Families and Schools Roundup

A few items on LGBT families that didn’t make my Political Roundup yesterday:

• Australia’s The Age has a lengthy article on gay and lesbian parents and our families. Mostly familiar territory for those of us in the LGBT community, but interesting for those of us not in Australia.
• In that vein, I will repeat one item from my Political Roundup: The Iceland Review published a fascinating article on the changing shape of families in that country, where both same- and opposite-sex couples are moving towards state-recognized “consensual unions” rather than marriage, and the isolated nation is trying to come to grips with the idea of international adoptions.
• Bay Windows takes a look at the strong LGBT-friendly record of the new Boston superintendent of schools, Carol Johnson, including her cutting off the Boy Scouts from district resources and insisting gay fathers be allowed to chaperone field trips, even if other parents object.
• In unsurprising but quotable school news, a new study sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) has found that secondary institutions with gay-straight alliances “provide a more positive learning environment for LGBT students than schools that don’t,” and “students in GSA schools are less likely to hear homophobic remarks and slurs in the classroom than students in non-GSA schools.”
• The Supreme Court of Canada this week refused to consider the appeal from Christian conservative groups to overturn a decision granting mutual parenthood to two lesbian moms and the father of their child. The trio had sought parenthood status over the past five years, and gained it last January.
• Philly.com has a good editorial on the Evesham, New Jersey ban of the film That’s a Family. Contrast this to the New York Times’ coverage, on which I posted yesterday. They make the excellent points:
  

  Lessons can be value-neutral. Acknowledging that divorce exists, for example, does not “advocate” divorce.

  Students as young as third grade do wonder why some families look different from theirs, and they do ask questions – not always in the privacy of their homes, as a number of Evesham parents seemed to desire.

  Far better that the questions get answered in the classroom than on the playground.