A few items from recent news:
- Which state has the highest percentage of LGBT couples with children? Mississippi, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, and reported by The Daily Mississippian. (Thanks to the Family Equality Council for the link.) The state also has the highest percentage of African American same-sex couples. The Census data does not, however, record the number of LGBT single parents out there.
- Nancy Polikoff, author of Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law
, brings us up to date on legislation in D.C. that would give expanded rights to non-biological parents in cases of donor insemination.
- Two publishers in Sweden are facing criticism over their efforts to be more inclusive of non-traditional families and gender roles in their books.
- The Family Equality Council has posted photos from Family Week 2008 in Provincetown, MA, and Between the Lines reports on the Family Week in Michigan run by Rainbow Families Great Lakes.
- Following the success of Camp fYerfly, a summer camp for LGBT youth in Edmonton, Canada, two new camps will launch next summer. The new camps, in Ottawa and British Columbia, will carry the Camp fYerfly name and follow the same philosophy of “youth teaching youth.” Two more camps, in Halifax and Saskatchewan, will open at a later date.
- Lesbian mom and Republican scion Mary Cheney and her partner Heather Poe have donated $3,000 to fight Proposition 8, the marriage-equality ban in California.
- Conor Pendergrast, a 22-year-old son of lesbian moms, writes in The Irish Times about his family and urges the Irish government “to provide the means of extending the rights and responsibilities of biological parents to non-biological parents.”