There’s more going on right now than just the presidential election and Halloween. Here are a few stories:
- First, score one for the penguins: Library trustees in Calvert County, Maryland, voted unanimously to keep And Tango Makes Three
in the children’s section of county libraries, along with other picture books, despite an official complaint that the book be shelved in an area labeled “alternative or non-traditional family.”
Library trustees asserted, “it is the job of a library to disseminate information, not to ‘take the role of a parent’ and determine who can access what information.” They asked “how would [books] about single, foster, mixed-race, young or old parents be tagged” and concluded, “Segregating books about such families would require ‘passing value judgments on such families’ and would censor what readers could easily find in the library.”
- The Atlantic profiles an eight-year-old transgender child. It’s somewhat similar to a May NPR piece on the subject. Like the NPR piece, it does give space to the opinions of Dr. Kenneth Zucker, who doubts children can have any true sense of a non-biological gender identity. (See my earlier post about Zucker.) Overall, it’s a positive article, though, and balances Zucker’s opinions with those of other experts as well as the experience of the family.
- Nancy Polikoff, among others, reminds us of the Arkansas ballot measure, Initiated Act 1, which would ban adoption and foster parenting by unmarried same-sex and opposite-sex couples. She urges donations to Arkansas Families First.
- Polikoff also points out the bill passed by the U.K.’s House of Commons on October 22, which will require fertility clinics to consider only a child’s need for “supportive parenting,” not the “need for a father” before accepting patients. The new law will also allow lesbian couples who bear children to put both parents’ names on their children’s birth certificates, without requiring the non-biological mother to adopt. She notes that she and others are trying to achieve the same thing in Washington, D.C.
- And two news items from Canada: School principals in Charlotte County, New Brunswick, have decided not to allow gay author Alex Sanchez to address students in area high schools, after some parents complained about his pending appearance. Local youth leaders condemned the officials’ decision. Sanchez’s Rainbow Boys
was a Lambda Literary Award finalist.
- Two men responsible for the creation of a new, LGBT-inclusive social justice course for British Columbia high school students have filed a human-rights complaint against their local school district for its decision not to offer the course this year. School officials say they want to review the course’s content after some parents complained it went against their religion.