Assorted recent news about LGBT families:
- California’s KNBC-TV refused to air an ad during the Super Bowl from GetToKnowUsFirst.org, featuring a gay family. They say the NFL Legal Department considered the ad “advocacy,” and would not let it run. During the Presidential Inauguration, California’s KABC-TV refused to run the ad for the same reason (although the media buyer for GetToKnowUsFirst’s ad agency claimed the station wouldn’t run it since “many families will be watching.”).
- The 4th District Court of Appeal ruled that California Lutheran High School, as a private, religious organization, can exclude students based on sexual orientation. The school expelled two girls in 2005 because of an alleged lesbian relationship.
- Ron Huberman, president of the Chicago Transit Authority and previously Chief of Staff for Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, was appointed CEO of Chicago Public Schools. The big deal? Huberman is openly gay.
- Over in Boston, Rev. Gregory Groover, the new chair of the Boston School Committee, said he is committed to making Boston schools welcoming for all students, families and staff, including LGBT people, despite having once been part of a coalition that opposed marriage equality.
- The ongoing saga of the Miller-Jenkins custody case goes on. A Vermont Family Court judge rejected a new bid by Lisa Miller to deny visitation rights to her former partner, Janet Jenkins, and reminded Miller that she risks losing custody if she continues to violate court orders. At the same time, he turned down a request from Jenkins that she be given primary custody, and allowed her five weeks of custody in the summer.
- Big news in the U.K. is a case in Scotland involving the adoption of two children by a gay couple. The childrens’ mother is a recovering heroin addict. The children were originally being cared for by their two grandparents, who were then told they were too old to adopt them. A new couple was chosen to adopt, and they happen to be gay. Both the grandparents and the mother have said they do not want the children raised by a gay couple. Now, a “consortium of businessmen and professionals” is funding a legal challenge to the adoption, backed by the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland.
- John Corvino is not a father and has no desire to be one, but his piece on gay adoption is worth a read. “When discussing adoption,” he writes, “it’s a bit misleading to ask what’s ‘best’ for children. In the abstract, what’s ‘best’ for children . . . is to not need adoption in the first place. . . . So what we’re really seeking is not the ‘best’—that option’s already off the table—but the ‘best available.’ What the 1977 Florida law entails is that gay persons are NEVER the best available. And that’s a difficult position for even a die-hard homophobe to maintain.”
- Sara Whitman reminds us that it’s okay for lesbian and gay parents not to be perfect.