On parental rights:
- A Michigan state House committee approved legislation for second-parent adoptions, splitting the vote along party lines. (Do I really need to specify which party voted in favor?)
- A Montana woman, Barbara Maniaci, is asking the state Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that recognized her former partner as a co-parent to the two adopted children the two women had been raising together. Under state law, the women could not jointly adopt, so Maniaci was their only legal parent. Maniaci is represented by lawyers from the Alliance Defense Fund (think the anti-Lambda Legal), and claims she is no longer a lesbian. Why do “ex-lesbians” keep doing this?
- The Miami Herald stuns us with the headline, “Children of gay parents just like other kids.” OK, most readers of this blog won’t find much new here—but it’s good to see the matter getting more press, especially in a state with such antiquated parenting laws.
- Same-sex couples in Queensland, Australia, are fighting their state’s refusal to match federal laws and recognize their parental rights, reports the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
- Members of the European Parliament will vote next month on legislation that would require all 27 EU member states to give new fathers and female partners of new biological mothers two weeks’ compulsory paid leave. (Here in the U.S., we can’t even get optional leave for same-sex partners in many cases. In Europe, they’re about to make it mandatory. What’s wrong with this picture?)
On bullying and school climates:
- The Indian River Central School District in New York, after being sued by Lambda Legal, agreed to allow a student to form a gay-straight alliance. Both she and her brother “endured years of anti-gay harassment”
- State legislators and the Massachusetts Commission on GLBT Youth held a legislative meeting to discuss whether middle schools would be the next frontier for gay-straight alliances. The discussion was prompted by the recent suicide of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover in Springfield, Mass.
- The ACLU has warned as many as 107 Tennessee public school districts that they may be illegally using Internet filters to block students from online information about LGBT issues.
- As we remember the 10th anniversary of the Columbine school shootings, Nancy Polikoff makes the excellent point, “No one mentions the family structure of either young man. . . . And that’s because both were raised by their married, heterosexual, biological parents. Imagine any other family form—never-married mother, divorced parents, gay parent, same-sex couple parents, raised by a grandmother or other relative, raised by a step-parent, adopted—the list is long. You KNOW that everyone would be asking about the impact of that family form on the children. . . . Many commentators would find both pathology and causation.
- And the makes-my-blood-boil news of the week: A mother in Aberdeen, Scotland, must pay a £250 fine after shouting homophobic abuse at her estranged teenage son.
Last, and perhaps least, if you are a same-sex couple with kids, like to cook, and live in the U.K., the BBC wants you for a cooking show.