LGBT Parenting Roundup

Let’s start with a funny:

Wanda Sykes is experiencing the . . . plumbing issues . . . that many of us encounter with our male infants. (Via Queerty.)

School issues:

• School officials in Ramona, California, told sixth-grader Natalie Jones that she couldn’t share her independent study project in class like the other students. The reason? Jones had written about civil rights icon Harvey Milk, and the school claimed the presentation would violate policy on sex education. The ACLU LGBT Project and the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties has sent a demand letter to the school, stating that the school’s actions constitute illegal censorship. (The ACLU is wrong, however, in saying Milk was the United States’ first openly gay elected official. He was the fifth.)
• A Vallejo, California school district agreed to pay a student $25,000 after she filed a complaint that teachers harassed her for being lesbian and forced her to attend a counseling session in which she and other students were discouraged from being gay. The district settled without admitting liability.
• The ACLU and ACLU of Tennessee filed a federal lawsuit against two Tennessee school districts, claiming the schools are unconstitutionally blocking students from accessing online information about LGBT issues. The ACLU says that non-sexual Web sites about LGBT equality are blocked, but those that advocate “reparative therapy” for being gay are accessible.
• An 8-year-old transgender child has been kicked out of Catholic school after her parents began allowing her to live openly as a girl.
• The Elementary Teachers’ Federation in Canada sent a letter to the Education Minister asking that the curriculum reflect family diversity, including LGBT families.
• The Minnesota House and Senate have passed the “Safe Schools for All Bill,” which clarifies existing bullying and harassment laws to fully protect all Minnesota students, including LGBT children and those with LGBT parents. The Family Equality Council is asking people to call the governor and urge him to sign it.
• The San Francisco school board voted to reinstate the JROTC program, reversing a 2006 decision to phase out the program because of the military’s ban on openly gay personnel.
• In North Carolina, an LGBT-inclusive anti-bullying bill has passed the Senate and now moves to the House.
• In South Carolina, LGBT-rights advocates demonstrated at the state capitol, protesting a provision in a teen dating violence bill that specifically excludes same-sex couples.

Right-wing silliness:

• The ultra-right World Net Daily has published an article titled, “Girl Scouts Exposed: Lessons in Lesbianism.” (I must have missed that week at camp. Damn.) They inveigh against “lesbians, radical feminists and controversial figures as role models instead of other significant female pioneers” and against the organization’s turn towards “the religion of the New Age.” After Ellen has more.

Court cases:

• California’s First District Court of Appeal unanimously affirmed the second-degree murder convictions of Michael Magidson and Jose Merel for the murder of Gwen Araujo, a transgender 17-year old.
• A judge in Ventura County, California, ruled that the parents of Lawrence King, the eighth-grader killed by a classmate last year, can sue his foster home for negligence. The parents say that because the foster home allowed King to express his sexuality and gender identity, they helped lead to his death.
• The New York Times reports on the case of Janice Langbehn, who is suing a hospital in Florida for refusing to let her or her kids visit her dying partner (the kids’ other mother), Lisa Pond, despite having a health care proxy and the kids’ birth certificates on hand. (I first wrote about this almost a year ago, when Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit on Langbehn’s behalf. What took major media so long?)

Laws and legislation:

• U.S. Rep Rosa DeLauro reintroduced the Healthy Families Act. Employees could use the seven days of paid sick leave a year provided by the Act for their own medical needs or those of children, parents, spouses or any other individual “whose close association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship.”
• The Finnish Parliament voted to allow second-parent adoptions by members of couples in registered partnerships.
• Romania is considering legislation to prohibit same-sex couples from adopting children.
• Ben Krull, an attorney who works as a law assistant to a Manhattan Family Court judge, explains why “Marriage equality would have the biggest impact on the children of same-sex couples.”

Family stories:

• Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of the Family Equality Council, reflects on what marriage equality means to her seven-year-old twin sons, and in what ways it matters—and doesn’t—at their age.
• Deborah Gar Reichman describes the trip to the Galapagos she and her partner took with both of their moms. A tale of in-laws and inlets.

Amazing kids:

• Eight-year-old Ethan of Denver, Colorado, has organized a marriage equality rally at the state capitol.
• PFLAG announced the winners of 16 scholarships, totaling more than $30,000. The students “have made significant contributions to equality in their schools and communities.”