LGBT Parenting Roundup

It’s a big roundup this week, so grab some coffee:

Personal Stories

• The U.K.’s Mirror brings us the story of Emma and Laura Flanagan, who used the same known donor to get pregnant five months apart, and plan for their children to know the man as their father, though not a legal one. It’s pretty well done, although the paper gives some sense that their situation is rarer than it probably is. “This is their unique family,” it says. Here’s my previous post on simultaneous pregnancies among lesbian couples, proving that it certainly isn’t unique—and I know there are many of you out there with involved known donors, so that isn’t unique, either. Still, it’s a sweet story, and I wish the couple my best.
• Margaret Daros, the mother of a gay son, gives us a moving, multi-generational look at her family, including her in-laws (through her son’s partner), as an argument for upholding marriage equality in Maine.
• A couple of weeks ago, I posted the touching video of Chelsea Montgomery-Duban speaking at her dads’ wedding. Mississipi’s Sun Herald has an article about the video, Montgomery-Duban’s YouTube fame, and her thoughts on her family and marriage equality. Florida’s St. Petersburg Times also has a piece about the video.
• This one could have gone under the Politics heading as well: Indy Week profiles Julia Boseman, North Carolina’s only out state senator and a mom who recently won a custody battle with her ex-partner over rights to see her seven-year-old son. She and her new spouse, Chrystal Medlin, are expecting a baby boy in January. In the article, Boseman talks both about her personal life and about measures like the anti-bullying bill she helped institute.
• Nevada’s domestic partnerships went into effect last week, and while that’s not parenting-specific, it did give the Las Vegas Sun a reason to publish a profile of Carline Banegas and Jodie Dearborn and their three teen children, who will be one of the first couples to register. They are field trip chaperones and enjoy trips to Disneyland, making them a pretty typical family of any sort—but they met during a softball game and moved in after just a few weeks, making them pretty typical lesbians.
• Canadian lesbian site The Pink Elephant brings us the reminiscences of a teen daughter of a lesbian mom, who tells us when she first started thinking of her mom as a person, not just a parent—and it wasn’t the day her mom came out to her.
• Paige at Bilerico shares the very funny story of her son asking about his body parts (his word mix-up almost made me spill my coffee), and discusses her difficult search for children’s books that talk about bodies and sexuality in an age-appropriate, feminist, queer-affirming, sex-positive way.

Politics and Law

• In 2001, Guadalupe ‘Lupita’ Benítez and her spouse Joanne Clark sued their former doctors at North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group for refusing to perform donor insemination for Benítez because she is a lesbian. The doctors claimed a right to opt out of California’s civil rights law because they hold fundamentalist Christian views. The California Supreme Court ruled last year that Benitez was entitled to be treated like other patients with her same health problem, and that constitutional protections for religious liberty do not excuse unlawful discrimination. Now, Lambda Legal reports, “the parties have reached a mutually satisfactory settlement of the litigation for an undisclosed sum of money.”
• Guess who supports marriage equality in Maine? The Maine Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatricians, the Maine Children’s Alliance, Maine Psychological Association, National Association of Social Workers Maine Chapter, Community Counseling Center, and Kids First Center, all stating that stable, legal, family bonds are in children’s best interests.
• Mainer D. Allan Kerr rightly says that the issue of marriage equality in Maine is an issue of marriage equality, not schools or what kids might learn in schools, as opponents would have us believe.
• Not LGBT-specific, but certainly a case worth tracking: The Massachusetts State Appeals Court refused to take a case in which the mother of twins is demanding that the New England Cryogenic Center Inc. identify her anonymous sperm donor. The woman “seeks disclosure of his identity so that she can institute a paternity and child support claim against him and obtain medical information that may be useful in treating conditions she claims her daughters have developed.’’ The court did say, however, that state legislators should look at the issues involved. I say if there are medical reasons to ask a donor to reveal himself, he can do so through intermediaries if he wishes to remain anonymous. The whole idea of instituting a paternity suit against a donor seems patently ridiculous, and could lead to donors trying to claim paternity in cases where the woman does not wish him to do so. If a woman or couple wants a known donor, that’s great, but if the donor is unknown and anonymous, then he should remain that way.

Schools and Youth

• Kevin Jennings, the Assistant Deputy for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education, and the founder of GLSEN, is under fire from the right, who don’t seem to like an openly gay person in any official role that has to do with kids. Apparently, back when Jennings was a 24-year-old teacher in Massachusetts, one of his teen students admitted he was sleeping with an older man. Jennings, closeted at the time, advised the boy to use condoms. Now, the right is saying that he promoted pedophilia. Turns out, according to Media Matters, that the boy was over 16, and thus over the age of consent in the state.

  Should he have been more forceful in trying to dissuade that one teen from continuing a relationship with an older man? Certainly. But the incident happened over 20 years ago and was in no way criminal. (Arguably, Jennings would have caused the boy more trauma if he had done what the right suggests and reported him.) All I can say is that through GLSEN, Jennings has probably done more good for youth than any of those who attack him. He has clearly learned much since his younger days when he was closeted, and seems perfect for the safe schools role. If Obama lets him be run out of town for this, it will seriously damage my opinion of our president.

• On October 25-26 in Indianapolis, The Women’s Sports Foundation initiative “It Takes A Team” will partner with the Sports Project of the National Center for Lesbian Rights to host a national think tank on “Equal Opportunities for Transgender Student-Athletes”. Pat Griffin, director of It Takes a Team, explains that while some large sports organizations have developed relevant policies at the international level, “each is focused on the inclusion of adult transgender athletes who have no eligibility limitations on their ability to participate in their sports as is the case with collegiate or high school athletes. . . . Our goal in the think tank is to address, not only the participation of athletes who have completed a transition or who are in the process of transitioning, but also athletes who are not undergoing a transition but whose gender identity and expression do not conform to typical expectations.”
• Another story from Canada: Edmonton teacher Jan Buterman has filed a human rights complaint against the Greater St. Albert Catholic school district after it said he could not be a substitute teacher because he was changing his gender. The district is in fact a publicly funded institution, not a small privately run religious school, making the religious-freedom argument moot, as I see it. (Thanks, Autumn.)

Demographics

• Mother Jones casts a critical eye on a new Census Bureau report about stay-at-home moms. The report claims to debunk the myth of the “opt-out revolution.” Women, it seems, are not leaving high-paying jobs in droves to have children. Mother Jones, however, says the reasons for an apparent drop in SAHM’s are more complex, and the report’s methodology is iffy. Among other things, the Bureau defines “stay-at-home moms” as: “those who have a husband who was in the labor force all 52 weeks last year, while she was out of the labor force during the same 52 weeks to care for the home and family.”

  One problem, I am sure, is glaringly obvious to readers here (Husband? What husband?), and to Mother Jones’ credit, they notice it as well. They also poke all kinds of other holes in the methodology, which ignores single moms, freelancing moms, and others. Good stuff, and a reminder to take all such reports with a dose of skepticism.