Politics and Law
- A must-read this week is Jacob M. Appel’s piece on the growing “sperm donors’ rights movement,” in which donors are trying to assert their claims to parenthood.
- New Mexico’s new parentage laws go into effect on January 1, Nancy Polikoff reminds us. The Really Quite Wonderful new law states: “a person who…consents to assisted reproduction…with the intent to be the parent of a child is a parent of the resulting child.” The non-biological parent is supposed to consent in writing, but will still be considered a parent if she resided with the child during the first two years of the child’s life “and openly held out the child as [her] own.” Washington, D.C. enacted a similar law last July. Nancy has more on what this all means and how New Mexico recognizes same-sex couples in other ways.
- Mexico City became the first city in Latin America to legalize marriage for same-sex couples—and smartly also allowing them to adopt children.
- On a related note, Equality California Executive Director Geoff Kors writes of the need to create safe environments for LGBT youth, saying, “We need to make it clear to the broader public—and parents in particular—that the danger isn’t in students learning about LGBT people in school, but rather the danger is in students not learning about LGBT people in school. We need to take on our opponents and call out these adult bullies for the very real harm they cause to LGBT youth—harm that lasts a lifetime.”
Schools and Youth
- Maria José Muñoz and Rafael Pineda are non-LGBT parents from self-described conservative backgrounds. They are also the parents of “a beautiful, happy and healthy transgender child attending school in Alameda” and wrote a piece for Inside Bay Area taking fellow Alameda parent and “ex-gay” Kerry Cook to task for her remarks that being transgender is a mental illness. (For more on the Alameda kerfuffle over the school district’s anti-bullying curriculum, see my last roundup.
- Psychiatrist Serena Yuan Volpp has a good piece at HuffPo on how marriage equality can teach children to be more tolerant of others. “Marriage equality,” she asserts, “can change society so that peers—and parents—can, if not embrace, accept homosexuality as part of the world in which we live.”
- The Point Foundation, the nation’s largest scholarship-granting organization for LGBT students, has opened its 2010 application season. Students who will be enrolled in undergraduate or graduate programs for the 2010-11 school year are eligible to apply for the multi-year scholarships. Candidates should have demonstrated academic excellence, leadership skills, community involvement and financial need. Particular attention is paid to students who have lost the financial and social support of their families and/or communities as a result of revealing their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. The average amount of annual support for each scholar is between $25,000-$33,000, and also includes “programmatic support in leadership training, community service and mentoring.” The application deadline for this year’s scholarships is February 12, 2010.
Personal Stories
- Paige Schilt’s “Timetables: Trains, Gender, Empathy” at Bilerico is a great piece about gift-giving, gender, and child development.