Schools and Youth
- The ACLU and and Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition are advocating on behalf of a Mississippi high school student who wants to go to the prom with her girlfriend. School officials have said she may not arrive with her girlfriend or wear a tux, and must leave if other students become “uncomfortable.”
- A Catholic preschool in Boulder, Colorado has told a lesbian couple their child cannot return to the school next year because their sexual orientation is against Catholic teaching and school policy.
- The Washington State senate passed an LGBT-inclusive anti-bullying bill. It now goes to Gov. Christine Gregoire, who has said she will sign it.
Custody Cases
- Detroit’s Between the Lines has a lengthy and worthwhile piece on a custody case in which a biological mother is refusing to let her ex-partner see the three children the two of them had been raising together. Michigan does not allow second-parent adoptions. Nancy Polikoff has more on the case, and astutely notes: “We need courts to rule on the parent-child relationships created in a family, not on the perception that a ruling to preserve an existing parent-child relationship is a vote for same-sex marriage.”
- The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) announced the resolution of a custody dispute between a biological and a non-biological mom in California. (I’ve posted before about this case, in which the bio mom is now in a relationship with the women’s known sperm donor.) Under the settlement, both women are recognized as legal parents of their twins.
Politics and Law
- Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) plans this week to reintroduce the Every Child Deserves a Family Act, which would prohibit discrimination against LGBT people seeking to adopt children.
- Arizona state Rep. Warde Nichols says there’s no anti-gay agenda behind his bill giving preference to married couples in matters of adoption. Arizona Republic writer E.J. Montini is dubious.
- David Cameron, leader of the U.K.’s Conservative party, said that if his party gains power, it would extend maternity and paternity leave to same-sex couples in civil partnerships who adopt children or use assisted insemination. He also apologized for his party’s support of Section 28, a ban on the “promotion of homosexuality” by public authorities. (Side note: Section 28 had been enacted shortly before I went to live in the U.K. in 1988. It was my first real introduction to bias against gay people. Still, it’s about time the Tories are apologizing. I’m still not sure they’ve said “sorry” for Margaret Thatcher, though.)
