Personal Matters
- Sex and the City actor and lesbian mom Cynthia Nixon is the first “celebrity expert” at 365gay.com, where she tackles the question “I think my 7-year-old is gay and kids are starting to tease him. How do I help him or what should I do?”
- We Are Goodkin profiles Kimbo Prichard and Natasha Boissier, a couple who used a known donor to create their family.
- I mentioned CNN’s upcoming In America segment about two gay dads in my last roundup. Adam Amel Rogers has an interview with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien about the segment. It’s well worth a read. I commend O’Brien for stating that she is not trying to tell the story of all gay Americans here, or even all gay parents, just that of these two individuals (though she does say that she views the segment as the start of what she hopes will be a longer series of profiles of gay Americans).
Law
- Yet another custody battle between a non-biological mother and a biological mother, with (yet again) the biological mother hiring an anti-LGBT conservative lawyer. This time, it’s in Ohio, the second recent bio/non-bio case in the state.
- Two gay Israeli dads will be returning to Jerusalem from Mumbai after being stranded there for three months waiting for the Israeli government to issue passports for their twin sons, born to an Indian surrogate. I find the Advocate’s wording puzzling, however. Although my understanding is that the men chose to become parents together, the Advocate refers to “dad” in the singular, and then mentions his partner, as if only one (presumably the biological one) is the “real” dad. They are reporting based on coverage from the Press Times of India, which used similar wording. I would expect the Advocate to know better, however.
- The Louisiana House Civil Law and Procedure Committee rejected a bill to allow same-sex couples to adopt children jointly. A similar bill died in a Senate committee earlier this legislative session.
Politics
- Nancy Polikoff writes of a new report from the Center for American Progress (CAP) on the 2008 passage of Arkansas’ Initiated Act 1, banning adoption and foster parenting by anyone living with an unmarried partner. Disputes over messaging and a failure to reach out to faith communities were two of the major reasons opponents of the ban did not succeed.
- British home secretary and minister for equality Theresa May, who has had a poor LGBT-rights voting record, told the BBC’s Question Time that she would now vote in favor of same-sex couples jointly adopting. “I think it’s more important that that child is in that stable and loving environment and I have genuinely changed my mind on that,” she said.
Miscellaneous
- A new study from the University of Queensland has found almost 50 percent of same-sex attracted women over 34 have children and most want to marry. Almost a third of both same-sex attracted females and males under 25 also said they planned to have children.
- Several young adult authors are taking steps to combat bullying in schools, as I discuss at Change.org.