The Boy Scouts may be shining a flashlight into a tent they would prefer remains dark. In April they ejected Ohio mother Jennifer Tyrrell from her position as leader of her son’s Cub Scout den, simply because she is a lesbian. In doing so, however, they turned a light on the impact of their policy, and helped show that the real victims are children like Tyrrell’s seven-year-old.
The Latter-day Saints (Mormons) as a group are not known for being particularly accepting of LGBT people. What happens, then, when a young person in a Mormon family comes out as LGBT? The Family Acceptance Project (FAP) at San Francisco State University, which has long studied and addressed the impact of family acceptance and rejection on the health and mental health of LGBT youth, has just released a new faith-based family education resource to help guide Mormon families in supporting their LGBT children.
The ACLU has filed a new federal case in North Carolina, seeking to overturn the state’s ban on second-parent adoption. A win would mean that kids being raised by same-sex couples could have “legally protected relationships with both of the parents who are raising them.” Because the case was brought under the federal constitution, a win could have an impact on other states as well.
It’s my son’s last week of school before vacation, and I’m thinking about our summer plans, so I thought I’d ask the rest of you what you’re looking forward to this summer. Anyone taking any trips? Starting (or finishing) any home improvement projects? Sending the kids to camp?
A right-wing author has published a paper that claims children of lesbian and gay parents face many negative outcomes—but several leading LGBT organizations are calling his work “flawed, misleading, and scientifically unsound.”
At least two of the entries to Blogging for LGBT Families Day were from lesbian moms whose children have serious illnesses. Jaime and Laura of Team Shimmy have a son with cardiomyopathy (whom I’ve mentioned before); Brooke and Liz of Lenox Slays the Leukemiasaurus have a daughter with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). I want to offer a special thanks to them for sharing their stories, not just on Blogging for LGBT Families Day, but on all the other days when they write about the good and the bad, the ordinary and the extraordinary, of their lives. They offer a gift to other families facing similar situations.
Because Brooke asked directly, “Hello? Any other lesbian moms going through this now? What is your experience like?” I also wanted to offer this post as an attempt to facilitate such connections.
I can’t believe it’s been a whole week since Blogging for LGBT Families Day. I’ve finally read through all the posts, and am more amazed than ever at the diversity, strength, and love of our families. I know that a U.S.-based site like Mombian is bound to attract mostly U.S.-based visitors, so I’m especially pleased to see folks from non-U.S. countries who have found their way here—thanks for letting the rest of us travel a bit (albeit virtually) into your countries and lives.
Most of us LGBT parents know in our bones that the quality of one’s parenting matters more than one’s family structure in raising well adjusted children. Not everyone is so rational, however—hence the need for experts like Cambridge University psychologist Michael Lamb, who has recently published what LGBT family law expert Nancy Polikoff calls the “definitive article on child adjustment.”
Author Todd Parr has responded with the video below (after the jump) to the banning of his The Family Book by an Illinois school board. They banned the book after some parents complained about a page that says, “Some families have two moms or two dads.” Todd Parr is awesome.
President Obama has said that same-sex parents and their children influenced his decision to support marriage equality. And in the Washington Post recently, Janice D’Arcy asked, “Has gay parenting ‘normalized’ the perception of gay relationships?” The interaction between LGBT parenting rights and relationship rights is indeed a fascinating and important question—and one charted in part by law professor Carlos Ball, whose new book also gives us a compelling history of the expansion of LGBT parenting rights. Here’s my review of his work, originally published as my Mombian newspaper column.
