I’m taking this week’s pick from the great new blog The Gay Dad Project, founded by Amie, Erin, and Jared, who were each born to opposite-sex parents and had their dads come out to them later in life. In these days of Modern Family and The New Normal, it’s easy to forget that not all LGBT families are LGBT families from the start—and that some people have both LGBT and non-LGBT parents.
The Boy Scouts of America are an anti-gay organization. They don’t allow gay scouts—even ones about to get their Eagle awards. They kick out gay dads and lesbian moms who are leading their children’s dens and troops. But not all Scout leaders agree with the national policy, and some are speaking out.
Stories. Legos. Cartoons. Three things that Chad and Lisa Johnson say make their neighbors “a regular family,” no matter that the neighbors are two moms, Colleen Ozolitis and Lee Ann Martinson, and their five-year-old sons. Washington United for Marriage, the coalition working to defend the state’s marriage equality law, created an ad featuring the Johnsons that will run statewide on broadcast and cable.
What makes a family? Most of us know in our hearts. Thanks to the Pride Foundation for tweeting to remind us of this short but powerful video by lesbian mom Jen Finkle-Weaver that offers her perspective on the question.
Today is National Coming Out Day, so I’m going to celebrate in true Mombian fashion and write about coming out while a parent. Parents who come out, it seems to me, fall into two broad camps. One, parents who have been out as LGBT since they became parents, but whose degree of “outness” may be impacted by having children, and two, parents who have had to come out to their children after the children thought they were straight or cis-gendered.
Stories can be told in many ways. Two new works—one poetic, one academic—take strikingly different approaches to telling the stories of LGBT people and families.
We lesbian moms sure have made our mark. The day after I posted about Roberta Achtenberg being selected as an LGBT History Month Icon, lawyer Mary Bonauto was named one as well. Bonauto is best known as the lead counsel in the historic case that won same-sex couples the right to marry in Massachusetts.
It’s LGBT History Month, and one of the icons being celebrated by the Equality Forum is lesbian mom Roberta Achtenberg, a commissioner of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the first openly gay presidential appointee confirmed by the Senate, and cofounder of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Here’s a short clip Equality Forum did about her;
Get your “I Love My Mummies” t-shirts and other kid apparel in the Mombian Store at CafePress. Thanks to my own “mummy” for providing the drawing.
