I’m posting a second roundup this week because of the many great parenting-related pieces after the marriage equality hearings at the U.S. Supreme Court. This should get you through the weekend!
- First, Tom Junod of Esquire has a brilliantly reasoned yet heartfelt piece that should be required reading for all straight people still on the fence about marriage equality. Junod is a straight man who says his own position on marriage equality has evolved through becoming an adoptive parent. He explains how the far-right argument against marriage equality rests heavily on the argument that only couples with biological children are considered to have “natural marriages.” Since adopting, he says, he and his wife have also gotten to know many same-sex adoptive couples, and “I have come to believe that they have the right to be married because I know that I have the right to be married, and I know that they are the same as me—because I know that I have more in common with gay adoptive parents than I do with straight biological ones.” I’ve touched on similar arguments myself, but Junod’s personal perspective makes his piece that much more powerful.
- Ezra Klein of the Washington Post explains to Justice Antonin Scalia why “There’s no evidence that gay parents aren’t great parents.” He, too, notes that “adoption by gay couples is one of the best arguments for gay marriage, not an argument against it.”
- Erik Botsford at Parenting.com writes that while the American Academy of Pediatrics’ affirmation of gay marriage is good, insofar as we need quantifiable results to counter conservative arguments, something about their announcement rankles him. He explains, “I don’t need anyone to weigh in on my ability to parent my kids or whether my kids are well-adjusted and emotionally healthy. To even attempt to make that kind of determination implies that the fact that I’m gay has the potential to harm my kids.” He doesn’t blame the AAP, but rightly highlights the conflicting emotions many of us may be feeling when we hear of these studies.
- Melissa Hart, author of Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood
, about growing up in the 1970s separated from her lesbian mother, has reposted her 2005 piece “Meet the Queerspawn.” And you should.
- Emily Hecht-McGowan is Director of Public Policy for the Family Equality Council, but she’s also a mom. She wrote a letter to give to her infant daughter later in life, as a way of explaining why people had to fight for LGBT equality when she (the daughter) was younger.
- LGBT family law expert Nancy Polikoff adds her take to “The talk about children (and more) at the Supreme Court“—in particular, addressing Chief Justice John Roberts’ point that there is an “internal inconsistency” in saying (as Polikoff puts it) that “children are not harmed being raised by gay and lesbian parents or same-sex couples” while we also claim “the children are worse off than their peers with heterosexual parents because those parents can marry.”
- In perhaps-less-political but still-nicely-timed news, Jenna Wolfe of NBC’s “Today” show both came out and announced that she and her partner, NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gosk, are expecting a child.
- Finally, in a reminder that our struggle is really a global one, Giuseppina La Delfa writes at HuffPo about what life is like as a lesbian mom in Italy.
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