Lots of good stuff lately that I haven’t covered elsewhere, starting with a few pieces from the perspective of adults with gay and/or lesbian parents.
- Helena Andrews piece at The Root, “Finally, Equal Rights for My Lesbian Mother,” looks at both the general relief many of us have felt after the Supreme Court’s DOMA decision, and at the very individual relationship she has with her mother.
- Danish model Josephine Skriver talks with Buzzfeed about her lesbian mom, gay dad, and career, from diaper model to runway star. “I want to be the voice for the kids [of gay parents] because it’s really not that bad,” she says.
- Lesléa Newman, best known as the author of Heather Has Two Mommies
, uses one of her more recent books, Donovan’s Big Day
(about which more here) to shine a light on the impact of the DOMA ruling on children with same-sex parents.
- Some of you (especially if you’ve “liked” the Mombian Facebook page) may have seen a news item in early June about the Florida twins who graduated first and second in their high school class—and who happen to have lesbian moms. One of their moms writes at the Advocate about the unexpected publicity and what it means to her and her family.
- Terry Boggis, former director of family programming at the New York City LGBT Center, writes at HuffPo about “What’s Next?” beyond marriage equality for queer families.
- LGBT family law expert Nancy Polikoff also offers a caution against seeing marriage as the be-all and end-all. She cites Justice Kennedy’s ruling on DOMA, in which he says that DOMA “humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples.” Polikoff rightly asks, “What about the children of unmarried couples? single mothers? being raised by extended family members? They also deserve not to be demeaned and humiliated by their family structure.”
- Kimberly Dark at HuffPo writes on a similar theme, noting that even without marriage equality, her family has “maintained loving bonds for decades, and we’re different from the heteronormative, consumption-focused, religiously mandated norm.” She wants the same benefits for all families, but also cautions, “We queers will simply have to stay aware of how we assimilate into mainstream thinking, lest we lose all the wonderful benefits of having been on the margins for so long.”
- Adding to the reflections on the margins and the mainstream: If you haven’t read E.J. Graff’s “A Queer History” at The American Prospect, about her journey “from radical to mainstream and married” (and with kids), get thee hence.
- Clay Wirestone, a gay dad and staff member at the Concord Monitor, shares the stories of three other New Hampshire families with gay dads.
- Finally, on a lighter note, the new animated film Boxtrolls is running a trailer showing two-mom and two-dad couples among a mix of families. The film doesn’t seem to be about those couples, but is to be commended for including them even when it didn’t have to. It comes from Laika Studios, co-produced with NBC Universal’s Focus Features, which also both co-produced 2012’s ParaNorman, the first full-length animated feature to show a clearly gay character.
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