Pride Month may be drawing to a close, but there’s still lots of news for and about LGBTQ parents. Read on for headlines from Hong Kong, Israel, Ireland, and Britain as well as the U.S. Learn about a young pro hockey player showing pride for his family, and see what you think about Fox’s idea for a new show with a queer mom.
Around the World
- An anti-LGBTQ group has pressured the Hong Kong Public Libraries into restricting the circulation of 10 LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books, moving them to closed-stack sections, available only upon request. The Leisure and Cultural Services Department of the Home Affairs Bureau, which oversees the library, noted that the librarians who reviewed the books found that seven of the titles were in fact “neutral without promoting homosexual or single-sex marriage,” reports the South China Morning Post. They recommended the books’ restriction, however, so that parents could guide children in reading them. Gay legislator Raymond Chan Chi-chue publicly criticized the move, however, and gay activist Lee Tak-hung has asked the courts to review the decision.
- Just weeks after the Haifa Family Court in Israel ruled that both partners in a two-woman couple will be able to legally register as the parents if one of them gives birth, come three more stories from the country:
- A Tel Aviv couple won a case in Family Court over bureaucratic entanglement after the birth of their twins. Because their babies were in intensive care, they missed a filing deadline to get their names on the birth certificate. They were then instructed to get an adoption order, which took a year to approve. The court ordered that they both be recognized as legal parents and paid for their legal costs.
- Unbeknownst to the mothers, Israel’s Interior Ministry has been deleting the names of nonbiological mothers in two-mom couples from their children’s birth certificates, and not telling the mothers. The approximately 30 documents in question were issued in 2006 and 2007, says Haaretz, “after the courts began issuing adoption orders that recognized non-biological parents in LGBT families…. The state claims that the original certificates were issued in error.” A two-mom couple discovered the changed birth certificates when they went to an embassy abroad to get visas for their children and discovered the documents on file did not match the ones they had.
- A Knesset committee approved a law that would allow single women to become parents via surrogacy, but not to extend that right to same-sex couples.
- The Irish cabinet has begun drafting a bill that “will allow some same-sex couples to both legally declare parentage of a child, and will also allow couples to seek a retrospective declaration of parentage,” reports TheJournal.ie. The bill would allow the nonbiological mother of a child conceived through sperm donation to be recognized as a legal parent.
- Lord Ivar Mountbatten, the first member of the British Royal Family to marry a same-sex partner, is also a dad.
In the U.S.
- A Manhattan appeals judge sent a child custody case between two women back to the lower court, saying that the lower court judge did not previously consider the best interests of the child and the child’s relationship with the non-legal mother. The women had planned to adopt a child from Ethiopia, but had to have only one of them do the paperwork because of concerns that the country would not allow a same-sex couple to adopt jointly. During the process, the women broke up. The legal mother, Circe Hamilton, claimed her former partner, Kelly Gunn, never had a relationship with the child and should not receive any custody. Gunn said she was a mother in all ways but legally.
- One Oregon private school has cancelled middle school athletic games with another private school because of the second school’s refusal to accept students with LGBTQ parents. High school games will continue. While private schools may have the right to discriminate (assuming they take no public funds), the Oregon School Activities Association (OSAA), which regulates sporting events at its member schools, including these two, requires the schools to adhere to its policies, including an anti-discrimination rule. The two schools are still in conversation over the issue, and the OSAA board will consider the matter at its July board meeting.
Sports and Entertainment
- Jaret Anderson-Dolan, who plays junior hockey for the Spokane Chiefs in the Western Hockey League, put rainbow-colored tape on his hockey stick for Pride, to show support for his family and his two moms. (Bonus fun fact: Other pro athletes with two moms include retired Cincinnati Reds pitcher Joe Valentine and basketball player Kenneth Faried of the Denver Nuggets.)
- Fox has cast Leah Rimini as a conservative queer mom in the pilot of an unnamed show. The character is “a self-described patriot who loves her country and firmly believes in everyone’s right to be left alone. Though she fits the stereotype of a typical conservative, Jean leads a very progressive lifestyle and is now married to a woman, who helps Jean raise her two sons, as does the boys’ father (and Jean’s ex-husband),” reports TVLine. Hmmmm. I grant that there are indeed LGBTQ conservatives, but this description (which I’m guessing comes from the network or producers) makes me raise an eyebrow. If she’s a “typical conservative,” how can she have a “very progressive lifestyle,” unless by “leads a very progressive lifestyle” you simply mean she’s a queer woman? Let’s review: Queerness is not a “lifestyle.”
