LGBTQ Parenting Roundup: End-of-Year Edition

• LGBTQ Parenting Roundup • china, israel, singapore

LGBTQ Parenting RoundupI posted my big year-in-review piece yesterday, but here are some more stories about LGBTQ parents and our children to note as we slide towards the end of 2018.

Family Profiles

  • After thieves stole the rainbow flag from the Barrington, Illinois home of Casey Handal and Zadette Rosado and their two kids and replaced it with an American flag, their neighbors sprang into action to distribute and display rainbow flags throughout their community and to drop off small gifts for the family.
  • Jen Colletta, former editor-in-chief at Philadelphia Gay News (for whom I also write), shares her feelings about adjusting to parenthood with an infant and becoming comfortable with her new identity as a parent.
  • Transgender dad Chris tells Gay Star News about meeting his spouse, creating a blended family with her, and coming out as transgender.
  • Director, writer, and actor Joey Tremblay writes for CBC News about his and his partner Cory Beaujot’s experience creating their family through gestational surrogacy, including their relationships with their surrogate and egg donor and their experience at the hospital for their child’s birth.
  • Glenis and Tiffany Liz-Decuir tell LGBTQ Nation their story of co-breastfeeding.
  • Actor and comedian Rosie O’Donnell is now a grandmother. Baby Skylar was born to her daughter Chelsea.

Politics and Law

  • Attorney Diana Adams, who will soon be launching a new legal nonprofit to serve polyamorous families, multi-parent families, LGBTQ families, and other families of choice, writes at the LGBT Bar Association about “What Polyamorous and Multi-parent Families Should Do to Protect Their Rights.”
  • CNN covers the ongoing story of religious exemption laws that make it legal in 10 states to cite religious or moral beliefs as a reason to discriminate against LGBTQ people in adoption and foster care. As part of their coverage, they profile Michigan couple Kristy and Dana Dumont, one of two couples suing the state to change these laws.
  • Connecticut Comptroller Kevin Lembo, one of the many LGBTQ parents who won election this year, has praised Governor Dannel Malloy and other state officials for trying to recruit same-sex couples to become foster care and adoptive parents.

International News

  • The Supreme Court of Israel ruled that when two parents adopt a child in Israel, the names of both parents must be put on its birth certificate, even if they are of the same sex. The ruling came as the result of a lawsuit brought by two adoptive dads and The Aguda: The Association for LGBTQ Equality in Israel.
  • Reuters reports on how “LGBT+ parents challenge stereotypes in China.” Even though the article focuses on same-sex couples and no clearly transgender ones, it’s a good overview of how this part of the LGBT+ community is creating families despite challenges. (Same-sex couples in China have no legal way to use reproductive technologies, for example, so some go abroad to do so.) Make sure to click over to the associated photo essay about dads An Hui and Ye Jianbin.
  • A man in Singapore has won an appeals court decision allowing him (but not his partner) to adopt the child he fathered in the U.S. through a surrogate. The Singapore Times notes, however, that the court “stressed that its decision to reverse the district court’s ruling was based on the welfare of the child, and ‘should not be taken as an endorsement of what the appellant and his partner set out to do.'” Still, the best interests of the child is what it’s all about, so let’s take this as a step forward.
  • Same-sex penguin pair Thelma and Louise, who reside at Kelly Tarlton’s Sea Life Aquarium in Auckland, New Zealand, are expecting a chick together. The king penguin pair have been together for five years made headlines last year when they were given an egg to incubate after another female laid a fertile egg but did not have a mate. This time, Thelma laid an egg—meaning that at some point she had to mate with a male penguin—but Louise is “still helping incubate the egg as it if was her own.”  (There are also many more examples of same-sex penguin parents!)

Research

  • “Are Gay Men Able to Adopt Faster Than Other Couples?” asks Rewire.News. While there is some anecdotal evidence that male couples may on average adopt faster than female couples or different-sex couples, reporter Miriam Zoila Pérez notes that “Adoption is a complicated process, rife with gender, class, and racial dynamics, and political shifts may only make the environment more challenging for those navigating the process.”
  • Charlotte J. Patterson, professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia and a long-time researcher on LGB parents, and Ph.D. student Jason Sumontha are “interested in discovering ways to support parenting and reduce stress among same-sex couples raising children” and are therefore conducting a study “to explore how couples work together in their parental roles and the life experiences that help or hinder them (such as minority stress or social support).” Check out their 15- to 25-minute online survey and help them help us.
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