Let’s roundup some stories I haven’t already covered—including, unfortunately, the progress of anti-LGBTQ bills in several states in the past week.
Politics and Law
- The Tennessee House passed a bill that would allow child service agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ prospective parents, LGBTQ youth, and people of other identities (like Jews), if serving them would violate the agency’s religious beliefs. This would be allowed even if the child service agencies are receiving taxpayer money. It’s one of several virulently anti-LGBTQ bills in the state’s legislature right now. While at least one legislator has tried to mollify people by saying the bill only applies to the “extent allowable by federal law,” that’s disingenuous—the current federal government has shown it’s more than willing to allow this crock of nonsense.
- The Texas Senate looks set to pass a bill that “would forbid a professional licensing or regulatory agency from sanctioning, refusing to issue a license, or revoking the license of a practitioner who asserts a religious justification for failure to meet professional standards,” as HRC explains it. This includes teachers, doctors, social workers, counselors, psychologists, and therapists, among many others. While the bill “includes specific exemptions to ensure that neither police officers nor medical practitioners providing emergency medical care would be allowed to assert religious justifications for failing to provide those life-saving services,” it is still a thinly veiled excuse to discriminate.
- The New York State Assembly failed to pass the Child-Parent Security Act, which would have legalized gestational surrogacy as well as clarifying and simplifying the procedure for recognizing the parents of a child born via assisted reproduction.
- On a brighter note, the Massachusetts Senate voted to ban conversion therapy in the state. The House has already approved the legislation; Governor Charlie Baker (R) has said he is “inclined to support” it.
- The House Judiciary Committee held its first hearing on the Equality Act, which would offer numerous protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, including in foster care and adoption. Here’s law professor and gay dad Kenji Yoshino’s personal testimony.
Profiles
- Lindsay Curtis writes at HuffPo about her experience parenting and dating as a single lesbian mom.
- Sixty-one-year-old Cecile Eledge was the gestational surrogate for her son, Matthew Eledge, and his husband, Elliot Dougherty, using an egg from Elliot’s sister Lea Yribe, fertilized with Matthew’s sperm. They share their story with BuzzFeed News.
- “Just having a rainbow flag on your door isn’t enough,” says one of the people interviewed by Brianna Sharpe at HuffPo Canada for a piece on “How Canadian Midwives Are Making Birth Better For LGBTQ+ Parents.”
Research
- A study of more than 700 gay fathers by Tufts University researchers found that “Despite legal, medical, and social advances, gay fathers and their children continue to experience stigma and avoid situations because of fear of stigma.” This stigma is associated with reduced well-being of both children and adults. On the positive side, the researchers also found that “States’ legal and social protections for lesbian and gay individuals and families appear to be effective in reducing experiences of stigma for gay fathers.”
- A researcher at the University of Michigan is doing a study on LGBTQ people who have experienced pregnancy loss, and is looking for participants who have either experienced pregnancy loss themselves or been in an intimate partnership in which a pregnancy was lost.