I’ve already highlighted some of 2019’s key news events for LGBTQ parents, but here are a number of other stories from recent weeks to round out and round up the year. Pull up some hot cocoa (or break out the New Year’s bubbly early) and have a read!
Posting will be light here this week as I enjoy the new year with my family—but these stories should keep you busy for a while.
Family Profiles
- Clara Moskowitz shares with the New York Times her and her wife’s “absurd, occasionally maddening, and ultimately successful path to parenthood” through IVF.
- Good Morning America profiled KC and Lena Currie, of Sudbury, Mass., who formed their family by adopting three brothers.
- Reuben Sharpe, a transgender man, and his non-binary partner Jay, share with the Daily Mail the story of their path to parenthood. Sharpe carried their child, conceived with his eggs and sperm from a transgender woman.
- The Daily Mail also profiled spouses Jake and Hannah Graf, both transgender, on their upcoming child. Hannah had been the highest-ranking transgender officer in the British Army until she left last year, and received an MBE award from the Queen in June; Jake is a director and actor (Colette; The Danish Girl). (I’m usually suspicious of media articles that publish pre-transition photos of transgender people, but Hannah retweeted this piece, so I assume it was done with the couple’s permission.)
- The New York Times published a piece by U.S. Air Force Technical Sgt. Alexandria Holder about serving in the military as a transgender person. She and her wife Brittani have four children.
- PinkNews reminds us of a 1983 photo from Life magazine of two dads and their child, one of the first photos of an LGBTQ-headed family to appear in the mainstream media.
- An anonymous writer in the Michigan Daily talks about growing up with two moms. Among other things, he raises an excellent point about being asked what it’s like to grow up without “fatherly influence.” While he often answers that he has uncles and grandfathers, “The question itself is problematic, for what is fatherly influence? Is it knowing how to play football? My mother taught me how to throw a tight spiral. Is it having some older representative of male anatomy? My parents are both physicians — they know more about male anatomy than most dads.”
- WNBA stars Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart spoke with the Washington Post about their decisions to freeze their eggs earlier this year. Bird, who is in a relationship with U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe, told the paper, “I think being in a relationship changes your mind-set on [becoming a parent] … It’s hard to picture [life with children] when you’re both professional athletes. But that’s when it became like: ‘Wait a minute. Shouldn’t we take the steps to have the option, if down the road we decided we do want kids?’” Bird notes, too, that the WNBA’s health plan does not cover elective egg freezing, which many female athletes, regardless of sexuality, may desire—and hints that this issue could come up in their next collective bargaining agreement with the league.
Education
- News aggregator Newsela, which compiles news articles and primary sources for classroom use, announced the launch of the Newsela LGBTQIA+ Studies Collection, to help teachers in the states (California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, and Oregon) that are now requiring LGBTQ studies to be taught (as well, as, presumably, the ones incorporating such materials on their own). One sign of progress to note: an article about a transgender girl running for homecoming queen of her California high school was the platform’s article that teachers blocked from students the most in the 2013-14 school year, but in the 2014-15 school year, teachers assigned it more than they blocked it.
- After the school district in Kalamazoo, Michigan received complaints from three parents about LGBTQ-inclusive books, administrators decided to focus the books in a diversity initiative on just issues of racial and ethnic diversity, “and to avoid other diversity issues such as disability, socio-economics, and sexuality at this time.” After a public outcry, it changed its mind and will now include the wider selection of books.
Politics and Law
- West Virginia could become the 11th state to allow discrimination against otherwise qualified foster parents and adoptive parents because of the parents’ sexual orientation. A legislative committee has approved this discrimination; the full legislature must now vote. The Register-Herald newspaper put it pointedly: “In the state with the highest per capita rate of children in state custody in the country, a group of West Virginia lawmakers voted this week to remove a provision of state law that requires LGBTQ children in protective care to have equal access to foster and adoptive families.”
- The Kansas Supreme Court heard arguments in two similar cases involving the rights of nonbiological mothers. The mothers had started families with other women via assisted insemination, but could not legally marry at the time. After they broke up, the biological mothers refused to let the nonbiological mothers see the children and a trial court supported the biological mothers. While the state Supreme Court did rule in favor of a nonbiological mother in a 2013 case, the women in that case had a written agreement, where these don’t. The nonbiological mothers’ lawyers argue, however (rightly, in my opinion) that the women were in effect common law couples and should be treated as such, with equal parenting rights.
- A coalition of Rhode Island parents, with the support of LGBTQ and family advocacy organizations, announced the launch of Rhode Islanders for Parentage Equality (RIPE) to push for passage of legislation this year that would revise outdated parentage statues and make it easier for parents of any gender, married or not, to establish legal parentage of a child born through assisted reproduction. Such legislation failed to pass last year.
- NBC interviewed two of the same-sex couples suing the U.S. State Department to recognize the U.S. citizenship of their children (about which more here).
- Sanna Marin on December 10 became Finland’s youngest prime minister, its third female premier, and the youngest sitting leader in the world. She also has two moms: she “was raised by a single mother who later entered a same-sex relationship,” reports the Guardian.
- Since Taiwan became the first country in Asia to legalize marriage for same-sex couples, “a rush of commercial surrogacy agencies” have headed there to serve them, even though the procedure is still illegal. Additionally, same-sex couples cannot adopt unless the child is biologically related to at least one of them. Nevertheless, the Taiwan LGBT Family Rights Advocacy (TLFRA) group expects the number of same-sex parents to rise, reports Reuters.
- A court in Zagreb, Croatia, has ruled that a two-man couple may foster a child, the first time a same-sex couple has been allowed to foster in the country.
Books
- The Jewish Book Council interviews Lesléa Newman, author of the classic (but now revised and updated) Heather Has Two Mommies
, on diversity in children’s books.
- The Highlights Foundation has a podcast interview with Newman and Rob Sanders (Stonewall: A Building. An Uprising. A Revolution; Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk
) about their recent workshop on LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books and more.
Resources and Research
- Washington, D.C., has its first childbirth community and referral service for LGBTQ people: Rainbow Doula DC.
- A new study from researchers at Sweden’s Linköping University has found that fear of childbirth is the same among prospective parents, regardless of sexuality. However, “The difference is that in addition to this fear, lesbian and bisexual women and transsexual people are afraid of being questioned or offended because of their identity. That is, their fear has an added dimension,” said Anna Malmquist, one of the study’s authors. Malmquist notes, too, that staff training can help, but “It’s not enough that healthcare staff feel they are ‘open-minded’ in their interaction with this group. They need knowledge.”
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