Even in the middle of summer, things are happening! This week’s roundup is heavily (but not exclusively) about entertainment news—lighter fare, perhaps, but also touching on the important topic of representation.
Entertainment and Media
- Netflix’s new show The Baby-Sitter’s Club includes an episode in which one of the main characters is asked to sit for a young transgender girl, played by 9-year-old transgender actress Kai Shappley. Netflix writer and trans woman Rose Dommu said the episode “made me cry happy tears.”
- Watch Tall Tales with True Queens, a free, short film that looks at the phenomenon of Drag Queen Story Hours.
- TLC has premiered “My Pregnant Husband,” which shares the journeys of two transgender couples on their way to parenthood.
- IndieWire interviewed Doc McStuffins creator and lesbian mom Chris Nee about her deal with Netflix that “positions her well on her way to becoming the Shonda Rhimes or Ryan Murphy of kids TV.” Among other things, Nee related why she pushed for the inclusion of a same-sex family on Disney Junior’s Doc McStuffins in 2017 (about which more here): “I said, ‘I’m constantly doing press, talking about how important it is to see yourself onscreen and what that means to kids, and yet I can’t talk about my own family. I just said ‘I’m done, we’re putting a same sex family on the air.’”
- The Butson-Luthier family—two dads and their 9-year-old daughter—have become the first family with gay dads to appear on a reality-based Disney show, the Disney Channel’s Disney Fam Jam.
- Has it really been 10 years since The Kids Are All Right, the movie about a two-mom family in which one of the moms has an affair with their children’s sperm donor? Variety spoke with writers Lisa Cholodenko (a Real Lesbian Mom) and Stuart Blumberg, along with the film’s stars, about their reflections on the movie. Love it or hate it, this was the first major feature film to center an LGBTQ family, and one with older kids, no less.
- GLAAD’s 2020 Studio Responsibility Index, which looks at LGBTQ representation in films, notes that there were only two LGBTQ-inclusive animated and family films in 2019, but the inclusive moments were “incredibly minor.” They opine, “Film should look to the boom and success of queer and trans representation in all ages programming happening on TV.” (Hear, hear!)
Family Stories
- Colorado resident Kenneth Felts came out at age 90 to his gay daughter, and spoke with the BBC about it.
- The Washington Blade interviewed Mexican dads Alan Daniel Alcántar Velázquez and Leonardo Daniel Vela Soria, who became the first same-sex couple to adopt a child in Guanajuato.
- Xtra reports on “When miscarriage happens to LGBTQ2 parents.”
Politics and Law
- A federal judge in Atlanta heard oral arguments this week in a case brought on behalf of two dads and their daughter against the U.S. State Department, which is refusing to recognize the girl’s citizenship from birth, despite the fact that both dads are U.S. citizens. (See my post from last year for more on the case.)
- The New York Times looks at “The Fight for Fertility Equality,” and a growing movement that “envisions a future when the ability to create a family is no longer determined by one’s wealth, sexuality, gender or biology.”
- A judge in the U.K. has ruled that an evangelical Christian foster care agency must allow people to sign up as foster parents regardless of their sexual orientation.
History
- Sarah Prager wrote at GoMag about eight queer parents who made history, drawing on her two great books, Rainbow Revolutionaries: Fifty LGBTQ+ People Who Made History
(for tweens) and Queer, There, and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World
(for teens).
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