It’s time for another roundup of LGBTQ parenting news I haven’t covered elsewhere, with stories on family creation, politics, censorship—and penguins!
Family Creation
- The BBC looks at “The Millennials Choosing Friends as Sperm Donors.” The article reads a bit as if known donors are a whole new option for us (with lines like “While plenty still adopt, many are choosing to ask close friends to donate sperm” and “the fact that the donor option is now so visibly on the table in general has expanded their possibilities”). Fact is, known donors were in many cases the only option for many queer folks long before we could legally access assisted reproduction or adoption. The recent HBO docuseries Nuclear Family, in fact, focuses on one of the first lesbian couples to start a family together, in the early 1980s, and what happened when their known donor sued for paternity. Nevertheless, this is a helpful article that weighs some of the pros and cons of known donors and offers guidance on how to protect yourself legally should you choose this route.
- Billy Penn at WHYY profiles the Philly Queer Doula Collective a peer support group that “helps pregnant LGBTQ people find affordable medical care from competent providers, and assist them in navigating the health care system.”
- Emily Jaeger writes thoughtfully at Motherfigure about being a nongestational mother.
- Elmer and Lima, two adult male Humboldt penguins at the Rosamund Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, New York, just hatched an egg they incubated together and are now raising the chick. They are the first same-sex penguin parents at the zoo, but far from the first overall. In recent years, others have included female Gentoo penguins Electra and Viola at the Oceanogràfic Valencia aquarium in Spain; male penguins Sphen and Magic of the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium, who even adopted and hatched a second egg; and many others (but not Skipper and Ping, a male same-sex Emperor penguin couple at the Zoo Tierpark Berlin, who were incubating an egg in 2019 that turned out not to have been fertilized, despite the Rosamund Gifford Zoo listing them among other penguin parents).
Books and Censorship
- A school principal in Kent, Washington, has tried to pull “sexually explicit” books, including several LGBTQ-inclusive books, from a middle school library, and in doing so is ignoring policies around the district’s collection development policy, claims librarian Gavin Downing, according to Book Riot.
- On the positive side, the Orange County Board of Education in North Carolina voted unanimously to keep three LGBTQ-inclusive books on high school library shelves that some parents protested as obscene and sexually explicit.
- Some far-right, religious Israeli Jews are protesting a Doritos ad that features a two-dad couple, along other types of families. (As a Jew myself, albeit a secular one, I’ll note that most major branches of Judaism are more than welcoming to LGBTQ folks and families.)
Politics and Law
- Students rallied against a Florida bill that would ban classroom discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity “in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students”—an awfully subjective assessment. State Rep. Joe Harding (R), who introduced the bill, said during a hearing that it would not prohibit students from discussing their families or LGBTQ history, but would ban teachers from introducing “specific curriculum or coursework” that would require a student to have a discussion about LGBTQ topics. Florida already requires parental notification of LGBTQ-inclusive curricula and allows parents to opt their children out, according to the Movement Advancement Project. The bill would also require schools to notify parents “if there is a change in the student’s services or monitoring related to the student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being,” which LGBTQ advocates worry could lead to LGBTQ students being outed to their parents.
- A similar “parental rights” plan was introduced in Texas by Governor Greg Abbott (R) that among other things, would “expand parents’ access to course curriculum, and all material that is available in schools.” This comes shortly after Abbott asked the Texas Education Agency to develop standards preventing “pornography” and other “obscene content” in public schools, citing two memoirs about LGBTQ characters, reported the Washington Blade.
- And in Arizona, a new bill would make it illegal for a government employee—like a school teacher or administrator—to withhold information that is “relevant to the physical, emotional or mental health of the parent’s child,” including information about a student’s “purported gender identity” or a request to transition to a gender other than the “student’s biological sex,” reports Raw Story.