We’re full of stories today: personal stories of forming families, reflections from grown children of LGBTQ parents, and the political stories impacting LGBTQ parents and our children. Have a read of what I haven’t covered elsewhere.
Family Stories
- The Provincetown Independent covers Family Week in P’town in “For LGBTQ Families, a Week That Brings ‘a Sigh of Relief.“
- Good Morning America spoke with two-dad and two-mom couples (including Jamie Kelton of podcast If These Ovaries Could Talk) about their paths to parenthood via adoption and IVF, respectively.
- Three single gay dads told NPR their stories of becoming fathers via surrogacy.
- Gay dads Michael and Travis VanZant spoke with Nashville’s NewsChannel5 about becoming dads through adoption.
- The Guardian profiles Ben Fergusson and his husband Tom, one of the first same-sex couples to adopt in Germany.
- “I’m Trans, I’m Trying to Get Pregnant and I’m More Pro-Choice Than Ever,” writes R/B Mertz at Autostraddle. (See also Rewire News Group’s look at “How Overturning ‘Roe’ Impacts Trans and Nonbinary Communities.“)
- Many of us could talk about “What it’s like to be queer parents amid a wave of anti-LGBTQ backlash,” but Trinidad Escobar and Meredith Coons did so through a comic series at the Washington Post.
- Last but far from least, Melissa Hart, whose memoir Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood I have long recommended, offers “Families Like Ours: A Reading List for the Children of Queer Parents,” a compilation of links to and summaries of pieces by grown children of LGBTQ parents.
Politics and Law
- The Respect for Marriage Act passed the House of Representatives 267 to 157, with bipartisan support as 47 Republicans joined Democrats to vote in favor of the bill. The legislation would ensure federal recognition of all marriages that were valid when performed; require states to give full recognition to valid out-of-state marriages regardless of the sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of the married individuals; and formally repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which remains on the books despite U.S. Supreme Court rulings overturning it. On to the Senate—contact your senators now and tell them to support the bill!
- Kelly Easter, a Tennessee woman who was turned away from the opportunity to foster refugee children through a federally funded program because she is a lesbian, will finally be able to do so. She filed a federal lawsuit with the help of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Lambda Legal, and the law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. Now, the taxpayer-funded agency involved, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), has said it no longer has a religious objection to working with a single lesbian foster parent. While this is a victory for Easter, Lambda Legal notes, “USCCB’s policy may now permit single LGBTQ parents to foster children, but the agency still discriminates against married same-sex couples.” Their clients Fatma Marouf and Bryn Esplin are also suing USCCB to change that.
- “Lesbian Parents in the US Should Not Need to Adopt Their Own Children,” says Human Rights Watch in reporting on an Oklahoma case that I’ve also covered. They have a point, in that theoretically, we shouldn’t have to—but at the moment, doing so (or getting a court order of parentage or equivalent) is the only way to guarantee full legal rights for nonbiological/nongestational parents. (See this post for how and why.)
- A Catholic hospital system in Illinois will only cover fertility treatment for those of its 24,000 workers who are in different-sex marriages, a policy some say violates federal discrimination laws, reports Bloomberg Law.
- Because of Florida’s new “Don’t Say Gay” law, a school district in the state has removed a video designed to prevent anti-LGBTQ bullying, reports Jax Today. It also plans to “dramatically reduce a LGBTQ+ support guide.”
- Sophia Laurenzi at NBC News, the daughter of a gay dad, writes about how “straight children with queer parents” are “The gaping hole in how we talk about the harmful effects of anti-LGBTQ laws,” at least in the national conversation. While she acknowledges that sometimes queer parents have queer children, she asserts that “straight children are often forgotten as adjacent members of the LGBTQ community who are also affected by anti-LGBTQ legislation and rhetoric.” While I’ve always included all children of LGBTQ parents in my discussions of anti-LGBTQ laws, I’d agree that the mainstream focus has been on LGBTQ children and youth, but that the harms are much wider, certainly extending to our straight, cisgender children as well.