Catch up on some news for and about queer parents that I haven’t covered already! We’ve got family news, political moves, science, and some big events for LGBTQ families!
Family Stories
- Olympic diver Tom Daley and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black welcomed their second child. Congratulations to the family!
- People interviewed Star Trek: Discovery‘s Anthony Rapp about his family. The actor welcomed a child with partner Ken Ithiphol, a leadership and life coach, last December.
- Kathy Kiger wrote at the Pride and Joy Foundation about coming out as a lesbian to her four children (three of whom then came out as queer to her), after having been raised as an evangelical Christian and suppressing her queer identity for 50 years.
- 7News in Australia profiled Kim Lee, a trans man, and his wife July Lies. After Lies had several miscarriages and was told a pregnancy would be “high risk” for her, Lee decided to try and become pregnant instead. The couple now has one child and is trying for another.
- U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) welcomed his third grandchild, child of his daughter Alison and daughter-in-law Elizabeth.
Politics and Law
- Somerville, Massachusetts, has passed legislation extending nondiscrimination protections to people in polyamorous relationships and other nontraditional family structures, including queer co-parenting (but not necessarily romantic) relationships. The new ordinances, however, “do not address child custody directly, but advocates hope to tackle the issue in future legislative efforts.”
- “‘We say gay.’ Bills targeting LGBTQ+ community have some South Florida families worried,” reports the Miami Herald with what seems to me a stunningly obvious headline. The bills, often framed as supporting parents’ rights, ignore the fact that some LGBTQ people are parents, and many parents of all identities want to support their LGBTQ children.
- A government-commissioned review of surrogacy laws in the U.K. has recommended that the intended parents of a child born via surrogacy should be the legal parents from the moment of its birth. Currently they wait six months to a year. The U.K. government must now decide whether to implement the recommendations.
Science
- Scientists in Japan have created viable embryos from the cells of two male mice, following in the footsteps of Chinese scientists who did the same from the cells of two female mice in 2018. As with the earlier effort, the odds are still long: only seven out of 630 embryos developed into pups—and as lead researcher Katsuhiko Hayashi told Nature, “There are big differences between a mouse and the human.”
Community
- xHood has announced its 2023 Black Parent Pride Summit.
- Tickets are also on sale for Family Week in Provincetown, hosted by Family Equality and COLAGE.