Catch up on a variety of stories and news about LGBTQ parents that I haven’t covered separately, from family stories to politics, entertainment, sports, and more!
Family and Community
- Zach Ellams shared a graphic/comic story with the New York Times about being a transgender dad.
- Sarah Rawlings wrote at The Bump about attending Pride as a parent.
- Alena Papayanis also shared her story with The Bump, but hers is about coming out later in life, after marrying a man and having a child, and how this experience impacts her parenting.
- Emmy Award-winning journalist Eliecer Marte and his husband, business executive Erick Martinez, spoke with Parents magazine about building their family via surrogacy and foster parenting.
- Meaghan Shields wrote about “Finding belonging as a two-mom family” for WBUR.
- People shared the story of Kenny Ethan Jones, a trans man who donated eggs to help his sister have a child.
- Senator Elissa Slotkin’s (D-MI) told LGBTQ Nation about how her mom came out during the AIDS crisis, and how this helped shape her (Slotkin) into the politician she is today.
- NPR’s StoryCorp spoke with Stefan Lynch about growing up with gay parents during the AIDS crisis.
- PhilSTAR L!fe interviewed two two-dad couples about being a queer family in the Philippines.
Politics and Law
- Jordan Wilson, the executive director of COLAGE, wrote at LGBTQ Nation about why efforts to overturn marriage equality will harm children.
- Queer families in Queensland, Australia, are fighting new guidance that treats each woman in a couple as part of a separate “family” for the purpose of setting limits on donor sperm, reported the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The limits are used to minimize chances of “unintentional incestuous relationships between genetic siblings,” but the guidance fails to account for queer couples wanting to use the same donor for all of their children.
- Danielle Melfi and Mike Snaric wrote at the blog of RESOLVE: The National Infertility and Family Building Association, about “Building an LGBTQ+ Family: The Fight for Equal Access to Fertility Care.” Rewire News Group similarly looks at why “Requirements that couples get an infertility diagnosis for coverage to kick in drives up out-of-pocket fertility costs for queer couples.” (See also my post on Connecticut’s recent positive law change in this regard.)
- “LGBTQ+ families are building lives Japanese lawmakers still struggle to see,” explained the Japan Times.
- The Polish government refused to issue a passport to the son of two Polish women living abroad, on the basis that they couldn’t first issue him a Polish birth certificate, because “Polish law recognizes only a man and a woman as parents”—but the European Court of Human Rights has found that this violates the child’s rights and best interests, Ukraine’s Judicial and Legal Newspaper reported.
- The parliamentary group leader of Germany’s conservative Christian Democrat party (CDU) has resigned after he and his husband became parents via surrogacy, a practice he has publicly condemned.
Entertainment
- HBO Max drama Proud is about a hard-partying gay man in Warsaw suddenly thrust into caring for his young niece after her mother dies. Metro Weekly has a review.
- Emmy and Grammy winner Scott Hoying of Pentatonix, and husband Mark Hoying, welcomed their first child, and People has the details.
Health
- A research review has found that pregnant trans men may be more likely to miscarry than cis women, reports LGBTQ Nation, which also noted that “much more data is needed to draw any strong conclusions.”
Sports
- Two-time Olympic gold medalist in hockey with Team Canada, PWHL Hamilton player, former Ottawa Charge captain, and queer mom Brianne Jenner will be Grand Marshal at Ottawa’s Capital Pride in August.
- American Olympic gold medalist Meghan Duggan, who is in a “Heated Rivalry” marriage with a former opponent and Canadian Olympic gold medalist Gillian Apps, was named the general manager of PWHL Hamilton, one of the women’s ice hockey league’s four new expansion teams. The couple have three children.
- Canadian Olympian Anastasia Bucsis (speed skating) and Olympic medalist Diana Matheson (soccer) welcomed their first child.
- University of Arizona Women’s Basketball Head Coach Becky Burke and spouse Savannah Burke announced they are expecting their second child.
- Women’s Professional Baseball League (WPBL) player Kylee Lahners spoke with player Ashton Lansdell about being a mother and a professional athlete.
Listen
Check out these great podcast listens! In cases where I couldn’t easily link to an audio-only episode in a platform-independent way, I’ve linked to YouTube—but all of the shows below should also be available on most major podcasting apps.
- WNBA start Brittney Griner and her wife, attorney Cherelle Griner, spoke with the ANDMOM podcast about building their family through IVF, how they handled Brittney’s participation in the Paris Olympics just days after their son’s birth, and more.
- The American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s ASRM Today podcast discussed “Creating Inclusive Fertility Care for LGBTQ+ Patients.”
- Sam Leeson of the babyREADY podcast spoke with Kate McMahon about her journey to become a mother of three, and the unexpected turns that her path took.
- The Dam Parenting Podcast interviewed Aldo, founder of Queerfamilies.nl, about building a community for queer parents in the Netherlands.
- Jameel Meyers of the Fathernetics podcast spoke with Ronaldo Dwight about “Black Fatherhood Evolved,”
- Jaimie Kelton of the Queer Family Podcast spoke with Wilma and Marilyn, aka The Rainbow Aunties, about raising children over four decades, during most of which they couldn’t live openly as a couple.