(Originally appeared in Bay Windows, February 4, 2009.) “Family law is very vague,” says Kimberly Richman, an associate professor of sociology and legal studies at the University of San Francisco. “That leaves room for a lot of open interpretation.” In her new book, Courting Change: Queer Parents, Judges, and the Transformation of American Family Law […]
Helen and I congratulate the world’s first lesbian mom to become a head of state. We then turn to a viewer’s more personal question: How to deal with a pregnant partner’s hormonal mood swings. (“Run!” is a tempting but unacceptable answer.) Although there were no parenting angles this week on The L Word, we use
It’s time for another poll: {democracy:16} Feel free to leave comments about what you liked/didn’t like about any of these books or others. More books for and about lesbian families, as always, in the Mombian Shop.
(Originally published in Bay Windows, December 11, 2008.) LGBT parents or our kids on your holiday list? For the most part, mainstream gift guides will work just fine. Not everything we own has to be rainbow colored, and our kids already have three “I love my mommies” t-shirts each. If you do want something with
It’s time for another collection of news and fun stuff for LGBT parents: Put on your flak jackets. “It is same-sex parenting that is heating up as the next skirmish in the nation’s culture wars,” asserts the Chicago Tribune. Nancy Polikoff points out just how scary are the proposed Bush rules that would allow healthcare
(Originally published in Bay Windows, October 16, 2008.) When Peg Tyre wrote an article titled “The Trouble with Boys” for Newsweek in 2006, outlining what she saw as a national trend of boys struggling at school, it caused a firestorm of controversy. Some feminists accused her of ignoring the age-old and still ongoing struggles of
It’s Banned Books Week once again, the American Library Association’s annual celebration of the freedom to read. Each year, the ALA tracks the books that have received an official challenge, “a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.” Judith F. Krug, director of
Nina over at Queercents has posted her thoughts on Leslie Bennetts’ The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much?, a book that warns women of the financial risks of staying home as full-time caregivers. The book spawned much controversy when it first came out, with the media hyping it as part of the “Mommy
“There’s no definition for the type of cooking that butches do,” asserts Nel Ward. There are, however, butches who cook, and Ward, her partner Sue Hardesty, and their friend, novelist Lee Lynch, have gathered a truckful of recipes from them into The Butch Cook Book. Alongside the recipes, however, are literary quotes, insights, and historical anecdotes on what it means to be butch, making this not just a cookbook but also a celebration of lesbian culture past and present.
(Originally published in Bay Windows, June 26, 2008, with minor variation.) Two new works and one re-release share the real and fictionalized stories of teens with LGBT parents, shining a light on this often-overlooked part of our community. Tru Loved, now making the rounds at LGBT film festivals, features an all-star cast including Jasmine Guy,
