On parental rights: A Michigan state House committee approved legislation for second-parent adoptions, splitting the vote along party lines. (Do I really need to specify which party voted in favor?) A Montana woman, Barbara Maniaci, is asking the state Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that recognized her former partner as a co-parent […]
Tragedy: GLSEN reports, “An 11-year-old Massachusetts boy, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, hung himself Monday [April 6] after enduring bullying at school, including daily taunts of being gay, despite his mother’s weekly pleas to the school to address the problem. This is at least the fourth suicide of a middle-school aged child linked to bullying this year.”
Shirley Tan, the lesbian mom in California who was on the verge of being deported and separated from her partner and twin sons by immigration officials, has been given a two-week reprieve. Congressional sponsors reintroduced the Responsible Education About Life (REAL) Act, which states that federally funded sex education programs in the nation’s public schools
News about kids, parenting and schools for this week: Not specifically LGBT, but still relevant: Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) reintroduced the Responsible Education about Life (REAL) Act legislation, to authorize federal funding for comprehensive and medically accurate sex education. Transgender youth face even higher levels of victimization in school
The news came fast and furious this week: The good: A Kentucky bill to ban unmarried couples from becoming foster or adoptive parents is effectively dead after not being called for a floor vote this session. Good news. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced that the antigay Arizona-based Adoption Profiles, LLC and Adoption Media,
“Adoption Emerges As The Next Gay Rights Battle” asserts On Top magazine. The Chicago Tribune said pretty much the same thing back in December: “Next skirmish in culture war: Gay parenting,” but On Top brings us up to date with recent legislation and court cases. Drilling down into the cases mentioned by On Top, 365gay.com
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to take the case of a Kentucky high school student who wants to sue his school district over a policy he says barred him from expressing opposition to homosexuality. Alaska North Star Borough School Board voted to add gender identity to the nondiscrimination and harassment policies that cover students, staff,
The family of Larry King, a gay middle school student who was shot to death last year by a classmate, has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit that accuses the school district, a shelter, and the Ventura County Rainbow Alliance, an LGBT-rights organization, of failing to protect him. The suit claims the Alliance “encouraged him to make
News from here and there about parents, kids, and schools: Attorneys representing Brandon McInerney, the 15-year old accused of killing openly gay teen Larry King (who identified as Letitia King in the weeks before the murder) are asking an appeals court to order prosecutors to show how they determined McInerney should be tried as an
Assorted recent news about LGBT families: California’s KNBC-TV refused to air an ad during the Super Bowl from GetToKnowUsFirst.org, featuring a gay family. They say the NFL Legal Department considered the ad “advocacy,” and would not let it run. During the Presidential Inauguration, California’s KABC-TV refused to run the ad for the same reason (although
