It’s the season of the High Holidays for Jews around the world—and that means that Julie Silver, one of the most popular singers and songwriters of Jewish contemporary music — and a lesbian mom — is very busy. She took time, however, to speak with me about being a mom, balancing family and work, coming out, living as an interfaith family, and doing good in the world.
It’s happened. A Russian lawmaker introduced a bill in the lower house of the Duma that would deny LGBT parents the right to be parents. It adds sexual orientation to alcoholism, drug use, and abuse as reasons for taking away custody of children. The bill cites a widely discredited study of LGBT parents by University of Texas sociology professor Mark Regnerus as support for its position.
Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, so I’m honoring the occasion not only by baking (and eating) ridiculous amounts of challah and honey cake (a low-carb people we are not), but also by rounding up a few recent stories about Jewish lesbian moms.
Several announcements last week made it clear that same-sex couples who are legally married will be recognized as married by the U.S. government — even if they do not reside in a state that recognizes same-sex marriages. That’s generally good news for same-sex parents — although there are still a few things to keep in mind.
In honor of the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights March on Washington this week, MomsRising.org has published a blog carnival, “Moms Get Real About Race in America.”
Yesterday’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington included many amazing speeches, including President Obama’s — but for the purpose of this blog, I want to highlight two speeches by LGBT parents: Eliza Byard and Alan Van Capelle.
Three same-sex couples yesterday challenged Nebraska’s ban on gay men and lesbians becoming foster parents. One of the couples — and the five children they adopted out of foster care in California, where they previously lived — were the subject of a documentary a few years ago. Read my interview with the filmmaker and see a trailer after the jump, and learn more about the dads who are clearly continuing to do good for their family and others.
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, the seminal civil rights rally and site of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, organized in large part by Bayard Rustin, a gay Black man. The fight for racial justice is far from over in this country, even as the fight for LGBT equality picks up steam — and the two movements, while not identical, are nevertheless interwoven. Here are a few items of late that touch on the intersection of race and LGBT parenting.
It’s a big, fat roundup to close out the week — some of the stories I haven’t covered already. Enjoy!
