In a significant victory for same-sex parents, the U.S. State Department on Monday backed down in two cases where it had been challenging the citizenship of children born abroad to married two-dad couples who were U.S. citizens.
We are a week away from the 2020 elections. President Trump’s nominee Amy Coney Barrett has just been seated on the U.S. Supreme Court. A case that the court will be hearing the day after the elections has me as concerned as the elections themselves, for it goes to the heart of how our country treats its children and to LGBTQ people’s right to be treated equally as prospective parents.
The home where pioneering LGBTQ and civil rights activists Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin lived for more than five decades may become a local historic landmark, as the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has taken the first step towards giving it that designation. The two women may be best known as the first same-sex couple to marry legally in San Francisco, but the legacy of these mothers of our movement is bigger than that.
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last Friday unanimously upheld a lower court ruling recognizing the birthright citizenship of a boy born abroad by surrogacy to two married gay dads, one of whom is a U.S. citizen. The Trump Administration’s State Department had refused to recognize the dads’ marriage and tried to deny the boy’s citizenship—even though it recognized his twin brother as a citizen.
The LGBTQ community has lost a light this week. Monica Roberts, a groundbreaking transgender journalist and blogger, died in Houston at age 58. She started her blog, TransGriot, shortly after I began this one. I had the honor of meeting her at several conferences, and was always struck by her strength, knowledge, and commitment to lifting up trans youth.
One of the most common questions I see from LGBTQ parents is whether and how nonbiological/nongestational parents should do a co-parent (second-parent) adoption, especially if they’re married and on their children’s birth certificates. Here are some things to know and resources to get you started, for both married and unmarried couples.
Yesterday, a grand jury indicted only one of the three police officers involved in the shooting death last March of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman in Kentucky—and the charge was “wanton endangerment,” not the more serious ones of manslaughter or reckless homicide. I hope that other White people like myself make it a priority to learn more about this case and about the ongoing need for racial justice in the U.S. Here are a few places to start.
A new picture book pairs the stories of youth activists with #OwnVoices poems from exceptional adult poets who were inspired by their work. Unsurprisingly, there are queer voices among them.
Her loss is a loss for our country—yet even as we mourn, we must recommit to the cause of justice that she championed.
This November’s presidential election may carry with it the biggest consequences any U.S. election has ever had for LGBTQ parents and our children. That’s why we need to make our voting plans now.
