In early June, the West Virginia Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Kathryn Kutil and Cheryl Hess, a lesbian couple who have been fostering an 18-month-old girl since shortly after she was born, can maintain custody and not turn the child over to an opposite-sex couple for adoption, as ordered by a lower court. Here’s my […]
Confused by the bevy of marriage-related lawsuits now in play? Lisa Keen at Bay Windows breaks it all down in a multi-part series. (Parts I and II are out; Part III will be next week.) Chris Geidner does a similar breakdown for federal hate crimes legislation. Thursday, the U.S. Senate passed the Defense Department authorization
Children and Gender Brett Berk rightly shreds the conclusions of a recent study on children and gender roles. Sassymonkey at BlogHer looks at the recurring question of why there aren’t more books for boys, and astutely asks, “Maybe the question isn’t about where the books for boys are but why boys need books about boys?
In a national first, a new Washington, D.C. law grants legal parenthood to both women of a couple who plan a child together using donor insemination. More specifically: When a woman bears a child conceived by artificial insemination, and her spouse or unmarried partner consents in writing to the insemination, the consenting spouse or partner
Two lesbian moms who had a child in Florida are in the midst of a custody battle with their known sperm donor. The donor, Ray Janssen, and his partner Craig were involved with the child’s life until the moms, Katherine Alicea and Ana Sobrino, moved to California. Janssen then sued them for custody. A Miami-Dade
The U.S. Senate unanimously adopted the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act as an amendment to the Department of Defense authorization bill. This means its fate is tied to whether the president will veto the bill because it also includes funding for F-22 fighter jets, which he opposes. The NAACP announced a partnership with National
Politics and Law First, a great ruling from the Oregon Court of Appeals via the vigilant Nancy Polikoff: “If the biological mom’s partner consents to the insemination [of her partner], she is also the parent of the resulting child.” The ruling states, in part: “There appears to be no reason for permitting heterosexual couples to
I wrote yesterday about the Utah court that just denied parenting rights to non-bio mom Gena Edvalson. The court said the parenting contract she had signed with her former partner Jana Dickson “directly offends the state’s public policy that parents retain the fundamental right to exercise the primary control over the care and supervision of
Yee hah. Another huge week in LGBT political news. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court challenging the constitutionality of Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The suit claims that DOMA “unfairly excludes more than 16,000 Massachusetts married same-sex couples and their families from critically important rights
This isn’t parenting-specific, but my son is going through a superhero phase right now, so there’s a connection in my head: Rights are only useful if people know you have them. That’s been one of my complaints about the plethora of terms for “two people in a mutually committed, legally recognized relationship.” The GLBT Community
