A new California bill would allow a child to have more than two legal parents, including two lesbian moms and their sperm donor. This may be new for the U.S., but one Canadian province is already leading here.
Two senior Defense Department officials spoke at the Department’s first-ever Pride month event. One noted the positive impact of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal on the children of gay servicemembers—but the other observed that there are still obstacles to full equality for them.
The ACLU has filed a new federal case in North Carolina, seeking to overturn the state’s ban on second-parent adoption. A win would mean that kids being raised by same-sex couples could have “legally protected relationships with both of the parents who are raising them.” Because the case was brought under the federal constitution, a win could have an impact on other states as well.
President Obama has said that same-sex parents and their children influenced his decision to support marriage equality. And in the Washington Post recently, Janice D’Arcy asked, “Has gay parenting ‘normalized’ the perception of gay relationships?” The interaction between LGBT parenting rights and relationship rights is indeed a fascinating and important question—and one charted in part by law professor Carlos Ball, whose new book also gives us a compelling history of the expansion of LGBT parenting rights. Here’s my review of his work, originally published as my Mombian newspaper column.
When President Obama announced his support for marriage equality, I was only one of numerous writers who pointed out that he stressed the influence of same-sex parents and their children on his decision. Here are two worthwhile articles that explain why Obama’s positioning of his statement in this way is especially significant.
Penny Wong, an Australian senator and the Commonwealth Minister for Finance and Deregulation, and also a lesbian mom, gave a dignified and heartfelt answer to Representative Joe Hockey when he was asked on talk show Q & A about marriage equality. LGBT advocates are calling it “a watershed moment” in public awareness and understanding of the issue on a personal level.
Looks like President Obama’s statement in support of marriage equality is already having an effect. His campaign has updated an earlier blog post and now refers to two lesbian moms as “married.”
MeiBeck “Chino” and Maya Scott-Chung are lesbian moms raising a seven-year-old daughter. When they wanted to add another child to their family, but had trouble conceiving, they discovered that the only way they could get access to assisted reproductive services was to pretend that one of them was in a heterosexual relationship with their known donor (whom they had used to conceive their daughter).
When President Obama first announced his support for marriage equality yesterday, he mentioned that his new view was motivated in part by same-sex couples who are raising kids together. In a campaign e-mail later yesterday evening, he said again that he was influenced by the children same-sex parents. His daughters have friends with same-sex parents, he added, and the girls assume that their families should be treated equally:
BREAKING NEWS: President Barack Obama, in an interview with ABC News this afternoon, announced, “I’ve just concluded that for me, personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”
