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
A couple of months ago, I mentioned the case of Gena Edvalson and Jana Dickson, a former couple now involved in a custody and visitation dispute over the three-year-old son they created together through assisted insemination and raised together until their breakup in 2007. Dickson, the bio mom, is now married to a man and
Bonnie Tinker, a peace activist, lesbian mom, and head of the Oregon LGBT organization Love Makes a Family, died after a bike accident at Virginia Tech, where she was attending a conference. Tinker, 61, was hit by a truck and pronounced dead at the scene. I did not know Tinker, but I am sure some
Once again, Nancy Polikoff is making me think this week. Yesterday, she managed to inform us of why media treatment of Michael Jackson may indeed have a direct impact on LGBT families: The news reports this morning about the circumstances of the conception of Michael Jackson’s children are suggesting that the information might impact who
Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle (D) signed a bill yesterday that allows same-sex couples to register as domestic partners and thus gain certain rights like hospital visitation and survivor benefits. As an erstwhile Cheesehead, who met my now-spouse while we were both graduate students at UW-Madison, this comes as happy news. Wisconsin is, in fact, the
