My 10-year-old son throws around the word “epic” on a daily basis. His newest Pokémon card? Epic. His latest zombie-defeating battle in Minecraft, his favorite online game? Epic. The word seemed in danger of losing its original clout—and then the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). That, I told him, was epic.
Great news out of Kansas this afternoon. In a case involving two lesbian moms, the state Supreme Court ruled that a non-biological mother may be recognized as a parent under the law.
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.
Sometimes it’s good to be reminded of how far we’ve come. In 1995, Floridian Mary Ward lost custody of their daughter to her ex-husband, even though he had been absent from the girl’s life for six years—and been convicted of murdering his first wife in a custody dispute. Why did the judge not award custody to Ward? She was a lesbian. Now, a new documentary tells the sobering story of the case.
The state of Iowa has made two moves this week that challenge the rights of same-sex parents.
First, Governor Terry Branstad’s (R) administration announced it will appeal a state district court ruling that said a child born to a lesbian couple married in that state has the right to have the names of both her parents on her birth certificate.
The military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) ban on openly lesbian and gay servicemembers is now gone. In a piece for Keen News Service, I took a look at how repeal of DADT will impact the children of these servicemembers. I’m not the only one to explore this issue, however. Stars and Stripes magazine, a Department of
If you’ve been following news about LGBT parents for any length of time, you’ve probably come across at least one, if not several, examples of custody cases in which a biological parent tries to deny custody to a former same-sex partner and non-biological parent, claiming that the latter is not really a parent to the
If you read one story about lesbian moms today, make it this one from RH Reality Check, by Jaime Jenett. Jenett writes from her perspective as the nonbiological mother of a critically ill child, and says, “policies designed to prevent same sex families from having legal protections took on a whole new meaning for me”
Just when I was starting to get all happy about the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal comes a court ruling that really pisses me off. The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a second-parent adoption by state Sen. Julia Boseman of her ex-partner Melissa Jarrell’s son was invalid. The ruling could jeopardize other
