Taxpayer-funded adoption and foster care agencies in Michigan may use their religious beliefs as a reason to discriminate against same-sex and unmarried couples, a federal judge ruled yesterday, overturning a settlement that had been reached earlier this year.
Personal stories, political news, entertainment tidbits, and more that I haven’t covered elsewhere! A buffet for your reading pleasure!
When the first same-sex couple to marry legally in the United States, Hillary and Julie Goodridge, was feeling stressed from public attention, they didn’t want to seek couples’ counseling. Julie told NPR this past May, “It felt like too much of a risk.” They divorced a few years later. Their daughter Annie, who was 10 at the time, said in retrospect, “I felt like our family let everyone down.” Their situation highlights a long-time problem for the LGBTQ community and other marginalized groups: the pressure to be perfect. Two new books, however, each look at topics often associated with failure—relationship break-ups and reproductive losses—in order to help LGBTQ people and our children better navigate them.
“Thank you in advance for letting me be your mom,” wrote Braiden Schirtzinger in a letter to their future child, halfway through their pregnancy. Schirtzinger has shared more of their journey to parenthood—and their intertwined journey to self-understanding as a nonbinary person—with the Washington Post for a lengthy feature article and podcast episode.
Summer may sometimes feel like a slow time of year, but there’s still a lot happening in LGBTQ parenting news!
Today marks the 41st birthday of Louise Brown, the world’s first baby born after in vitro fertilization (IVF). My spouse and I also used IVF to have our son, now one of more than eight million other people created through the procedure, so here’s a big happy birthday to Louise Brown and gratitude for the progress she represents.
Financial giant J.P. Morgan has announced it will soon offer expanded fertility benefits aimed at helping LGBTQ employees start or grow their families. Let’s take the opportunity, then, to look at what they and other companies are doing—or should be.
It’s been a disappointing few days for legislation that would have helped LGBTQ families, as bills that would have more effectively protected families formed through assisted reproduction failed in both New York and Rhode Island.
I’m very excited to be bringing you the official, full-cover reveal of A Kid of Their Own, by Megan Dowd Lambert, her second picture book about a group of barnyard friends and the two farmers—a gay couple—who care for them. Lambert also shares with Mombian readers a little about her motivations, the importance of language when talking about adoptive families, and why her fictional world includes both anthropomorphic animals and humans.
New York State, where the Stonewall Riots accelerated the LGBTQ rights movement, is in many ways one of the most LGBTQ-friendly states around. Yet the state’s laws do not yet effectively protect families created through assisted reproductive technologies. That could change very soon.
