Michigan legislators on the state House Committee on Families, Children, and Seniors have passed three bills that would give taxpayer-funded adoption agencies the right to deny an adoption placement based on that agency’s moral or religious beliefs. This is an anti-LGBT bill, no doubt about it — but it is the children needing homes who will suffer the most. . Here’s what you can do to help stop these bills from going any further.
A new study by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute aims to look at how the Internet and social media are impacting people touched by adoption, from adopted persons to adoptive parents, birth/first parents, and adoption professionals. If you fit one of those categories, they want your input!
Three same-sex couples yesterday challenged Nebraska’s ban on gay men and lesbians becoming foster parents. One of the couples — and the five children they adopted out of foster care in California, where they previously lived — were the subject of a documentary a few years ago. Read my interview with the filmmaker and see a trailer after the jump, and learn more about the dads who are clearly continuing to do good for their family and others.
I’m very pleased to bring you a guest post today by Dawn Dais, author of The Sh!t No One Tells You: A Guide to Surviving Your Baby’s First Year, which I reviewed earlier this week. Dawn is a lesbian mom, but wrote the book for a general audience, because . . . well, I’ll let her explain.
I’ve long said that LGBT parents and non-LGBT parents are more alike than different. There’s no “lesbian” way to change a diaper, for example (unless perhaps you make them yourself out of old flannel shirts). It should come as no surprise then, that a new book about the first year of parenthood, aimed at a mainstream audience, happens to have been written by a lesbian mom.
More stories I haven’t covered earlier, including a terrific piece by the mother of a sperm donor; a newly out lesbian mom with a major university sports program; and yet more research showing sexual orientation of parents doesn’t negatively impact children.
From the “how could I have missed this” files: While studies show [and they do] that children with same-sex parents are just as well-adjusted as those with different-sex parents, they might lead us to overlook the full experience of adopted children, wrote Frank Ligtvoet in the New York Times a few weeks back. Ligtvoet, a gay dad with two adopted children, reminds us that “motherless parenting is a misnomer.”
A second study published within the past week has concluded that how adoptive parents relate to each other is more important to their children’s development than their sexual orientation is.
Yet another study has confirmed what many of us already know: having same-sex parents doesn’t predict how well-adjusted a child will be. This new study is notable, however, for looking at adopted children who were placed in their adoptive homes at a very young age.
The New York City Administration for Children’s Services has launched a new, citywide campaign for adoptive and foster parents, including LGBT parents and those affirming of LGBT youth.
