This touching new video from the Family Equality Council’s “Allies for Adoption” campaign is the most poignant thing I’ve seen online in quite some time. Anyone who has ever waited for that call from an adoption agency should be able to relate.
There’s a recent AP news story going around about a “new twist” on baby making for two-mom couples. Thing is, it’s not so new — it’s the method my spouse and I used 11 years ago to start our family, with her carrying an embryo made from my egg and donor sperm. It seemed doubly appropriate to mention it again today because we started our family in New Jersey — and as of yesterday, same-sex couples in New Jersey can legally wed. We’re happy to be celebrating as former New Jerseyans.
These two delightful videos will start your Friday right. Both show fathers who are awesome in different ways, and both have fun twists at the end.
Despite that whole Prop 8 thing, California continues to be a leader in legal protections for LGBT families.
Russian authorities have halted adoptions of Russian children by Swedish same-sex couples, reports Swedish newspaper The Local. A spokeperson for the Adoptioncentrum agency told Sveriges Television (SVT) “It’s terrible. We have 13 children in Russian orphanages today who have been offered to parents in Sweden who they have actually met.”
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.
