Today is National Coming Out Day, so I thought I’d share some thoughts on coming out as a lesbian mom, along with a few resources for both parents and kids. I posted a version of this a couple of years ago, but I hope it bears repeating.
I felt old today as I realized that Ellen, Ms. DeGeneres’ first television show, premiered in 1994 — 20 years ago. Of course, most of us remember best the 1997 episode in which she came out as a lesbian. Writer Emma Tattenbaum-Fine recently recalled watching the show with her two moms. “The night Ellen came out, I felt my family got an invitation to the party,” she says in the video after the jump.
I think most of the LGBT community in the U.S. is celebrating the election results this week, and rightly so. As we revel in the amazing reality of four states voting the right way on marriage equality, we should nevertheless remember that these political victories are only the tip of the iceberg. They rest on the everyday victories of LGBT people and our families—the courage that we find to make ourselves visible, changing hearts and minds one person at a time. I was reminded of this by a post over at The Adventures of K & D, a lesbian couple in Florida.
This week’s pick isn’t from the perspective usually found here, of a mother. Instead, writer Felix Jay at Elixher tells us of the importance of mothers in the broad sense, and how finding “a den of mothers” helped her in her coming out process. It’s a great piece that speaks to the importance of sharing wisdom across the generations.
If you have not yet seen the New York Times’ excellent Coming Out project, which showcases the voices, words, and pictures of a diverse group of LGBTQ youth, get thee to their site and browse through it. There’s also a good introductory article here. Their stories are touching, sometimes heart-wrenching, but always inspiring. (Stories can
An LGBT organization in Saint Petersburg, Russia has launched a poster project about lesbian families—and it’s worth a look. The posters, produced by the Rainbow Parents project of the LGBT group Coming Out, with the help of the Heinrich-Böll foundation in Moscow, will be distributed among community organizations in St. Petersburg and the regional offices of the Russian LGBT Network–and anywhere else people wish to hang them.
Unless you’ve been stuck in an elevator for the last 24 hours, you’ll know that pop star Ricky Martin has come out as gay. He wrote at his Web site: If someone asked me today, “Ricky, what are you afraid of?” I would answer “the blood that runs through the streets of countries at war…child
[Editor’s Note: A reader left a comment on a post I wrote last fall about LGBT resources for teens. She wanted to know about safe-sex resources for her bi daughter. Blogger Serena Freewomyn, who has been a youth counselor and founded the Feminists for Choice site, was kind enough to write a whole guest post
I’ve written and vlogged already this week in honor of today’s National Coming Out Day. (Maybe it’s my Jewish heritage that makes me want to extend fun holidays across an entire week.) I think it’s clear that I generally think visibility is a good thing. In all the hoopla today over the benefits of coming
This week, Helen and I offer our parenting perspectives on recent news about celebrity lesbian moms Melissa and Tammy Etheridge and Rosie O’Donnell. What would happen if moms showed off their parenting talents on Rosie’s upcoming variety show? We also wonder why there aren’t more celebrity gay dads, despite the recent addition of singer Clay
