A new report details the inequalities children of LGBT parents face under state laws—laws that govern much related to family life, including parentage orders, fostering, adoption, donor insemination, surrogacy, custody, and inheritance.
Felix Bermea, his partner Roy, and their four children have been harassed in their hometown of Gilbert, Arizona for almost three months. It started with epithets scrawled on their house and car, led to someone setting their bushes on fire, and has escalated to a home break in and vandalization of the children’s furniture. The children are afraid, and the parents are afraid for them. Now, the Family Equality Council wants to do the family a kindness and send them, free of charge, to the organization’s annual Family Week in Provincetown. But they need our help.
A big congratulations to Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of the Family Equality Council, her spouse Cheryl Jacques, and their sons Tim and Tom as they welcome little brother Matthew Wade into their family!
A very happy 40th birthday to PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays)—the nation’s largest grassroots-based non-profit for families, friends, and straight allies of LGBT people. Not everyone is pleased to hit middle age, but I have to imagine the folks at PFLAG are pretty excited.
Today marks the first-ever International Family Equality Day, an event designed “to bring together LGBT families of all kinds to celebrate their family pride and ongoing efforts for full family equality,” Family Equality Council, one of the participating organizations, tells us.
Lots of good stuff this week, including some great personal stories as well as much-needed research on LGBT families of color. Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Many of us have been in this situation: Returning to the U.S. from a family vacation abroad, we stand in the customs line with partner and kid(s), only to be separated when it is our turn and the customs agent only allows “one family at a time”—meaning “only one federally recognized family.” Suddenly, all of our vacation relaxation is gone.
That will soon change.
Scratching out “Father” and writing in “Mother” is an all-too common experience for coupled lesbian moms (vice versa for gay dads). Now, the Family Equality Council (FEC) hopes to draw attention to the many forms that still exclude our families. Their “Snap It & Send It” campaign asks people to take photos or scans of non-inclusive forms and send them to forms@familyequality.org, along with notes about how the forms are impacting their family.
One of the strengths of the LGBT parenting community is that we are a community. Whether online or in real life, we can share, support, and learn from each other. In order to help LGBT families connect with each other, the Family Equality Council today released “Promising Practices,” a toolkit to help those who wish to create new LGBT family support groups, and to help strengthen existing ones.
There’s a myth that LGBT parents are all affluent—a myth perpetuated by many in the media, who tend to focus on upper-middle and upper class families when they do LGBT family stories. The reality is much different. Children being raised by same-sex couples are in fact twice as likely to live in poverty as those being
