Yesterday’s election saw the first openly gay man—and gay dad—to win a governorship, the first lesbian mom to win election to Congress, and the first person with LGBTQ parents to win state or federal office.
Could you use some good news today out of our courts? I sure could. The Supreme Court of Hawaii on Friday upheld a lower court ruling that said a nonbiological mother is a parent to the child she and her former spouse had through assisted reproduction.
California Governor Jerry Brown (D) signed legislation Friday that updates state laws so they offer the same protections to all parents and their children, including same-sex and transgender parents. Read on for details—and importantly, what this means for second-parent adoptions.Â
Six years ago, Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Donna Johnson was killed in Afghanistan and her wife had to fight for survivor benefits. Now, the National Guard is naming a readiness center in her honor.
The number of LGBTQ candidates running for elected office this year is higher than ever, and it’s no surprise that many of them are parents. Let’s meet them and their families!
Weeks after the Trump administration ostensibly changed its policies of child separation and family detention at the U.S.-Mexico border, and after a court-imposed deadline to reunite separated families, hundreds of immigrant and refugee children are still not with their parents. These policies are only some of several recent moves by the administration and by individual states that show an appalling disregard for the well-being of children.
Just two days after a U.S. House committee approved an amendment that would allow publicly funded foster care and adoption agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ parents and others based on the agencies’ religious or moral beliefs, a federal court issued a decision saying that Philadelphia can require foster care agencies with city contracts to follow its LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination policies.
Vermont this week took a big step forward in protecting the relationships of all children with their parents, by enacting a new parentage law that is gender neutral and marital-status neutral, and clarifying the recognition of both biological and nonbiological relationships. What does this mean for second-parent adoptions, though?
The Trump administration continues to push for banning some, if not all, transgender people from the military, despite all four service chiefs asserting that the presence of transgender troops has caused no harm. At the same time, one Department of Defense program has launched a new professional development course for staff at military-affiliated childcare centers and youth programs on how to create safe, inclusive spaces for gender-expansive and LGBTQ children.
Let’s end this week on a good note! The Mississippi Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a nonbiological mother has the same rights as a biological one, overturning a lower court ruling that had given parental rights to her child’s anonymous sperm donor instead.
