That’s right. This year has seen not one, but two queer parents winning Nobel Prizes! Svante Pääbo is this year’s Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution. He’s also a bisexual dad.
Another entry for the “queer parents can do anything” files: Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi, a professor at Stanford University, has won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the 59th woman to win the prize (versus more than 800 men). She’s also a lesbian mom.
Australian rugby player Ellia Green has come out as a trans man, the first Olympian to do so. The 2016 gold medalist and his wife also have an infant daughter, whom he credits as an inspiration for being open about himself. Click through to read more and see more photos of this loving family!
The Massachusetts Parentage Act (MPA), which would update state parentage laws to better protect all children, including those with LGBTQ parents, did not make it through the legislative process before the session ended July 31. Advocates say they will continue fighting for it in the next session.
In a major win for equality, the U.K. government has announced that female same-sex couples will no longer have to pay for expensive rounds of assisted insemination to prove infertility before accessing in vitro fertilization (IVF). The country’s leading LGBTQ advocacy organization has clarified that this will also apply to trans people.
Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law (which really impacts the entire LGBTQ community) goes into effect today—but it has already had a chilling impact on LGBTQ students, families, and on supportive teachers in the state.
For many LGBTQ people, getting pregnant is done with planning worthy of chess masters. Yet LGBTQ people who have been pregnant are also more likely to have had unwanted or mistimed pregnancies and to need abortion services than cisgender heterosexual women—meaning the end of Roe v. Wade will have an immediate negative impact on LGBTQ people, whether or not it leads to the erosion of additional rights.
Attorney Stuart Delery, currently deputy counsel to the president, will become White House counsel next month, President Biden announced. Delery joins several other queer parents with leading roles in the administration.
From the latest “queer parents making a mark” files: The U.S. Senate voted at the end of May to confirm Charlotte Sweeney, a Colorado employee rights attorney and a lesbian mom, to the federal judiciary. She will be the first out LGBTQ federal judge in Colorado and the first out LGBTQ woman to serve as a federal district court judge in any state west of the Mississippi, according to the White House.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) yesterday signed “Marlo’s Law,” which will ensure critical legal protections for families formed via assisted reproduction and is named after the child of the bill’s co-prime sponsor, a lesbian mom. The Colorado legislature has also recently passed a bill ensuring that donor-conceived people have access to certain information about their sperm/egg donors.
