A new law is now in effect in the state of New York that not only legalizes gestational surrogacy but also simplifies and strengthens the legal recognition of nonbiological parents and single parents in families formed through assisted reproduction. Easy forms? No home study? Yes, please!
After a lawsuit brought by LGBTQ organizations and a foster youth and alumni group, the Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has agreed to delay implementing a Trump-era rule that would have allowed taxpayer-funded foster care and adoption agencies and other health and social service organizations to discriminate against LGBTQ people and others. This will allow the administration time to review the rule and potentially change or nullify it.
A two-woman couple has pushed Gibraltar to change its laws so they will both be recognized as parents of their child, due to be born next week. Another E.U. child with two moms, however, remains stateless after Bulgaria denied her citizenship, claiming that a child cannot have two mothers.
President Biden’s executive order yesterday ending the ban on transgender people serving in the military is not only a victory for the many trans people in uniform, but also for the children and families they support.
Senator Bernie Sanders’ wooly mittens, which he wore to the inauguration, have been taking the Internet by storm. The woman behind them is a second-grade teacher in Vermont—who just happens to be a queer mom!
I slept better last night knowing that the U.S. nuclear codes were in the hands of someone not likely to make ego-driven decisions. I woke up refreshed thinking about the first vice president who is a woman, Black, and of South Asian descent. And I was delighted for LGBTQ families, who have a number of reasons to celebrate today.
Dear President-elect Biden:
I’m writing you this open letter as you prepare to take office as president. My son was just a few months too young to vote in the last election, but watched it with great concern, for its results would directly impact him and his family. Would the next administration be one that treated our family with equality? Would it view families like ours as part of the rich fabric of American diversity or as aberrations?
President-elect Joe Biden has nominated Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine, who has led the state’s COVID-19 response, as assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Services. Levine, a transgender woman, is also the parent of two grown children. Her nomination comes days after President Trump’s HHS finalized a rule that would allow schools to misgender and discriminate against transgender students. Do you sense change?
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos made sure she struck one more time at LGBTQ youth as she stepped down last week, with her department issuing a memo saying that “gender identity” was not protected under laws that ban discrimination on the basis of sex, and that schools are within their rights to misgender transgender students and force them to participate in programs and use facilities based on their biological sex.
Not letting a little thing like insurrection stop them, the Trump administration on Thursday finalized a rule that will allow foster care and adoption agencies, along with other public health and social service organizations receiving taxpayer funds, to discriminate against LGBTQ people and others.
