Woman forcibly sedated and Child taken from womb by social services

The Telegraph, November 30, 2013 – by Colin Freemen

A pregnant woman has had her baby forcibly removed by caesarean section by   social workers.

Essex social services obtained a High Court order against the woman that   allowed her to be forcibly sedated and her child to be taken from her womb.

The council said it was acting in the best interests of the woman, an Italian   who was in Britain on a work trip, because she had suffered a mental   breakdown.

The baby girl, now 15 months old, is still in the care of social services, who   are refusing to give her back to the mother, even though she claims to have   made a full recovery.

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Robert Oscar Lopez: Married Gay Couples Collaborate With Human Traffickers To Have families

OnTopMagazine.com, 11/27/2013

Anti-gay marriage activist Robert Oscar Lopez on Tuesday claimed that allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry leads to human trafficking.

Lopez, who is celebrated among social conservatives due to the fact that he was raised briefly in a same-sex household and claims he was damaged by the experience, appeared on Sandy Rios in The Morning to criticize passage of a marriage law in Hawaii.

“Look [at] what they did in Hawaii, that’s a state where over sixty percent of the population is Asian-American; they’re the people who came from South Korea, from Japan, from the Philippines, countries that have a very, very controversial history with adoption,” Lopez said, according to an account from Right Wing Watch. “And the predominantly white Human Rights Campaign went to Hawaii and ripped apart that state, you heard the testimony, they took a state and they just ripped at their heart.”

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The Changing American Family

November 26, 2013 – New York Times, by Natalie Angier

CHELSEA, MICH. — Kristi and Michael Burns have a lot in common. They love crossword puzzles, football, going to museums and reading five or six books at a time. They describe themselves as mild-mannered introverts who suffer from an array of chronic medical problems. The two share similar marital résumés, too. On their wedding day in 2011, the groom was 43 years old and the bride 39, yet it was marriage No. 3 for both.

Today, their blended family is a sprawling, sometimes uneasy ensemble of two sharp-eyed sons from her two previous husbands, a daughter and son from his second marriage, ex-spouses of varying degrees of involvement, the partners of ex-spouses, the bemused in-laws and a kitten named Agnes that likes to sleep on computer keyboards.

If the Burnses seem atypical as an American nuclear family, how about the Schulte-Waysers, a merry band of two married dads, six kids and two dogs? Or the Indrakrishnans, a successful immigrant couple in Atlanta whose teenage daughter divides her time between prosaic homework and the precision footwork of ancient Hindu dance; the Glusacs of Los Angeles, with their two nearly grown children and their litany of middle-class challenges that seem like minor sagas; Ana Perez and Julian Hill of Harlem, unmarried and just getting by, but with Warren Buffett-size dreams for their three young children; and the alarming number of families with incarcerated parents, a sorry byproduct of America’s status as the world’s leading jailer.

The typical American family, if it ever lived anywhere but on Norman Rockwell’s Thanksgiving canvas, has become as multilayered and full of surprises as a holiday turducken — the all-American seasonal portmanteau of deboned turkey, duck and chicken.

Researchers who study the structure and evolution of the American family express unsullied astonishment at how rapidly the family has changed in recent years, the transformations often exceeding or capsizing those same experts’ predictions of just a few journal articles ago.

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Gay Parenting Junk Science on trial in MI in February

ThinkProgress.org, November 18, 2013 by Zack Ford The case challenging Michigan’s bans on same-sex marriage and adoption will go to trial in February, and state officials announced Friday that they are going to showcase four prominent “researchers” who claim that same-sex parenting harms children: Mark Regnerus, Douglas Allen, Loren Marks, and Joseph Price. Here’s a look at the “research” these four have produced that will likely inform their testimony:

Mark Regnerus

Mark Regnerus is a sociologist at the University of Texas and a social conservative who frequently writes from a perspective of Christian sexual morality. Regnerus’ infamous “New Family Structures Study” claimed that children with same-sex parents had less positive negative outcomes compared to different-sex parents, but the study did not actually address same-sex parenting. Most of the subjects in the study grew up in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, long before marriage equality was available or adoption rights were codified in many states. Only two of the individuals in the sample were actually raised from birth by same-sex parents, whereas almost all of the rest were the product of “failed heterosexual unions” who happened to have had a parent who at some point had a “romantic relationship with someone of the same sex.” An internal audit by the journal that published Regnerus’ study found his conclusions to be “bullshit,” and many academics, including the American Sociological Association, have condemned its results. Regnerus himself has admitted that the study doesn’t address same-sex parenting, but that hasn’t stopped him from using it to repeatedly speak out against marriage equality — as recently as this month in Hawaii — which he was coached to do by anti-gay groups.

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Fla. Supreme Court Settles Lesbian Custody Battle

By BRENDAN FARRINGTON Associated Press for ABC.com

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that a woman who donated an egg to her lesbian partner has parental rights to the child.

The court issued its ruling Thursday and ordered a lower court to determine custody and visitation rights.

The case involves two lesbians who began raising the child together. One donated an egg that was fertilized and implanted in the other. That woman gave birth in 2004.

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The Cost Of Childcare Rose Last Year, Is More Than Rent Or Food

ThinkProgress.org, November 4, 2013 – By Bryce Covert

Families paid more for childcare in 2012 than in 2011, with the costs of center care rising by 2.7 percent for an infant and 2.6 percent for a four-year-old, according to a new report from Child Care Aware of America. They rose even faster for care in a family’s home, which went up 3.7 percent for an infant and 4.8 percent for a four-year-old. While the average annual cost of full-time center care ranges state by state, it is now as much as $16,430 in Massachusetts for an infant and $12,355 in New York for a four-year-old. For both children, it can be as much as $28,606.

This cost eats up a huge amount of families’ budgets. Putting two children in full-time center care represents the biggest single expense for a household in the Northeast, Midwest, and South, and it is only exceeded by the cost of housing in the West. It is more than annual median rent in every state and more than mortgage payments in 19 states and DC. The cost of putting an infant in a childcare center is more than what the average family spends on food in every region in the country. It can even be higher than college tuition: The costs are higher than a year of public college a four-year institution in 31 states and DC for an infant and 19 states and DC for a four-year-old.

It’s also high for a family budget in percentage terms. The Department of Health and Human Services considers spending 10 percent of a family’s income on childcare to be the benchmark of what is affordable. Yet for single parents, the average cost of center-based infant care is more than 25 percent of the median income in every state. For a married couple, the cost for an infant is more than 10 percent of median income in 38 states an DC and the cost for a four-year-old exceeds that limit in 21 states and DC. The cost of putting an infant in full-time center care will eat up anywhere from 7 percent to 19 percent of a married couple’s income.

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A Quick Guide To The Research On Same-Sex Parenting (As Presented To The Federal Courts)

By Zack Ford, ThinkProgress.org, October 28, 2013

Two marriage equality cases are advancing to the Ninth Circuit of Appeals from the states of Nevada (Sevcik v. Sandoval) and Hawaii (Jackson v. Abercrombie). In both cases, marriage equality lost at the district court level, distinguishing them from the case challenging California’s Proposition 8 and essentially freeing them of the jurisdictional issues that complicated the Prop 8 case. This means that the two cases provide an opportunity for the court to directly consider the constitutionality of states banning same-sex marriage.

Zach-Wahls-DNC-2012-200x300Numerous professional organizations submitted amicus briefs last week advising the court about why it should support marriage equality and in particular, addressing the question of same-sex parenting. Opponents assert that same-sex marriage should be banned because children fare better with different-sex parents than with same-sex parents. Not only does this ignore the fact that joint adoption is already legal for same-sex couples in both Nevada and Hawaii, but as the scholarly community points out, it disregards the consensus of scientific research endorsing same-sex parenting.

In a brief filed by the American Psychological Association, National Association of Social Workers, American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, American Psychoanalytic Association, and Hawaii Psychological Association, the scholars outline three factors that research has determined leads to good parenting:

  • The quality of the relationships between parent and child.
  • The quality of the relationships among adults in the child’s life (such as between the parents).
  • Available economic resources to support the child’s development (e.g., safer neighborhoods, more nutritious food, etc.).

The groups point out that these factors are not impacted by sexual orientation, and thus there is no reason to conclude same-sex parents would be inferior in any way.

In a complementary brief, the American Sociological Association (ASA) expanded upon what research says specifically about the outcomes for children of same-sex parents:

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Gay Couples, Choosing to Say ‘I Don’t’

October 25, 2013
New York Times

When the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act in June, Brian Blatz, 47, marched into the kitchen of Fiddleheads, the restaurant in Jamesburg, N.J., that he owns with Dan Davis, 58.

“DOMA is dead,” Mr. Blatz said, before the pair turned their attention to opening the restaurant for lunch. And last month, when a judge in New Jersey ruled that same-sex marriage should be legalized, their reaction was similarly muted.

“I said ‘wow’ and he said ‘yea,’ ” Mr. Blatz said. “And then we went right back to work.”

It’s not that Mr. Blatz and Mr. Davis are not in love. They have been together for 18 years and swapped rings in a ceremony in their backyard nine years ago. But the couple sees little point in marrying.

“We are in all senses married, and it isn’t going to change anything in terms of how we feel about each other,” Mr. Blatz said.

They are not unique. Now that same-sex couples in 14 states have all the rights and responsibilities of straight married couples, gay couples are rushing to the altar, right? Not exactly. Plenty of gay couples do not want to marry, and their reasons are as complex — and personal — as any decision to wed.

For some, marriage is an outdated institution, one that forces same-sex couples into the mainstream. For others, marriage imposes financial burdens and legal entanglements. Still others see marriage not as a fairy tale but as a potentially painful chapter that ends in divorce. And then there are those for whom marriage goes against their beliefs, religious or otherwise.

“It’s a very, very archaic model,” said Sean Fader, 34, an artist in New York who is single and asked to be identified as queer. “It’s this oppressive Christian model that says ‘Pick a person that’s going to be everything to you, they have to be perfect, then get a house, and have kids, and then you’ll be happy and whole.’ ”

“There are many heterosexuals who feel the same way,” he added. After all, not all heterosexual couples choose to marry. But same-sex couples do seem more inclined to be marriage holdouts. According to a Pew Research poll released in June, 60 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults are married or said they wanted to marry, compared with 76 percent of the general public.

Some of the opposition among gay men and lesbians is rooted in a feminist critique of marriage, which sees it not as a freedom to be gained but as an institution that has historically oppressed women.

That feminist strain held firm in the earlier years of the gay rights movement. The late Paula L. Ettelbrick, a leading lesbian and gay rights figure, was among the vocal opponents of same-sex marriage, and held a more expansive view of relationships and family.

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Fertility Clinics Help More Gay Couples Have Kids

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE 10/16/13

BOSTON — BOSTON (AP) — Fertility clinics have put a new twist on how to make babies: A “two-mom” approach that lets female same-sex couples share the biological role. One woman’s eggs are mixed in a lab dish with donor sperm, then implanted in the other woman, who carries the pregnancy.

A New York doctor described 18 of these cases Tuesday at a fertility conference in Boston that featured other research on ways to help same-sex couples have children. Dr. Alan Copperman is medical director of Reproductive Medicine Associates, a New York City clinic that does the “two-mom” approach.

A New York couple — Sarah Marshall, 40, a recruiter for law firms, and Maggie Leigh Marshall, 35, a real estate broker — used it to have their daughter, Graham, now 18 months old. Maggie’s eggs were used to make embryos that were implanted in Sarah, and both women are listed as parents on the birth certificate.

“It allowed us both to participate,” Sarah Marshall said. “I had to mentally and psychologically give up the idea of, is she going to look like me or my family. But from the time I started carrying her up to now, she is definitely mine.”

Maggie Marshall said she had no interest in being pregnant, but “Sarah really wanted to have the experience. We also thought it would be a great way to bond with a kid that ultimately would look a lot like me.”

It wasn’t cheap — the couple spent nearly $100,000 on multiple failed attempts before the last one worked. A single in vitro fertilization attempt can run $15,000 to more than $20,000, depending on how much embryo testing is done and whether some embryos are frozen to allow multiple attempts from one batch.

One Canadian study suggests that more lesbian couples have been seeking fertility services in Ontario since same-sex marriage was legalized in the province a decade ago. Some doctors think interest also is up in the U.S. For male couples, many clinics offer egg donors and surrogate moms, using one or both men’s sperm.

“The modern family is created in a way that would be humbled by traditional fertility treatments,” said Copperman. “We’re seeing more and more couples come in and want to share the parenting experience,” and their medical forms more often say “wife” rather than “domestic partner.”

“This is something that a lot of lesbian couples choose to do” if they can afford it, said Melissa Brisman, a reproductive law specialist in Montvale, N.J., who has advised many such couples. “Some doctors really have a problem doing this for non-medical reasons” because any medical procedures carry risks of infections or other complications, she added.

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Russian Draft Bill Banning Gay Parenting Withdrawn

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – October 22, 2013

A draft bill that would have stripped gay parents of their children has been withdrawn from the agenda of the Russian parliament.

Russian lawmaker Aleksei Zhuravlyov of the ruling United Russia party said the bill will be resubmitted for debate to Russia’s State Duma after changes are introduced.

He did not elaborate.

The draft was submitted to the State Duma last month.

The head of the State Duma committee on family, women, and children, Yelena Mizulina, said earlier that it was unlikely that the proposed bill would be adopted as it would have been impossible to implement because of the difficulty in identifying parents with “nontraditional sexual orientations.”

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