France’s Senate approves adoption for gay couples

GayStarNews.com – April 11, 2013 by Joe Morgan

The French Senate has approved adoption for same-sex couples.

On the evening of 10 April, the second article of the ‘Marriage for All’ bill was adopted by the upper level of French parliament.

The vote came just one day after the Senate approved Article 1, the provision allowing gay couples to marry.

The Senate must now complete a review of the legislation in its entirety, although passage of both articles almost guarantees gay couples will soon be able to marry and adopt in France.

Once approved, the bill will go back to the National Assembly in late May for final approval. It will then go to the French President François Hollande to sign into law.

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in Adoption / In the News  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

U.S. Says Study of Babies Failed to Disclose Risks

April 10, 2013
 New York Times

The lead investigators on a large study of the effects of oxygen levels on extremely premature babies failed to inform the infants’ parents that the risks of participating could involve increased chances of blindness or death, the federal Department of Health and Human Services has warned in a letter.

The Office for Human Research Protections, which safeguards the people who participate in government-funded research, sent a letter to the University of Alabama at Birmingham last month, detailing what it said were violations of patients’ rights.

The university, which was a lead site for the study, had not detailed the risks in consent forms that were the basis of parents’ participation, the office said in the letter. Specifically, babies assigned to a high-oxygen group were more likely to go blind and babies assigned to a low-oxygen group were more likely to die than if they had not participated. Ultimately, 130 babies out of 654 in the low-oxygen group died, and 91 babies out of 509 in the high-oxygen group developed blindness.

Some of the 1,300 infants who participated in the study, which took place between 2004 and 2009, would probably have died or developed blindness even if they had not taken part. They were born at just 24 to 27 weeks gestation, a very high-risk category. But being assigned to one or the other oxygen group in the study increased their chances further, a risk that was not properly disclosed, the office said

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in In the News / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

The Child, the Tablet and the Developing Mind

By NICK BILTON – The New York Times,
March 31, 2013
 
I recently watched my sister perform an act of magic.

We were sitting in a restaurant, trying to have a conversation, but her children, 4-year-old Willow and 7-year-old Luca, would not stop fighting. The arguments — over a fork, or who had more water in a glass — were unrelenting.

Like a magician quieting a group of children by pulling a rabbit out of a hat, my sister reached into her purse and produced two shiny Apple iPads, handing one to each child. Suddenly, the two were quiet. Eerily so. They sat playing games and watching videos, and we continued with our conversation.

After our meal, as we stuffed the iPads back into their magic storage bag, my sister felt slightly guilty.

“I don’t want to give them the iPads at the dinner table, but if it keeps them occupied for an hour so we can eat in peace, and more importantly not disturb other people in the restaurant, I often just hand it over,” she told me. Then she asked: “Do you think it’s bad for them? I do worry that it is setting them up to think it’s O.K. to use electronics at the dinner table in the future.”

I did not have an answer, and although some people might have opinions, no one has a true scientific understanding of what the future might hold for a generation raised on portable screens.

“We really don’t know the full neurological effects of these technologies yet,” said Dr. Gary Small, director of the Longevity Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of “iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind.” “Children, like adults, vary quite a lot, and some are more sensitive than others to an abundance of screen time.”

But Dr. Small says we do know that the brain is highly sensitive to stimuli, like iPads and smartphone screens, and if people spend too much time with one technology, and less time interacting with people like parents at the dinner table, that could hinder the development of certain communications skills.

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in In the News / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Science led to gay families: Law should follow

By Debora L. Spar. Special to CNN
Wed April 3, 2013

(CNN) — Of all the arguments swirling around the legality of same-sex marriage, it’s clear that a major concern is, as always, the kids.

Supporters argue that same-sex parents need to provide their children with a stable and supportive family home, complete with the legal protections afforded heterosexual married couples. Opponents claim that children raised by same-sex parents are wounded in some fundamental way by being denied the “normal” benefits of having both a mother and father at home.

What is lost, remarkably, in both these arguments is the science that enabled families headed by same-sex couples to exist at all.

Until recently, families had to consist, at least at the outset, of a mommy and a daddy, each biologically necessary to bring children into being. Even if the mother died in childbirth or the father disappeared shortly thereafter, the physiological basis of the nuclear family remained intact: one mother, one father, and a child conceived of their union.

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in In the News / Parenting / Surrogacy  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

It Is Time for the U.S. to Cover IVF (for Gays and Lesbians Too)

Huffington Post, March 18, 2013 – Dov Fox and I. Glen Cohen

This week the United Kingdom joined the ranks of countries like Israel and Canada that provide in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment to citizens under a certain age (42 in the U.K.) who can’t have children without it. That includes gays and lesbians. When it comes to helping people form the families they long for, the United States is woefully behind. The U.S. has among the lowest rates of IVF usage of any developed country in the world, owing in part to boasting the highest cost for the procedure, on average $100,000 per successful pregnancy.

Among the handful of states that require insurers to cover IVF, many carve out exclusions for same-sex couples and people who aren’t married. These singles, gays, and lesbians are sometimes called “dysfertile” as opposed to “infertile” to emphasize their social (rather than just biological) obstacles to reproduction. The U.S. should expand IVF coverage for the infertile and include the dysfertile too.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the inability to reproduce qualifies as a health-impairing disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The commitment to universal health care that we renewed in President Obama’s health reform act invites us to understand the infertile and dysfertile alike as needing medicine to restore a capacity–for “[r]eproduction and the sexual dynamics surrounding it”–that is, in the words of the Supreme Court, “central to the life process itself.”

It is true that dysfertility fits less comfortably within the medical model. But why should that alone make less worthy the desires of gays and lesbians to have a genetic child? Joe Saul, the protagonist in John Steinbeck’s 1950 play Burning Bright, put it best:

A man can’t scrap his bloodline, can’t snip the thread of his immortality. There’s more than . . . the remembered stories of glory and the forgotten shame of failure. There is a trust imposed to hand my line over to another.

My impulse to create a biological family, to raise “my own” children, to “hand my line over to another” is shared by people single or married, black or white, gay or straight. And the arguments against IVF subsidies fall short.

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in IVF / Legal / Legislation / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Pediatrics Group Backs Gay Marriage, Saying It Helps Children

March 21, 2013
New York Times

The American Academy of Pediatrics declared its support for same-sex marriage for the first time on Thursday, saying that allowing gay and lesbian parents to marry if they so choose is in the best interests of their children.

The academy’s new policy statement says same-sex marriage helps guarantee rights, benefits and long-term security for children, while acknowledging that it does not now ensure access to federal benefits. When marriage is not an option, the academy said, children should not be deprived of foster care or adoption by single parents or couples, whatever their sexual orientation.

The academy’s review of scientific literature began more than four years ago, and the result is a 10-page report with 60 citations.

“If the studies are different in their design and sample but the results continue to be similar, that gives scientists and consumers more faith in the result,” said Dr. Ellen Perrin, a co-author of the new policy and a professor of pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine.

Other scientists called the evidence lackluster and said the academy’s endorsement was premature. Loren Marks, an associate professor of child and family studies at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, said there was not enough national data to support the pediatric association’s position on same-sex marriage. “National policy should be informed by nationally representative data,” he said. “We are moving in the direction of higher-quality national data, but it’s slow.”

The academy cited research finding that a child’s well-being is much more affected by the strength of relationships among family members and a family’s social and economic resources than by the sexual orientation of the parents. “There is an emerging consensus, based on extensive review of the scientific literature, that children growing up in households headed by gay men or lesbians are not disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents,” the academy said.

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in Legal / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Kansas Supreme Court Upholds Co-Parenting Agreement

According to this February 22, 2013 decision, “A coparenting agreement is not automatically rendered unenforceable as violating public policy merely because it contains the biological mother’s agreement to share the custody of her children with another, so long as the intent and effect of the arrangement will promote the welfare and best interests of the children.”

The court basically stated that same-sex couples have the same rights as opposite sex couples in parenting.  Way to go Kansas – Who knew?

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in Anonymous/Known Donation / Legal / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Hillary Clinton Endorses Same-Sex Marriage

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG – March 18, 2013 – New York Times

Saying that “gay rights are human rights,’’ Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former secretary of state and potential 2016 presidential candidate, has endorsed same-sex marriage.

“I believe America is at its best when we champion the freedom and dignity of every human being,’’ Mrs. Clinton said in a video posted Monday on the Internet by the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group. Her announcement comes as the Supreme Court is about to hear two landmark gay rights cases that advocates hope will make same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states.

Mrs. Clinton had not previously come out in favor of same-sex marriage, but she did take steps to protect gay couples when she was secretary of state, work that she said “inspired me to think anew” about the values she held.

“L.G.B.T. Americans are our colleagues, our teachers, our soldiers, our friends, our loved ones, and they are full and equal citizens and deserve the rights of citizenship,’’ she said in the six-minute video, using the abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. “That includes marriage.’’

Mrs. Clinton spoke in the video of the recent wedding of her own daughter, Chelsea, saying, “I wish every parent that same joy.’’

Mrs. Clinton and her family have longstanding ties to the Human Rights Campaign. The group’s executive director, Chad Griffin, was born in Hope, Ark. – Bill Clinton’s hometown – and got his start in politics volunteering for Mr. Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. The former president and Chelsea Clinton expressed their support for same-sex marriage when it was under consideration in the New York State legislature.

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in In the News  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Top Anti-Gay Attorney Insults Chief Justice Roberts And Justice Thomas’ Decisions To Adopt Children

ThinkProgress.org, By Ian Millhiser on Mar 14, 2013

When President Bush announced his decision to nominate future-Chief Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court, his wife Jane stood nearby holding the hands of two beautiful children — Jack and Josie Roberts. Both of these children were born in Ireland, and later adopted by the future Chief Justice and his wife. Justice Clarence Thomas also has an adopted son, his grandnephew Mark Martin, Jr., who Thomas adopted when Martin was six.

So it is a bit hard to understand why a top anti-gay advocate decided to insult adoptive parents in general — and Chief Justice Roberts in particular — as the justices are preparing to hear two cases that will decide whether same-sex couples will enjoy the same right to marry as all other Americans. According to John Eastman, a law professor and chair of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage, Roberts and Thomas’ adopted children are only growing up in the “second-best” environment:

The justices also are not immune to considering how they might be affected by the course one side or the other is advocating in a dispute before them. . . . [Johns Hopkins Sociology Professor Andrew] Cherlin, who does not follow the high court especially closely, wondered whether the gay marriage cases might take on a similar dynamic. “If justices consider their own family lives in these cases, it may change the way they rule,” he said.

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in Adoption / In the News / Religious  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

New Pope: Francis believes gay adoption is child abuse

Argentina’s Jorge Mario Bergoglio was chosen by the conclave of cardinals as the next leader of the Roman Catholic Church
| By Joe Morgan – GayStarNews.com

Pope Francis was elected as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church today (13 March).

Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 76, was chosen by the conclave of 115 cardinals as a successor to Benedict XVI.

Tens of thousands of faithful Catholics broke into cheers as the white smoke indicated the new pontiff had obtained the required two thirds majority, which happened in the fifth round of voting over two days.

Francis is still a conservative choice, but has taught the ‘importance of respecting gay individuals’.

However he strongly opposed same-sex marriage legislation introduced in 2010 by the Argentine government, calling it a ‘destructive attack on God’s plan’.

In a letter to the monasteries of Buenos Aires, he wrote: ‘Let’s not be naive, we’re not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God.

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in Adoption / In the News / Religious  by Anthony Brown 0 comments