Male Couples Face Pressure to Fill Cradles

August 9, 2012
New York Times

WASHINGTON — When the jubilant couple were wed in June, they exchanged personalized vows and titanium rings, cheered the heartfelt toasts and danced themselves breathless. Then, as the evening was winding down, unexpected questions started popping up.

One after another, their guests began asking: Are you going to have kids? When are you going to have kids?

Tom Lotito and Matt Hay, both 26, could not help but feel moved. They never imagined as teenagers that they would ever get married, much less that friends and family members would pester them about having children.

“It’s another way that I feel like what we have is valid in the eyes of other people,” said Mr. Hay, who married Mr. Lotito in June before 133 guests.

As lawmakers and courts expand the legal definition of the American family, same-sex couples are beginning to feel the same what-about-children pressure that heterosexual twosomes have long felt.

For some couples, it is another welcome sign of their increasing inclusion in the American mainstream. But for others, who hear the persistent questions at the office, dinner parties and family get-togethers, the matter can be far more complicated.

Many gay men had resigned themselves to the idea that they would never be accepted by society as loving parents and assumed they would never have children. They grieved that loss and moved on, even as other gay men and lesbians fully embraced childless lives. So the questions can unearth bittersweet feelings and cause deep divisions within a couple over whether to have children at all, now that parenting among same-sex couples is becoming more common.

The process can be also daunting logistically and financially, as would-be parents wrestle with whether to adopt or use a surrogate. And once they have children, many same-sex couples still endure the inevitable criticism — spoken or unspoken — from those who remain uncomfortable with the notion of their being parents.

But support for same-sex parents is growing steadily among Americans. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in July and released last week found for the first time that a majority of people surveyed — 52 percent — said that gay men and lesbians should be allowed to adopt children, up from 46 percent in 2008 and 38 percent in 1999.

The shift in public opinion and the simple question — Are you having children? — is nothing short of a marvel to some gay men, perhaps even more so than to lesbians, for whom giving birth has always been an option.

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in Legal / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Trial Due for Pastor in Dispute on Custody

 

August 6, 2012
New York Times

The curious involvement of an Amish-Mennonite sect in a high-profile case of international parental kidnapping will be on display — and perhaps become clearer — in a courtroom in Burlington, Vt., this week.

Jury selection is to begin Tuesday in the criminal trial of a pastor charged with helping Lisa A. Miller flee the country with her young daughter to prevent the girl from staying with Ms. Miller’s former partner in a civil union.

Kenneth L. Miller, 46, the leader of a Beachy Amish Mennonite church in Stuarts Draft, Va., is accused of helping Ms. Miller, who is no relation, violate custody orders, aiding her in her flight with her daughter, Isabella, to Nicaragua, where they were sheltered by missionaries of the sect. The pair have been missing since September 2009 and are believed to be in Central America.

The bitter and widely publicized custody battle that preceded Ms. Miller’s flight pitted conservative Christians using the slogan “Protect Isabella” against the courts and supporters of gay rights.

Ms. Miller repeatedly defied orders by a Vermont family court to allow Isabella to visit  Janet Jenkins, Isabella’s other legal parent. The Vermont civil union was officially dissolved in 2004; Ms. Miller, the birth mother, was granted custody, and Ms. Jenkins was awarded visitation rights.

Ms. Miller became a cause célèbre among evangelical opponents of same-sex marriage after she declared her newfound religious objection to homosexuality and spent years in court trying to end Ms. Jenkins’s parental rights. In September 2009, as a frustrated Vermont judge ordered one more visit and threatened to transfer custody of the girl to Ms. Jenkins, Ms. Miller and Isabella, then 7, disappeared from their home in Lynchburg, Va.

Federal agents eventually learned that the pair had flown to Nicaragua, where they were sheltered by missionaries of the Beachy Amish Mennonites, sect members have acknowledged. The group believes that same-sex marriage is a sin.

Mr. Miller contacted a fellow pastor in Nicaragua to ask if he would buy one-way airplane tickets for Ms. Miller and her daughter, meet them at the Managua airport and arrange a place to stay, according to recovered e-mails, telephone records and the deposition of the missionary in Nicaragua.

Ms. Miller and Isabella remain missing, but federal agents believe they remain in hiding somewhere in Nicaragua, possibly with covert help from conservative Christians.

How Kenneth Miller met Lisa Miller and who drove the pair to the Canadian border so they could fly from Toronto remain mysteries.

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Which Mother for Isabella? Civil Union Ends in an Abduction and Questions

July 28, 2012 – New York Times
By

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Lisa A. Miller and her daughter, Isabella, started their fugitive lives here in the fall of 2009, disguised in the white scarves and long blue dresses of the Mennonites who spirited them out of the United States and adopting the aliases Sarah and Lydia.

Now 10, Isabella Miller-Jenkins has spent her last three birthdays on the run, “bouncing around the barrios of Nicaragua,” as one federal agent put it, a lively blond girl and her mother trying to blend in and elude the United States marshals who have traveled to the country in pursuit.

She can now chatter in Spanish, but her time in Nicaragua has often been lonely, those who have met her say, long on prayer but isolated. She has been told that she could be wrenched from her mother if they are caught. She has also been told that the other woman she once called “Mama,” Ms. Miller’s former partner from a civil union in Vermont that she has since renounced, cannot go to heaven because she lives in sin with women.

Isabella’s tumultuous life has embodied some of America’s bitterest culture wars — a choice, as Ms. Miller said in a courtroom plea, shortly before their desperate flight, “between two diametrically opposed worldviews on parentage and family.”

Isabella was 7 when she and Ms. Miller jumped into a car in Virginia, leaving behind their belongings and a family of pet hamsters to die without food or water. Supporters drove them to Buffalo, where they took a taxi to Canada and boarded a flight to Mexico and then Central America.

Ms. Miller, 44, is wanted by the F.B.I. and Interpol for international parental kidnapping. In their underground existence in this impoverished tropical country, she and Isabella have been helped by evangelical groups who endorse her decision to flee rather than to expose Isabella to the “homosexual lifestyle” of her other legal mother, Janet Jenkins.

In a tale filled with improbables, an Amish Mennonite sect known for simple living and avoiding politics has been drawn into the high-stakes criminal case: one of its pastors is facing trial in Vermont on Aug. 7 on charges of abetting the kidnapping.

The decade-long drama touches on some of the country’s most contentious social and legal questions, including the extension of civil union and marital rights to same-sex couples and what happens, in the courts and to children, when such unions dissolve.

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Controversial Gay-Parenting Study Is Severely Flawed, Journal’s Audit Finds

July 26, 2012 – The Chronicle, Percolator

By Tom Bartlett

The peer-review process failed to identify significant, disqualifying problems with a controversial and widely publicized study that seemed to raise doubts about the parenting abilities of gay couples, according to an internal audit scheduled to appear in the November issue of the journal, Social Science Research,that published the study.

The highly critical audit, a draft of which was provided to The Chronicle by the journal’s editor, also cites conflicts of interest among the reviewers, and states that “scholars who should have known better failed to recuse themselves from the review process.”

Since it was published last month, the study, titled “How Different Are the Adult Children of Parents Who Have Same-Sex Relationships?,” has been the subject of numerous news articles and blog posts. It has been used by opponents of same-sex marriage to make their case, and it’s been blasted by gay-rights activists as flawed and biased.

The study’s author, Mark Regnerus, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, even made the cover of The Weekly Standard. In the illustration, he is strapped to a Catherine wheel that’s being tended by masked torturers.

Click here to read the entire article.

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Answers to Frequently Asked Questions for Same-Sex Couples From IRS

The following questions and answers provide information to same-sex domestic partners, same-sex individuals in civil unions and same-sex couples whose marriage is recognized by state law (for convenience, these individuals are referred to as “same-sex couples” and each individual is referred to as a “same-sex partner” in these questions and answers). Below this information are questions and answers for same-sex couples who reside in community property states and are subject to their state’s community property laws:

Q. Can same-sex partners who are legally married for state law purposes file federal tax returns using a married filing jointly or married filing separately status?

A. No. Same-sex partners may not file using a married filing separately or jointly filing status because federal law does not treat same-sex partners as married for federal tax purposes.

Q. Can a taxpayer use the head-of-household filing status if the taxpayer’s only dependent is his or her same-sex partner?

A. No. A taxpayer cannot file as head of household if the taxpayer’s only dependent is his or her same-sex partner. A taxpayer’s same-sex partner is not one of the related individuals described in the law that qualifies the taxpayer to file as head of household, even if the same-sex partner is the taxpayer’s dependent.

Q. If a child is a qualifying child under section 152(c) of both parents who are same-sex partners, which parent may claim the child as a dependent?

A. If a child is a qualifying child under section 152(c) of both parents who are same-sex partners, either parent, but not both, may claim a dependency deduction for the qualifying child. If both parents claim a dependency deduction for the child on their income tax returns, the IRS will treat the child as the qualifying child of the parent with whom the child resides for the longer period of time. If the child resides with each parent for the same amount of time during the taxable year, the IRS will treat the child as the qualifying child of the parent with the higher adjusted gross income.

Q. Can a same-sex partner itemize deductions if his or her partner claims a standard deduction?

A. Yes. A same-sex partner may itemize or claim the standard deduction regardless of whether his or her partner itemizes or claims the standard deduction. Although the law prohibits one spouse from itemizing deductions if the other spouse claims the standard deduction (section 63(c)(6)(A)), same-sex partners are not spouses as defined by federal law, and this provision does not apply to them.

Q. If a same-sex couple adopts a child together, can one or both of the same-sex partners qualify for the adoption credit?

A. Yes. Each same-sex partner may qualify to claim the adoption credit on the amount of the qualified adoption expenses paid or incurred for the adoption. The same-sex partners may not both claim credit for the same qualified adoption expenses, and neither same-sex partner may claim more than the amount of expenses that he or she paid or incurred. The adoption credit is limited to $13,360 per child in 2011. Thus, if two same-sex partners each paid qualified adoption expenses to adopt the same child, and the total of those expenses exceeds $13,360, the maximum credit available for the adoption is $13,360. The same-sex partners may allocate this maximum between them in any way they agree, but the amount allocated to a same-sex partner may not be more than the amount of expenses he or she paid or incurred. The same rules generally apply in the case of a special needs adoption. The total credit for such an adoption is limited to $13,360, but the amount that each same-sex partner may claim is not limited by the amount of expenses paid or incurred.

Q. If a taxpayer adopts the child of his or her same-sex partner as a second parent or co-parent, may the taxpayer (“adopting parent”) claim the adoption credit for the qualifying adoption expenses he or she pays or incurs to adopt the child?

A. Yes. The adopting parent may claim an adoption credit to the extent provided under the law. The law does not allow taxpayers to claim an adoption credit for expenses incurred in adopting the child of the taxpayer’s spouse. However, this limitation does not apply to adoptions by same-sex partners because same-sex partners, even if married for state law purposes, are not treated as spouses under federal law.

Q. Do provisions of the federal tax law such as section 66 (treatment of community income) and section 469(i)(5) (passive loss rules for rental real estate activities) that apply to married taxpayers apply to same-sex partners?

A. No. Like other provisions of the federal tax law that apply only to spouses or married taxpayers, section 66 and section 469(i)(5) do not apply to same-sex partners because federal law does not treat same-sex partners as married for federal tax purposes.

Q. Is a same-sex partner the stepparent of his or her partner’s child?

A. If a same-sex partner is the stepparent of his or her partner’s child under the laws of the state in which the partners reside, then the same-sex partner is the stepparent of the child for federal income tax purposes.
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Adolescents of the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Male role models, gender role traits, and psychological adjustment

By Henny Bos, Naomi Goldberg, Loes Van Gelderen, Nanette Gartrell June 2012

The absence of male role models did not adversely affect the psychological adjustment of 17-year-old teens raised in lesbian-headed households, based on teens who participated in the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS). The study is part of a growing body of research that evinces the positive psychological well-being of children reared in planned lesbian families. Approximately half of the teens had male role models. The NLLFS teens with and without male role models did not differ from each other in psychological well-being, and also did not differ on stereotypical feminine (e.g., understanding) and masculine (e.g., competitive) traits. No differences were found in the well-being of those with and without male role models, or between girls and boys. There was no empirical evidence suggesting that boys require a same-sex parent, or male role model, to develop a healthy psychological well-being.

To read the complete article, click here.

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How and Why I Am Outspoken

By Ella Robinson – From The Family Equality Council Website – June 19, 2012

I have had a very public and unusual opportunity to speak up in support of my gay Dads: we all went on the Today show together. It was after Dad was elected the 9thEpiscopal Bishop of New Hampshire and I accompanied him, and his then partner (now husband) Mark to chat with Matt Lauer. I was there to dispel the misconceptions that he “abandoned his wife and kids to shack up with a gay lover” as certain newspaper headlines had proclaimed throughout his Bishop Election process. Truth was, my sister and I couldn’t have gotten rid of him if we tried! He has been such a devoted and committed father to us from the day we were born, through the divorce, childhood into adolescents and now as adults. By becoming the first openly gay Bishop, our little family was thrown into the spotlight in a major way, and I couldn’t have been more proud.

That is the ‘Bishop’ side of the story though. I like sharing the Dad side – the side of the story that focuses on the overwhelming love I felt growing up with Dad and Mark, way before any Bishop talk occurred. Their relationship, which started when I was 7 years old, was such an important example of what a loving, committed relationship should look like that I never thought to question it. I never knew to be embarrassed if someone looked at our family differently, or to worry if my friend coming to my Dad’s with me for the weekend would be uncomfortable. I just knew we’d have fun, watch The Golden Girls and play some board games (competitively). I credit Dad and Mark for giving me the tools to know how to talk about having gay parents when I was out in the world, and doing their part to make it easier for me whenever they could. I look back now in awe that at a very young age, I had such confidence in the love and strength of my family to not let anyone tell me differently.

To read the entire article, click here.

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APA Blasts Allegedly Biased Report on Gay Parents

BY Neal Broverman

June 14 2012 Advocate.com

A recent study called into question the ability of gay parents to raise well-rounded children, but the report has been widely blasted as biased, manipulative, and agenda-based. Now the American Psychological Association has stepped in to reiterate its belief that gay parents are just as good as straight parents.

“On the basis of a remarkably consistent body of research on lesbian and gay parents and their children, the American Psychological Association and other health, professional, and scientific organizations have concluded that there is no scientific evidence that parenting effectiveness is related to parental sexual orientation,” the APA announced on its website earlier this week. “That is, lesbian and gay parents are as likely as heterosexual parents to provide supportive and healthy environments for their children. This body of research has shown that the adjustment, development, and psychological well-being of children are unrelated to parental sexual orientation and that the children of lesbian and gay parents are as likely as those of heterosexual parents to flourish.”

The APA was responding to the “New Family Structures Study,” which called into question the effectiveness of gay parenting. But according to several equality groups, the study is majorly flawed.

According to a joint press release from the Human Rights Campaign, Freedom to Marry, Family Equality Council, and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the paper was “written by rightwing author Mark Regnerus (of the Department of Sociology and Population Center at the University of Texas at Austin) and funded in large part by the antigay Witherspoon Institute.” It “makes a number of claims about negative outcomes for children raised by gay and lesbian parents. However, for the most part, the paper doesn’t even look at same-sex couples raising a child together in a longterm committed relationship.”

Click here to read the entire article.

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Protecting Kids and Families in North Carolina

By James Esseks, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project June 13, 2012

We’ve just filed a new federal case in North Carolina to ensure that kids being raised by lesbian or gay parents can have legally protected relationships with both of the parents who are raising them. North Carolina bans second parent adoption – which is the name for that kind of protection – and the stories of two of our plaintiff families illustrate just how harmful the ban is.

Crystal Hendrix and Leigh Smith are raising two children together, 2-year-old Quinn and Joe, their baby. Crystal carried each of them and of course is recognized as their mother. But Leigh, the stay-at-home mom, can’t become a legal parent because of the ban on second parent adoption. Crystal’s parents have never accepted the women’s relationship, so both Crystal and Leigh have a real concern about what would happen if Crystal were to die or become legally incapacitated, with Leigh remaining a legal stranger to the kids.

Click here to read the entire article.

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

How Should We Talk to Boys About Sexual Abuse?

June 12, 2012, 3:21 pm

New York Times By KJ DELL’ANTONIA

Have you talked with your sons and daughters about the Jerry Sandusky case, and if you have, what did you say? Opening arguments in the trial against Mr. Sandusky, along with Amos Kamil’s New York Times Magazine story this weekend about sexual abuse at the Horace Mann School in New York City, have me revisiting what I’ve said to my children — in particular, my oldest son.

“When I was at Horace Mann,” Mr. Kamil wrote, giving a little back story on the 6th Floor blog, “all of these stories were swirling around us. Some of it was rumor, some of it was conjecture, some of it was latent homophobia.” Thirty years and more after the fact, the young men at the center of some of those stories shared them with Mr. Kamil (although he writes that young women, too, suffered at the hands of the teachers and administration at Horace Mann, those aren’t the stories he tells).

It’s the “latent homophobia” Mr. Kamil describes that leaves me wondering if saying the same things to my son as I do to my daughter about sexual abuse is enough. I can talk about inappropriate touching, I can talk about it being fine to leave anyone and anywhere that makes them uncomfortable. I can talk about how if they come to me, at any time, I will believe them, and I will protect them.

To read the entire article, click here.

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