Study Finds Wider View of ‘Family’

September 15, 2010
New York Times
By SAM ROBERTS

A majority of Americans now say their definition of family includes same-sex couples with children, as well as married gay and lesbian couples.

At the same time, most Americans do not consider unmarried cohabiting couples, either heterosexual or same-sex, to be a family — unless they have children.

The findings — part of a survey conducted this year as well as in 2003 and 2006 by Brian Powell, a sociology professor at Indiana University, Bloomington — are reported in a new book, “Counted Out: Same-Sex Relations and Americans’ Definitions of Family,” to be published on Wednesday by the Russell Sage Foundation. Since the surveys began, the proportion of people who reported having a gay friend or relative rose 10 percentage points, said Professor Powell, the book’s lead author.

“This is not because more people are gay now than in 2003,” he said. “This indicates a more open social environment in which individuals now feel more comfortable discussing and acknowledging sexuality. Ironically with all the antigay initiatives, all of a sudden people were saying the word ‘gay’ out loud. Just the discussion about it made people more comfortable.”

The book concludes that framing the equality of same-sex couples in terms of “the best interests of the child” might prove to be a more successful political argument than others.

“Neither the numbers from our data nor actual votes on initiatives are anywhere near the sufficient magnitude to support the idea that the public is ready to embrace same sex-couples with open arms,” the authors say. But, likening the resistance to laws and mores against interracial marriage, “we envisage a day in the near future when same-sex families also will gain acceptance by a large plurality of the public.”

The latest telephone survey of 830 people conducted this year found that Americans were almost equally divided on same-sex marriage. “I don’t think people are ready to embrace it, but people are ready to accept it,” Professor Powell said of same-sex marriage.

The survey also found a growing acceptance that genetics, rather than parenting, peers or God’s will, was responsible for sexual orientation.

Since 2003, the survey found a decline of 11 percentage points in the number of people who generally define family as a husband and wife with or without children.

Prof. Stephanie Coontz of Evergreen State College in Washington, director of research and public education at the Council on Contemporary Families, a research and advocacy group, said that “Americans seem to be open to seeing same-sex couples with children as families, even while they hesitate to recognize their unions as marriage.”

David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, a marriage research and advocacy group, said he was not surprised by the findings. “I like the standard definition of family: two or more persons related by blood, marriage or adoption,” Mr. Blankenhorn said. “Keeps it simple and coherent.”

But, he added: “We live in groups, and we need each other. So it’s always a good thing, isn’t it, when any of us truly loves and is loved by another.”

in Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Living to Be a Parent

September 10, 2010
New York Times Magazine
By LISA BELKIN

Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? You learned about it in your intro psych course: a neat and tidy pyramid, with fulfillment of “physiological needs” at its base, then things like “safety,” “love,” “belonging” and “esteem” stacked on top, all capped by “self-actualization.”

A group of academic psychologists have redesigned the nearly 70-year-old triangle. Most notably they have knocked “self-actualization” off the pinnacle and replaced it with “parenting.” Right below, they have added “mate retention” and “mate acquisition.”

This very academic change — which was an attempt on the part of its proponents to look at human motivation based on evolution — has sparked some very visceral responses. It has brought protest from people who don’t want children (and who see the redesign as a criticism of their choice) or can’t have children (who see it as an intimation that they are not psychologically complete) or who oppose gay marriage (who see in this an attempt to legitimize same-sex parenting as a psychological right). Most of all, it raises the question of whether the tendency in recent decades to all but sanctify parenting has gone just a bit too far.

All science reinforces or refutes what came before, and when Abraham Maslow published his paper “A Theory of Human Motivation” in 1943, it was a rebuttal of the prevailing theory that everything humans do stems from physical needs. A baby learns to love by bonding with its food source, the older behaviorist thinking went. Maslow’s newer argument was that humans are not motivated simply by hunger and thirst but by higher goals. “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself,” he said.

Over the decades, though, Maslow’s triangle came to be seen as “aspirational” — a description of what fulfilled individuals “should” do — rather than as an explanation of how human motivation actually works. Viewed through an evolutionary lens, some aspects of Maslow’s hierarchy make no sense, says Douglas T. Kenrick, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University, who argues for a new pyramid. If the only purpose of art, music and literature is self-fulfillment, how does that abet the survival of the species? After all, he argues, “the time you spend playing the guitar or creating poetry or contemplating the meaning of life could be otherwise spent finding food.” Kenrick isn’t saying the pursuit of art and such has no evolutionary purpose; he just sees it as subordinate to the main act. “Look at it this way,” he says. “If you are a good poet or a good musician, there is a reproductive payoff: women are attracted to men with these abilities. What a man is saying when he is playing his guitar up there is ‘look at my good genes.’ ”

Which is why, in the paper published earlier this summer in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, Kenrick and his co-authors redefined “self-actualization” as an indirect means to attracting a mate and, ultimately, parenting children. They chose the word “parenting,” rather than “procreation,” quite deliberately, he says, because our genes do not live on unless our children reach puberty healthy enough to have children of their own. And if those children are attractive as potential mates — the result of good schools, years of tennis lessons and the ability to play the guitar or write poetry — so much the better.

Kenrick and his colleagues are careful to say that, unlike Maslow, their pyramid is not aspirational, and that by placing parenting at the top they are not promoting it as the “right” or “laudable” path. They are simply explaining, with illustrations, why we, as a species, act as we do. In fact, Kenrick — who is the father of two sons, one 6 and the other 33 — says he believes the earth would be better off if fewer of us had children.

Point taken. But I find it hard to look at the new pyramid, with parenting at its apex, and not see a value judgement. That’s because in the decades since Maslow proposed his hierarchy, in the decades, even, since Kenrick became a father, “parent” became a loaded verb. Once, “parent” was something you were, not something you did. We have elevated it into a profession, a competition, a calling. Women, freer to choose, find themselves unexpectedly torn by the choice. Men, once free not to be involved, are now expected to plunge in. (Kenrick himself says he is “a lot” more involved in raising his younger son than he was with his older one, though that’s easier now that he has tenure.) Society, with virtual, actual and imagined predators, demands more vigilance from parents.

A result of a certain kind of overparenting, we are learning, is children who are better prepared for college but less prepared for life. They are more dependent, expecting trophies just for trying and texting their parents to ask for advice about what to eat for breakfast. Childhood, some experts say, now continues well into the 20s.

All scientific inquiry relies on assumptions that go unseen because they are so tangled up with their times. Maslow’s conclusions seem ethnocentric now, but the idea that some cultures might not value individualism as much as Americans do was not so obvious then. Similarly, Maslow never mentioned parenting as one possible subset of “self-actualization” perhaps because he couldn’t fathom the idea of children as “life’s work,” at least not for the audience of men to whom he seemed to be speaking.

So while this new construct may not set out to glorify parenting, it nonetheless reflects a moment when too many have lost sight of the goal of all parents — to make ourselves unnecessary. Just as Maslow’s views look quaint through a modern lens, we may look back on this version too as an artifact of a muddled time. Our current tendency toward “too much for too long” arguably influenced researchers to crown their revision with parenting. Yet that same tendency is delaying our children from reaching independent adulthood, which is, on any pyramid, the entire point.

Lisa Belkin is a contributing writer and the author of the Motherlode blog.

in Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Kids with Same-Sex Parents are All Right: A Conversation with Lisa Cholodenko

by Vera von Kreutzbruck  – September 3, 2010

Last winter film director Lisa Cholodenko came to Berlin to present The Kids Are All Right at the International Film Festival. Dressed in black with short dark hair and thick-framed glasses Cholodenko is an outgoing and witty person, who occasionally swears. She has a winning sense of humor, which is reflected in the new movie. Her films portray the clash between conservative and creative milieus, places she knows first-hand. Though The Kids Are All Right has not done well outside of the large cities and art house theaters, the topic is “timely” and significant.

On July 15, 2010 a civil rights milestone was set – Argentina became the first country in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage. Not so long ago, in fact until 1983, homosexuals were persecuted. Homosexuals in Argentina now have the same rights as heterosexuals, including the right to adoption, inheritance, pension, and social security. This is a sign of evolution in a nation in which a Macho-driven culture unfortunately still prevails.

Before same-sex marriage was legalized in Argentina, one of the most fiercely debated topics in the Senate was whether to allow gay couples to adopt. Opponents fear that children raised by same-sex couples will not develop properly. But a recent study reveals that young children with same-sex parents are as well-adjusted as their counterparts with heterosexual parents.

Research conducted by the University of Virginia investigated child development and parenting in 27 lesbian couples, 29 gay male couples, and 50 heterosexual couples with young adopted children. Parents, teachers, and external caregivers evaluated the preschoolers’ behavior and gender development.

The results revealed that family type was not significantly associated with parent reports of child adjustment, including children’s behavior problems and gender role development. They also demonstrated that “family type was not significantly associated with parents’ reports of parenting stress, parent discipline techniques, or couple relationship adjustment.” The study concluded that “parental sexual orientation did not emerge as an important predictor of any outcomes.”

Four years ago film director Lisa Cholodenko gave birth to her child with the help of a sperm donor. During the process she decided to make a movie about it. The Kids Are All Right was one of the most talked about movies at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The dialogue is smart and amusing – often playing on society’s prejudice against homosexual couples. The cast’s performances are all fantastic. Julianne Moore and Annette Bening play the lesbian parents, Mark Ruffalo is the sperm donor, and Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson are the teen children.

In a room with dark wood-paneled walls of a fancy Berlin hotel I sat with Lisa Cholodenko to talk about family upbringing, gay marriage, and the intention of her film:

Do you think that your new movie The Kids Are All Right shows a family situation in a way that nobody has seen before in cinema?

I do. It feels like a relief because when I was writing I thought this is too good, this is too timely. I was so amazed that nobody took that subject on before. The press coverage about gay marriage and kids finding their sperm donors in the States is becoming so popular.

The movie is about family. Why did you choose the title The Kids Are All Right for it?

I think it’s my ironic comment about how people are always afraid that kids of gay parents are going to get fucked up. In this case the kids are more stable than their moms.

Did you choose to make the script more comedic to broaden the appeal to a mainstream audience?

I just felt that the subject really lent itself to that. There is something so inheritably ridiculous about all of it. I totally respect and identify with it. It’s very much my own experience because my partner and I have a kid with a sperm donor. When you peel away the layers of what happens in a long term marriage: people going outside of the marriage to keep their marriage exciting, or what they don’t do. I can’t play this straight. It would be ridiculous. Everybody is struggling, but it’s kind of ridiculous too.

The two moms are very different.

Annette Bening is more type A. She wears the pants in the family and is less overt with her feelings. Juliane Moore is more the nurturing, “get in touch with your feelings” kind of mom. It was a fun thing to play with and that it actually was plausible that these people with such psychological differences would be attracted to each other.

It’s not the first movie where you have free-spirited characters clash with more structured people. This dynamic seems to be a recurring theme. What attracts you so much to this exchange between characters?

I think that it’s something that is universal. Maybe it’s expressed in a very specific way in my films because they are in very specific places and milieus. The tension between going the right path, the conventional path, and moving outside the box, doing the wrong thing, I think that that is a universal theme. So far I’m still interested in it. It might be the last one.

What was your own upbringing like? Was it strict?

It was a little bit of both, which is why I can switch between these two worlds. It was conventional in the sense that my parents have been married 50 years and they still live in the house that I grew up in. There was always dinner at seven o’clock when my dad got home. But I grew up in Los Angeles in a liberal environment. Things were a little bit looser – it was the seventies.

There was a rigid structure at home?

There was a rigid sense of family life and appropriateness as a family, about what you did: the whole thing with “Did you write the thank you card, did you call blah blah blah?” Those sorts of things. In certain families there is this idea of what is appropriate and I had a mother that was quite like that. It’s oppressive, you always had to be doing the appropriate thing. On the other hand, both of my parents worked and we were kind of on our own during the day and it wasn’t like we were supervised and had to have our homework checked or anything like that. We were smoking pot and hanging out and nobody was really noticing.

What would you like people to walk away with after seeing this movie?

I feel like it’s really a film about family. It’s a portrait of a family. I want people to walk away with a really good feeling about family. That it was a fair, sort of even-handed representation of the shit people go through and the storms people can weather and kind of stick it out for good reasons with genuine feeling intact because I really think that families are great if you can make them work. I’m all for the family, especially with kids in the picture.

Do you think that the film can help gay marriage become more accepted in America?

Yes, all the stuff that is going on brings me down. I’m proud that this film isn’t overtly political. It’s just a portrait, it’s just a story and I think it’s coming in a good time. I feel ashamed of what is going on in our culture.

Do you think it’s getting better?

I think it’s changing. It’s incredibly slow, much slower than it should be and much slower than Western Europe. I’m pleased that it translated culturally here in Germany, that cross-cultures are responding to it, that’s really hopeful to me.

Do you think that Catherine Bigelow winning an Oscar is a milestone in the film industry?

Yes, it’s a step forward but I don’t see things changing for women in a quick or epic way. But I think incrementally we see more opportunities and women taking out projects that are bigger, more lucrative, more ambitious.
About the Author
Vera von Kreutzbruck was born in Argentina. She started her career in journalism at the English language newspaper, Buenos Aires Herald. After a fellowship in Germany, she decided to settle in Berlin. She currently works as a freelance journalist contributing to media in Europe and Latin America. Her articles focus on international news and culture in Germany and the European Union.

in Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Hollywood now opening arms to gay characters, families

By Maria Puente, USA TODAY – August 23, 2010
When it comes to gay marriage and gay families, politicians are still bickering and courts are still deliberating. But in entertainment, it’s all over but the shouting.

Hollywood, which once routinely depicted gay people as miserable, dysfunctional or tragic, now produces movies and TV shows — such as this summer’s film The Kids Are All Right, ABC’s Modern Family and Fox’s Glee — in which gay relationships and gay families are portrayed as just like other families — normal, unremarkable, no big deal.

“The general trajectory has them transitioning from minstrel acts and punch lines to relatable everyday characters,” says David Hauslaib, founder of Queerty, a media-watching blog “by and for the queer community.” He adds, “It’s a new era where (being a gay family) is no longer a significant part of the story.”

Why is this happening now? Is Hollywood following the culture, or is the culture following Hollywood?

STRAIGHT OR GAY: Casting goes both ways

 

Jarrett Barrios, president of GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, says it’s no accident that positive depictions of gay families are increasing.

“These stories are interesting, they’re edgy, they make for good entertainment,” he says. “Hollywood is a business, so they’re telling good stories because it’s good business. Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people have stories that are capturing the imaginations of Americans because fundamentally, we’re as American as everyone else.”

The Kids Are All Right is a comedy-drama starring Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a couple with two teens, who refer to them collectively as “Moms.” The plot (sperm-donor dad turns up, leading to laughter and tears) isn’t driven by the lesbian relationship; it would work the same if the couple were straight.

“It’s the perfect post-gay film,” says Howard Bragman, a Hollywood publicist known as the “coming-out guru” for helping gay celebs go public. “Gays are just part of the landscape, which is where we want to be.”

The opposition speaks out

It’s a landscape that many Americans still don’t accept.

Such movies and TV shows “desensitize the public to the raft of problems associated with homosexual behavior,” says Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for the American Family Association, one of the proponents of Proposition 8, California’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage now tied up in court. “Hollywood is conveying a deceptive message about that behavior and doing a disservice to (viewers) who are coming to conclusions based on what they see on the silver screen. It’s a distortion of reality.”

Says Glenn Stanton, director of family studies for Focus on the Family: “When actual gay and lesbian weddings are shown on TV (as in news coverage), we win. When they’re shown through the lens and creativity and artifice of Hollywood, we don’t. Hollywood is succeeding, but they’re doing so by not representing reality.”

Defenders of films and TV shows that depict the ordinary, even mundane, details of gay family life say that’s exactly what it is — reality.

Kids, which is already stirring Oscar talk for Bening, is unclear about whether the women are legally married, but they behave as if they were married, their kids and other characters treat them as if they were married, and at one point one of the women actually says, “I’m married.”

“It shows how regular our families are; it goes a long way toward gay and lesbian families introducing ourselves to straight families as not that much different,” says Dustin Lance Black, the writer/director who won an Oscar for the screenplay of Milk, about murdered San Francisco politician Harvey Milk (played by straight actor Sean Penn, who won an Oscar). Milk was the first openly gay man elected to public office in California.

“And unlike in Milk and so many (past) gay movies, the lead characters don’t die,” Black adds.

For a small art-house film, Kids has demonstrated success at the box office: a respectable $18 million since it opened this summer. Director Lisa Cholodenko, herself a lesbian mom, says she didn’t set out to tell a political story or even a lesbian story; she set out to tell a family story.

“We wanted to make a film about a family and a marriage in midlife, at a low point, the things you don’t see in most movies about what families look like behind closed doors,” she told USA TODAY’s Donna Freydkin.

Gay-friendly roles on TV

Entertainment friendly to gays and gay relationships is proliferating, especially on TV.

•On Glee, a hit about the triumphs and travails of a high school glee club, the story line featured a subplot in which teen-age Kurt comes out as gay to his father, who is not as homophobic as expected.

•On Modern Family, the lineup includes a gay couple, played by Eric Stonestreet (straight) and Jesse Tyler Ferguson (gay), who have adopted a baby and are eagerly, comically trying to fit into the new-parent life. The show has been critically acclaimed and popular, and co-creator Steve Levitan says there has been virtually no push-back from opponents of gay marriage.

“We set out to do a family show with different kinds of families because it seemed to us that families are changing and (a gay family) was a logical type to explore,” Levitan says. “We didn’t think it was the most commercial choice. We thought it might marginalize our audience a bit, but much to our surprise, it hasn’t.”

•On ABC’s Ugly Betty, the final season ended this spring with an understated yet affecting episode in which Betty’s fashion-obsessed teen nephew, Justin, comes out to his loving Latino family, marking the first time a network audience watched a gay child grow up and embrace his identity. Other shows, such as Gossip Girl, United States of Tara, 90210 and Weeds, also have featured story lines about teens in various stages of self-recognition.

•A number of network dramas feature gay characters whose problems/issues have little to do with being gay. On Fox’s House, the bisexual Dr. Remy “Thirteen” Hadley has more angst about her Huntington’s disease than her sexuality. And on ABC’s Brothers & Sisters, the gay brother and his spouse are way less whiny and screwed up than some of his siblings.

•CBS, which received a failing grade recently in GLAAD’s annual report rating TV networks on use of gay characters and programming, just announced that three gay characters will be added to three shows next season: the highly regarded The Good Wife, the returning half-hour Rules of Engagement and new comedy $#*! My Dad Says.

CBS also will launch a The View-style show this fall featuring actress Sara Gilbert (Roseanne) as executive producer and panelist. Gilbert had never discussed her private life, but at the news conference announcing the show, she acknowledged she is a lesbian mother with a partner.

•At least two network shows this fall will feature story lines about California’s Proposition 8, according to AfterElton.com, which tracks depictions of gays in the media: NBC‘s new Law & Order: Los Angeles will explore the various religious groups that funded the campaign for Prop. 8, while cable channel FX‘s dark comedy It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphiawill showcase story lines about one character’s freak-out reaction to the marriage of a transgendered character, and two other male characters who form a domestic partnership to get health care benefits.

“I really do think every year it gets a little bit better,” says Candis Cayne, a transgendered actress who has appeared in ABC’s now-canceled Dirty Sexy Moneyand Lifetime’s hit Drop Dead Diva in transgendered roles.

‘There will come a day …’

“Five years ago, ABC would never have put on a transgendered woman in a loving relationship with someone — it just wouldn’t have happened,” says Cayne, who hopes to be cast in dramatic roles playing straight women. “There will come a day that will happen — I know it.”

So is the entertainment industry now ahead of the culture or just following it?

“The overarching movement is in the culture,” says Stephanie Coontz, history professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and an expert on contemporary families. “Hollywood never had the courage or strength or ability to get positive portrayals of gays until things began to change in the culture at large.

“When it did, Hollywood jumped on it. But they couldn’t do it unless marketers and investors realized there’s an audience for it.”

Eric Stonestreet, left, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson play a couple getting used to being adoptive parents.

in Parenting / Uncategorized  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Long Awaited Birth Announcement

We are proud to announce the birth of their daughter, Abigail Elizabeth.

Born: June 18, 2010 at 5:31am. Weight: 6 pounds, 4 ounces. Height: 19.5 inches long

It has been a long anticipated adoption process with challenges, pitfalls and heartbreak, but with enough perseverance , determination and love we can finally start our forever family.  Our journey has not ended, but finally begun and are excited to welcome our new little girl into our heart and home forever.

While found and both of us being on the board of www.LGBTfamilies.info and beginning the adoption process we gave advice we had heard from many professionals as not to celebrate too early, protect yourself and to use the ‘3x’ factor for estimating time and money. Although we gave the same advise, we failed miserably on executing the same precautions for ourselves.  We posted pictures on Facebook and they were faced with a failed adoption and returning the child to the birthmother.  We estimated the costs to be half, not taking into account a failed adoption may double your original estimate. As far as protecting ourselves, I still have no clue how to do that while holding your potential child in your arms, even before they begin to smile back at you.

We heard many opinions of what is ‘meant to be’, we were given other options (as if we had not explored every option imaginable) and people brought to light other “successful” means of expanding families they have heard of.  As if there was an infallible option.  Facing these friendly challenges showed us that we need more education about non-traditional family expansion and how valuable these lessons will be for our children and our children’s children.

We are, although, very lucky to also have support from our church and were mentioned in an article written by Michele Somerville, a partitioner and writer for the Huffington Post, titled Gay Catholic Ministry and Straight Pride.  There is a place for everyone, every parent, every child, every LGBT person and their families and sometimes you just have to search until you find what you have been looking for.

All in all, I could not and would not change it for the world. I often told my husband had I not had the heartache and loss I had from prior relationships, I would not have been ready for you.  Although I think we were well prepared for parenthood, this has given us such depth to be able to parent that much better and provide enhanced appreciation for the newest member of our family. Welcome to your new world Abigail Elizabeth.  We will strive every day to make it better for you and teach you to do the same.

ALL our love,

Papa & Daddy

in Adoption / Parenting / Personal Stories  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Antibullying Bill Passes N.Y. State Senate

By Julie Bolcer – Advocate.com, 6.23.10

The Dignity for All Students Act, which would protect LGBT students from bullying and harassment in schools, passed the New York state senate Tuesday evening after years of effort. Governor David Paterson is expected to sign the bill into law, which would mark the first time gender identity and expression are included in state law.

Senators approved DASA by a bipartisan vote of 58-3 late Tuesday night after some 90 minutes of speeches. All three no votes came from Republicans.

The assembly passed the bill in May for the ninth time since 2002.

According to the Empire State Pride Agenda, the statewide LGBT advocacy group, “The Dignity bill creates tools for school administrators, teachers, parents and students to address bullying and bias-related behavior of all kinds that interfere with student safety and learning. Key provisions include: developing rules to prevent and respond to discriminatory harassment and hate violence; establishing teacher, staff and administrative training guidelines; incorporating discrimination awareness into civility and character education curricula; and required reporting of incidents of bias harassment to the State Education Department.”

DASA marks the first time gender identity and expression would be included in New York state law. The approval arrives two weeks after a state senate committee rejected the Gender Expression Non-discrimination Act,  which would add gender identity and expression to state human rights laws.

State senator Thomas Duane, the chief DASA sponsor in the senate, will hold a press conference Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. to discuss the victory. Tune into the New York state senate channel or watch the video below.

New York state assemblymember Daniel O’Donnell, who sponsored DASA in the assembly, said in a news release Tuesday, “The bill’s enactment will be a major victory for the LGBT community. When fully implemented, DASA will afford all public school students an environment free of harassment and discrimination. The law will cover but is not limited to, the broadest categories of students who are the victims of bullying based on actual or perceived race, color, weight, national origin, ethnic group, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender, or sex.”

New York City Council speaker Christine Quinn, who advocated strongly for DASA, released a statement late Tuesday that recognized the long drive to pass the bill.

“I want to thank the lead sponsors of this bill – Senator Thomas Duane and Assembly Member Daniel O’Donnell – for their tireless leadership on this important legislation,” she said. “I applaud Senate Majority Leader John Sampson and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver for their leadership on this issue in Albany. I also thank the advocates who worked for so many years to reach this point, as well as the thousands of New Yorkers who called, wrote and met with their Senators about this bill, year after year.”

in Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Parenting should be a nonissue in gay marriage debate

Supporters of Proposition 8 have made child-rearing a focus of the trial. But no other group is prohibited from marrying because of parental abilities, or lack thereof.

June 16, 2010 – LATimes.com

It wasn’t surprising that the federal trial on Proposition 8 in January confirmed that the same-sex marriage ban is destructive to family life and discriminatory toward a group that has historically been subject to abuse. What did surprise us: Some of the strongest arguments in favor of same-sex marriage were made by those opposing it.

Closing arguments in the case will be heard Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, more than four months after testimony ended. Even so, it’s easy to recall some of the startling moments of the trial. One witness who had been hired to testify that gay men and lesbians wield significant political power — and therefore were not a group that had especially suffered from discrimination — ended up conceding that at least some people voted for Proposition 8 because of prejudice against homosexuals. The witness, Kenneth Miller, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, also had made statements in the past that minorities were vulnerable to harm from ballot initiatives, and that courts should protect them from such harm — an argument that seemed to weaken the case for his side.

Then there was David Blankenhorn, the founder and president of the Institute for American Values, who testified that preserving traditional marriage should take priority over the rights of gays and lesbians — but then offered no proof that same-sex marriage would in any way harm the institution of marriage, and admitted that marriage would be beneficial to families headed by same-sex couples.

The objective of the lawyers arguing for Proposition 8 before Judge Vaughn R. Walker is to show that voters had rational reasons for approving it rather than being motivated by bigotry. And a key reason, one of the lawyers said, is that children fare best when raised by a married couple of opposite genders.

The premise itself is dubious. A longitudinal study published online this month in the journal Pediatrics found that the adolescent children of lesbian couples fare very well. In fact, they “rated significantly higher in social, school/academic and total competence and significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking, aggressive and externalizing problems” than others their age.

The premise also is irrelevant. Just as we wouldn’t propose taking marriage away from heterosexual couples even though their children might not do as well as those of lesbians, there is nothing reasonable about denying marriage to same-sex couples based on judgments about child-rearing or anything else concerning the perceived quality of their marriages. Despite what Proposition 8 supporters have tried to argue during the trial, marriage is not solely about procreation and raising children; for many couples, that’s not even a factor. And same-sex couples who want children will have them whether or not they have a marriage license.

We’re sorry that Walker has even asked for a discussion of this issue at Wednesday’s session. Specifically, he wants to delve into the question of whether voters were acting rationally if they believed the marriage ban was in the best interests of children, even if their belief wasn’t backed up by facts. Society doesn’t force single parents to marry, even though there’s a general presumption that having two parents would be better for the children. It doesn’t force teenagers, still children themselves, to give up their children to older couples, or forbid people with kooky parenting theories to wed. Only gay and lesbian couples are singled out for this judgment of whether they’re good enough to marry and have children.

Walker refused to allow a video broadcast of Wednesday’s closing arguments after defenders of Proposition 8 opposed allowing the session to be aired. It’s a puzzling decision, especially considering that the judge favored allowing cameras during the trial. But the U.S. Supreme Court rebuked him for that decision, agreeing with Proposition 8 supporters that witnesses who oppose same-sex marriage could face harassment or worse if their testimony were televised. Yet the pro-Proposition 8 witnesses already had made themselves public figures.

Prohibiting cameras in the courtroom makes even less sense for the closing arguments, when there are no witnesses to feel intimidated. In this instance, the theory is that lawyers might play to the cameras instead of to the judge. If they were foolish enough to do so, after investing this much time and passion on both sides, they could only lose ground by alienating the judge. The millions of people who have been watching with intense interest as the story of same-sex marriage unfolds have a legitimate stake in seeing and hearing the arguments that will determine whether gays and lesbians in California are granted the basic right to form families with the same legal status as all other families.

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

Study Finds Children of Lesbian Parents Are Socially and Academically Superior

Vanity Fair

by Juli Weiner

June 7, 2010

A 20-year study, the results of which were released today, has found that children raised by lesbian parents “have fewer social problems, and less aggressive and rule breaking behaviors than other teens,” according to an article on U.S. News and World Report’s health blog. And “even in homes where the lesbian parents had split up, the researchers found that those teens still fared better than teens from more traditional families.” (Maybe this is a 20-year viral-marketing campaign orchestrated by the crafty, polemicist producers of The Kids Are All Right.) Anyway, the author of the study points out that this should put a fork in claims made by anti-gay-marriage activists that same-sex parents make for unsteady upbringings.

Said anti-gay-marriage activists don’t quite see it that way. “This study was clearly designed to come out with one outcome—to attempt to sway people that children are not detrimentally affected in a homosexual household,” said the president of Concerned Women for America, she herself apparently appropriately concerned. Her objection, according to Yahoo, is that the study was financially supported by gay-rights groups, which she thinks may have swayed the results. The author of the study has in turn denied that this funding affected her findings.

in Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Inside the gay baby boom

Salon.com, Monday May 17, 2010

The author of a new memoir talks about the odd dynamics of lesbian motherhood and how it’s changing our culture .

America’s got a bad case of gayby fever. In the past few years, we’ve been subjected to countless trend pieces about the growth of gay parenting and its remaking of the American family. Censuses have shown a dramatic increase in the number of gays and lesbians living with children, and, most recently, high-profile gay celebrities, like Ricky Martin and Clay Aiken, have adopted children of their own. Of course, gay parents have been around as long as there have been gay people, but their recent prominence (see: the upcoming “The Kids Are All Right,” the “gayby” neologism, “Modern Family”) suggests that a new cultural moment is afoot.

Amie Klempnauer Miller’s delightful new memoir, “She Looks Just Like You,” offers an engrossing, funny and eminently readable new take on the subject of gay parenthood. The book tells the story of how Miller and her long-term partner, Jane, came to the decision to become pregnant (having the “lesbian love of process” they went on a retreat to discuss the subject), their failed attempts at insemination (after Amie proved unable to get pregnant, Jane carried the child) and the stress of their daughter’s early years. Along the way Miller plumbs the meaning of her strange new identity — non-biological lesbian mother — and the ways it challenges our conventional ideas about motherhood, fatherhood and the American family.

Salon spoke to Miller over the phone about “The Kids Are All Right,” reasons behind the gayby boom and why we’re so afraid of gay dads.

In the book you say that “unconventional parents” are becoming more common in America. What do you mean by that?

I was referring to the growing number of lesbian and gay parents. Non-biological lesbian moms, like gay fathers who use surrogates, we’re in this weird zone between motherhood and fatherhood.

How is that?

I had tried to get pregnant, but, in the end, it was my partner who carried the baby, and I found myself going, “Wow, so what’s my role here?” I was planning on taking maternity leave, but I wasn’t pregnant. I was there for the conception, and I was there for the ultrasound but I wasn’t going to get to do these things, like childbirth, that are so paradigmatic of what it means to be a mother.

The parents I ended up relating to the most were stay-at-home dads because they are bending the genre categories themselves. It’s interesting that some of the criticisms that have been made toward stay-at-home dads are not that different from the criticisms of gay and lesbian families. Is it natural? Will the kids turn out OK?

It seems like gay parenthood has suddenly become very visible in popular culture. What’s behind this gayby boom?

There has been a rise of the celebrity gayby, but it’s really about more gay men and lesbians having children and becoming more visible. My sense is that it’s because the first generation of children of gay and lesbian parents have come into their mid-20s. It’s no longer that bizarre to know somebody who has gay and lesbian parents, or a gay and lesbian person with a child. And the numbers are going up. According to the census there are about 270,000 kids with gay and lesbian parents, but every census the numbers jump up. And as the numbers increase, so does the visibility.

More broadly, medical technology has become much more available and much more available to single women. Back in the day you had to have your husband approve it. In the past 25-30 years, there’s also been a lot research done on the outcomes for children of gay and lesbian parents. Most of that has focused on kids of lesbians, and the research has shown that the kids are turning out fine.

Straight parents don’t have the problem with terminology that gay parents have. What did you end up calling yourselves?

Jane is “mommy.” I’m “mama.” I like “mama” in particular because I never used it for my own mother, and it’s recognized by the outside world as a real word for mother. Hannah discovered when she was about 4 or 5 that other people are still very confused by this, so to people in the outside world she’ll often refer to us as Amy and Jane. I’d been warned by other people, “What are you going to call yourselves?” “It’s so confusing, you’d better not have a kid!” It’s funny how when we have names for something, it becomes more real.

For a long time, gay culture was defined by the fact that, since so many of us were rejected by our biological parents, we created these non-traditional families for ourselves. The gay parenting boom seems like a move back from this idea of a gay community toward a very traditional idea of family.

In some ways it probably is. I think fundamentally the big change that’s been happening is that gay and lesbian people are seeing the full range of choices open to them. Not that long ago, we would have assumed we couldn’t get married or assumed we couldn’t have a lasting relationship or we couldn’t have children. People are now not making those assumptions at all.

A lot of people have this expectation that gay parents would pressure their kid to be gay. To be completely honest, if I had a daughter at this point, part of me would wish that she’d end up being gay.

I don’t think we’ve in any way tried to form Hannah into a budding heterosexual or a budding homosexual. But I think our goal has really been to help her understand at this point — she’s just 7 — that there are lot of different kinds of families. There are people who have two moms, and families that have two dads, and families with one mom and one dad. She knows kids who have been adopted by a single mom. There’s a whole gamut, and she can see these things as a part of daily life.

As the non-biological mother you had to go through a complicated legal process to adopt Hannah. What was that like?

The legal process is all based on where you live. There are a minority of states that will say statewide that same-sex parents can do a second-parent adoption. Even in Minnesota we don’t have it statewide — it’s county by county, and then it’s judge by judge. Before Hannah was born we met with a lawyer and had affidavits drawn up, saying we our parents support my adopting Hannah. We had to prove that there’s not a father out there that’s going to make a claim on her. We asked the court to waive the requirement that Jane would terminate her parental rights.

But some courts will require a home study [where your home is evaluated by a social worker]. In places where you can’t have a second-parent adoption, the parent and child are very vulnerable. You can’t carry unrelated children on your insurance; inheritance-wise, they don’t have claims on your estate; you don’t have the legal authority to make medical decisions, and if there’s a breakup or death, you don’t have custody rights. There are 16 states now that say, statewide, you can have a second parent adoption. There are a few states like Minnesota where some counties approve it and some do not, and then there are lots of states where you can’t do it at all.

In the last few years there’s been an awful lot of attention paid to gay marriage, but not much talk about gay parenting rights. Does that bother you?

In some respects they’re tied together. The ideal situation would be for the laws to protect gay and lesbian couples with children in the same way they protect heterosexual couples and heterosexual couples with children. If you rely only on marriage extending the rights, there are always going to be some people who have families but for whatever set of reasons don’t fit into the marriage paradigm. The best situation would be for the laws to be set up so the parents and the kids would be protected — and be able to provide medical care for each other — whether they’re married or not.

This summer’s “The Kids Are All Right,” which stars Julianne Moore and Annette Bening as a lesbian couple, has a good chance of being the first big movie about gay parenting to be a mainstream hit. Do you think the idea of lesbian parents is still more culturally acceptable than the idea of two gay men raising a child?

I think it’s important to say that 20 percent of gay male couples now have at least one kid. That’s huge and a pretty recent phenomenon, but I think there is more openness toward lesbian parents. I think it mirrors the cultural feelings about mothers and fathers. There’s a kind of old-fashioned sense that women are just more inclined toward being able to have and raise children than are men. I’ve certainly encountered hetero women saying it would be so great to have two mothers because they think we keep the house so much cleaner.

There’s also a history of gay men being more sexualized. There’s this idea that if two gay men have a child there must be something sordid going on, which is obviously not the case.

Has your daughter, Hannah, encountered any teasing at school?

She’s gotten some stuff from another kid in kindergarten who was like, “That’s so weird,” but she’s not the only one with a nontraditional family. She goes to school with kids who live with guardians or were adopted by a single mom. At this point, the fact that there are so many different kinds of families helps us be just one of them.

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Archdiocese Of Boston Welcomes Children Of Gay Parents In Schools

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald
Religion News Service

(RNS) The Archdiocese of Boston says that children of same-sex couples are welcome in its schools, after a local school rejected a student with lesbian parents.

Superintendent of Catholic Schools Mary Grassa O’Neill said the archdiocese will develop a policy to eliminate any misunderstandings about its openness to children of gay parents.

“We believe that every parent who wishes to send their child to a Catholic school should have the opportunity to pursue that dream,” O’Neill said in a statement released Thursday (May 13).

Press reports earlier this week quoted an anonymous woman who said administrators at St. Paul Elementary School in Hingham, Mass., had denied admission to her 8-year-old son because his parents’ relationship was “in discord with the teachings of the Catholic church.”

O’Neill said she spoke Thursday with the Rev. James Rafferty and principal Cynthia Duggan, who oversee St. Paul Elementary School, about their decision. She then contacted one of the child’s parents, who according to O’Neill indicated that she would consider sending her son to a different Catholic school in the upcoming school year.

Whether to enroll schoolchildren of same-sex parents is a matter of some debate among the nation’s Catholic dioceses. The Sacred Heart of Jesus School in Boulder, Colo. refused to re-enroll a child after they learned the child has same-sex parents last winter. The Archdiocese of Denver supported their decision.
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“Parents living in open discord with Catholic teaching in areas of faith and morals unfortunately choose by their actions to disqualify their children from enrollment,” said a March statement from the Archdiocese of Denver.

Gay rights advocates applauded the Boston archdiocese’s policy announcement.

“We agree 100 percent with that decision” to welcome children of same-sex couples in Catholic schools, said Pam Garramone, executive director of Greater Boston PFLAG, a gay rights education and advocacy group.

in In the News / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments