Barack Obama gives a nod to same-sex couples in his Family Day proclamation

September 28, 2009, Los Angeles Times
In an official proclamation this afternoon, President Obama declared today Family Day 2009.

What is significant is the way he defined “family.”

The president gave a nod to the gay community when he praised all families, “whether children are raised by two parents, a single parent, grandparents, a same-sex couple, or a guardian.” (Emphasis ours.)

His shout-out to same-sex couples is sure to draw heat from some social conservatives. Interestingly, it has been met with some hostility from gay rights activists too.

One commenter on gay blogger Pam Spaulding’s website called today’s statement “honeyed words, easy to say.”

“Mr. President,” the commenter asked, “when are you going to actually DO something for same-sex couples and their children? Other than make ceremonial proclamations, that is.”

Obama’s proclamation has fueled an ongoing debate among gay rights activists about whether the president is living up to his promise that he would be a “fierce advocate” for LGBT equality.

Many gay rights activists greeted…

…Obama’s inauguration with optimism. But some complain that he has made no significant efforts to further their cause.

They point out that since taking office, Obama has not moved to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. And his administration has defended the Defense of Marriage Act, which says that states don’t have to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states and that the federal government does not recognize same-sex marriage.

The president’s support for gay rights, they argue, has not been reflected in policy decisions, but has been purely rhetorical. In April, Obama made a point of inviting gay families to the Easter Egg Roll at the White House. And in June, the president declared it Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month.

Other bloggers have voiced support for the president’s agenda. They note that in June, Obama ordered federal agencies to “extend the benefits they have respectively identified to qualified same-sex domestic partners of Federal employees” where possible under current law.

The text of the Family Day proclamation appears below.

— Kate Linthicum

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BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
Our family provides one of the strongest influences on our
lives. American families from every walk of life have taught us
time and again that children raised in loving, caring homes have
the ability to reject negative behaviors and reach their highest
potential. Whether children are raised by two parents, a single
parent, grandparents, a same-sex couple, or a guardian, families
encourage us to do our best and enable us to accomplish great
things. Today, our children are confronting issues of drug and
alcohol use with astonishing regularity. On Family Day, we
honor the dedication of parents, commend the achievements of
their children, and celebrate the contributions our Nation’s
families have made to combat substance abuse among young people.
The 21st century presents families with unprecedented
challenges. Millions of women and men are struggling to balance
the demands of their jobs with the needs of their families.
At the same time, our youngest generation faces countless
distractions in their social environment. They are coming
of age in a world where electronic devices have replaced the
playground, televisions have preempted conversation, and
pressure to use drug and alcohol is far too prevalent. Parents
bear significant stress and burdens to protect their children
from harmful influences.
It is our responsibility to talk with adolescents about the
risks of abusing alcohol, tobacco, or prescription and illicit
drugs, and other harmful behaviors. These substances can
destroy the mind, body, and spirit of a child, jeopardizing
their health and limiting their potential. Active parents,
voicing their disapproval of drug use, have proven themselves
to be the most effective preventative method for keeping our
children drug-free. A strong and engaged family can make all
the difference in helping young people make healthy decisions.

By coming together as a family and discussing the events
of the day, parents can foster open communication, share joys
and concerns, and help guide their children toward healthy
decisionmaking. A strong nation is made up of strong families,
and on this Family Day, we rededicate ourselves to ensuring that
every American family has the chance to build a better,
healthier future for themselves and their children.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the
United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in
me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do
hereby proclaim September 28, 2009, as Family Day. I call upon
the people of the United States to join together in observing
this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities to honor and
strengthen our Nation’s families.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
twenty-eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord
two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States
of America the two hundred and thirty-fourth.
BARACK OBAMA

in Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Oregon Appellate Court Adopts Progressive Interpretation of Donor Insemination Statute in Custody Dispute Between Lesbian Former Partners

Arthur Leonard Lesbian/Gay LawNotes 9.09

A lesbian who had separated from her partner
challenged the constitutionality of two Oregon
statutes: one that creates a presumption that a
husband is the father of a child born to his wife,
so long as the spouses are not separated; and
another that gives a husband parental rights
over a child born as a result of his wife’s artificial
insemination, so long at the husband consented
to the insemination. An Oregon appellate
court deemed the former statute
constitutional and inapplicable to lesbian couples,
but held the latter statute unconstitutional
unless it extends to give parental rights to a
same-sex domestic partner of an artificially inseminated
woman. Thus, the statute was upheld,
but judicially amended to apply under
circumstances such as those presented here.
Shineovich and Kemp, 230 Or. App. 670, 2009
WL 2032113 (Or. App. July 15, 2009).
The appeal by the woman cut off from her
partner’s children was argued by Mark Johnson
of Johnson and Lechman-Su of Portland, Oregon,
with amicus briefs from the American Civil
Liberties Union, ACLU Foundation of Oregon,
Inc., and Basic Rights Oregon. Murphy
McGrew of Lake Oswego, Oregon, represented
the birth mother.
Sondra Lee Shineovich and Sarah Elizabeth
Kemp had a 10–year relationship during which
Kemp was artificially inseminated and bore two
children. Shineovich alleges that she consented
to the insemination. Around the time of
the birth of their first child, the couple was married
in Multnomah County, but the marriage
was later declared void when the courts determined
that the county did not have authority to
issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
After the couple’s separation, Shineovich
sued for a declaration of parental rights. The
lower court dismissed her suit for failure to state
a claim, and only cursorily discussed the constitutionality
of the statutes. Shineovich appealed,
contending that laws that extend parental
rights to husbands must be read to extend
such rights to same-sex partners of women who
give birth during their partnership.
One statute challenged by Shineovich, Or.
Rev. Stat. Section 109.070(1), created a presumption
that a husband was the parent of his
wife’s child, but only if he was not impotent or
sterile at the time of the conception. (The provision
regarding impotency or sterility was removed
from the statute in 2007, after the events
precipitating this action.) The court held that
because this statute relates only to biological
paternity, and specifically applies only to people
capable of fertilizing a woman’s egg, it could
not, even if it were phrased in gender-neutral
terminology, grant parental rights to a woman; it
is not possible for a woman to fertilize the egg of
another woman. Thus, the lesbian partner of a
birth mother is in the same position, under this
statute, as an impotent or sterile man. Since the
presumption equally excludes any man or
woman incapable of fertilizing an egg, the statute
is not unconstitutionally discriminatory, according
to the court.
The second statute challenged by Shineovich
is quite different. Under Or. Rev. Stat.
Section 109.243, the relationship, rights and
obligation between a child born as a result of artificial
insemination and the mother’s husband
is viewed as the same as if the child had been
naturally and legitimately conceived by the
mother and the mother’s husband, so long as
the husband consented to the performance of
artificial insemination. Thus, the statute gives a
status to “husbands” that is not available to
other similarly situated persons. Under Oregon
law, therefore, a woman partnered with another
woman cannot be a “husband,” or any other
type of spouse, thus, the statute privileges men
and discriminates against women. Further, homosexuals
are a suspect class under Oregon jurisprudence,
and laws that disfavor a suspect
class are only justifiable if there is a genuine
difference between that class and other persons
granted some sort of privilege or immunity.
Thus, the court found the latter statute to contravene
the equal protection clause of Oregon’s
constitution.
The appeals court also considered the section
of the Oregon Constitution that prohibits
legal recognition of same-sex marriage . Unlike
such provisions in other states’ constitutions,
Oregon’s constitution does not prevent
marital-type benefits from being extended to
same-sex partners. (The court compared the
provisions in Georgia, Ohio, and Utah.) Definitions
of marriage from both legal and non-legal
sources do not indicate that “marriage,” in and
of itself, encompasses any particular benefits.
Thus, it is not unconstitutional under the marriage
amendment to extend statutory privileges
to same-sex partners on the basis of unequal
treatment of women or homosexuals. Such an
extension does not impinge on prerogatives integral
to the concept of “marriage.”
Under the rules of statutory interpretation
recognized in Oregon, if a statute is defective
because of under-inclusion, there exist two remedial
alternatives: a court may either (1) declare
the statute a nullity and order that its
benefits not extend to the class that the legislature
intended to benefit, or (2) extend the coverage
of the statute to include those who are aggrieved
by exclusion. In order to decide which
path to choose, the court sought to determine
which course would further the legislative objective.
The objective of the statute was, according
to the court, to protect children conceived
by artificial insemination from being
denied the right to support by the mother’s husband
or to inherit from the husband. Invalidating
the statute would undermine that purpose,
and might nullify the legal parent-child relationship
of any such child and the mother’s
husband.
“On the other hand,” said the court, “extending
the statute’s coverage to include the children
of mothers in same-sex relationships advances
the legislative objective by providing
the same protection for a greater number of
children.” Thus, “the appropriate remedy is to
extend the statute so that it applies when the
same-sex partner of the biological mother consented
to the artificial insemination.”
Under the first statute, the appellate court ordered
the trial court to enter a judgment declaring
that Shineovich is not the legal parent of
Kemp’s children, because she is not biologically
capable of being the genetic parent of
Kemp’s children.
Under the second statute, however, the trial
court, on remand, must treat Shineovich the
same as it would treat a mother’s husband.
Note, however, that the latter statute includes
an element of consent. Thus,Kemp alleged that
Shineovich could not prove that she “con-
Lesbian/Gay Law Notes September 2009 157
sented” to the artificial insemination because
no writing evidenced such consent. The court
held that writing is not essential to show consent,
and the lack of a writing does not foreclose
a claim. On the other hand, on remand, Shineovich
must prove that she in fact consented to
the insemination. Whether she consented is a
factual issue appropriate for determination by
the trier of fact. (Note: The appeals court also rejected
an attempt to dismiss this suit on jurisdictional
grounds, namely, that the petitioner must
name the state as a party whenever a state statute’s
constitutionality is challenged in an action
for declaratory relief.) Alan J. Jacob

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

Parenting and Food: Eat Your Peas. Or Don’t. Whatever

August 30, 2009., New York Times
By FRANK BRUNI

The boy sneaks food. I’ve seen him. His appetite is formidable, and he knowingly eats more than he should or must, to the steady concern and occasional consternation of his parents.

Sometimes they keep count: “How many pretzels?” Sometimes they vainly suggest an apple instead. Often they look away, not wanting to aggravate an eating-related anxiety that they can already sense in him on the cusp of adolescence.

The girl treats food warily. Edging into adulthood, she worries about what too many French fries — what any French fries — could do to her, and monitors her waistline even though her own parents have never exhorted her to. Does she monitor it too closely and joylessly? Can parents prevent that? They wonder. So do I.

Neither of these children, with whom I interact occasionally, comes close to being a statistic or case study. He isn’t obese; she isn’t anorexic.

But they represent a larger group of young people between those widely publicized (and much more complicated) extremes. And they speak to a subtler parental challenge: how to coach children away from unhealthy eating without sowing panic; how to make them conscious of their intake without making them too self-conscious about its consequences.

Over recent years, worry about what and how much children eat has intensified, in part because of the regular references to childhood obesity as an epidemic. And right now, as children head back to school, where they graze beyond the gaze of parents, potentially dangerous eating habits are getting fresh attention.

School cafeterias and vending areas have become ground zero in the battle against overweight and poorly nourished children; from coast to coast this fall, students will encounter fewer sugary soft drinks, fewer fried foods, class birthday parties without cupcakes and class bake sales with calorie-reduced brownies.

That may help. But it’s just one piece of a puzzle that health experts and concerned parents are still sorting out. Conflicting information about the fiercest culprits in child weight gain abounds. Beyond genes, which obviously play a fundamental role, is soda pop a major factor? What about too little sleep?

There are hundreds of studies and thousands of opinions, and Tom Baranowski, a professor of pediatric nutrition at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, says they’re inconclusive. He has reviewed research suggesting that there are viral prompts for childhood obesity and research suggesting that children fond of fruits and vegetables aren’t any less heavy than those mad for Mountain Dew.

Dr. Baranowski’s verdict? “A lot more work needs to be done.”

Diet, it seems, is a dirty word. A Stanford University study found that a father’s projected attention to and remarks about a daughter’s weight may increase her risk of eating disorders. A University of Minnesota study found that children whose parents encouraged diets were significantly more likely to remain overweight than those whose parents didn’t.

Cynthia M. Bulik, the director of the University of North Carolina Eating Disorders Program, explained that “diet” implies deprivation, “and deprivation goes into that whole mindset that, ‘I deserve something when this is over, and this is short term.’ And it can’t be. It’s got to roll right into a lifestyle.”

Those words ring true for me. As a fat boy who ate expansively and compulsively, I went on the first of many strict diets at age 8 — and thereby commenced decades of untenable regimens and compensatory pig-outs, of binging and purging.

But my outsize hunger seemed flat-out chromosomal, and my insecurity about it predated those early weight-loss schemes. Should my parents have forbidden them? What’s the best course for today’s parent, in a society where fast-food come-ons drown out Alice Waters, and models no thicker than swizzle sticks still rule fashion magazines?

“We get nutrition advice, but that’s not the same as eating advice,” said Rebecca Saidenberg, a Manhattan mother of a 16-year-old girl, referring to child-rearing tips. She said that as her daughter went through puberty, she worked particularly hard to encourage healthy habits — balanced meals, restrained portions — in the hopes of minimizing the chances of a weight problem that might follow her daughter through life.

At the same time, Ms. Saidenberg wanted to push back against “a trend of treating food like medicine.”

“I don’t like that,” she said. “There are a lot of psychological pleasures that come from sitting at a table and enjoying a meal.” She doesn’t want her daughter deprived of those.

So she didn’t despair when the teenager recently returned from a summer trip to Italy during which, it was clear, the joys of gelato were fully explored. But she did get herself and her daughter a membership at a local gym, where they go together.

In my conversations with Ms. Saidenberg and other parents, I was struck by just how much thought they had given to coaxing their children toward sensible eating and away from extreme indulgence or self-denial. They clearly saw that as a parental responsibility akin to giving a child a first-rate education.

But their prescriptions and beliefs diverged, illustrating the elusiveness of a ready consensus about what’s most effective.

Joan Yamini, a mother of one in Austin, Tex., said it was important not to have unhealthy foods around the house, but Andrew Segal, a father of three in Glen Ridge, N.J., said that children who can’t find cookies, ice cream and similar snacks at home can always find them elsewhere — and probably will.

Every parent fretted over the right language to use with children.

Janis Azarela, a mother of three in Sudbury, Mass., recalled the upset her husband caused a few weeks ago when he questioned their 16-year-old daughter’s decision to eat ice cream immediately following a three-mile run.

“He asked because she’d just worked so hard to run and be healthy — why not make a healthier choice?” Ms. Azarela recalled. “And she said, ‘Dad, are you calling me fat?’ ” The teenager abandoned the ice cream, stomped out of the kitchen and didn’t speak to him for a good long while.

Ms. Azarela said that her daughter is, in fact, slim, and gravitates naturally toward less fattening foods. Her 7-year-old son, on the other hand, has the fiercest sweet tooth in the brood. A budding problem? Time will tell, and meanwhile she has vowed to “keep reintroducing foods, because palates change so quickly.”

That’s consistent with advice from diet and nutrition experts, who agree, for the most part, on a few prudent strategies.

They say parents can and should encourage sensible eating and vigorous physical activity by engaging in both themselves; children are likely to imitate those behaviors.

Whether parents allow junk food or not, they should make sure healthier alternatives are even more available — and should promote them. They should also make time for family dinners, the nutritional content of which they can monitor more carefully than they can a quick meal in an economical restaurant.

And by actually involving children in the shopping for, and cooking of, meals, some parents have successfully given them a consciousness about food — and a way to think about it — that guards against an abuse or disregard of it. When it comes to overeaters who clearly thrill to that gluttony, it’s vital for parents to try to find some replacement activity — a hobby, say — that affords similar emotional gratification.

“Food lights some people up more than it lights other people up,” Dr. Bulik said. “We’re not born the same.”

I see that in the boy and girl. If they were merely emulating their parents, he’d be the measured eater and she the exultant one. That the opposite is true underscores the mysteries of appetite — and the tricky task parents face in trying to regulate it.

Frank Bruni is the author of a new memoir, “Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater.”

in Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

PTSD and Preemies – For Parents on NICU, Trauma May Last

August 25, 2009 – New York Times

 

By LAURIE TARKAN

 

Kim Roscoe’s son, Jaxon, was born three months early, weighing two and a half pounds. But for nine days he did exceedingly well in the neonatal intensive care unit, and Ms. Roscoe felt little different from the other new mothers.

Her nightmare started on Day 10.

“I had left him late the night before, in my arms, tiny but perfect,” said Ms. Roscoe, now 30, of Monterey, Calif. But when she returned to the NICU the next day, Jaxon was in respiratory and kidney failure, and his body had swollen beyond recognition.

“He was hooked up to ventilators, his skin was turning black, the alarms kept dinging over and over,” Ms. Roscoe recalled.

Jaxon is 16 months old now, and home with his family. But he was in the NICU for 186 days, and his days and weeks were punctuated by near-death episodes.

During the six-month ordeal, Ms. Roscoe had constant nightmares. She slept with her shoes on, expecting a call from the hospital at any moment. She became angry at the world, and so jumpy she thought a supermarket scanner was one of Jaxon’s monitors going off. Her husband, Scott, immersed himself in projects, took care of their daughter, Logan, now 6, and held things together emotionally.

About three months after her son’s birth, Ms. Roscoe asked to see a psychiatrist. She was given a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, or P.T.S.D. — a mental illness more often associated with surviving war, car accidents and assaults, but now being recognized in parents of premature infants in prolonged intensive care.

A new study from Stanford University School of Medicine, published in the journal Psychosomatics, followed 18 such parents, both men and women. After four months, three had diagnoses of P.T.S.D. and seven were considered at high risk for the disorder.

In another study, researchers from Duke University interviewed parents six months after their baby’s due date and scored them on three post-traumatic stress symptoms: avoidance, hyperarousal, and flashbacks or nightmares. Of the 30 parents, 29 had two or three of the symptoms, and 16 had all three.

“The NICU was very much like a war zone, with the alarms, the noises, and death and sickness,” Ms. Roscoe said. “You don’t know who’s going to die and who will go home healthy.”

Experts say parents of NICU infants experience multiple traumas, beginning with the early delivery, which is often unexpected.

“The second trauma is seeing their own infant having traumatic medical procedures and life-threatening events, and also witnessing other infants going through similar experiences,” said the author of the Stanford study, Dr. Richard J. Shaw, an associate professor of child psychiatry at Stanford and the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.

“And third, they often are given serial bad news,” he continued. “The bad news keeps coming. It’s different from a car accident or an assault or rape, where you get a single trauma and it’s over and you have to deal with it. With a preemie, every time you see your baby the experience comes up again.”

Abby Schrader and her partner, Sharon Eble, delivered twins at 23 weeks. Both girls, born at 1 pound 5 ounces each, were having continuous near-death events. “We were constantly being asked whether we wanted to remove support,” said Ms. Schrader, of Philadelphia.

Eighteen days after the girls’ birth, the couple did withdraw support from one baby, whose health had badly deteriorated. The surviving twin, Hallie, now 3, was in the NICU for 121 days and continued to have medical problems once home. “From the moment of their birth, and still to this day, we feel like we’re triaging everything and just hanging on,” Ms. Schrader said.

The Stanford study found that although none of the fathers experienced acute stress symptoms while their child was in the NICU, they actually had higher rates of post-traumatic stress than the mothers when they were followed up later. “At four months, 33 percent of fathers and 9 percent of mothers had P.T.S.D.,” Dr. Shaw said.

It may be that cultural roles compel the men to keep a brave front during the trauma to support their partners, Dr. Shaw said, adding, “But three months later, when the mothers have recovered, that’s when the fathers are allowed to fall apart.”

The post-traumatic stress may take the form of nightmares or flashbacks. Sufferers may feel panic every time a beeper goes off in the intensive care unit, or they may avoid the trauma by not visiting the unit or by emotionally distancing themselves from their child. Over time, they may develop depression, anxiety, insomnia, numbness, anger and aggression. These symptoms, of course, can impair their abilities as parents.

Several studies have shown that the risk of P.T.S.D. was not related to how tiny or sick the child was or how long the stay in the NICU. “It had to do with the parents’ coping style,” Dr. Shaw said. “There were some who were more resilient and others more vulnerable.”

In one study of rural African-Americans, those who were at greater risk of post-traumatic stress reported more problems in their daily lives, like financial trouble or lack of a partner, said the study’s author, Diane Holditch-Davis, a professor at Duke University School of Nursing. One of the biggest problems for these parents is coping after they finally leave the NICU.

“It may be several months later when they’re ready to process what they experienced, but at that point, family and friends don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Dr. Holditch-Davis said.

Ms. Schrader, in Philadelphia, felt a similar isolation in dealing with her surviving daughter’s health problems. “We got the sense that people just didn’t want to hear about it anymore,” she said.

Experts say parents who are at risk for post-traumatic stress should be identified ahead of time and given help to prepare them for dealing with the initial trauma. But many hospitals are focused on saving the infants, not the emotional crises of the parents.

“Some hospitals have really great programs, and in some, it’s really very sad,” said Liza Cooper, director of the March of Dimes NICU Family Support program, which offers psychological support to parents in 74 hospitals nationwide. Even though most units have social workers, she went on, “there’s really no one there to support the parents, provide group activities or education.”

Vicki Forman did not realize that she was suffering from post-traumatic stress until about four years after the premature birth of her twins, when she began researching her book “This Lovely Life” (Mariner Books, 2009), about her experience in the NICU and raising her surviving son with multiple disabilities.

“What the parent is going through is more or less dismissed because what you’re contending with are the health issues of your child,” she said. “Occasionally a social worker will say, ‘Are you taking care of yourself?’ but never, ‘This is a traumatic experience you endured and you need to pay attention to these symptoms.’ ”

Some hospitals pair parents of premature babies in intensive care with those who have been through the experience. One study found that 16 weeks after childbirth, mothers who were matched with NICU veterans had less anxiety and depression, and felt they had more social support, than mothers in a control group.

In addition to the family support program, the March of Dimes runs an online support community called shareyourstory.org. “The most critical piece is to help prepare someone so they know what to expect and don’t fall into a world of frightening unknowns,” said Ms. Cooper, from the March of Dimes.

Untreated P.T.S.D. can have lingering effects on the child. During the NICU stay, for instance, traumatized parents may find it hard to hold or even look at their child, and that can profoundly affect the baby’s attachment to the mother. Later, mothers might experience “vulnerable child syndrome,” in which they become so anxious that a minor medical event sends them into a panic. Normal, everyday risks can seem life-threatening; children can learn to gain unhealthy attention from physical complaints.

In her book, Ms. Forman wrote: “From the moment my twins were born, I saw potential for tragedy wherever I turned. It would be years before I stopped thinking that way.”

In Monterey, Kim Roscoe is coping with a similar anxiety now, 16 months after Jaxon’s birth. “I still freak out if he has a runny nose,” she said. “And when he gets a fever, I’m back in the NICU.”

in In the News / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Welcome to the Gayby Boom, baby.

July 28, 2009, Huffington Post – By Johann Hari – Throughout the Nineties, there has been a surge of gay and lesbian couples deciding to settle down in the suburbs and have kids. En masse, gay people are slowly trading the Shadow Lounge for a baby-vomit-and-puke-filled lounge of their own.

This quiet trend has finally poked its way to public attention with the sight of Bruno – the crazed Austrian fashionista played by Sasha Baron Cohen – sitting with a little African baby on his lap, bragging that ever since Madonna went to Malawi, it’s the essential fashion accessory, dah-ling.

Of course, there have always been gay parents, but in the past, they were trapped in the loveless marriages of the closet. Now they are out in the open, and increasing. Many of my gay friends are going the same way as my straight friends as we all sag into our thirties. Gay celebs are just part of this trend: John Barrowman is planning to adopt, for one. I was recently sounded out by a lesbian couple I know and love as a possible gay daddy, and I was broodily tempted.

This is all part of a slow shift that is transforming gay culture. During the twentieth century, our battle was to find a place of our own where we could be safely different, and recover some shreds of self-esteem. After millennia of being told our difference was a sickness, we needed a moment to celebrate that difference.

But after that was achieved, our goal changed. We started to realise – once we had the space – that we are actually very similar to our straight siblings. We have the same desire for stability and home-building as everyone else. Our tune changed from “I Am What I Am” to “I Am What You Are.” We wanted enough basic equality to have everything straight people have. It started with demands for marriage – and the logical next step is children. We want the chance to show we are as dull and suburban as everybody else.

It used to be that whenever you came out, your mother would give you a hug, say she loved you, and offer a sad aside to her friends that she would never have grandchildren. That’s not the case any more. When I was a kid realising I was gay in the 1980s, it never occurred to me that I would grow up to create a family of my own; it was a bleak and alienating thought. But in the 1990s, when I saw so many gay people doing just that, I felt like I had the option to be part of the great human slipstream of procreation.

The children of gay couples are desperately and passionately wanted. They are, by definition, planned, with parents who have to go to a great deal of hassle and heart-searching before they are created. Compare that the number of kids idly conceived in a five-minute shag at a bus stop.

But obviously, every parent wants the best for their child – and many gay parents were inhibited by the idea that their child would be somehow disadvantaged. Would my son be picked on? Would my daughter be confused by having gay parents? It would not be worth repairing our self-esteem at the expense of damaging our children’s.

Now the evidence is in. There have been over a hundred scientific studies of the grown-up children of gay parents – and they overwhelmingly find the same thing. Professor Ellen C. Perrin, MD of Tufts University School of Medicine explains: “The vast consensus of all the studies shows that children of same-sex parents do as well as children whose parents are heterosexual in every way.”

Some 90 percent of them grow up to be straight – just like in every family. They are no more or less like to be abused, depressed, or confused. And they love their parents, like we all do. “What is striking is that there are very consistent findings in these studies,” Perrin says.

Under the sheer concrete weight of this scientific evidence, anybody who continues to oppose gay parents is letting their prejudice cloud their judgment. When the Vatican calls gay parents “gravely immoral”, they condemn only themselves.

There is a new gay anthem in town (with apologies to the Shirelles): Gayby, It’s You.
Johann Hari writes for the Independent newspaper.

in Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

No Stork Involved, but Mom and Dad Had Help

July 12, 2009, New York times
By SARA RIMER

Melissa Brisman and her daughter, Simmie, age 6, were catching a matinee of “Marley and Me” in Tenafly, N.J.

It was supposed to be a movie about a dog named Marley. But up on the big screen, Marley’s owner, a glowing Jennifer Aniston, kept getting pregnant — serenely, effortlessly pregnant (after one miscarriage).

Jumping up on her seat, Simmie loudly asked her mother, “How come you’re the only mommy who can’t get pregnant?”

“Sit down,” whispered Mrs. Brisman, who is a lawyer specializing in surrogacy. “We’ll talk about this later.”

Every child has a birth story. The story of Simmie, who was born to a surrogate, is different from the stories of the three children in the movie. But her story, which is also the story of her 11-year-old twin brothers, Andrew and Benjamin, is less unusual than it used to be.

While there is no widely agreed upon number for surrogate births, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine estimates 400 to 600 births a year from 2003 to 2007 in which a surrogate was implanted with a fertilized egg. Advocacy groups put the count much higher — including most recently to the actors Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick — and say the numbers will increase as more people, including gay men, turn to surrogacy to become parents.

So despite the substantial costs (at least $30,000), there is now a group of young children whose parents are wrestling with this modern twist on the eternal question: Where did I come from?

These parents have to take the often excruciating saga of all they went through to have a baby and turn it into a child-friendly, reassuring and true Your Birth Story.

So many parents are trying to figure out how to tell this new story that Judith Kottick, a licensed social worker in Montclair, N.J., provides counseling in just that area. “What kids want to know is that they’re in the family they were meant to be in — that they belong to their mom and dad,” she said.

She advises parents to start telling their children’s birth story early. “You want them to grow up with the information so it’s not a news flash,” Ms. Kottick said. She also recommends some of the new children’s books that are tailored to the story of birth through surrogacy, like “Hope & Will Have a Baby: The Gift of Surrogacy” by Irene Celcer.

Marla Culliton and her husband, Steven, of Swampscott, Mass., have 7-year-old twins, Jacob and Naomi. “When they were 4, I told them, ‘First you have to get married, then you have to have a nice house, then you can go to a doctor, and he can help you,’ ” said Mrs. Culliton, a dental hygienist. “At 5, they said, ‘How is the baby made?’ I said: ‘They come from a sperm and an egg. The doctor made you in a dish.’ ”

If anyone has been preparing for The Talk, it is these parents, who have often spent years trying to have children. “You know how you sit down at night, talking to them, telling them stories?” said Jan Zoretich, who has two children, Sarah Elizabeth, 5, and Rachel, 3, born through surrogacy. “From Day 1,” she said, referring to Sarah Elizabeth, “I said: ‘Mommy’s so happy. You’re such a blessing. We’re so grateful Jessica was a surrogate for us.’ ”

In Sarah Elizabeth’s birth story, Jessica, whom the family prefers to identify only by her first name and who lives in the same Maryland town, is a central character. “She comes to the door, and I’ll say, ‘Sarah, your surro’s here,’ ” said Mrs. Zoretich, a former chief financial officer for a group of nursing homes who now stays home with her children.

Mrs. Brisman, the lawyer, who also runs an agency that connects prospective parents with surrogates, began telling Simmie her birth story when she was about 3. (“The doctor took a piece of Daddy and took a piece of Mommy and put it inside someone else because my tummy was broken.”)

Mrs. Brisman, who contends that the estimates from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine on the numbers of surrogate births are far too low, said her clients alone had 300 babies through surrogacy last year, with gay men becoming parents in 20 percent of the cases.

Jeffrey T. Parsons, a Manhattan psychologist and his partner, Chris Hietikko, have a 3-year-old son, Henry, who sees his surrogate, Jessica, at least once a year.

When their son starts asking questions at, say age 5, said Dr. Parsons, a psychology professor at Hunter College, “I would probably relate it to one of his friends. I’d say, ‘You’ve met your friend Michael’s dad and mom. You have two dads, right? Well, it takes a mom to make a baby because they grow them in their tummy. That’s Jessica.”

The television host Joan Lunden, 58, has become a celebrity spokeswoman for surrogacy since she and her second husband, Jeff, became parents of two sets of twins, now 4 and 6. Their surrogate, Deborah Bolig, has become a part of their large, extended family. This is how Ms. Lunden has described their surrogate to her twins: “She’s a woman in our lives we greatly respect, she helped us have Kate and Max and Kim and Jack.”

Although she considers her children too young for a talk about embryos and uteruses, Ms. Lunden already has a metaphor ready for when the time comes: cupcakes. “It’s almost like we can’t cook the cupcakes in our oven because the oven is broken,” she said. “We’re going to use the neighbor’s oven.”

Fay Johnson, whose two children, Lily and Chase, now 19 and 15, were born through traditional surrogacy — the surrogate was also the egg donor, with the sperm from Mrs. Johnson’s husband — said she started telling them their stories when they were babies. “I was like Seinfeld,” said Mrs. Johnson, who is a program coordinator for the Center for Surrogate Parenting in California. “I needed to practice my material.”

As the children got older and had more questions, Mrs. Johnson had more explaining to do about their surrogate. “Lily would say to me, ‘Why don’t I look like you?’ ” Mrs. Johnson said. “She was maybe 3 at the time. I would say, ‘Because you look just like Daddy, and you have Natalie’s gorgeous hair and skin.’ ” Lily knew all about her surrogate, Natalie, because her mother had been talking about Natalie since Lily was a baby.

“So when Lily was 9 years old, she said: ‘Mom, I have figured out that I’m not from your eggs. And I think Dad and Natalie make a pretty cute couple,’ ” recalled Mrs. Johnson, whose husband died several years ago.

“I said: ‘Lily, well, Natalie and Dad were never a couple. You were only created in the doctor’s office because I was going to be your mother. Would you like to see your birth certificate — because I’m going to be your mother forever.’ ”

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

NEA calls for LGBT rights

By Jennifer Vanasco, editor in chief, 365gay.com
07.08.2009 9:25am EDT

(Washington) The National Education Association adopted two resolutions calling for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights at its annual conference last week.

The resolutions say that the organization opposes the “discriminatory treatment of same-sex couples and its belief that such couples should have the same legal rights and benefits as similarly-situated heterosexual couples.” They also call for the “passage of a federal statute prohibiting federal discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity and expression.” The NEA also committed itself to supporting the enactment of LGBT equality at local, state and federal levels.

The NEA falls short of asking for gay marriage – instead, it says:

“NEA does not believe that a single term must be used to designate this legally recognized “equal treatment” relationship, and recommends that each state decide for itself whether “marriage,” “civil union,” “domestic partnership,” or some other term is most appropriate based upon the cultural, social, and religious values of its citizenry.”

The National Education Association is the nation’s largest professional employee organization with over 3.2 million members. Members work at every level of education — from pre-school to university graduate programs.

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

IVF Savings: Consider Shared Egg Donation

By Eleni Himaras

Would-be parents who want to work with an egg donor, but who don’t have the $30,000 or so in-vitro fertilization costs, have some hope. Many fertility centers give their recipient patients the option of splitting the cost of receiving an egg donation with another couple.

“It’s really great for the younger patients who haven’t had a chance to really acquire any finances,” says Dr. Bruce Rose of Infertility Solutions, P.C., a clinic in Allentown, Pa.”It gives them the chance to have a child not otherwise possible.”

Sharing Means Saving
This process can save patients up to 50% of the costs in this step in the in-vitro fertilization (IVF) process. In some cases what could typically cost $30,000 to $40,000 can come down in price to $15,000.

Other fertility treatment discounts are available, too. Dr. Carlos E. Soto-Albors, senior partner at the Northern California Fertility Medical Center in Roseville, Calif., is making IVF more affordable for patients by decreasing the cost each time they have the procedure, whether it is because they did not conceive the first time or because they want a second child.

“If they wait a year or two [to save additional monies for a second child] it will hurt their chance of getting pregnant,” he says.

Even With Fewer Eggs, Success Rates Are Similar
According to Soto-Albors, the most obvious drawback of sharing an egg donor is that each couple only gets half of the total oocytes.
Typically, when eggs are harvested, doctors will pick the healthiest two or three to turn into zygotes and implant into the mother. In a single-donor program, that can leave up to 10 eggs that can be frozen for use in the future if the procedure was unsuccessful or they want a second child.

But Soto-Albors says couples who share have a comparable conception rate as with those who do not share an egg donor.

“In 2008, we did 39 embryo transfers on the non-shared and 25 of those got pregnant,” he says. “That comes out to 64%.”

In the shared program, they implanted 11 women and seven got pregnant. That’s an identical 64% success rate.

At Soto-Albors’s practice, patients in the non-shared program pay $24,725, and those in the shared pay $16,775, but these numbers vary by clinic.

“When we started it years ago, I was expecting the success rate of the shared program to be smaller,” says Soto-Albors. But in the 10 years he’s been offering the program, the rates have only differed by, at most, 5%.

in IVF / Legal / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Kids met gay dad’s partner on Father’s Day

By The Associated Press
06.22.2009 10:12am EDT

(Atlanta) Eric Mongerson’s kids couldn’t meet his partner of two years, much less join the couple for ice cream. His friends couldn’t cheer on the children at concerts or Little League games.

The divorced dad spent thousands of dollars fighting an unusual ban imposed by a county judge in 2007 that kept the three minors from having any contact with his gay friends or partners. 

He felt unfairly scrutinized every moment he spent with the kids, though he never was looking to make a statement. He just wanted to spend a day with his kids and his partner, Jose Sanchez – together.

This Father’s Day, he finally did.

“It’s a fairy tale ending,” he told The Associated Press after the Georgia Supreme Court overturned the ban.

The ban stemmed from the bitter divorce between Mongerson and his ex-wife, Sandy, who were married for almost 20 years and had four children. Mongerson said the marriage ended when his wife discovered he was gay in November 2005, but he would not elaborate.

The dispute played out the next few years in court, as Sandy’s attorney claimed he had several affairs with other men and subjected the kids to an array of “wholly inappropriate conduct” during a trip to Arkansas.

The arguments helped sway Fayette County Superior Court Judge Christopher Edwards to award Sandy Kay Ehlers Mongerson custody of the children. The judge also issued a blanket order banning Eric Mongerson from “exposing the children to his homosexual partners and friends.” A fourth child is an adult over 18 and had no restrictions on contact with Mongerson or his gay friends.

Edwards said in his ruling that the decision was meant to reflect “the trauma inflicted upon the children” during the Arkansas trip.

Mongerson, though, said it only made him feel like he was being targeted for coming out of the closet. For almost two years, Mongerson said he feared losing more time with his kids and walked on egg shells during their weekly four-hour visits.

He didn’t hide the fact he was gay from the kids, but they couldn’t be around his partner, Sanchez. He was afraid to invite straight friends who might be accused of being gay. And he wouldn’t dare bring his children to his place in downtown Atlanta, even though his wife once brought a boyfriend to his daughter’s concert.

“I was always afraid of the ‘What if?’” Mongerson said. “I felt isolated, alone. She could go get friends, have them watch the kids, but I could never because I was gay.”

Sanchez, fearful of somehow violating the order, would run through all sorts of scenarios.

“What if you and I are on a plane, and your kids happen to be on the plane?” he would ask incredulously. “Do I jump out?”

Mongerson, a restaurant manager who routinely works 13-hour shifts into the night, said he scrounged together more than $10,000 to challenge the judge’s decree, partly by wracking up debt on his credit cards.

In court arguments in January, attorneys Hannibal Heredia and Kimberli Reagin contended the judge had no evidence that exposing the children to Mongerson’s gay friends would damage them.

Last Monday, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously agreed. Justice Robert Benham wrote in the scathing 10-page ruling that the trial court abused its discretion without evidence of harm to the children. He concluded it “flies in the face of our public policy that encourages divorced parents to participate in the raising of their children.”

The decision was quickly applauded by gay rights advocates who say the judge’s order was rooted in decades-old misconceptions about gays and lesbians. Jeff Graham of Georgia Equality called the top court’s decision a dose of “common sense and fair mindedness.”

Sandy Mongerson’s attorney, Lance McMillian, said the mother does not plan to appeal.

“My client is interested in putting it behind her,” he said. “Other than that, we don’t have anything to say about it.”

As news of the court’s ruling filtered down to Mongerson on Monday morning, he picked up the phone and called his partner. It didn’t take long to work out their schedule for Father’s Day, when they’d finally go out for that ice cream.

“I cry at commercials – he cries before commercials come on,” Sanchez said. “He’s very emotional. He said, ‘Happy Father’s Day. You get to meet my children.’”

in In the News / Parenting  by Anthony Brown 0 comments

Raising Kids in a Same-Sex Marriage

Washington Post Blogs – June 2009

Lisa Miller

First comes love, then comes marriage. Then come all the thorny issues that arise with raising kids in a religious tradition when that religious tradition doesn’t see you as married.

When another state legalizes gay marriage, as New Hampshire did recently, civil-rights activists cheer. But practicalities are another matter, and same-sex couples–especially those who want to raise their children with religion–may find that the laws intended to protect them may also create new domestic challenges previously unforeseen. That two men or two women would want to marry and raise children in a church that views their love as sinful would be, in the eyes of some, puzzling at best. (I’m focusing on the Roman Catholic tradition here, but any orthodox religion presents similar trials.) Many people feel that religion is essential to them, however, and that family life would be emptier without it. Gregory Macguire, author of the novel Wicked, has had all three of his children baptized in the Catholic Church. He recently watched proudly as his youngest child had her first holy communion. “As the daughter of two dads, she sat in the first pew in her beautiful, white, borrowed gown,” Macguire told me. “And then she sang, ‘I’ve got that joy, joy, joy, down in my heart’.”

Macguire lives in Concord, Mass., and is legally married now–but wasn’t when he and his partner started adoption proceedings for each of their three children (from Southeast Asia and Latin America) more than 14 years ago. In an ironic twist, gay-marriage laws now make foreign adoption more difficult for gay couples. Adoption agencies and lawyers say no foreign countries knowingly give babies to gay couples for adoption. Same-sex couples who want to adopt internationally have traditionally circumvented this prohibition with the following fudge: one half of the couple adopts as a single person. Once back home, the couple goes to court and establishes co-parenthood in states that will allow it. A legally married gay couple doesn’t have the option of a fudge: truthful responses to questions about marital status on adoption documents crush the couple’s chances of ever adopting abroad. That’s why Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders advises couples to wait to get married. “If international adoption is important … then they need to postpone forming a legal relationship,” says Bruce Bell, who runs GLAD’s help line.

And then there’s the question of adoption agencies with traditional religious affiliations. In Britain, Catholic-run adoption agencies are in an uproar for having to comply with a 2007 law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual preference. Because the Catholic Church stands so firmly against gay marriage–and reaffirmed this opposition in a 2003 document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith–any Catholic agency that helps same-sex couples adopt children is, in a sense, helping to foster a lifestyle that it believes is fundamentally immoral. (The 2003 document was explicit: allowing same-sex couples to adopt children “would actually mean doing violence to these children.”) Now, with the 20-month transition period over, the British agencies are having to choose between retaining their Catholic affiliation or their function as adoption agencies.

Lest one think this couldn’t happen here, it already has. In 2006, Catholic Charities of Boston agonized about whether it could submit to the state’s nondiscrimination policies. “What the Catholic Church has tried to say,” explains the Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government who, at the time, headed Catholic Charities, “is that gay men and women ought to have their civil rights protected. I think on the whole we’ve pretty much stood for that in terms of wages, jobs, access to living accommodations … Where you meet the neuralgic point is the definition of marriage.” Hehir says that he and Boston’s Archbishop Seán O’Malley understood that the church’s teaching left no wiggle room. They shut the adoption agency down.

But there are many ways of procuring children, and once procured, the Catholic Church–on a pastoral level, at least–has had only occasional problems baptizing and educating them in the tradition. “Church law always favors the salvation of the person and is very biased in favor of the person asking for the sacrament,” says John Baldovin, a sacramental theologian at Boston College. What canon law actually says is this: any baby can be baptized if the parents agree, and if the infant has a reasonable hope of being raised in a Catholic home. The experts disagree, obviously, about whether two mommies or two daddies are able to do this. Macguire firmly believes he is, and he can imagine severing his relationship with his church over the enforcement of any hard line. What he can’t imagine is being anything but Catholic.

With Jessica Ramirez

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