Family Pride’s Blog

I’m happy to report that 35 more people are now trained to tell their stories, stand up and be OUTSpoken!

This weekend, my fellow Program & Education Associate Ariana Flores and I traveled to Minneapolis, MN to conduct our 15th in-person OUTSpoken training in just 2 years! Our new friends in Minnesota, as you might expect, were extremely hospitable and a great crowd. Representatives from major LGBTQ family and social justice organizations, such as Rainbow Families, Out Front MN, and aMaze, were present. They came to learn new skills and how better to advocate for family equality. Also in the room was Robert Curoe, co-author of Are There Closets in Heaven: A Catholic Father and Lesbian Daughter Share Their Story, a great book about one family’s reckoning with difference and how it’s made them stronger.

Minnesota is a great state for our families, relatively speaking. Through various lower court decisions, second parent adoption has become legal. And even though a marriage amendment is floated every year, it doesn’t pass. The state was one of only two to receive an A from the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) in it’s 2004 State of the States Report.

What this means and what I told parents, family members and friends at the training, is that Minnesota is in a great place to set the tone and make even greater change. Just because there’s a statewide policy banning discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation and/or gender identity/expression doesn’t mean that people don’t experience this discrimination every day. Once these policies are in place, it’s up to people on the ground to make sure they’re enforced. State officials should be responsive to complaints, but they can’t be responsive unless complaints are made.

The most inspiring version of this story I’ve seen in a while is the Adoption.com case we blogged about and took action on a few months back. (Click here to read the original blogs.) When a California couple looking to adopt found that the “leading” adoption profiles website discriminated against them for being gay, they invoked California antidiscrimination laws, which include sexual orientation. And they won their case. Adoption.com had to choose — to open their services to all prospective parents or stop doing business in California.

I met great people in Minnesota — people who are already out there telling their stories, trying to make change, but also people who know that they can always strive to do this better and with a community of supporters. It’s important to stay active and stay vigilant in Minnesota — making sure that no new marriage amendments pass, that no anti-family legislation is proposed and passed. But it’s also important not to get too comfortable with the relatively positive environment that’s been created. Make it better, make it stronger, make it even more positive for our families and for all people who experience discrimination.

I look forward to my next trip to Minnesota — it was a truly inspiring endeavor!

In the spirit of Oprah, we decided to put together our own list of favorite things. Unlike the Oprah show, unfortunately, we’re not giving any of them away. If you like them, you’ll have to buy them for yourself. Here are some of our favorite things for LGBTQ parents.

The children’s book: Holly’s Secret. When Holly’s family moves to a new town, she changes her name and lies about her parents (two moms), hoping that she’ll fit in. She learns that her true friends will stand by her and that love is the most important thing. The scenes between Holly and her family are very loving and realistic. This book is great for children 8-12. Check it out here.

Got moms? or Got dads? t-shirt from Family Evolutions. Available in black or white, and a full range of sizes for children or adults. Click here to read more.

The children’s book: The Family Book. Written and illustrated by Todd Parr, this book celebrates many different types of families in his typically silly and reassuring style. He includes adopted families, stepfamilies, one-parent families, “traditional” nuclear families, and - best of all - families with same-sex parents! Click here for more information.

All babies are created equal t-shirt from Tiny Revolutionaries. This 100% cotton t-shirt sends a strong message. Available in toddler sizes only. Click here to check it out.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke earlier in the week at Columbia University amid a huge swirl of controversy. On his website, the Iranian President published and scrubbed a portion of the transcript, according to PageOneQ.com.

Which section was scrubbed? It was the part of the question and answer session wherein Ahmadinejad claimed there were no homosexuals in Iran. Interestingly, the section was removed only from the Persian language translation of the speech, and left in-tact in the English version.

Ahmadinejad stated: “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. In Iran we do not have this phenomenon, I don’t know who has told you that we have it.” The audience responded with boos.

PageOneQ contacted the Iranian Embassy regarding the transcript inconsistencies, at which point the entire question and answer portion was removed from the site.

Ahmadinejad’s comments are truly outrageous, and the fact the he removed them from the Persian translation speaks to their deceit; his own people would certainly have recognized the absurdity of the statement.

According to PageOneQ, Paula Ettlebrick, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Rights Commision had this to say:

The first reaction of many of us was to join in the astonished response to President Ahmadinejad’s clearly outrageous view that no lesbian or gay  people live in Iran. But, the whitewashing of his comments from the eyes and ears of most Iranian citizens speaks to something more troubling. His denial attempts to simply erase from public view the lives of men and women who face regular abuse in his country. Perhaps he knows he could not credibly get away with such a denial among his own people.

To date, not a single Persian-language media outlet in Iran - including Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, and the semi-independent news agencies, ISNA, Mehrrnews and Farsnews, and the Wednesday morning newspapers - has reported on the President’s comments.

I just learned about an important event set to kick off next Sunday, October 7^th, called “Seven Straight Nights for Gay Rights,” which aims to provide a venue for straight allies to vocalize their support for equality for the LGBTQ community in their local towns and cities.

The week of events includes everything from candlelight vigils to church potlucks in cities across the country, ranging from Seattle, Washington to Augusta, Maine.

7SN, as it is abbreviated on their website, is being organized by two Texas-based organizations, Atticus Circle, named after the To Kill A Mockingbird character Atticus Finch, who stood up for a wrongly accused black man, and Soulforce, a group which aims to attain “freedom for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from religious and political oppression through the practice of nonviolent resistance.”

I encourage you to spread the word and get your friends and family members involved. People can sign up to sponsor an existing event, host and organize an event in their town if one is not already scheduled, and to find the details for events already set up.

As Aaron Toleos, the featured ally on Boston’s event page says, “The gay community has been coming out of the closet for years. Now it is our turn to come out with our support for them.”

As many of you may know, during last night’s Democratic presidential debate, a question was asked about LGBTQ families. The question was:

The issues surrounding gay rights have been hotly debated here in New England. For example, last year some parents of second graders in Lexington, Massachusetts, were outraged to learn their children’s teacher had read a story about same-sex marriage, about a prince who marries another prince.

Same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts, but most of you oppose it. Would you be comfortable having this story read to your children as part of their school curriculum?

Then, today, Republican candidate Mitt Romney slammed the Democrats in a press release on his website:

Last night’s debate was just the latest example of how out of touch the Democratic presidential candidates are with the American people. Not one candidate was uncomfortable with young children learning about same-sex marriage in the second grade. This is a subject that should be left to parents, not public school teachers. We need to strengthen our families by passing a federal marriage amendment and also insisting on marriage before having children. Change in Washington requires Democrats with the courage to stand-up to their ultra liberal base and do what’s right for our children.

Family Pride is monitoring these developments and putting together a plan of action to educate the candidates and media. As we put together our plan, give us feedback through our comments. We want to know your thoughts.

We will keep you posted as the developments unfold.

Last weekend marked the ultra-conservative, right-wing Family Impact Summit in Tampa, Florida. The conference, sponsored by the Family Research Concil (no surprise there!) amounted to little more than organized gay-bashing, and aimed to address such issues as, the “homosexual agenda”, “homosexuality & ministry” and “racial reconciliation.”

I recently read a post from a liberal blogger, Jim Burroway, who attended the conference. The blogger went to a town hall meeting titled “Defending Marriage: What’s At Stake.” According to the post, the town hall meeting concluded that LGBTQ people:

• all are prone to mental illnesses and physical diseases
• all have been abused as children
• all are substance abusers
• don’t really want marriage because we don’t want it to interfere with our promiscuity

Once the panelists would up their lie-filled diatribes attacking LGBTQ individuals and families, the meeting was opened up to questions from the floor. This is where it got interesting, as Jim Burroway recounts:

And the second questioner, a brave young woman wearing a red tee-shirt, was a stunner:

Hi. My names is Cathy James and I would like to challenge all of the individuals here listening today to really take a look at some of the rationale and some of the comments that speakers have given in regard to things such as …why government gets involved with personal relationships, that is, for the procreation of children. I think as most of the attorneys will tell you, that civil marriage was created for one purpose only, and that was property and how to divide property.
And so I am a lesbian, I live in the Riverview area with my partner of thirteen years and our son who is seven. And I go to work Monday through Friday and attend church weekly, I volunteer at the school, I volunteer at the homeowners association. And what I have a hard time understanding is why you are interested in keeping a legal framework from us in being able to handle the same things as heterosexual couples and such things as visitation, and hospital…. And how to divide our property in the same way, and how to parent our child?

The stunned silence was amazing. John Stemberger thanked her for coming and tried to stammer out an answer. He said that some forms of discrimination are perfectly legitimate (“home ownership benefits society in the way renters do not.”) and ended by saying, “marriage uniquely benefits society in the way same sex couples do not.” But Cathy remained calm and firm:

But in what way? What’s the difference in the benefit? How does your marriage benefit society more than my relationship with my same gender partner does not?

Peter Sprigg jumped in to assert that “without question” the best family structure was headed by a man and a woman. But Cathy persisted:

…But now you’re devaluing, what, over fifty percent of the children who live with one parent or that one parent as died or that they’re divorced and now they’re just living with one parent. You’re devaluing them and that’s not fair.

By now the panel was speechless, leaving Peter Sprigg to stumble around trying to get his footing. “Each person’s relationship choices serves as an example to the rest of society… and if that example becomes more widespread, more people will make the same choice, more children will suffer.”

So you’re saying a man and a woman in a marriage are valued higher than single people? They’re valued higher than…
Sprigg cut her off and instead of relying on his own outwitted wits, he decided to read from David Blankenhorn’s book, The Future of Marriage. And as he read, his voice rose, becoming more strident, more angry, more sharp with each word. “I would be rich if I had a nickel for every time someone who knows almost nothing about marriage has told me that historically marriage was all about property. That is nonsense!” But as he continued to spit out the words, it slowly dawned on him that Blankenhorn was talking about dowries and gifts to the bride’s family – which had nothing do with Cathy’s questions.

Clearly Sprigg is a man who doesn’t like having his reputation as an “expert” challenged. And it became obvious that he wasn’t up to this particular challenge. But he kept reading, vainly looking for the rescue that he was sure he’d find in Blankenhorn’s book. But it wasn’t there. He finally gave up and Cathy graciously thanked all of the panelists for their time.

For the two and a half days of the summit so-called “experts,” one after another, paraded from one stage to another convincing everyone who would listen that homosexuals would be the downfall of society. The solution? “Ordered Liberty Under God” went the oft-repeated battle cry.

But one brave woman burst through the bluster and showed that the emperors had no clothes. It was a wonderful moment, and for me the greatest highlight of the whole conference.

After circulating this post among the office, our Program & Education team recognized the name of that brave woman. She’s a well-known Florida activist and board member of Securing Our Children’s Rights. And, she’s agreed to write a guest post for our blog about her experience. Stay tuned!

Hello new friends!

My name is Julia and I would just love to introduce myself to you! I have a fascination for exclamation points, so just bare with me, folks! Here are a few tidbits about me:

•    My mother came out as a lesbian three years ago—which ignited my enthusiasm   for family equality. As one of my best friends, my mother has always embodied ultimate compassion, selflessness, and undying love. If her fairly recent title of “lesbian” all of a sudden makes her a target of criticism and a “questionable” parent, I can’t just sit still and allow these fallacious ideas continue to build and snowball in our society. I am wholeheartedly committed to securing equality for all families, whether they are hetero-normative or not.
•    While a senior at the University of Maine, I took a life-changing course called the ‘Sociology of Gay and Lesbian Relationships’ with Professor Stephen Marks. This was the first venue in which I was able to come out about my mother and it was fabulously supportive—it also lit my passion on fire to strive towards family equality.
•    My major areas of work while in this position will concentrate on building parent groups, creating youth programming, and working on the Research Symposium for 2008!
•    I was born in Presque Isle, Maine and spent most of my childhood biking through potato farms, water skiing up north, and playing with lobsters!
•    I love hiking and hope to hike the Triple Crown someday! It includes the entire Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide. It takes about a full year to hike—anybody game?

I have been avidly researching for the best children’s books, music, and games with themes such as: LGBTQ parents, diversity, self esteem and tolerance. In the future, perhaps we will integrate these into our conferences with LGBTQ families. I have also been making appointments with child psychologists and guidance counselors to see what direction some of our youth programming can take! I’m really excited to be here and can’t wait to start making a difference!

Our members send us a lot of wonderful treasures - our office is decorated with family photos, drawings, school pictures - you name it, we have it! It’s really nice to have the personal connections and see the faces of the families we’re fighting for.

We got particularly excited when we received Different Families. It’s a book that was colored in by one of our families in the New York area. We knew we had to share it with you on our blog. Download it, print it out and share it with your children this evening.

It’s no surprise to LGBTQ parents that the insurance industry discriminates against them and their families. From marriage and partner recogniction to legal parent status and children’s access to health benefits, there are any number of obvious ways that insurance excludes LGBTQ people and their kids.

But rather than just thinking about how the insurance industry discriminates and excludes, I think it’s helpful to take it a step further, to truly wrap our brains around what’s going on:

The benefits packages that insurance companies provide not only discriminate and exclude, they define what specific illnesses, procedures, treatments, and, yes, even families are worth encouraging and supporting.

My package, for instance, includes funds for childbirth classes and support and education programs for expectant mothers, but says nothing of preparing parents who are adopting children, even infants who will be in their care from the first moments of life. The first thing to note here is that insurance companies often apply the term “medically necessary” as a rationale for providing benefits or not. In my reading, there’s nothing “medically necessary” about parent education classes for anyone, really. If parent education classes were “medically necessary,” why wouldn’t my insurance also cover home care assistance for chronically ill people, such as providing funds to hire someone to assistance in daily tasks like dressing, cleaning and feeding oneself. My insurance covers home care assistance for things like physical therapy, administration of drugs and other at home “treatments,” but not day-to-day personal care tasks, things that can vastly improve one’s quality of life and can be excessively difficult to do when debilitated by illness.

Elsewhere in my package there’s funding for gym memberships and nutrition counseling–also, in the strictest sense, not “medically necessary.” So what’s going on here? If insurance is willing to subsidize preventive care and health maintenance, which would include classes to educate new parents on how to best care for their kids, why not apply that rationale equally?

Whether insurance companies intend this or not, their current support of one type of parent (mothers who give birth) over others privileges one type of family over others. Why should lesbian moms or gay dads, for instance, not receieve benefits for parent education classes when they pay their premiums, as well? For that matter, why should any prospective parent who is not a pregnant woman be excluded from these benefits? If the health and well-being of the children is primary purpose behind a parent education benefit, why not equally care for all children?

This is just one of the many questions we must ask the insurance industry, which so greatly shapes our lives through our health. Anyone reading this post who feels categorically discriminated against or excluded from their insurance coverage should think not only about how they’re excluded but who is included and why. What groups and kinds of people are held up over others? Who receives benefits, who has coverage? None of this is black and white and all of it can change.

If you want to take action, assess your benefits package and see if you and your family are inappropriately excluded. You may not be able to get your provider to cover your partner without legal marriage, but you may make waves around things like parent education class benefits and other, less “political” subjects.

As the Jena 6 controversy continues, the president of the Human Rights Campaign traveled to Jena, Louisiana to speak at a rally. His powerful and touching words speak to the many intersections in our fight for equality:

My name is Joe Solmonese and I represent the largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender organization in the country. Am I am here — we are all here from the Human Rights Campaign — because this injustice cannot stand.

We are here because we know about bigotry. We know about hate. We know the pain in high school of standing apart. Of being taunted. Of standing up, only too often, to be shut down.

I am here — we are here — because you have stood with us. Because all of us know that one injustice against any of us is an injustice against all of us.

And I am here because I remember. I remember James Byrd. James was a gentle soul, a special soul. Someone who struggled his whole life with challenges, but was filled with love and was deeply loved in Jasper, Texas.

But James Byrd — at 49 — was savagely beaten, then chained to a pickup truck and literally dragged to his death. He was brutally murdered because he was black.

And then something really profound happened. Remember when George Bush was governor of Texas? Well, Governor Bush had a hate crimes bill on his desk. There was a lot of pressure to sign the bill because of what they did to James Byrd. So, George Bush said he’d sign that bill, but they had to take the gays out.

And here’s what happened. Stella Byrd, who has just buried her beaten, broken, gentle James said, If some of us are left out, then all of us are. Valuing one life and not valuing another is not right. And the Byrd family said No. They said No. And they walked away.

So, I stand here today with solidarity. I stand here for social justice. I stand here to free those young men. To say this will not stand. It cannot stand. I stand here for the Jena 6. I stand here today for James Byrd.

We will not forget. We will never walk away.

Thank you very much.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. An injustice to one is an injustice to all.