Family Pride’s Blog

At lot can change in a few years.

When I was interviewing for my current job at Family Pride, there were four staff members. That was a year and a half ago.

Now, we have more employees that that in our Programming Department alone. Today marks Julia Bean’s first day of work at Family Pride as our tenth staff member. Julia joins us as a Program and Education Associate. She earned her BA in Sociology from the University of Maine, and has extensive experience in mentoring and volunteering in diverse communities. Bean is an adult child of a lesbian mother who volunteered during Family Week in Provincetown.

Jenn Chrisler, our Executive Director commented on our explosive growth:

I am thrilled with the addition of four highly qualified and dedicated new staff members. Nina, Daniel, Ariana and Julia bring a diverse and extensive set of skills and experience to Family Pride and will make us all the better at working with and representing LGBTQ families. Our continuing growth will allow Family Pride to reach more LGBT families, make further progress in educating the community and advance our rights across the country.

Kudos the Family Pride team, and to all of you who make our work possible!

We couldn’t be more thrilled that Family Pride and our amazing staff are being featured in this month’s issue of the advocate. Here’s your sneak peak at the full page spread featuring Family Pride. Click to enlarge the image.

The advocate writes, “The organizations now propelling the movement have smaller staffs and budgets but major impact. As the big three [aka HRC, the Task Force and GLAAD] work on a macro level to lobby politicians, corporate leaders, entertainers, and other influential movers and shakers as well as pour millions of dollars - HRC has an annual budget of around $30 million - into wide-ranging research and initiatives, the “micro” groups featured on these pages are delivering on their laser-focused missions. The result? Progress up and down the scale of the fight for equality. Indeed, the little guy may be the key to our success in the long haul.

Kudos to Family Pride and the handful of other small but mighty organizations featured in the issue. And a special kudos to you. Family Pride is an organization defined by its members; it’s because of engaged supporters like you that our work is possible. Each time you download a publication, comment on our blog, send us an email or tell a friend about our work, we take a step forward. Here’s to the many steps we’ve taken together, and the many more yet to come!

Well, I have just finished my third week at Family Pride and am beginning to settle in.  I am really excited to back doing professional advocacy work for the lgbt communities again.  I have worked for SpeakOut, a Boston-based lgbt speaker’s bureau, and GLSEN Boston.  I made a concerted decision to become a “civilian gay” as my friends like to refer to my departure from the professional lgbt world.  When I entered back in the mainstream nonprofit world, I found working with heterosexual individuals was more difficult than I remembered.  There were lots of awkward moments when people found out I was a lesbian, sad moments when someone I thought was a friend said something homophobic, and overall lots of exhausting moments having to the goodwill ambassador for the lgbt community with people who had never talked to a lesbian before.

All that is not to say, that I didn’t meet and work with some great folks in those four years.  I did.  But all that explaining of who I was, how I loved who I loved, and that we were a family (with our beloved pug, Bella, of course) was exhausting.  My work at SpeakOut came in handy, because everyday I hosted a bunch of mini-lgbt 101 trainings.  And while it was trying at times, I know I changed hearts and minds.

One of my former colleagues had a baby and he called me to tell me about a conversation someone was having with him about his daughter marrying a man someday.  He corrected that person and said, “well, you never know.”  Before we worked together, he had never had a serious conversation with a lesbian about gender, sexual orientation, the politics working against us and our families.  I truly believe he is an ally now and will always be listening for assumptions AND correcting them.

I am looking forward to moving beyond simply educating the people immediately around me to taking our message of love, justice, family and equality to communities all over the country so positive changes that affect our kids and families will be felt for years to come.

Hello everyone! My name is Daniel and I am writing to introduce myself as a new team member here at Family Pride. I hopped onboard this summer and have not had the chance to look back. I have been amazed (and yes, sometimes overwhelmed) by how hard the staff works everyday to do all that Family Pride does. I thought this would be easiest to do in a brief interview, and lacking an interviewer I have decided to interview myself.

Give us the basics?

The basics: I am a 6’4”, half-Aussie graduate of Bowdoin College (Bio Major, Gay and Lesbian Studies Minor) who is passionate about many social justice issues, especially LGBTQ equality.

Why Family Pride?

I think it is important to start this answer by saying family equality hasn’t always been important to me. Growing up in a conservative military town meant that I never (knowingly) met anyone whose family pushed the bounds of the “traditional” nuclear family very far. Without realizing it, I absorbed the sentiment that the “traditional” family represented an ideal and that deviations from that ideal meant the family became “dysfunctional.” Even arriving at Bowdoin and coming out, I secretly struggled with my desire to one day be a father and my internalized, homophobic fear of deviation. Then I met and began to baby-sit for two sets of lesbian mums. After observing first-hand how incredibly loving and caring these families were, my internal struggle came to rest only to be replaced by a controlled rage at the hoops LGBTQ-headed families had to jump through to simply build and protect themselves. So I am here at Family Pride for two reasons: 1) to help our families tell their stories to people like me who only need to be exposed to be convinced of their legitimacy and 2) to fight for that legitimacy to be legally recognized.

Favorite food?

Chicken pesto pizza from anywhere or anytime. Start your morning with a piece one day and find out what I mean. Delish.

As a young person I wanted to be a parent before I ever knew I was gay. Like many of you, I suppose, there was a time after coming out when the thought of being a parent slipped away. It wasn’t that I knew, then and there, out to the world, that I could no longer be a parent. Obviously not—the size and strength of the community of LGBTQ parents attests to that. But there were a few years where parenting wasn’t in my thoughts. To begin with, how as a gay man would I bring a child into my life? Would it be too difficult to navigate that world? Would it be fair to the child?

All questions I’m sure many of you have thought and asked yourself. The good news is we have the answers:

1) How can I bring a child into my life? So many ways! I can foster parent. I can adopt. I can co-parent with others. I can conceive a child through surrogacy. I may even find a partner with a child of his own, who becomes my child through partnership and family.

2) Would it be too difficult to navigate that world? Difficult, yes, but certainly not so much that I would deny myself the joys and responsibilities of being a parent. Each family has its own trials and tribulations to face. At least in dealing with the difficulties of being a gay parent, I can know that it’s a wrongheaded society that’s causing my problem—that it’s no fault of my own.

3) Would it be fair to the child? So long as I’m a loving, caring and dedicated parent, yes. We are all complicated human beings, and at one point or another any child is going to question whether they’d rather have a gay parent or a single parent or a parent who goes away on business or a parent with embarrassing hair. Perhaps a gay child might question whether their situation would be better if their parents weren’t straight. All any child can really ask for, though, is to have wonderful, responsible adults in their life, meeting their needs and guiding them through the world. Don’t we all realize that as we grow into adulthood, looking back on our parents with more generous eyes?

But coming to terms with these questions leaves others still and one in particular I’d like to address. Now, if you’ve met me, you know I’m not yet a parent, but I do want kids someday. And as I meet other gay people—especially out in the dating world—the subject of families comes up. The trouble is I often encounter young gay men who say, yes, I want children someday but I really want my own children. To which I reply, What on earth do you mean? Well, I want a child that’s genetically mine, you know, a child that’s really mine, they say. To which I say (and while seriously biting my tongue):

There is no such thing as a child that is more yours than not. If you have committed to parenting a child, to filling that role for the rest of their lives, then you are theirs and they are yours. Parenting is a commitment so profound it truly feels like a contract of ownership has been signed. You are my child. You are my parent. And we spend the whole rest of our lives pushing and pulling the lines of that relationship, but seldom do we sever them fully. If I adopt a child, that child is as much a part of me and my family as a child to which I contribute genes. And if I anonymously donate sperm to help other couples conceive, that child is not at all my child, not unless I actively commit to being that child’s parent.

This is hard for a lot of people to swallow, especially many of the young gay men I meet. We as a community of LGBTQ parents, prospective parents and allies know we have a great deal of educational work to do among the larger LGBTQ community as well as in the world-at-large. But we have to begin with certain principles, stand by them, and be steadfast in making sure our voices are heard. No adopted child should ever feel less the family member because a guest makes a dinner-time comment about one day having “their own child,” meaning a child that’s biologically theirs. You don’t have to yell and scream, but you do have to correct and educate. Love makes a family. Commitment and care make families. Certainly genes and reproduction are part of the process, but they do not create the necessary bonds.

I’ve been wanting to get that off my chest for some time now. I hope it resonates with you out there. If you’ve had similar issues combating ignorance around this issue with friends, family, strangers or others, please leave a comment and share. I can’t stress enough how important it is for all the families out there to hear from each other on these difficult matters.

To all the loving families out there, keep keeping on. You are an inspiration to us all.

This year’s Family Week was my second as a member of the Family Pride Team (this year dubbed “Team Family Equality” on our bright orange t-shirts). It was a thrilling experience to be back—better prepared to navigate Provincetown, happy to speak with LGBTQ family friends I made last year and meet new folks this time around. I was especially excited to have much more time to plan and prepare for our educational workshop series—to have time before and afterwards to sit and talk at length with families who had issues, ideas, questions, and concerns to share. Last year, when Family Pride produced Family Week entirely on its own (with COLAGE providing programming and events for youth), just as soon as I or any other Family Pride staff member finished a talk or presentation we had to zip off to some other location—the beach, the pier, a hardware store, a copy shop two towns over! Anyone who’s involved in Family Week planning and execution—be they Family Pride, COLAGE, R Family Vacations or otherwise affiliated—can tell you that it’s an uncanny combination of dedication to our families and adrenaline/caffeine cocktails that make this week happen. As hard as we sweat, as little as we sleep, there’s nothing more satisfying than connecting with our families face-to-face and providing them with an amazing opportunity to connect and grow.

Longtime Family Weekers have noticed many additions over the years—almost all of which have been tied to the astounding growth of the event from year to year. There are larger events, more partners, and more amenities geared towards families in the town. We estimate more than 600 families attended Family Week this year. That’s a tremendous increase from the 15 or so families that first gathered just 12 years ago! And with that growth comes change.

We have heard your initial feedback from Family Week 2007, and we look forward to hearing more. Feedback is essential to building better programs and activities for our families, and we are dedicated to incorporating as much as of it as possible into our planning for next year. Family Week 2008 is already in the works. We thank you for taking the time to let us know how much you care about this very special week for our families.

In the meantime, in those twelve long months between one Family Week and the next, we invite you to connect with Family Pride in all the other work that we do—advocating for our families through our policy initiatives; activating parents in their local communities through OUTSpoken Families; growing communities through our work with local parents groups; building safer and more inclusive schools for our children; increasing the visibility of our families through local and national media; and providing the best, most up-to-date and accurate research about our families experiences to the world.

Thanks again and I look forward to my third Family Week next August!

It’s been a while since we’ve given you an update on our staff, our work and all of our projects. Summer is always a busy season for us, and this summer was the busiest yet! Not only did we expand our base of operations to include our new Boston office, but we took on new programming commitments and three new staff members! So things have certainly been a bit hectic for us.

Our new office is great. There is a lot of communal working space (which we love!) and the walls have a fresh coat of white paint. It’s finally starting to feel like home. All in all, we love Massachusetts - and in particular, the state’s commitment to equality.

Two new staff members started on Monday: Nina Selvaggio, Director of Policy & Programs; and Daniel Robinson, Development Associate. Ariana Flores, our newest Program & Education Associate will start next Monday. All three are amazing, talented and brilliant folks that we’re thrilled to have on our team. You’ll probably be hearing from Nina, Daniel and Ariana in the upcoming weeks on our blog.

Next up? We have a fundraising event this weekend in the Hamptons and then an OUTSpoken training towards the end of Sept. in Minneapolis, MN. Also, look for an exciting new contest that we’ll be announcing at the end of the month.

Meanwhile, the school year is about to start so Jenn and Nina are already busy with interviews and programming around our safe and inclusive schools initiative. Our new website is in its final stages of completion, and will be launched during our National Awards Dinner honoring Jamie Lee Curtis and Growing Generations in mid-October.

And keep and eye to your local newsstand - the Advocate recently visited our new Boston office and we’ll be featured in the issue hitting newsstands Sept. 11.

Geesh - with so much work, you’d never know that there are only nine of us! It’s going to be a busy month and busy rest of the year, but meeting and hearing from all of you and your families is all the motivation that we need.

Thanks to our unprecedented growth, we’ve created a new position on our staff; we’re thrilled to welcome Nina Selvaggio as our Director of Policy & Program.

Nina is an advocate who has deep experience with community organizing, professional development, operations management and strategic leadership; over the past ten years, she has built coalitions and worked with communities around issues of education and social justice.

After earning a degree in Political Science and Women’s Studies from the University of Illinois-Urbana, Nina began her career as a Field Organizer for the Feminist Majority Foundation and has served in a number of similar campaign and community organizing roles since.  She ascended to the Executive Director position at SpeakOut in Boston, a role that she held for over three years before moving on to direct the Youth Violence Prevention Coalition at GLSEN Boston.  She also worked in the Massachusetts State House for State Treasurer Timothy Cahill and for the national organization Citizen Schools.  Nina’s dedication to social responsibility and activism extends into her personal time, as well; she has served the National Organization for Women in several roles, including the President and Political Action Committee Chair of Massachusetts and on the National Board representing the Northeast region.

Join me in welcoming Nina to team family equality!

Even in a week devoted to rest, relaxation and family fun, Family Weekers make time in their days to learn and grow together as a community. We know that Family Week and other family gatherings started as a way for families with LGBTQ parents to get together, provide safe spaces for their kids to play, and build community around issues that matter–parental rights, marriage equality, finding and making safe schools. We continue this tradition with Provincetown Family Week 2007, providing workshops on topics from getting active in schools to building better relationships as LGBTQ parents. You can see a full list of workshops on the Family Pride website, at www.familypride.org/familyweekcomingsoon.html.

Yesterday morning I had the privilege of presenting on the Rainbow Report Card and other tools Family Pride provides to parents to make their schools safer and more inclusive of all loving families. We had a large crowd, about 70 parents, sitting in rows with note pads out and pens in hand, ready to learn. We talked about how lasting change starts from the ground up, that every situation is different, and that all parents need to be as out as they safely can be–with their children, within their school community, etc.–in order to create open, honest dialogue about the challenges they face.

Bay Windows, New England’s LGBT community newspaper, was there, taking photos at the workshop and talking to families. Check out their website to see if Family Week coverage is up!

Sadly, I’m going to have to wrap this one up more quickly than I thought, as I now have to set up at the pier for another workshop–The Toughest Questions You’ll Get Asked as an LGBTQ Parent (or “Toughest Questions,” as we like to call it). You can find out more about Toughest Questions by downloading the OUTSpoken Families Speaker’s Toolkit here.

Sorry for the lack up updating yesterday. Much like on the cruise, our Internet keeps going in and out! Twenty-first-century roughing it, I like to say

Cheers,
Dustin

It’s only been two days since the 12th annual Provincetown Family Week began, and I’m already astounded by the growth! I’ve seen many old faces and also a lot of new. This year, R Family Vacations is running the large social and entertainment events, like their Under the Big Top Circus Dinner and their Classic Disco Family Tea Dance, and already 3 of the 4 major events are SOLD OUT with more than 650 people attending each one! Last year, our biggest dinner (also run by R Family and pirate-themed) was 350 people. We estimate well over 500 LGBTQ-headed families in PTown this week–that’s at least 1,000 if not more than 1,500 people from our community. The growth is tremendous!

So much has happened since we arrived Saturday morning, not to mention the drive up. (I surprised my boss, Family Pride Executive Director Jennifer Chrisler, with my fancy driving. Hey, that rest stop crept up on me, and I hadto get over two lanes of traffic to get there. Parents understand: when someone in the car has to go, someone in the car has to go.)

We had a great time at check-in and registration Saturday morning, down on MacMillan Pier. We’ve moved most of our events down there this year–both to create a one-stop shop for our families and because the breeze off the water is oh so nice! We busted out the sound system and I plugged my iPod in–I have a special “Family Pride” playlist for just such occasions, with great LGBTQ family hits like “We Are Family,” “Love and Happiness,” “Freedom 90,” and more. As R Family staff handled tickets and program books, the Family Pride staff was able to do what we’ve always wanted to have more time to do at Family Week–talk and share with all the wonderful families!

We have a full workshop schedule this week, continuing the tradition of bringing fresh, valuable education and advocacy programming to LGBTQ-headed families even as we ratchet up the fun side of the week through our partnership with R Family. I’m particularly excited to present on safe and inclusive schools with Jennifer on Tuesday and to lead parents through our “Toughest Questions” workshop Wednesday morning, an exercise pulled directly from our OUTSpoken Families Speakers Bureau toolkit.

Other highlights of the past few days include:

The Gathering for Families with Members of African and/or Caribbean Descent (held at the Family Pride staff house!)
The Broadway Belters Brunch (think bacon, eggs, vibrato)
The Welcome Family Beach Picnic (complete with cool breeze and even cooler water)
The Blogging and Online Activism Workshop (with our good friend, Dana Rudolph of Mombian.com)
The Sandcastle Building Contest (complete with Family Pride ribbons for all the families that participated)

Tomorrow’s our first full day of workshops and entertainment programming, with “little gatherings” for the under 4s first thing, followed by a workshop conducted by Jennifer Chrisler on “Talking to Our Children” about being LGBTQ. Then it’s on to “Relationship Success,” a presentation on keeping LGBTQ partnerships strong, followed by Beach Olympics, the 7th Annual Guatemalan Barbecue (for families with children adopted from Guatemala), and the big deal, big-time Under the Big Top Dinner!

I can’t say I’m not a little exhausted already, and I think I speak for the Family Pride staff as a whole. However, there is a strange energy that develops around Family Week–an energy that keeps a smile on our faces (through the pounds of sweat) and pep in our step (with burns on our necks). The truth of the matter is that there’s no way to explain or describe this energy as anything other than the warmth and good vibes we get from being around all these beautiful families. I’m excited to keep you all posted as we work through the week, and to have other Family Pride staff members update you, as well. It’s not easy finding a few minutes each day with packed schedules like these to share what’s going on here on the Cape, but we believe in sharing our work with as many people as possible, especially the ones who can’t be here.

And now for some much-needed rest…

Stay tuned!
Dustin