Month: February 2018

First Dance – Groundbreaking Advertisement from Apple

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first dance

First Dance is a moving and very emotional advertisement targeting the Australian market and coming at exactly the right time.

First Dance – In what can only be described as a seminal moment in advertising to a market that needs it the most, Apple has produced this beautiful commercial for the new iPhone X – First Dance – incorporating images shot on the phone itself of same-sex wedding ceremonies.  The music is by Courtney Barnett and the emotion is pure love.  

Thanks to Apple for making First Dance, a groundbreaking advertisement at such a crucial moment in history.  And welcome Australia to the world of marriage equality!

Song: “Never Tear Us Apart” by Courtney Barnett: https://apple.co/2BOEqci

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LGBT Victory: Supreme Court Allows AZ Same-Sex Parents Decision to Stand

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second parent adoption necessity

In Victory for LGBT Community, U.S. Supreme Court Allows Decision Ruling Married Same-Sex Parents and Married Different-Sex Parents Must be Treated Equally 

WASHINGTON, DC—The Supreme Court of the United States announced today that it will not review the decision in McLaughlin v. McLaughlin, an Arizona Supreme Court case that found a woman to be the legal parent of the child she and her same-sex spouse conceived through assisted reproduction during their marriage. The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), Arizona attorney Claudia Work, and Ropes & Gray LLP represented the mother who sought to be recognized as a parent in this case. Kennedy

As the Arizona Supreme Court recognized, the U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Obergefell v. Hodges and Pavan v. Smith require states to treat married same-sex parents and married different-sex parents equally under the law. The Arizona Supreme Court explained: “It would be inconsistent with Obergefell to conclude that same-sex couples can legally marry but states can then deny them the same benefits of marriage afforded opposite-sex couples.” 

“The U.S. Supreme Court has twice explained in Obergefell v. Hodges and Pavan v. Smith that the U.S. Constitution requires states to provide the exact same rights to same-sex spouses and different-sex spouses,” said NCLR Family Law Director Catherine Sakimura. “States across the country should take careful note of this decision. Discrimination against married same-sex couples will not be tolerated.”

NCLR – February 26, 2017

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Civil Rights Act Protects Gay Workers, Appeals Court Rules

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Discrimination

A federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled on Monday that federal civil rights law bars employers from discriminating based on sexual orientation.

The case, which stemmed from the 2010 dismissal of a Long Island sky-diving instructor, was a setback for the Trump Justice Department, whose lawyers found themselves in the unusual position of arguing against government lawyers from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.Discrimination

The E.E.O.C. had argued that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars workplace discrimination based on “race, color, religion, sex or national origin,” protected gay employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

But the Trump Justice Department took the position that the law did not reach sexual orientation, and said the E.E.O.C. was “not speaking for the United States.”

The Justice Department and Altitude Express, the instructor’s employer, could seek review of the decision by the United States Supreme Court, although neither party had any immediate comment on the ruling.

In its decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said, “We see no principled basis for recognizing a violation of Title VII for associational discrimination based on race but not on sex.”

New York Times – By BENJAMIN WEISER and ALAN FEUER  FEB. 26, 2018

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Georgia Senate passes anti-LGBTQ adoption bill

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Georgia gay adoption

The Georgia Senate on Friday morning passed a bill that would allow adoption agencies to refuse to place children with same-sex couples based on their religious beliefs.

The bill would also prohibit the Georgia Department of Human Services from taking “adverse action” against such agencies. The bill passed along party lines 35-19 and will now head to the House for consideration.Georgia gay adoption

Senate Bill 375, called the “Keep Faith in Adoption and Foster Care Act,” was introduced earlier this month by state Sen. William Ligon (R-Brunswick), who added similar language to an adoption overhaul at the end of last year’s legislative session, causing the bill to stall. A Senate Judiciary sub-committee met on Feb. 8 to take up the bill, moving to send it on to the full committee, which passed the bill on Feb. 20.

Senators debated the bill for over an hour, and the 2015 Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage was a hot topic throughout, with several senators who support the bill quoting directly from the ruling.

Sen. Ligon and other supporters of the bill continued to try and make the case that passage of the bill would lead to more adoption opportunities in the state and not less.

“This bill does not prevent anyone from adopting,” Ligon said emphatically at one point.

Sen. Ligon and Sen. Jen Jordan (D-Atlanta), who beat an anti-LGBTQ Democratic opponent to win her state Senate seat in December, got into a lively discussion on the merits of the bill. Jordan questioned the need for the bill, confirming with Ligon that there are is no record of adoption agencies being discriminated against in Georgia because of their faith. Jordan then repeated a point brought up by State Sen. Elena Parent (D-Atlanta) during Tuesday morning’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing — that the concern these agencies have is based on a feeling rather than facts.

“It’s not based on feeling,” Ligon responded. “They want to have the assurance that they’ll be able to exercise their fundamental right to practice their faith.”

State Sen. Fran Millar (R-Atlanta) spoke in favor of the bill, saying that it would broaden opportunities for children in foster care.

“I’m tired of watching [the state] fail in certain areas and we have failed foster children,” Millar said. “The statistics [Ligon] read are true. If this broadens the opportunities for people to love them and raise them, then by God I’m going to vote for it.”

State Sen. Nan Orrock (D-Atlanta) pointed out that LGBTQ people also have religious beliefs.

by Patrick Saunders, gavotte.com, February 23, 2018

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Iowa court upholds enforceability of surrogacy contracts

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Family law

Iowa Surrogacy – The birth mother of an 18-month-old girl who agreed to be paid as a surrogate to have the baby, is not legally the child’s parent, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday in an emotional case that concluded surrogacy contracts can be enforced in Iowa.

The ruling means the girl remains with the Cedar Rapids couple, the only parents she has known since leaving the hospital after birth.

It was the first time the state’s highest court has weighed whether surrogacy contracts can be enforced.gay family law

But the fight isn’t over. The birth mother plans to appeal part of the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I no longer believe that surrogacy contracts should be entered into,” said the woman identified in court documents only as T.B., in a statement provided by her attorney. “Every child should have a mother and an essential part of the mother-child relationship is the role of pregnancy and the bonding that takes place during it. Children should not be sold.”

The woman said she has taken no money for bearing the baby. The contract required her to relinquish custody and parental rights in exchange for being paid, but she said she didn’t agree to do so after her relationship with the couple deteriorated. She also said she concluded that payment for babies is wrong.

Iowa, like most states, has no clear law on surrogacy parenting, but a 1989 law making it a felony to sell an individual to another person specifically exempts surrogate mother arrangements. The law was passed after the New Jersey Supreme Court invalidated surrogacy contracts as contrary to the state’s “baby selling” prohibition on payment of money to adopt a child.

In that case, which received wide publicity as the Baby M case, Mary Beth Whitehead agreed to carry a baby for William and Elizabeth Stern for $10,000. The New Jersey court in invalidating the surrogacy contract awarded the Sterns custody but allowed Whitehead visitation.

The Iowa court concluded that the Iowa Legislature “tacitly approved of surrogacy arrangements by exempting them from potential criminal liability for selling children,” in response to the Baby M case.

The justices concluded gestational surrogacy agreements promote families “by enabling infertile couples to raise their own children and help bring new life into this world through willing surrogate mothers.”

“Banning gestational surrogacy contracts would deprive infertile couples of perhaps the only way to raise their own biological children and would limit the contractual rights of willing surrogates,” the court said in an opinion written by Justice Thomas Waterman.

Omaha World Herald via AP, February 17, 2018

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All Evidence Shows That Children of Gay Parents Do Just as Well as Their Peers

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studies show kid of gay parents do great

Multiple studies have been conducted over the years, countless research has been carried out and endless debates have been had, all to show one thing.

That the children of gay parents do just as well as the children of straight parents. The myth that kids need a mum and a dad to have a fulfilled childhood has been repeatedly, conclusively disproved – so why is it still so pervasive?studies show kid of gay parents do great

Such views are ultimately rooted in outdated notions of what constitutes a good upbringing, stemming from conservative ideals of the ‘nuclear family’, with a mum, a dad and 2.4 children. In many cases, objection to LGBT families is motivated by homophobia as well – a belief that there is something different, and therefore undesirable or lacking, about same-sex parenting. But last year, researchers conducted one of the most comprehensive studies into same-sex parenting that has ever been carried out.

Scientists looked into more than three decades worth of peer-reviewed research into how the children in same-sex-parented families did in comparison to their peers from opposite-sex-parented families. The wide-ranging study, published in the Medical Journal of Australia in October 2017, found what had already been shown in multiple previous studies – that the kids do just as well.

Among the studies reviewed were the 2017 public policy research portal at Columbia Law School in the US, which itself looked at 79 studies investigating the well-being of children raised by gay parents; a 2014 American Sociological Association review of more than 40 studies, which found that children fared just as well in a number of areas; and the Australian Institute of Family Studies’ review from 2013, which found that there was no evidence of harm.

Researchers behind the study, titled ‘The Kids are OK: it is Discrimination Not Same-Sex Parents that Harms Children’, said at the time: ‘The findings of these reviews reflects a broader consensus within the fields of family studies and psychology. It is family processes – parenting quality, parental wellbeing, the quality of and satisfaction with relationships in the family – rather than family structures that make a more meaningful difference to children’s wellbeing and positive development.’

They added that studies that had shown poor outcomes for LGBT-parented children had been widely criticised for their limited methodologies.

by Ashtitha Nagesh, February 18, 2018 – Metro.co.uk

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Catholic Teacher Fired After Marrying Her Girlfriend

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catholic teacher fired

Parents at a Catholic school in Miami said they were astounded that administrators had fired a first-grade teacher just days after she married her girlfriend, and now some of the teacher’s supporters on the faculty are scared that the school will retaliate against them as well.

Catholic school teacher fired after marrying her girlfriend.  The teacher, Jocelyn Morffi, was by all accounts one of the most popular educators at Sts. Peter & Paul Catholic School in Miami, where she taught for nearly seven years.

“I consider her the Mother Teresa of teachers,” Samantha Mills, a parent whose son was in Ms. Morffi’s class last year, said on Monday.catholic teacher fired

But on Feb. 8, Ms. Mills and other parents at the school received an email from the principal saying that the school had made a “difficult and necessary decision,” and that Ms. Morffi would no longer be teaching at the school. The email was shared with The New York Times.

She was fired just days after marrying her girlfriend of about two years.

“The kids are very confused,” said Vanessa Almeida, whose children were tutored by Ms. Morffi. “My son said, ‘Mommy, I heard that Ms. Morffi got fired for getting married,’ and he looked at me and said, ‘What’s so bad about that?’”

On Friday, Ms. Morffi spoke out in a statement on Instagram.

“This weekend I married the love of my life and unfortunately I was terminated from my job as a result,” she wrote in the post. “In their eyes I’m not the right kind of Catholic for my choice in partner.”

Mary Ross Agosta, director of communications for the Archdiocese of Miami, said in an email on Monday that Ms. Morffi was fired because she violated a contract stipulating that teachers must abide by Catholic teachings and traditions.

She declined to say whether Ms. Morffi had been fired for marrying a woman, noting that it was “a personnel issue.”

Four teachers attended the wedding, one of them told The Times on Wednesday. She asked not to be named out of fear for her career.

by Christina Caron, New York Times, February 17, 2018

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Transgender Woman Breast-Feeds Baby After Hospital Induces Lactation

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Uterus

When a transgender woman told doctors at a hospital in New York that she wanted to breast-feed her pregnant partner’s baby, they put her on a regimen of drugs that included an anti-nausea medication licensed in Britain and Canada but banned in the United States.

Within a month, according to the journal Transgender Health, the woman, 30, who was born male, was producing droplets of milk. Within three months — two weeks before the baby’s due date — she had increased her production to eight ounces of milk a day.three-parent baby

In the end, the study showed, “she was able to achieve sufficient breast milk volume to be the sole source of nourishment for her child for six weeks,” according to the journal.

Dr. Tamar Reisman and Zil Goldstein, a nurse practitioner, of the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery in New York, say the case illustrates that, in some circumstances, modest but functional lactation can be induced in transgender women who did not give birth or undergo surgery.

“We believe that this is the first formal report in the medical literature of induced lactation in a transgender woman,” said the study’s authors, Dr. Reisman and Ms. Goldstein, a transgender activist and program director at the center. They were not immediately available for comment on Thursday.

New York Times by Ceylon Yeginsu, February 15, 2018

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Interracial Gay Family Handbook

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interracial

When same sex parents create families through transracial adoption, they must find ways to discuss racism, homophobia, instill positive racial identities, and honor their children’s birth culture.

If you don’t know this and what the benefits of transracial adoption are, it is worth considering before adopting. For so many same sex couples, transracial adoption is the best fit. If considering transracial adoption, there are many benefits and situations that should be discussed.interracial

Double Takes and Stares

We are a gay interracial couple – black and white – raising our two boys, black, with our mixed-raced daughter, who looks more white than anything else.

I personally identify with being black, because it carries the same combination of pride, remembrance and regret that “African American” was designed for. Thus, I prefer to raise our boys to also identify with being black. We will let our daughter decide what identity best fits her as she gets older.

Regardless if its black parents adopting white kids or white parents adopting black kids, families like ours typically garner lots of intention when in public.

Since our mixed-race daughter looks white, she and I often get double takes everywhere we go. I prefer to credit those double takes to our daughter’s beauty but reality dictates otherwise. Our first foster-to-adopt son (he has since been placed back with his birth mom) was white.  He and I also received stares wherever we went. I particularly despised the “is he yours” question, which made me feel self consciously black.

My white husband, Paul, receives similar double takes and stares, perhaps more, when he is in public with our black boys. On one occasion, he was approached by an older black woman asking, “where is the mother”? A polite reply would probably be the best response, but we typically respond with “none of your business” or “I am the mother”. Either way, we try to protect our children from such approaches by just removing ourselves from the situation.

Fascination with Hair 

The fascination with touching other people’s hair, particularly strangers, can be both frustrating and annoying. I have had situations where total strangers were fascinated with my boys’ hair because it “looks” and “feels” different. My advice would be to ask the child or their parent before touching his/her hair.

January  28, 2018 daddaddykids.com by Gregory Yorgey-Girdy

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Tom Daley And Dustin Lance Black Expecting First Child Together

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Congratulations are in order for British Olympic diver Tom Daley and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black.

The couple announced they are expecting their first child together on Wednesday. Each shared photos of themselves on their separate social media accounts holding up the same ultrasound photo.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Daley wrote in the caption, while Black added, “A Happy Valentine’s Day from ours to yours.”

Both complimented their posts with a same-sex family emoji just in case the message wasn’t clear.

By Cole Delbyck huffingtonpost.com, February 14, 2018

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