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Pete and Chasten Buttigieg Announce They Are Parents

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US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and husband Chasten are expecting a child.

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Out gay US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten Buttigieg, have expanded their family with a child!Buttigieg

In a tweet on August 17, the former presidential hopeful and mayor of South Bend, Indiana announced that he and his husband have become parents — and the couple expressed appreciation in response to the outpouring of love and support they have received along their parenting journey.

“For some time, Chasten and I have wanted to grow our family. We’re overjoyed to share that we’ve become parents!” Buttigieg tweeted. “The process isn’t done yet and we’re thankful for the love, support, and respect for our privacy that has been offered to us. We can’t wait to share more soon.” 

According to a Washington Post story published last month, the couple had been in touch with some prospective parents — but potential adoption scenarios initially fell through. The couple has been preparing for parenthood with “home studies and parenting workshops, writing up descriptions of their family values and ideal weekends.”

“It’s a really weird cycle of anger and frustration and hope,” Chasten said, according to the Washington Post. “You think it’s finally happening and you get so excited, and then it’s gone.”

Prior to serving as transportation secretary, Buttigieg rose to national fame during the 2020 Democratic primary race — when he and Bernie Sanders virtually tied to win the Iowa caucuses, though Buttigieg won the most delegates and officially became the first out LGBTQ person to win a state in a presidential primary race. After Buttigieg eventually dropped out, he backed Joe Biden’s candidacy for president, and in February, Buttigieg made history as the first openly gay cabinet member to be confirmed by the US Senate.

 

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Source: Time for Families

Phyllis Lyon, on Right, Lesbian Activist and Gay Marriage Trailblazer, Dies at 95

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When Phyllis Lyon married her partner of 55 years in 2008, they formed the first legal gay union in California.

Phyllis Lyon, who when she married her partner, Del Martin, in 2008 became part of the first legal gay union in California, died on Thursday at her home in San Francisco. She was 95.

Her sister, Patricia Lyon, confirmed the death.

Phyllis Lyon

Phyllis Lyon on the left with life long partner Del Martin

It was not their first wedding. In 2004, despite state and federal bans on same-sex marriage, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Ms. Lyon and Ms. Martin were the first to receive one, but that union would be short-lived. The California Supreme Court invalidated their marriage a month later, arguing that the mayor had exceeded his legal authority.

Four years later, the same court declared same-sex marriages legal and Mr. Newsom invited the couple back as the first to be married under the new ruling. Ms. Martin died shortly after.

“I am devastated,” Ms. Lyon said following her wife’s death. “But I take some solace in knowing we were able to enjoy the ultimate rite of love and commitment before she passed.”

The mauve and turquoise-blue suits that the couple wore to their weddings are in the permanent collection of the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco.

Mr. Newsom, who is now the governor of California, said on Twitter: “Phyllis — it was the honor of a lifetime to marry you & Del. Your courage changed the course of history.”

Phyllis Ann Lyon was born on Nov. 10, 1924, in Tulsa, Okla. to William Ranft Lyon, who was a salesman, and Lorena Belle (Ferguson) Lyon, who was a homemaker. The family moved to Sacramento, Calif., in the early 1940s.

After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1946 with a degree in journalism, Ms. Lyon worked as a reporter for the Chico Enterprise-Record in Chico, Calif. She moved to Seattle in 1949 to work at a construction trade journal, where Ms. Martin was also employed. They began dating and, on Valentine’s Day in 1953, moved in together in San Francisco.

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Fertility Benefits – A look at the most generous employee benefits out there today

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Fertility Benefits – These companies are adapting to workers’ needs, from shipping breast milk home to paying for gender transition.

Jackie Geilfuss recently submitted an unusual expense report to her employer: $6,285 for the purchase of sperm.  Some employers are covering fertility benefits.artificial insemination

Geilfuss and her wife are planning to have a baby. As a same-sex couple, they face thousands of dollars in costs to conceive a child, including the expense of donor sperm. Struggling with the financial burden, they turned to friends and family for help. Then, a few months ago, Geilfuss’ employer announced it would start reimbursing employees up to $20,000 for nonmedical costs to have children.

“This benefit is life-changing for us,” says Geilfuss, who helps employees manage the implementation of new systems at Akamai Technologies, an Internet services and technology company in Cambridge. “We were ready to be parents a long time ago, but it wasn’t something we felt was feasible. We weren’t in a financial position to do that.” Geilfuss and her wife, Jessica, began fertility treatments this month.

Akamai is among a growing number of local companies that have expanded their employee benefits beyond standard medical coverage, often looking at options to add through the lens of diversity and inclusion. Several large employers now offer new fertility benefits to help single people and same-sex couples start families. Some are adding supports for new mothers, or broadening coverage for people transitioning from one gender to another.

“It’s a really hot topic,” says Liz Spath, a Boston-based benefits consultant at the consulting firm Mercer. “They’re looking to programs like this that really drive culture. Anything that’s family-friendly and lets people bring their full selves to work is top of mind.”

Expanding benefits can be expensive, but there are many potential advantages for employers that do, including recruiting and retaining talented workers, fostering a corporate culture that appeals to clients, and improving their rankings on job sites.

“It does play a role in helping candidates understand what we’re all about and where we place value,” says Sarah Sardella, senior director of global benefits at Akamai, which now reimburses employees for costs of surrogacy, donor sperm, and donor eggs.

BostonGlobe.com, November 14, 2019 by  Priyanka Dayal McCluskey

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Utah Supreme Court Will Now Allow Surrogacy for Same-Sex Couples

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Utah Supreme Court

The Utah Supreme Court struck down a law stopping same-sex couples from having children through surrogacy.

Chief Justice Matthew Durrant declared in a Utah Supreme Court ruling that “same-sex couples must be afforded all of the benefits the State has linked to marriage and freely grants to opposite sex-couples,” reports Fox 13 Salt Lake City.Utah Supreme Court

The law was challenged by a gay couple who entered into a gestational contract with a straight couple, but ran into legal issues thanks to strict language in Utah’s laws governing surrogacy. A lower court judge noted Utah statute only allows surrogacy when an “intended mother is unable to bear a child or is unable to do so without unreasonable risk to her physical or mental health or to the unborn child.”

Lower courts ruled that with two gay men, there was no intended mother.

The Utah Attorney General’s office actually sided with the couple in the case, arguing the law should be gender neutral in its application, but it took going to the high court to deal with the explicit “mother” language appearing in the law as written.

Durrant wrote it was in the interest of the state to allow all same-sex couples the same access to surrogacy services.

Advocate.com by Jacob Ogles, August 2, 2019

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Civil rights groups sue over Trump foster care policies

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Civil rights groups are filing a lawsuit against the Trump foster care policies and the state of South Carolina, alleging the governments are making it easier for taxpayer-funded adoption and foster care agencies to discriminate against same-sex and non-evangelical couples.

Thursday’s lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Lambda Legal was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina on behalf of a married lesbian couple. Eden Rogers and Brandy Welch were turned away by Miracle Hill Ministries, South Carolina’s largest state-contracted, federally-funded foster care agency.  The suit targets Trump foster care policies.Trump foster care policies

The lawsuit comes after the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) earlier this year granted a waiver to a faith-based adoption agency in South Carolina that allows it to continue turning away same-sex and non-Christian couples while receiving federal money.

The ACLU and Lambda Legal said the federal waiver means the administration is condoning discrimination, and the lawsuit said the use of religious eligibility criteria is unconstitutional.

“This practice harms vulnerable children by denying them access to the loving families they desperately need and limits opportunities for would-be foster parents to participate in the public child welfare system on the basis of religion and sexual orientation,” the lawsuit said.

According to the groups, in order to foster through Miracle Hill, a family must agree with Miracle Hill’s “doctrinal statement,” including “that God’s design for marriage is the legal joining of one man and one woman in a life-long covenant relationship.”

Miracle Hill has said they refer couples who do not meet their criteria to other agencies, but the lawsuit noted those other couples are offered only a limited set of options, and are excluded from the state’s largest agency with potentially the most support to offer adoptive couples.

“Trump’s HHS and South Carolina should not be permitting foster care agencies that receive taxpayer money to care for wards of the state to disqualify potential foster parents because they don’t conform to a religious litmus test,” said Currey Cook, counsel at Lambda Legal. “Agencies have no right to exclude families because of their faith or sexual orientation.”

Recent reports suggest the administration is planning to release a new rule as early as this summer that would make it easier for federally-funded foster care facilities to deny services to same-sex couples.

TheHill.com, May 30, 2019, by Matthew Weixal

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Same-Sex Couples Entitled to Equal Visa Rights, Hong Kong Court Says

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hong kong gay visa

Hong Kong’s top court ruled on Wednesday that committed same-sex couples living in the city had the same rights to spousal visas as married heterosexual couples, a decision that advocates said could have ripple effects in advancing gay rights.

The case, which was brought in 2014 by a British woman who wanted to join her partner, galvanized gay rights activists who said that Hong Kong had not been living up to its image as “Asia’s world city” by failing, until now, to recognize such rights. Banks and law firms had pushed for such recognition to lure and keep top talent in the financial and business center.hong kong gay visa

“This judgment is a milestone for Hong Kong and a watershed moment” for gay rights across Asia, Jan Wetzel, senior legal adviser at Amnesty International, said in a statement.

The woman at the center of the case, known in court papers only as QT, came to Hong Kong as a visitor in 2011, several months after entering a same-sex civil partnership in Britain with SS, a woman of South African and British nationality who had taken a job in Hong Kong. QT’s application for a dependent visa was refused on the basis that marriage is defined in Hong Kong as the union of one man and one woman.

Without such a visa, a foreign partner would be able to stay in Hong Kong only on a short-term tourist visa and would not be able to work or receive public services.

QT took the government to court, claiming discrimination based on sexual orientation. She lost in 2016 in the Court of First Instance, which said it would be unlawful for the government to accept same-sex partnerships “through the back door.” Last fall, the Court of Appeal ruled unanimously in her favor on the grounds that the visa policy was indirectly discriminatory. That decision was upheld in Wednesday’s unanimous ruling by the Court of Final Appeal.

In a statement, QT said the ruling “affirms what millions of us in this wonderful and vibrant city know to be true, that discrimination based on sexual orientation, like any other form of discrimination, is offensive and demeaning.”

by Jennifer Jett and Austin Ramzy, New York Times, July 4, 2018

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In landmark ruling, Italy recognizes gay couple as dads to surrogate babies

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Italy surrogacy

For the first time in Italy, two gay partners have been legally recognized as fathers of two surrogate children.

The children were born to a surrogate mother in the United States using artificial insemination, but both of the men will officially be named as its father – not just the parent who is biologically related.

Judges at Trento’s Court of Appeal made the historic ruling in line with the birth certificate issued in the US, which stated the dual paternity, according to the Article 29 website.international surrogacy

The website, which takes its name from the article in the Italian Constitution regarding family life, published the ruling on Tuesday, though the ruling was dated February 23rd.

In their decision, judges noted that the foreign birth certificate was valid because in Italy parental relationships are not determined solely by biological relationships.

“On the contrary,” they said, “One must consider the importance of parental responsibility, which is manifested in the conscious decision to have and care for the child.” 

Article 29 said the decision had “great significance”, as it is the first time an Italian court has ruled that a child has two fathers.

Surrogacy in Italy

Italian law prevents couples from using a surrogate mother, and in theory, anyone caught entering into a surrogacy arrangement faces up to two years in prison and a fine of up to a million euros.

Two years ago, a child was taken from its parents who had paid a surrogate mother in Ukraine 25,000 euros. The couple were charged with fraud and the child put up for adoption.

TheLocal.it, February 28, 2017

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Source: Time for Families