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Zero percent abuse rate reported in lesbian households
A long-term study of lesbian parents and their children has turned up a surprising statistic: there is no sexual or physical abuse. Not a single case. The abuse rate in the lesbian households studied was literally zero percent.
Compare that to the 26% of teens in the general population who report being abused by their parents, and lesbian moms seem pretty awesome.
That’s a great headline for queer mamas who are too frequently called on to defend their lifestyle and parenting choices, simply because of who they are. But can it possibly be accurate?
Children raised by gay and lesbian parents are as academically successful as their peers, a researcher at Standford has found.
Looking at Census data, the research team was able to find that children raised by same-sex couples had only very slightly lower academic success rates than kids in heterosexual households. Once they accounted for income and education, that gap disappeared.
Exciting news for gay and lesbian couples in California! The Wall Street Journal reports that San Francisco Federal Judge Vaughn Walker “lifted the stay on his ruling from last week, in which he found that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.” Meaning that gay marriage ceremonies can once again be performed in California, starting August 18th. In the six days between now and then, Proposition 8 supporters will surely appeal.
It’s heartening to note that, “Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown had urged Walker to permit same-sex marriages to resume.” The other vocal supporters of gay marriage? The children of gay parents. Continue reading »
"See, they told me this picture would be good for the campaign..."
Florida is the only state in the union that prohibits homosexuals from adopting children. (The law banning gay adoption is currently being protested in the court of appeals.) Many states do not support second-parent adoption among gay couples, but even Mormon-filled Utah allows homosexual individuals to adopt. Florida attorney general (and Republican gubernatorial candidate) Bill McCollum not only supports the gay adoption ban, he wants to bar gay people from serving as foster parents as well. The Orlando Sentinel says they’re “breathlessly awaiting his next attempt to dehumanize Florida’s gays and lesbians.”
SheWired reports McCollum actually paid “disgraced ex-gay leader George Rekers to testify in support of the state’s law that bans adoptions by gay people.” McCollum cites his religious beliefs as motivating his political decisions, saying, “I really do not think that we should have homosexuals guiding our children.” Continue reading »
There is “no justification for denying lesbian and gay prospective adoptive parents the opportunity to adopt children.” So say the authors of a study published in the August issue of the journal Applied Developmental Science, titled, ”Parenting and Child Development in Adoptive Families: Does Parental Sexual Orientation Matter?”
Researchers followed “preschool-age children adopted at birth by 27 lesbian couples, 29 gay male couples and 50 heterosexual couples,” and found that regardless of the sexual orientation of their parents, adopted boys and girls exhibited age-appropriate, “typical” behavior. One can infer from these findings that being raised by gays doesn’t make a child gay, which is most likely the concern of conservatives in Florida, Mississippi, Utah and Arkansas, where laws are either on the books or being proposed to prevent homosexuals from adopting children. Continue reading »
The path to parenthood used to be fairly narrow: get married, get knocked up, gestate for 9 months and Viola! You have a baby.
That’s a great way to get a kid if you’re married, to someone of the opposite sex, you both want kids and you don’t have fertility problems stopping you from getting them.
In other words, the old-fashioned approach leaves a lot of people out of the parenting party. Modern technology has done an end-run around the limits of the birds and the bees. Fertility treatments give us the possibility of making babies with a little help from a variety of donors: donors of sperm, of eggs, of wombs.
This leads to some pretty strange arrangements. In Modern Love this week, writer Jerry Mahoney writes about his decision to create a family with his boyfriend, Drew. Their search for the perfect egg donor led them to Drew’s sister. The twins born of that arrangement are now ten months old. They look a bit like both their dad’s, and a bit like their aunt. They have the beginnings of a secret language, and a very happy raising them.
Amidst the powerful love story of a sister willing to give anything to her much-adored brother, Mahoney asks questions no one knows the answer to yet: what will it be like for her to always be the kids’ aunt, and never their mom? What will it be like for the kids?
Probably just fine.
The Chicago Tribune reported last week that a woman, identified as Wendy, “who raised two adopted children for years in a same-sex relationship is not considered their parent under Wisconsin law,” according to the District 4 Court of Appeals. The court ruled Thursday that Wendy’s former partner Liz is the only legal parent of the children because their adoptions were processed under Liz’s name. ”Same-sex couples do not have adoption rights in Wisconsin, meaning that only one of them can be considered the legal parent,” according to the Tribune.
As you can imagine, this decision is crushing for Wendy, who was a stay-at-home mom to the children for seven years. In response to the judge’s ruling, Wendy said, “I shouldn’t have to fight to parent my kids who I’ve been parenting 24-7. For me to read in the court documents that I’m not a parent is disturbing and troubling.” She is considering taking her case to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
This ruling is in line with a recent decision by a judge in the UK, who determined the non-biological lesbian mother of a ten-year-old boy is not his legal parent. It does not, however, follow the precedent just set by the U.S. government allowing the partners of gay biological and adoptive parents who have an in loco parentis relationship with their partner’s child to care for said child under the Family and Medical Leave Act. The FMLA ruling does not indicate that non-biological gay parents are the legal parents of a child they care for, but that they have a legal right to care for their child. If gay parents have a legal right to care for a child that is ostensibly their child via the aforementioned in loco parentis relationship, then why, provided that they are responsible and loving parents, is it so difficult for non-biological/adoptive gay parents to be granted the same parental rights after a split? It just doesn’t make sense. Continue reading »
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