(Originally published in Bay Windows (PDF link), July 24, 2008)
For many same-sex couples, one of the primary motivations for getting married is to gain legal protections for our children. Nancy Polikoff, professor of law at American University Washington College of Law, cautions us, however, that we should not tie parenthood and marriage too tightly. “For the last forty years,” she says, “the development of the law has been to equalize the status of children born to married and unmarried parents. . . . We were able to make enormous gains on behalf of same-sex parents and their children in that context, without marriage on the radar screen at all.”
While marriage should be an option for all, she believes, it should not be a requirement. Opposite-sex couples have their parental status protected whether or not they are married, she notes, and by and large their children turn out fine. Research has shown, too, that children of same-sex couples have also been doing well with unmarried parents. “That’s what we say in every custody case, that’s what we say every time somebody says we shouldn’t be able to adopt children.”
In Polikoff ’s Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law (Beacon, 2008), she further explores why marriage is not sufficient and should not be necessary to protect all families. She admits, however, that the book is “somewhat unusual” for her in that it focuses on couples and adult relationships and discusses parenting only as a subset of that.
She has spent most of her 30-year career, however, on issues specific to lesbian and gay parents and their children. In her last year of undergraduate work, 1972, she met the first person identified to her as a lesbian mother. The woman had just lost custody of her children after coming out and divorcing her husband. When Polikoff entered law school, her first law review article (published with Nan Hunter) was about lesbian mothers in custody cases. Her interest in the topic has never wavered, she says, although she has worked on other issues. Becoming a mother herself and watching many of her friends and colleagues doing the same has reinforced her commitment.
The courts, not the legislatures, are where we have achieved the most rights for same-sex parents, she observes, saying, “The whole body of law affecting lesbian mothers in custody cases, developing second-parent adoption, developing de facto parenthood . . . all of the ground we gained over decades in that area came out of courts because judges who hear family court matters often care about the well being of individual children and they’re not in a political hotspot.”
She also points to a “huge” recent decision by the Social Security Administration (SSA) in June that said a child could receive the disability benefits of his non-biological mother, who was in a Vermont civil union with his biological mother. As long as the state in which they lived recognized the parenthood, the SSA would, too, regardless of the Defense of Marriage Act.
Unfortunately, says Polikoff, that ruling won’t affect other federal benefits, because there is no one place that defines a parent-child relationship for all of federal law. A non-biological mother cannot claim her partner’s biological child for the earned income tax credit unless she does a second-parent adoption, for example, because the tax codes define “child” more narrowly.
The federal Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is one place that defines a parent-child relationship more broadly, based on whether someone is raising the child. Polikoff would like to see that definition used for all federal purposes, but knows of no movement to make that happen.
Some local jurisdictions are making progress in that direction, though. Washington, D.C. passed a law defining de facto parents last year, Polikoff says. On July 11, 2008, she herself submitted testimony to city hearings on further changes to its parentage laws that would expand recognition of non-biological parents.
She warns, however, as do most LGBT-rights groups, that even where there is recognition of marriage, civil union, or domestic partnerships, couples should not rely on this as the basis for a legal parent-child relationship when dealing with other jurisdictions, including the federal government. A second-parent adoption is the only way for a non-biological parent to secure her rights everywhere.
Even that may not go unchallenged. “The worst cases,” says Polikoff, “are where it’s the biological mother herself who’s trying to say that a state should not recognize a second-parent adoption that she participated in in another state,” in order to keep an ex-partner from having custody or visitation. She urges that people exert community pressure to stop such people from making these anti-gay arguments in court: “That is how we get these bad decisions that say a child only has one mother when in fact, she has two.”
Such actions have a personal dimension for Polikoff. She was her daughter’s only legal parent when she and her partner separated. “I’d like to think I’m a poster child for how to handle a split up in that context . . . in a way that continues and protects the child’s relationship with both parents. We actually did her other mother’s second-parent adoption years after we split up. . . . I’m sensitive to the feelings people have in those situations . . . but I believe that if you create a two-parent family, you should not under any circumstances act as though the child has only one parent. I didn’t, and I expect other people not to also.” If Polikoff continues her work, people may someday not even have that option.
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I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be speaking at BlogHer Boston, part of the BlogHer series of conferences for and about women bloggers, on October 11.
Founder Elisa Camahort was kind enough to invite me to speak at the Closing Keynote, “Change Your Future; Change the World.” That sounds like the tagline for a Terminator or X Files movie, but here’s the official description:
Blogging and social media have tremendous transformational power. Power at the individual level, but the power of community too. Perhaps most thrilling of all is how often bloggers observe that personal power . . . and decide to use it to create community, and ultimately change the world. Lisa Stone moderates this conversation with some Boston area women who are right where the rubber meets the road when it comes to enacting changes large and small, personal and global, including Dana Rudolph and Isabel Walcott Hillborn.

If you’re planning to be at the conference, drop me a note so we can say hi.
If you have any thoughts about the topic, too, please leave a comment. Are we changing the world with our blogs? In what ways?
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A Zogby Poll found that more than six in 10 U.S. voters say they could support an openly gay candidate for president of the U.S.
U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), chair of the House Financial Services Committee, is looking into a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) policy that disqualifies domestic partners from receiving coverage available to married opposite-sex couples. The FDIC restricts its bank deposit insurance protection for revocable trust accounts to a list of “qualifying” beneficiaries, which does not include domestic partners.
A former Army Special Forces colonel testified in federal court that she lost a job offer as a terrorism research analyst at the Library of Congress after she told her future boss that she was transitioning from male to female.
In “we could have predicted this” news, senior members of Concerned Women for America (CWA) have condemned Hallmark’s new greeting cards for same-sex weddings or commitment ceremonies, saying, “Now parents will need to steer their kids from Hallmark’s section of the greeting card aisle and away from its previously heart-warming movies for fear that they too will push homosexual messages.” Blegh.
In Arkansas, supporters of a proposal to ban unmarried cohabiting couples from adopting or fostering children turned in another 31,012 signatures to try and get it on the November ballot. Under state law, they had been given an extra 30 days to gather signatures after their initial submission fell short. A group opposing the ban says it will petition the state Supreme Court to stop the measure going on the ballot.
Opponents of marriage equality have raised more cash in support of California’s Proposition 8 than LGBT advocates have raised to defeat it. The Connecticut-based Knights of Columbus, a Catholic service organization, donated $1 million to Prop. 8 supporters last week, which helped give Prop. 8 supporters an edge.
More than two dozen couples in Miami-Dade County, Florida registered under the new domestic-partnership law.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) will not renew an executive order prohibiting employment discrimination against gay and lesbian state workers when it expires today. It was instituted in 2004 by his Democratic predecessor. Jindal says he doesn’t want to create “additional special categories or special rights.”
The Coquille Indian Tribe, based on the southern Oregon coast, adopted a law recognizing marriage of same-sex couples. It is believed to be the first Native American tribe to do so. Although Oregon’s state constitution bans such marriages, the tribe is a federally recognized sovereign nation. Two women, one a member of the tribe and one not, already plan to marry under the law next spring.
In the ongoing and continuing and perpetual saga of separated lesbian moms Janet Jenkins and Lisa Miller, a judge dismissed Miller’s latest attempt to deny visitation rights to Jenkins. He agreed with lawyers for the ACLU, who said lower courts and the Virginia Supreme Court already had ruled in Jenkins’ favor.

Around the world:

Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Sharon Bowles has drafted a written declaration for the recognition of U.K. civil partnerships (CPs) in other EU states. A French pacte civil de solidarité (PACS) is fully recognised in Britain, but France does not recognise U.K. CP’s.
The Argentine government granted same-sex couples the right to collect the pensions of their deceased partners.
Brazil’s lower house of Congress withdrew a measure giving same-sex couples the right to adopt because federal law doesn’t recognize same-sex civil unions.
Canada may have legalized marriage for same-sex couples, but same-sex non-biological parents are still not automatically recognized as parents, as a divorce and custody case in Toronto shows. “A man in a heterosexual relationship who is not the biological father has greater rights than a lesbian woman in the same factual circumstance. . . . There have been court rulings that declared the male to be the father without a biological connection to the child, even when the couple separated before birth.”
We may be catching a glimpse of modern China during the Olympics, but gay men and lesbians in Beijing still live largely in the shadows, as the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
The Ugandan AIDS Commission Chief has warned the education ministry that homosexuality is “rife” in schools, and they should stamp it out, aided by parents and guardians.

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I don’t often post about purely local events, but since this one has ties to national history, here goes:
Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts, the site of the first Thanksgiving, will host “Out at Plimoth Plantation” on September 13. The event will “offer a glimpse into the lives of 17th century LGBT pilgrims and Native Americans,” according to Bay Windows. The day includes two historical presentations and a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.
The Plantation’s PR manager, Jennifer Monac, told Bay Windows, “At Plimoth Plantation we feel that history is everybody’s story,” and stressed that the event was meant to be a family affair: “We want same-sex parent families to feel that they can come with their children for a place that’s safe for them to be who they are for the day, explore the sites and really enjoy it as a family experience.”
This isn’t the American history I grew up with—and that’s a good thing.
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“Where would an openly gay or lesbian, bisexual or transgender appointee or elected official make the most difference during the next administration?”
That’s the question the folks at Logo’s 365gay News posed to me and a number of others, including GLSEN director Kevin Jennings, former GLAAD director Joan Garry, former and current HRC directors Elizabeth Birch and Joe Solmonese, PFLAG director Jody Huckaby, furniture maven Mitchell Gold, and actor Rue McClanahan, as well as bloggers like Good As You’s Jeremy Hooper and Queerty’s Andrew Belonsky. See our answers here. I’m honored to be in such company, and happy to see such a diverse set of answers.
Logo asked the question to help celebrate today’s launch of 365gay News, “the first-ever, multi-platform, on-air, online news hub for the LGBT audience.” The hub will include 365gay.com, a long-running LGBT news site, as well as a half-hour magazine-style LGBT news show produced by CBS News, airing on Logo’s cable TV channel Thursdays at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT.
This won’t, luckily, conflict with out lesbian Rachel Maddow’s new show on MSNBC, which will run weeknights at 9:00 p.m. ET.. This means you can wallow in as much news coverage by and for LGBT people as you can handle (at least if the kids go to sleep on time).
Have your own answer to Logo’s question? Leave a comment.
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Last week, Helen and I talked about Olympic athletes who are mothers. This week, we turn to the mothers of athletes, bringing you some of our favorite stories of supportive parents at the Beijing Games. We add an LGBT twist by revealing which character from an LGBT-themed show Michael Phelps’ mom reminded us of, and pointing out an unintended double entendre about beach volleyball players Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh.
Online Videos by Veoh.com
(If the Veoh video above doesn’t work for you, try it at Dailymotion.)
Brought to you in partnership with After Ellen.
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The folks at Community Marketing have launched a survey for their second Gay and Lesbian Consumer Index. I’d like to encourage all of you to take it and contribute your perspectives as parents (or prospective parents) in our community. All information is confidential and will not be sold to third parties or used for marketing purposes by Consumer Marketing.
Last year’s Index was the largest LGBT consumer study ever conducted, with over 22,000 participants, 46% of whom were lesbians. Unlike many lesbian and gay surveys, this one separates the responses of gay men and lesbians, providing useful insight into the differences between these parts of our community. I’ll quickly add that yes, the bisexual and transgender parts of our community should also be included in surveys like these, and I hope they will be in the future.
I know many of us abhor advertising, but I firmly believe our consumer spending has driven much progress in LGBT rights. Corporate America is, by and large, far ahead of the U.S. Government in offering anti-discrimination protections and recognizing our relationships, parental status, and healthcare needs. Gathering demographic and marketing information is the first step in expanding corporate awareness of our marketing power. Complete the survey while you’re watching the Olympics, and it will be painless.
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With increasing coverage of LGBT parents in the media today, it is surprising LGBT grandparents are still largely invisible. I suspect this has much to do with the frequent media focus on lesbian couples with cute little tots or funny stories about finding sperm, or, for occasional variety, gay men searching for surrogates. The idea that LGBT people have been having kids long enough to become grandparents is foreign to most people, as is the concept of anyone coming out after having kids.
Alice Fisher and Michael Connolly of the Stonewall Communities Lifelong Learning Institute, the first LGBT LLI in the world, hope to change that. They ran a course in 2007 for LGBT grandparents, and wrote up their experiences for this month’s The Older LEARNer, a publication of the American Society on Aging. They discuss the changing role of grandparents in today’s society as well as particular issues for LGBT grandparents. One positive excerpt:
For the most part, we have not found the issue of how and when to come out to grandchildren to be a big issue for the youngest generation. We are open and low-key. . . . Grandchildren help choose—or invent—terms of endearment for the nonbiological grandparent. Can grandchildren keep track of five or seven grandparents? Yes, we found. Better than we can.

It’s a good article on a topic that deserves more recognition. I’ll be bringing you more voices of LGBT grandparents, in cooperation with Stonewall Communities, in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.
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A reader just wrote to ask me if I knew of any LGBT-inclusive children’s books in Spanish, especially for the very youngest tots. She knew of Antonio’s Card/La Tarjeta de Antonio, by Rigoberto Gonzalez and Cecilia Alvarez, but felt that was a little beyond the age of her own child.
I’ll add the bilingual English/Spanish Best Best Colors: Los mejores colores, by Eric Hoffman and Celeste Henriquez, but that, too, is more of a preschool/early elementary book rather than a toddler book. The classic Heather Has Two Mommies, again for the same age range, also exists as Paula tiene dos mamas, but I’ve never liked Heather as a starter book for kids since it focuses on a child being teased about her family. That’s important to explain at some point, but can also create fears where there were none.
For toddlers (and up), all I could find was Todd Parr’s It’s Okay to Be Different in Spanish as Esta Bien Ser Diferente. The book is not LGBT-specific, but includes depictions of two moms and two dads with the captions (in the English version) “It’s okay to have different Moms [Dads].”
This is a pretty meager showing. Anyone know of any other Spanish-language children’s books (originals or translations from another language) that are LGBT-inclusive? Although my reader was interested in ones for toddlers, leave a comment if you know of any for any age child.
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Lest you think I’ve become entirely obsessed with the Olympics (almost, but not quite), here’s a roundup of what’s happening in LGBT parenting news:

The California Supreme Court ruled today that a group of doctors cannot use their religion as a legal excuse for denying a lesbian patient infertility treatment. Lambda Legal reports, “In a unanimous decision, the justices ruled that Guadalupe ‘Lupita’ Benitez was entitled to be treated like other patients with her same health problem, and that constitutional protections for religious liberty do not excuse unlawful discrimination.”
Conservative activists gathered outside a California high school to rally support for Proposition 8, which would ban marriage of same-sex couples. They are apparently upset that the state’s Teachers Association donated $250,000 to fight the ban.
Canada.com has a good interview with the mother of a trans son, in which she says, “I haven’t lost a daughter. I have gained a confident, strong level-headed son of whom I am immensely proud.” The article also mentions Families In TRANSition: A Resource Guide for Parents of Trans Youth (PDF link), which seems similar in spirit to The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals, which I reviewed last month, albeit with a Canadian bent.
The U.K’s Guardian looks at some of the different approaches to transgender children who want to transition.
A lesbian couple in New Zealand responds to a statement from their country’s Catholic bishops urging voters not to support parties that approve of same-sex parenting. The bishops say children need both a mother and father, because “each contributes differently to their development.” The women, among other good points, make the obvious one that any two parents will contribute differently to their children.
Two adult children of same-sex parents tried to meet with Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley to explain what marriage equality would mean to their families. The governor, who has a mixed record on LGBT rights, declined.
To Form a More Perfect Union points out an interesting article from the Corvallis Gazette Times on whether it is legal for an Oregon employer to ask an employee to present a copy of her marriage license before granting parental leave under the Oregon Family Leave Act, if she is otherwise eligible.
In Wisconsin, billboards in Milwaukee and Waukesha counties are featuring same-sex couples with toddlers and teens, gay seniors, and gay singles. The “Gay Neighbors” campaign is funded by Cream City Foundation and aims “to break down stereotypes, share family stories and bring attention to important issues.”

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