November is National Adoption Month and one organization is making an effort to reach out to everyone who is interested in adopting, regardless of sexual orientation. With so many changes occurring within our country, and more acceptance of the LGBT community taking place around the the country, it’s only fitting that when it comes to the topic of adoption, everyone should be included within the discussion. Many states still have laws against same-sex couple adoption, or at least make it more difficult for a couple to adopt, although there are ways to work around each system. Single parent adoptions are on the rise, and of course, there are parenting partnerships, where two individuals in a non-romantic relationship raise a child together, under their own personal terms, which are beginning to become more and more common. Parenting partnerships are limitless and adoption is definitely one of the many options for people considering entering a co-parenting agreement.
More information on RaiseAChild.US and their campaign, “Let Love Define Family,” can be found below. (source)
In an expanded effort to outreach to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, RaiseAChild.US is launching a national campaign entitled “Let Love Define Family” and is hosting special events in a five-city tour in mid-November and early December for National Adoption Month. The events will be held in Chicago (November 18), Los Angeles (November 20), Kansas City (November 21), New York City (December 3), and San Francisco (December 5). The evening events will feature an LGBT parent panel and actor/comedian Alec Mapa performing an excerpt from his one-man show “Baby Daddy” about adopting his son from the foster care system.
RaiseAChild.US believes all children deserve a safe, loving, and permanent home. The Los Angeles-based nonprofit encourages the LGBT community to build families through fostering and adoption to serve the needs of the 400,000 children in our nation’s foster care system. Recognizing that many prospective parents fear they will not be accepted by foster and adoption agencies because of their age, marital status, or other reasons, RaiseAChild.US provides its services free to anyone who wants to foster or adopt from the foster care system by helping them navigate the system through RaiseAChild.US’s unique Parent Advocacy program.
“The upcoming holiday season is a special time when people think about family and family building,” says RaiseAChild.US founder and CEO Rich Valenza, who adopted a five-year-old girl and six-year-old boy from foster care before founding the organization. “At RaiseAChild.US, we are concerned year-round about the hundreds of thousands of children in foster care. Our goal is to find safe and loving homes for these children and we know that non-traditional family formations are another solid and proven answer to this national crisis.”
Actress Sherri Saum, who stars in ABC Family’s groundbreaking hit drama series “The Fosters,” has lent her support by recording radio PSAs that will air in Chicago, San Francisco, and in Spanish and English in Los Angeles. Saum and her co-star Maia Mitchell each participated in an interview for the RaiseAChild.US “Let Love Define Family” series in Huffington Post Gay Voices. Actor comedian Alec Mapa participated in media interviews to promote RaiseAChild.US’s work in the Advocate.com and in the Chicago Tribune. In addition to radio and television PSAs, the organization’s media campaign includes transit ads in Chicago, and streetlight banners in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Long Beach, California.
In what seems to be a never-ending court case, it appears as if the current judge hearing the Kansas sperm donor case is about to make a ruling. The Kansas Department for Children and Families filed the case in October of 2012 against a man who donated sperm to a same-sex couple. The women had posted an ad on the internet seeking a sperm donor. After the child was born, the women split up and the parent who remained with the child full time applied for state assistance. This is when the state refused to help and went after the sperm donor as they believed he was responsible as the biological father. The three technically didn’t follow a Kansas statute that specifically deals with sperm donors.
The statute, KSA 23-2208(f), says, “The donor of semen provided to a licensed physician for use in artificial insemination of a woman other than the donor’s wife is treated in law as if he were not the birth father of a child thereby conceived, unless agreed to in writing by the donor and the woman.”
Attorneys representing the state of Kansas and William Marotta presented arguments to a Shawnee County District Court judge Friday in the Craigslist case, which focuses on whether Marotta is legally considered a sperm donor or the father of a 4-year-old girl.
At the end of a nearly hourlong hearing, Judge Mary Mattivi said she would issue a written ruling addressing motions both sides have filed seeking summary judgment in their favor. A summary judgment is a determination made by a court without a full trial.
Marotta is fighting the action. He says he didn’t intend to be the child’s father and signed a contract waiving his parental rights and responsibilities while agreeing to donate sperm in a plastic cup to Schreiner and Angela Bauer, who was then her lesbian partner. (source)
California is once again in the spotlight with news that Governor Brown has has signed legislation to allow a child to have three legal parents. The new legislation was created to cover certain situations in which a same-sex couple has a child with an opposite-sex biological parent. Of course, this is causing all sorts of controversy from proponents of the “traditional” family, but with the law set to effect at the beginning of next year, California will now be the fifth state to pass such a law.
The bill was partly prompted by a complicated custody battle in 2011 involving a child of lesbian parents who was placed in foster care after one parent ended up in jail and the other in the hospital. The child’s biological father was initially granted parental responsibilities by a court, but the decision was later reversed after an appeals court concluded a child could not have more than two parents.
The bill was sponsored by the National Center for Lesbian Rights and by the Children’s Advocacy Institute at San Diego School of Law.
Opponents of the new law had the following to say:
“Once we started trying to normalize parenting by same-sex couples and redefine marriage to remove the dual gender requirement, we had to end up with triple parenting,” says Jennifer Roback Morse, founder of the Ruth Institute, which seeks to promote traditional marriage.
Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, says, “This is, in the long run, going to be a mistake.”
He adds, “The ones who are going to pay the price are not the activists, but it’s going to be children, who will see greater conflict and indecision over matters involving their well-being.”
So what do you think? Does this law make sense for certain situations and certain families?
A critically acclaimed documentary of this year is continuing to screen around the country and is currently set to screen at the Philadelphia Q-Fest and Outfest – Los Angeles. TWO documents the 12-year journey of songwriter Desmond Child and his partner of 24-years, Curtis Shaw and how they connected with the woman who carried their twin sons. During this time of progression for the LGBT community within the United States, real life stories like this one help show the world that families come in all different forms.
Father Curtis Shaw wrote more about the film for Huffington Post:
Our emotional film, which is narrated by Roman and Nyro (11 years old), features a cameo appearance by their godfather Jon Bon Jovi and by family friend Deepak Chopra. TWO won the Audience Favorite Award for U.S. Documentary at the Nashville Film Festival this past April where it played to two sold-out audiences of movie-lovers, media and friends, and also won the HBO ‘Home Town Hero Award’ for director Heather Winters at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. From preconception through the boys’ first 10 years, TWO is the personal and powerful story of how our lives became inextricably woven together in magical and unexpected ways. TWO is testament to the universal power and ultimate triumph of love — that it is love that makes a family, affirming modern families may be modern in their making, but timelessly human at their core. We’re just living our lives day by day, having the same ups and downs as any other family, but we have an interesting perspective… our kids don’t see any difference between our family and their friend’s families. We know that all parents want the same things for their children… to be happy, to live a life full of purpose and full of compassion, kindness and love.
Roman and Nyro were born in Miami Beach, Fla., but now call Nashville, Tenn., home. My partner, Desmond Child is one of the world’s most successful songwriters (‘Livin on a Prayer,’ ‘Waking Up in Vegas,’ ‘Dude Looks Like a Lady’ and ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’) and can really choose to work anywhere, but Nashville is where we’ve chosen to live and where we’ve built a supportive, diverse community of friends. Even when we’ve ventured out of our protected ‘circle of safety’ into the local youth-sporting community, we have discovered that the people here support diversity and recognize us as a family as legitimate as any other.
The Disney Channel is currently casting to fill a role of a their first LGBT characters. This is monumental for the company who has typically distanced themselves from anything that could prove to be controversial. TV Guide reports that a 2014 episode of Good Luck Charlie will include a lesbian couple:
In the storyline, parents Amy and Bob Duncan (Leigh-Allyn Baker and Eric Allan Kramer) set up a playdate for preschooler Charlie (Mia Talerico) and one of her new friends. When the kid arrives, the Duncans learn that Charlie’s pal has two moms. That’s fine, but the potential new friendship is put to the test as one mom chats with Amy, and the other is stuck listening to Bob’s dull stories.
The playdate is actually the secondary story in the episode, as much of the action will center on Teddy (Bridgit Mendler) and her best friend Ivy, as Ivy prepares to head off to college.
But Disney Channel understands the groundbreaking nature of featuring a same-sex couple on one of its sitcoms and took extra care in crafting the episode. “This particular storyline was developed under the consultancy of child development experts and community advisors,” a Disney Channel spokesperson says. “Like all Disney Channel programming, it was developed to be relevant to kids and families around the world and to reflect themes of diversity and inclusiveness.
Producers are currently casting the couple, with production set for next week. Because the episode will be a part of Good Luck Charlie‘s final season, the characters are only expected to appear in this one episode. Regardless, this is a huge step forward for LGBT visibility in children’s programming.
