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Showing posts with label Adoption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adoption. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

(SHOWcase) Family Untied!


After coming out as a lesbian and losing custody of her two young children in the late 1970’s, Ronni Sanlo turned her life into building community through her personal, political and professional struggles. Narrated by Meredith Baxter (Family Ties), FAMILY UNTIED is told through the life experiences of activist Ronni Sanlo and actress Meredith Baxter, documenting the parallel journeys of their very different lives.

The film offers insight into pieces of the LGBT historical puzzle, from the anti-gay campaign started by Anita Bryant in 1977, to coming out late in life on national television in 2012. FAMILY UNTIED portrays a story of love and loss, family and solitude, acting and activism.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

(MY View) Six Degrees of Savage!

by Dan Bucatinsky

I'm in the car, and my 7-year-old daughter is fighting with my 5-year-old son over a game on my iPhone called "Subway Surfer," which I made the mistake of surrendering to them in order to break up another fight that started when she told him that he's "not handsome, just cute" -- ironic given the fact that she'd spelled "cute" with a Q on her last spelling test before the holidays. His ego bruised, tears exploded from his eyes. Apologies were demanded and resisted.

"I didn't say a bad thing!" said my daughter.

"She hurt my feeleeengs," said my boy.

They were both right. And wrong. And hateful. And, OK, they're "qute." And this hideously interminable winter break from school -- like Richard III, I feel, this winter of our discontent -- is chugging way too slowly toward its end. The question pops into my head for the eleventy-millionth time: "Really? You had to have kids?" Why?

Friday, October 21, 2011

FAMILY LOVE: Nation Sees 'Stratospheric' Increase in Adoptions by Gay Couples!

Gill
Photo via Towleroad
Adoptions by gay couples have nearly tripled in the last 10 years, the AP reports:


About 21,740 same-sex couples had adopted children in 2009, up from 6,477 in 2000, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. About 32,571 adopted children were living with same-sex couples in 2009, up from 8,310 in 2000. The figures are an analysis of newly released Census Bureau estimates.

The New York-based Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute released a report Thursday culminating a four-year project surveying 158 gay and lesbian parents and their experience with the adoption process. Their researchers found the highest number of homosexuals adopted children from Massachusetts, California, New York and Texas.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Sorry, No Gay Adoption in Virginia!

Virginia's Board of Social Services voted late yesterday against a measure that could have let gay couples adopt children in the state. The board voted 7 to 2 to continue to allow faith-based organizations to screen prospective parents' religious and moral beliefs. Currently, discrimation based on national origin, race, and color is banned; the rejected overhaul would have additionally banned discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender, age, religion, political beliefs, disability, and family status.

Currently, only married couples or single men and women can adopt in Virginia, and there is some disagreement over whether the proposed overhaul would have actually allowed unmarried couples to adopt, the Washington Post reports. Even so, the president of a national gay-rights organization said, “Today, the State Board of Social Services told the 1,300 children already waiting for a loving, forever home that they’ll have to wait longer."

Friday, April 8, 2011

Arkansas Court Clears Way for Gay Adoptions

(AP) – The Arkansas Supreme Court Thursday rejected a voter-approved initiative that barred gay couples and other unmarried people living together from serving as adoptive or foster parents. Associate Justice Robert L. Brown wrote for the court that the law would encroach on adults' right to privacy in the bedroom. "Act 1 directly and substantially burdens the privacy rights of `opposite-sex and same-sex individuals' who engage in private, consensual sexual conduct in the bedroom by foreclosing their eligibility to foster or adopt children," Brown wrote.


The law effectively banned gay and lesbian couples from adopting or fostering children because they can't legally marry in Arkansas. It would have been extended to unmarried heterosexual couples who live together. Voters approved the measure in 2008 after the state Supreme Court overturned a Human Services Department policy preventing gay men and lesbians from serving as foster parents in 2006. The ACLU sued on behalf of a group of families.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Anti-gay groups: Virginia to introduce "mandatory gay adoption"!

Maggie Gallagher, the anti-gay marriage activist and columnist, has breaking news out of Virginia. Soon, she reports, the commonwealth will introduce mandatory gay adoption. That's right: Everyone in Virgina will belong to gay and lesbian couples. Or something, writes Alex Pareene on Salon:

Rep. Anthony Weiner may have joked about "mandatory gay marriage," at the WH Correspondents dinner, but amazingly, Virginia’s Dept. of Social Services is proposing new regulations that would require all adoption and foster-care agencies to do gay adoptions.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

French gay couples condemn discriminatory laws!

Gay couples in France are resorting to drastic measures to have children, according to campaigners.

Couples were resorting to costly and legally precarious methods, said Philippe Rollandin, spokesman for APGL, the largest association representing homosexual parents in France, reports The Guardian.

Campaigners are also unhappy that the children of homosexual couples have less protection than the offspring of heterosexual pairs if one parent dies or the couple separates.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Senator Gillibrand to Introduce LGBT-Friendly Adoption Nondiscrimination Bill!

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has confirmed to the Washington Blade that at some point in the future she will introduce legislation that, if enacted, would make it illegal to discriminate against gay couples on the basis of their sexuality when they come to adopt a child.

However, the Senator, who has been an outspoken advocate for such LGBT rights causes as the repeal of DADT and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), declined to say when she'd make the legislation public and is also keeping the exact nature of the bill under wraps for now.

Asked by the Washington Blade whether she'd introduce the legislation, Gillibrand replied, "Yes."

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Surrogacy bill: Needed changes or exploitation?

Because Washington state outlaws paying a surrogate mother to have a baby, some couples with fertility problems go to Oregon or California where they can hire women to carry a child, Details in the Spokane Spokesman.

Because state law also presumes that the birth mother has parental rights, some gay and lesbian couples have to go through legal adoption, even if one of them is a biological parent.

A bill in the Legislature would change both of those laws, and allow the state to recognize that not all families look like “Leave it to Beaver,” said the proposal’s sponsor, Rep. Jamie Pederson, D-Seattle (who had go to California Twice to Have a baby). Laws against paying a surrogate mother have never been enforced, he added.

But HB 1267 would also turn surrogate mothers, and the babies they have, into commodities, opponents told the Senate Government Operations Committee Tuesday. The state doesn’t allow people to sell kidneys or other organs, and shouldn’t allow surrogate mothers to receive money for having a child…

Friday, February 25, 2011

Mike Huckabee Says He Doesn't Want Gays to Parent, Marry, or Serve in the Military

CNN's John King talks to presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee about his new book, A Simple Government, leading off with this excerpt:

"I believe that we're in denial about potential problems as we see more and more homosexual couples raising families. Essentially, these are experiments to see how well children will fare in such same-sex households. It will be years before we know whether or not our little guinea pigs turn out to be good at marriage and parenthood."

Huckabee goes on to say that the government should legislate "traditional" marriage and that gays should be kept out of the military

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Gay Belgian Couple to Reunite with Son after Two Years of surrogacy Nightmare!

Laurent Ghilain and Peter Meurrens, a Belgian couple living in Southern France, have been separated from their son Samuel, whom they had through a surrogate, for two years and three months because the Belgian embassy in Kiev refused to issue Samuel a passport because of restrictive surrogacy laws in Belgium. Samuel has been living in a Ukrainian orphanage while they fight for his release.

Now, good news: The long and painful separation now seems about to come to an end. After more than two years of denying Samuel a passport, the Belgian Foreign Ministry issued him one Monday. He should arrive in Brussels within days.

The ministry's decision came after a Belgian court finally issued a ruling in the couple's favor last week, saying bureaucrats had committed numerous errors.

Samuel is scheduled to arrive in Brussels in a few days.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

MY VIEW: End the Hate in Florida!


By Tony Plakas



Florida is the only state that still bans all gay men and lesbians from adopting children, although they can serve as foster parents. Even though the ban is most likely to be overturned in the courts soon, the Lake Worth City Commission was correct last week to unanimously direct state legislators to overturn the 1977 law that prohibits children in need from being adopted by gays.

Last year, a Monroe County circuit judge declared that the 1977 law "arose out of unveiled expressions of bigotry." Anita Bryant, a woman who once served our nation orange juice, began using her prominence to sell fear, waging a successful campaign that brands her to this day as an early and vocal opponent of homosexuality. However, few are aware that the groundwork to make Florida's government unfriendly to gays and lesbians was laid more than a decade before her rise and fall.

The 1963 Florida Legislature mandated a Legislative Investigation Committee to report on "the extent of infiltration into agencies supported by state funds by practicing homosexuals, the effect thereof on said agencies and the public, and the policies of various state agencies in dealing therewith."

In January 1964, taxpayer money was used to print and distribute a dark and ugly pamphlet, "Homosexuality and Citizenship in Florida," "to be of value to all citizens; for every parent and every individual concerned with the moral climate of the state." The late Palm Beach Circuit Judge Marvin Mounts gave a rare copy of the document to me before he retired so I would always remember how far we have come. But it has been more a reminder of how far we have to go and how much we need to educate.

The booklet is a veritable Nazi-like propaganda piece, complete with obscene pictures and a "glossary of homosexual terms and deviant acts" that serves as a list of epithets that unquestionably intertwine homosexuality with pedophilia. Most of the bibliography cites research stemming from the Holocaust, and the leaflet ends with recommendations to "radically reduce the number of homosexuals preying upon the youth of Florida."

And it continues to this day. In January, a bill filed in the Florida House and Senate would revise the state's financial incentive program to provide tax credits to the film industry if filmmakers avoid certain subject matters, including the depiction of "nontraditional family values."

The time has come for the Florida Legislature to address continuing policies that demonize the gay community and atone for nearly a half a century of state-sponsored bigotry. However, it doesn't look like it is going to stop anytime soon, particularly when so many wish to gain politically for their stances on homosexuality.

Tony Plakas is CEO of Compass Inc., a gay and lesbian outreach center in Lake Worth. E-mail him at homerule@post.harvard.edu.
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