As we prepare to honor mothers on Sunday, we should keep in mind that the practice of mothering is not limited to women. There are many men in America today, married and single, gay and straight, who mother their children every day. I am one of them. My male partner and I nurture and care for our two sons in ways that are indistinguishable from what society has traditionally expected of mothers.

We comfort our children when they get hurt, either physically or emotionally. We cook their meals and clean their room. We bake cupcakes for their birthdays and take them to their school so they can celebrate with their friends. We hug and kiss them as often as they allow us. We encourage them to explore their passions, not only for baseball and soccer, but for knitting and piano too.

It may be tempting to think that my partner and I mother our children because there is no female parent in our home. But we know heterosexual married men who do the same things for their children that we do for ours. They, too, are mothers.

The seemingly obvious requirement that one must be a woman to be a mother is actually a powerful example of the ways in which our society has traditionally allowed apparently natural truths about gender differences to color our thinking about what individuals are capable of achieving. Interestingly, however, while our culture continues to view motherhood and fatherhood as mutually exclusive categories, the law no longer distinguishes between the two.

Labels: culture, Fathers, gay parenting, gender, gender differences, men, motherhood, women

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As a Catholic, a mom and a lesbian, Ann Tesluk has a personal interest in how Catholic schools handle homophobia.

The mother of two children at St. Joseph’s Catholic Elementary School was delighted when the school board sent out a 20-page equity blueprint last month to help teachers tackle all kinds of discrimination, from race, religion to disability and sexual orientation.

Then she read the fine print.

It felt like “stepping back into the Dark Ages.”

In an otherwise upbeat chapter “Rainbow is for Sexual Orientation,” which urges teachers to treat homophobic language as harshly as racial slurs and encourages the use of gay guest speakers and the reading of gay-positive texts, sat an excerpt from the Catholic Church’s catechism #2358.

It explained that while discrimination is wrong, homosexuals are “objectively disordered,” an archaic way of saying they don’t follow the “natural order” of pursuing procreation.

Labels: Canada, Catholic Church, gay parenting, homosexuality, parenting, religion, schools

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I hate these stories. A couple in love decides to start a family. They do. Their bond cracks under the strain of parenting (parents, y’all know exactly what I’m talking about). As they break up, instead of putting the child’s well-being first, one of them tries to keep the other one entirely out of their child’s life.

In this case, both parents are women, “law enforcement officers,” according to the AP. In order to have their bond to their child be mutual from the start, one donated her eggs and the other implanted the embryo and bore the child. When they broke up, the birth mom took the child to Australia. The bereft ova-mom hired a private detective and tracked her down. Now they’re in the Florida courts, where the ova-mom is insisting that they were both parents all along. ...

If only they could have gotten married! One major reason for marriage is that it clarifies parenthood. It’s long been settled law that, biology or not, the mother’s husband is the child’s father—even if the husband was on another continent when the child was conceived. (Check out Michael D. v. Gerald H., in which Scalia rejects a biological father’s claim to paternity, ruling in favor of the husband who had acted as a father.) If a cuckold is a legal father, why not the woman without whom the child would never have been conceived—either literally, donating the egg, or figuratively, dreaming up the plan of adding to the family?

Labels: biological parenthood, children, custody, donor conception, Florida, gay couples, gay marriage, gay parenting, law, more than two parents, motherhood, parenting, relationship dissolution

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It’s officially a go for NBC’s comedy project from the Glee duo of Ryan Murphy and Allison Adler. The network has given a pilot order to The New Normal, a single-camera project co-written by Glee co-creator Murphy and Adler and to be directed by Murphy, which might be the last half-hour to snag a pickup at NBC this season. The Book Of Mormon star Andrew Rannells is set for one of 3 leads in the project, a heartwarming comedy about a blended family of a gay couple and the woman who becomes a surrogate to help them start a family.

Labels: children, culture, donor conception, gay couples, gay parenting, more than two parents, motherhood, parenting, surrogate motherhood

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Do mothers matter? Having no mother was -- at least until recently -- widely agreed to be a tragedy. Psychiatric case studies, Disney movies, and well-known spirituals such as "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" have testified to the importance of mothers and the pain of mother loss. But such views have not meant that every child has lived in a society that affirms the importance of the child's bond with his or her mother. Children have been denied their mothers because of class biases (see, poor); racial and ethnic biases (Indian, Aborigine); as part of severe civil conflict (Argentina, Dirty War); amid widespread, institutionalized human rights abuses (slavery); or because their mothers were rightly or wrongly perceived to be unfit (see: history of adoption, good, bad, and ugly).

Yet even as the broad history of helping ourselves to other people's children continues to be probed and largely condemned (except in the case of adoption, where most reasonable people agree that such an institution must exist in order to find loving homes for children in need of them), a newer and notably deliberate form of mother loss has sprung up, one that receives relatively little debate and is often presented as benign or even good, without question. I am referring, of course, to the practices of surrogacy and egg donation.

When surrogacy and egg donation first gained national attention in the 1980s the children in question usually had a social mother, a woman, herself infertile, married to a man and seeking to achieve pregnancy with the use of another woman's body. Today we are witnessing an equal opportunity run on deliberately conceiving motherless children. Men, alone or in pairs, can buy eggs and rent wombs, too. A child can be denied knowledge of and a relationship with his or her generally fit mother simply because other adults -- the child's prospective legal parents -- wish it to be so, and are willing to pay to make it so. These transactions occur with the aid of doctors, lawyers, and clinics licensed by the state, and thus with tacit approval from the state.

I wrote about some of these new single fathers by choice in my recent report, "One Parent or Five: A Global Look at Today's New Intentional Families." There is Ian Mucklejohn, father of three. In 2001, at the age of 54, the British citizen became the father of triplets conceived with an egg donor and a gestational surrogate mother, both living in the U.S. Mucklejohn soon became a hero for other single fathers-to-be when he won British citizenship and birth certificates with a blank in the space for "mother" for all three children.

Labels: children, culture, donor conception, Elizabeth Marquardt, Fathers, gay parenting, motherhood, My Daddy's Name Is Donor, parenting, single parenting, surrogate motherhood

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Williams Institute demographer Gary Gates begins his new article in National Council of Family Relations [pdf] by indicating that the gay parents in the hilariously funny Modern Family (okay- the hilarious part is my editorializing, not Gary's analysis) are decidedly not the typical same-sex couple raising children.

The most important conclusion from Gates's review of census data and several other large scale surveys is that large numbers of children of same-sex couples almost certainly are the product of previous heterosexual relationships. ...

There is other, fascinating, evidence supporting the likelihood that most lesbians raising children have a child from a previous heterosexual relationship. In the 2009 California Health Survey, which asks respondents to identify their sexual orientation (unlike census data, which can only report numbers of same-sex couples raising children, thus exclusing gay men any lesbians raising children without living with a partner ), 22.4% of heterosexual women reported having a child before age 20, while 37.9% of lesbian and bisexual women reported having a child before age 20. (Does denial about one's sexual orientation lead to riskier behavior? less likelihood of using birth control? The data doesn't give us the "why," only room to speculate...)

In this article, Gates repeats information he has provided elsewhere, for example that the greatest percentage of same-sex couples raising children is in the south. Also, couples with less than a high school education are almost three times as likely to be raising children as couples with a graduate degree. (This discrepancy does not exist for heterosexual couples). Furthermore, African-Americans in same-sex couples are 2.4 times more likely than their White counterparts to be raising children. On the other hand, looking at adopted children only, White same-sex couples are almost twice as likely to have an adopted child when compared with couples where at least one partner is not White, and the couples with adopted children are more likely to have completed higher education.

Nineteen percent of same-sex couples with children have an adopted child, almost double the percentage in 2000. Yet the percentage of all same-sex couples raising children has decreased. It looks like lesbians and gay men are less likely to have children in heterosexual relationships now -- hence the more recent decline, perhaps because they are coming out earlier -- and that for all the attention to the "gayby boom," the actual number of children deliberately born or adopted into gay or lesbian families cannot make up the shortfall.

Labels: adoption, children, class, culture, donor conception, gay couples, gay parenting, gay/straight differences, lesbians, race

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The December 2011 peer-reviewed journal Family Relations [pdf] reports the latest findings from the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) on the well-being of children whose mothers split up before they were 17. The NLLFS has been following 85 children of lesbians born through donor insemination beginnning in the 1980's. Information about the study and its earlier published research is all located on the NLLFS website.

Of the 73 two-mother families in the study, 40 couples had split up by the time their child was 17 (over 90% of these occurred before the child was 13). This is a higher rate of separation than the divorce rate for married heterosexuals. 71% of separated couples reported shared custody of the children, a number considerably higher than the rate of shared custody among divorced heterosexuals. 59% of the couples had completed second-parent adoptions, and parents in that group were more likely to share custody. The children whose mothers had completed second parent adoptions were much more likely to report feeling close to both mothers. In 10 families, the birth mother was primary custodial parent. The study reports no families in which there was one primary custodial parent and that parent was the nonbiological mother.

The study's key finding: there was no difference in psychological health or problem behavior between those children whose mothers had completed second parent adoptions and those who had not, or between those whose mothers shared custody and those who did not. The authors note that this lack of association could reflect the small size of each subgroup. (Previous research from the NLLFS, published in Pediatrics [pdf], reported no difference in the well-being of children whose moms split up and those whose moms were still together.)

Labels: adoption, children, civil unions, custody, gay marriage, gay parenting, lesbians, motherhood, parenting, relationship dissolution

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In today's debates about the family a new phrase can often be heard: 'intentional parenthood'. The term appears to have originated in the 1990s to resolve disputed surrogacy or lesbian parenting family law cases. It has since been embraced broadly within family law, in public discussion about reproduction, and by advocates of family diversity. Intentional parenthood, proponents say, is good for children. Intention makes a wanted child. Anyone can be an intentional parent – straight, gay, married, partnered, or single (1). ...

In a sense, our study can be seen as an inquiry into whether, and how, being intended truly helps children. The first group in our study – the donor offspring – is a sample of entirely planned, intended, and presumably fiercely wanted children. The other two groups are more mixed. We know that in the USA today about half of pregnancies are unintended, babies who came about as a result of messy, often uncontracepted sex, and among them some are adopted, some raised by their biological parents.

So what did our study show? Does being explicitly intended spell terrific child outcomes, or at least better outcomes than for children conceived in other ways? Actually, no – quite the opposite. As a group, the donor offspring were faring the worst. Compared to those who were adopted, they were hurting more, more confused, and felt more isolated from their families. Compared to those raised by their biological parents, significantly more suffered from addiction, delinquency, and depression (2). ...

Let me note here that few donor-offspring activists single out gay and lesbian parents as a particular concern. My impression is that such activists generally fall into two camps: either they feel that donor conception should be available to pretty much anyone, so long as protections for the child's right to know the identity of both parents are put in place; or they believe that donor conception is not okay and they are against anyone – gay, straight, married, or not – using it. But because some of today's most vocal proponents of intentional parenthood are found among gay and lesbian leaders and their family law supporters, the debate about how much intentional parenthood matters cannot help but get entangled in the debate about gay- and lesbian-headed families.

Labels: adoption, biological parenthood, children, donor conception, Elizabeth Marquardt, gay parenting, parenting

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When "Yes on 8" signs began popping up on lawns in their Palo Alto neighborhood in 2008, Kathy and Lee Merkle-Raymond found themselves on the front line of the battle over gay marriage in California.

The same-sex couple, who were campaigning against Proposition 8, had to explain to their two young daughters why some of their friends' parents didn't want them to be allowed to marry. Then, with their daughters' encouragement, the couple decided to tie the knot before the ban on same-sex marriage took effect.

Their story is now the basis for "Operation Marriage," a new children's book that could make its way into classrooms and school libraries now that California passed a law ensuring that children learn about the contributions of gays and lesbians. Author Cynthia Chin-Lee debuted the book Wednesday at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park before an audience of local families, educators and faith leaders.

Chin-Lee, a publications manager for Oracle, has written several well-received children's books exploring cultural diversity in her spare time. With "Operation Marriage," she has taken on the subject of gay rights, mixing in broader themes of tolerance and bullying.

"I see this not only as a gay marriage issue, but opening the conversation of how all families are different," Chin-Lee said Tuesday.

"Operation Marriage" tells the story of a brother and sister who are disparaged at school by a boy who insists their moms aren't really married. After their parents console them, trying to explain the difference between a commitment ceremony and a traditional marriage, the siblings scheme to persuade their mothers to get legally married.

Labels: California, children, education, gay marriage, gay parenting, schools

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I am reminded each day I park my car that the pressure will never subside. A billboard from a storage company cries out to couples tying the knot: "IF YOU DON'T LIKE GAY MARRIAGE, DON'T GET GAY MARRIED."

It's not the political message that's killing me. It's the marital call to arms.

The pressure began on a subway platform the day our daughter Luna, 6, and her best friend, Jackie, 7, saw a newspaper with drawings of double brides and double grooms. The state of New York had saddled same-sex couples with the same stress long available to everyone else: the pressure to marry. And they were starting with our kids.

Jackie to Luna: Are your mommies going to get gay married?

Luna: Mama, are the mamas getting gay married?

Me: (Silence) ...

Mafe called me while I was on a reporting trip for CNN to tell me the New York State Legislature had voted to allow gays to marry. I reminded her she has been saying she wouldn't marry me for the last 10 years.

"That's not the point," she said. "It's big news."

Labels: children, Colombia, culture, donor conception, gay couples, gay marriage, gay parenting, Hispanic/Latino, parenting

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An estimated one-quarter of all same-sex households are raising children, according to U.S. Census data, providing one of the first portraits of gay American families.

For the first time ever, the census counts same-sex couples and their children, and as data trickles out state by state, more gay families are being tallied in the South.

Just last week, reports from Hawaii and Alabama -- two very different states geographically and socially -- revealed that 27 and 23 percent of same-sex couples were raising children, respectively, according to an analysis by the Williams Institute, a UCLA School of Law think tank that focuses on lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender issues.

Data released today on five more states showed that 28 percent of families in Wyoming are raising children. In California, the percentage is 21 percent; Delaware, 19 percent; Kansas, 26 percent; and Pennsylvania, 20 percent. ...

An estimated 42 percent of all heterosexual couples are raising children in Alabama and 42 percent in Hawaii, according to the census.

Hawaii has a substantially larger concentration of same-sex households, but child-rearing by these couples is higher in Alabama.

Higher rates of child-rearing by gay couples is also seen in rural states like Wyoming (28 percent) and Kansas (26 percent).

"Those patterns are not new," said Gary J. Gates, a Williams Institute demographer who analyzed the data.

"Same-sex couples who live in places with relatively high concentrations of same-sex couples tend to be less likely than other same-sex couples to be raising children," he said. "Child-rearing among same-sex couples is more common in conservative states like Alabama than in more liberal states like Hawaii." ...

Gates noted that the number of same-sex couples who are adopting has doubled, from 8 percent to 19 percent, even in states where they cannot legally marry, according to research by The New York Times.

Still, more than 80 percent of the children being raised by gay couples are not adopted, according to Gates. And the largest number of children in same-sex families are a result of previous heterosexual marriages.

The Alabama data reflects a growing trend: a large number of children being raised by gay families in the socially conservative southern states, according to the Williams Institute.

Gays and lesbians tend to come out later in life in communities where they are stigmatized, according to Gates. By then, partners may already have children from earlier heterosexual marriages.

Labels: children, culture, divorce, gay couples, gay parenting, gay/straight differences, parenting

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On a leafy drive in west Los Angeles, at a newly renovated home with cathedral ceilings and a backyard pool, 4-year-old Kate Eisenpresser-Davis' friends have been known to pose an intriguing question: "Why does Kate have three mommies?"

Lisa Eisenpresser, 44, and her partner, Angela Courtin, 38, share custody of Kate with Eisenpresser's ex-partner.

When asked to describe their life, Eisenpresser and Courtin respond with the same word: "Normal." Days are spent searching for the right balance between work and home, and zigzagging through Mar Vista to meetings, school and gymnastics.

Courtin is pregnant. Kate will soon have a sister, Phoebe, conceived from Eisenpresser's egg and sperm from a donor — the same 6-foot-1 Harvard grad, who scored a 1580 on the SAT, who served as Kate's donor. ...

New census figures show that the percentage of Californians who live in "nuclear family" households — a married man and a woman raising their children — has dropped again over the last decade, to 23.4% of all households. That represents a 10% decline in 10 years, measured as a percentage of the state's households.

Those households, the Times analysis shows, are being supplanted by a striking spectrum of postmodern living arrangements: same-sex households, unmarried opposite-sex partners, married couples who have no children. Some forms of households that were rare just a generation ago are becoming common; the number of single-father households in California, for instance, grew by 36% between 2000 and 2010. ...

The Times interviews also suggest that the state's stagnant economy has contributed to the erosion of traditional family models.

Marriage typically carries a host of financial benefits — a facet of traditional households touted by both social conservatives and gay rights activists pushing for the right to wed. But in Culver City, 49-year-old Xaime Casillas has declined to marry Claudia Bracho, the mother of his 16-month-old son and his partner of nearly 10 years, because he owns two properties that have fallen into foreclosure.

But, said Casillas, "I couldn't see my lady, my partner, marrying into a financial mess."

Labels: California, cohabitation, culture, economics, family structure, gay couples, gay parenting, Marriage, more than two parents

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...In fact, the fight for marriage equality works in tandem with the movement to strengthen the black family. Achieving marriage equality will actually help save the black family.

First, laws that prohibit same-sex marriage disproportionately harm black same-sex couples. According to the last Census, twice as many black same-sex couples are raising children as white same-sex couples. Black same-sex couples are also much more likely to be struggling economically. Achieving marriage equality will grant important benefits to these couples that will allow them to take care of and provide for their children and themselves.

But marriage equality helps the black community in a much broader way. Marriage equality is not just about relationship recognition. It's about family recognition, and the black community benefits from laws and policies that recognize the diversity of how families look, and demand equality for all families. ...

Likewise, marriage equality is not just about DOMA. It's not just about Prop 8. The fight for marriage equality is about fighting for equal recognition of all families. It's about combating the assumption that someone else can tell us what our families should look like. And in the black community, that assumption is dangerous, because black families are becoming increasingly nontraditional. Black families are more likely to be headed by single mothers. However, many of those mothers live with another person who helps raise the children, regardless of whether they are biologically or legally recognized as a parent. Black families are also more likely to consist of multi-generational households [pdf]. And the same policies that allow a same-sex couple to parent their children with access to all benefits they would otherwise receive grant those same benefits to aunts and uncles to raise their nieces and nephews and grandparents to raise their grandchildren. They are the same policies that allow a boyfriend to take time off work to care for his girlfriend's sick child even when there is no biological relationship. The principle that all families look different and all must be respected lies at the foundation of the struggle to strengthen the black family.

Labels: beyond marriage, children, cohabitation, culture, extended family, family structure, gay marriage, gay parenting, grandparents, Marriage, parenting, race, single parenting, unmarried parents

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Some faith-based agencies in Illinois that try to help the state's most vulnerable residents are in flux over providing foster care services in light of the state's upcoming legal recognition of civil unions.

The Catholic Diocese of Rockford, Ill., said Thursday that it will end its state-funded adoption and foster care program rather than comply with a new law that would require it to place children with gay or unmarried couples. Officials said other dioceses would decide quickly whether to follow suit. ...

Officials from the Rockford Diocese said they were forced to terminate state contracts worth $7.5 million after lawmakers failed to pass an amendment exempting religious groups from provisions of the state's new civil unions law, which will let gay and lesbian couples form civil unions, a rough equivalent to marriage. The law takes effect Wednesday.

Catholic Charities wanted to be allowed to refer unmarried or gay couples to other agencies, as it has for years. ...

Catholic charity groups place children only with married couples or single people — not with couples living together. They consider couples in civil unions to be unmarried and therefore not eligible to adopt or provide foster care through their programs.

If the Legislature does not add a religious exemption, other dioceses could decide to withdraw from the state program, said Bob Gilligan, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois.

Labels: adoption, Catholic Church, civil unions, discrimination law, foster parenting, gay parenting, Illinois, marital status discrimination, religion, religious liberty, unmarried parents

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ALMOST 500 single women and lesbians have used IVF and other fertility treatments in the past year in Victoria.

Taxpayers are subsidising the women who plan to raise children without biological dads, the Herald Sun reported.

The law was changed in January 2010 to allow Medicare rebates for women who are not infertile to access assisted reproduction.

IVF clinics are reporting a significant number of women accessing their services for the first time in Victoria. ...

Dr McBain said donors had no obligations, no responsibility and no rights - but once a child turns 18 he or she has access to identifying information about their donor.

Melbourne IVF has just launched a new online campaign to attract more sperm donors.

Labels: Artificial Reproductive Technology, Australia, donor conception, Fathers, gay parenting, IVF, motherhood, single parenting

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The American public is sharply divided in its judgments about the sweeping changes in the structure of the American family that have unfolded over the past half century. About a third generally accepts the changes; a third is tolerant but skeptical; and a third considers them bad for society.

This finding emerges from an analysis that the Pew Research Center conducted of responses to a survey in which a nationally representative sample of 2,691 adults were asked whether they considered the following seven trends to be good, bad or of no consequence to society: more unmarried couples raising children; more gay and lesbian couples raising children; more single women having children without a male partner to help raise them; more people living together without getting married; more mothers of young children working outside the home; more people of different races marrying each other; and more women not ever having children.

About a third (31%) of survey respondents are Accepters. Anywhere from half to two-thirds of this group say these trends make no difference to society. But of the remainder who express an opinion, more say that most of the trends are good than say they are bad. Women, Hispanics, East Coast residents and adults who seldom or never attend religious services are more likely than others to be represented in this group.

A similar share of the public (32%) rejects virtually every trend that the Accepters tolerate or endorse. A majority say five of the seven changes are bad for society; the only trends they generally accept are interracial marriage and fewer women having children. They are the only group in which a majority (61%) says it is harmful for mothers of small children to work outside the home. Whites, older adults, Republicans, the religiously observant and married adults are overrepresented in this group. They are the Rejecters.

The third and somewhat larger group (37%) are the Skeptics.1 While they generally share most of the tolerant views of the Accepters, they also express concern about the impact of these trends on society. On one of the trends—single motherhood—they and the Accepters have stark differences. Virtually all Skeptics say mothers having children without male partners to help raise them is bad for society. Among Accepters, just 2% say this. When asked about the six other trends examined in the survey, a majority of Skeptics say each makes no difference or is good for society. Young people, Democrats and political independents, and minorities are disproportionately more likely to be in this group. ...

Overall, relatively small percentages of Accepters, Rejecters and Skeptics say any of the seven trends have been “a good thing for society.” But the three groups differ sharply on whether each of these seven changes has been bad or has had no significant impact.

Perhaps the most striking difference occurs in attitudes toward single motherhood between the two more tolerant groups. Virtually all Skeptics (99%) say the increase single in motherhood is bad for society. In contrast, nearly nine-in-ten Accepters say the increase in single women having children has made no difference (74%) or is “a good thing for society” (13%).

So sizable is the difference between Accepters and Skeptics on this single trend that the division of the Accepters and Skeptics is driven primarily—though though not solely—by views on single motherhood. In fact, these two generally similar groups would merge into a single cluster if the question about single motherhood were removed from the analysis.

Labels: childfree, cohabitation, culture, family structure, Fathers, gay parenting, Marriage, motherhood, single parenting, unmarried parents

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State officials are investigating whether religious agencies that receive public funds to license foster care parents are breaking anti-discrimination laws if they turn away openly gay parents.

If they are found in violation, Lutheran Child and Family Services, Catholic Charities in five regions and the Evangelical Child and Family Agency will have to license openly gay foster parents or lose millions of state dollars, potentially disrupting more than 3,000 foster children in their care.

Though Illinois legislators championing the civil union bill earlier this year insisted that religious institutions would not be forced to bless same-sex unions, it said nothing about same-sex parents.

Now, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Gov. Pat Quinn's legal team and the Department of Children and Family Services are carefully researching the Illinois Human Rights Act, the Civil Union Act and the Illinois Constitution to determine whether they prohibit agencies from considering sexual orientation as a factor in foster care and adoption. In Illinois, all adults who adopt or become foster care providers must obtain foster care licenses.

"Social intervention such as adoption laws and practices inevitably reflect their communities," said Kendall Marlowe, a spokesman for DCFS. "Illinois as a state has grown on this (gay rights) issue as evidenced by (civil union legislation). Adoption law and practice should reflect the values of the people of Illinois."

But Bob Gilligan, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois, said Catholic Charities has no intention of changing its policy against allowing openly gay foster parents after nearly a century of serving children in Illinois. Catholic Charities inspired the state to take on foster care, which ultimately led to the creation of DCFS. ...

Though the civil union legislation factors into the inquiry, the issue came to light months earlier when Lutheran Child and Family Services turned away a gay male couple when they tried to become mentors for a gay runaway in the Lutheran agency's care. The policies of Lutheran Child and Family Services, which is affiliated with the conservative Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, preclude "developing or licensing foster care families who identify themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or questioning." ...

Officials at several of the religious agencies at the center of the state's investigation argue that they are shielded by an executive order signed by President Barack Obama in November ensuring that faith-based organizations can provide social services with federal funds without sacrificing their "religious character."

Labels: Catholic Church, Christianity, discrimination law, foster parenting, gay parenting, homosexuality, Illinois, religion, religious liberty

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...In addition, the data show, child rearing among same-sex couples is more common in the South than in any other region of the country, according to Gary Gates, a demographer at the University of California, Los Angeles. Gay couples in Southern states like Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas are more likely to be raising children than their counterparts on the West Coast, in New York and in New England.

The pattern, identified by Mr. Gates, is also notable because the families in this region defy the stereotype of a mainstream gay America that is white, affluent, urban and living in the Northeast or on the West Coast.

“We’re starting to see that the gay community is very diverse,” said Bob Witeck, chief executive of Witeck-Combs Communications, which helped market the census to gay people. “We’re not all rich white guys.”

Black or Latino gay couples are twice as likely as whites to be raising children, according to Mr. Gates, who used data from a Census Bureau sampling known as the American Community Survey. They are also more likely than their white counterparts to be struggling economically.

Experts offer theories for the pattern. A large number of gay couples, possibly a majority, entered into their current relationship after first having children with partners in heterosexual relationships, Mr. Gates said. That seemed to be the case for many blacks and Latinos in Jacksonville, for whom church disapproval weighed heavily. ...

Moreover, gay men who have children do so an average of three years earlier than heterosexual men, census data shows, Mr. Gates said. At the same time, there are fewer white women of childbearing age nationally, according to demographers, while the number of minority women of childbearing age is expanding.

Labels: culture, divorce, economics, gay parenting, gay/straight differences, parenting, race

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We don't discuss it much. It confounds notions of fixed sexuality and fidelity. But sometimes when a lesbian couple wants a child one partner conceives through sexual intercourse. Relatively speaking, it is cheap and reliable. But it alters the legal context of everything that follows. In Quebec, the law explicitly recognizes that assisted reproduction can include reproduction through sexual intercourse if the understanding is that the man will not be a father and is engaging in the sex act to allow the woman (or the woman and her partner) to be the only legal parent/s of the child. The impetus for this unique construct was the desire to make it as easy as possible for lesbians to have children and to shield them from the discrimination and cost of using fertility services. No law like that exists anywhere in the United States (or the rest of the world as far as I know). In a handful of cases here where a man and woman (lesbian or not or unknown) have made an agreement that only the woman would be a parent and that the man was assisting her through "artificial insemination by intercourse," no court has ever upheld the agreement. If it gets to court, the man has legal rights and responsibilities.

Well, a case decided this week in Minnesota [pdf] throws some daylight on this form of conception used by some lesbians. A lesbian couple identified in the court's opinion as J.M.J. and L.A.M. arranged with J.L., J.M.J.'s ex-boyfriend, that he would conceive a child with J.M.J. and then consent to the child's adoption by L.A.M., thereby terminating his parental rights. And that's what he did. L.A.M. became the legal parent of the twin girls born to J.M.J.

First thing to point out is this. Legally speaking, this method of family formation should work out fine any place that allows second-parent adoption. A biological father can consent to his child's adoption by the mother's new husband, thereby terminating his parental rights. All courts are familiar with this practice. The adoption must be in the child's best interests, but where all the parties agree there is not likely to be any difficulty. What the three people in this case did falls squarely in that category. It's the same process used in second-parent adoptions where conception takes place through insemination with a known donor; donor consents to adoption by bio mom's partner and his rights are terminated. The end.

But it wasn't the end for this lesbian couple, whose relationship ended shortly after the adoption. J.M.J. then married a man (not the bio dad), and several years later she filed an action to vacate the adoptions on the ground that Minnesota does not allow second-parent adoption.

Labels: adoption, children, gay parenting, lesbians, sex

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On March 25-26, 2011, I will be hosting a conference at American University Washington College of Law, co-sponsored by the National Center for Lesbian Rights and by our Journal of Gender, Social Policy, and the Law. The conference is entitled: "The 'New Illegitimacy': Revisiting Why Parentage Should Not Depend on Marriage."

The impetus for this conference -- actually the last straw -- was the ruling from the New York Court of Appeals last spring that a nonbiological mother was not a child's parent based on her role in her child's life but based solely on the fact that she was in a civil union with the child's mother when the child was born. I blogged about the case at length here. Massachusetts also determines when a child born to a lesbian couple has two parents based on whether the couple is married.

I sent the following call for papers to numerous family law academics:

It is an axiom of family law: children should not suffer as a result of being born to unmarried parents. This bedrock principle developed in the second half of the 20th century to sweep away the disabilities that plagued “illegitimate” children – those born outside of marriage – for centuries. Beginning in 1968, the US Supreme Court held in a series of cases that marriage of a child’s parents could not be the factor determining which children were eligible for, among other things, wrongful death recovery, worker’s compensation death benefits, and financial support and care by both parents.

Today, however, that principle is under attack. In some states, children born to lesbian couples find that their status depends upon whether their parents are married (or in a civil union). ...

Moreover, it is distressing that some support for same-sex marriage relies on the denigration of “illegitimate” children. Advocates often argue that denying same-sex couples with children the right to marry deprives those children of what those advocates allege is the security and stability offered by “legitimacy.” Arguing that same-sex couples must be allowed to marry to prevent the “illegitimacy” of their children flips on its head the modern understanding that neither law nor society should penalize children of unmarried parents. It may also make it more difficult to advocate recognition of parent-child relationships outside of marriage, including those formed when more than two adults plan for and raise a child together.

Labels: beyond marriage, children, de facto parenting, family structure, gay marriage, gay parenting, law, Marriage, more than two parents, Nancy Polikoff, single parenting

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