A week ago, in response to a question in Florida, President Obama declared his belief that LGBT Equality is founded in the Constitution.
The President then went on to acknowledge that Social Security short-changes America’s same-sex couples:
“…the notion that someone who’s working really hard for 30 years, can’t take their death benefits and transfer them to the person they love the most in the world, and who has supported them all their lives, that just doesn’t seem fair, it doesn’t seem right…”
Here is a video put together by Rock For Equality on Portraits of Discrimination
CHICAGO, Jan. 12 /PRNewswire/ — Two Chicago-area surrogacy firms today announced the launch of a program designed to facilitate the delivery in Illinois of babies carried by gestational surrogates.
Alternative Reproductive Resources (ARR), Chicago, and the Center for Egg Options (CEO), Northbrook, Ill., created The Surrogacy Advantage to help more intended parents benefit by the state’s surrogacy friendly status.
Gestational surrogacy is when a third party carries a child that will be parented by another individual or couple; the child is not conceived with the surrogate’s egg. In Illinois, if at least one intended parent has contributed the sperm or egg(s) and if they fulfill all of the necessary legal requirements prior to the child’s birth, they are recognized as the child’s legal parents through an administrative process, without an adoption, allowing them full custody of the child upon its birth.
“We’ve fully addressed the necessary legal and medical guidelines to give parents the best possible outcome once the baby’s arrived,” said Robin von Halle, president of ARR (www.arr1.com).
Added Nancy Block, president of CEO (www.egg411.com), “Both of our agencies have certain clients – those who live overseas, for example – who need help coordinating an Illinois birth. We want to make it work.”
Under the program, the two agencies will jointly recommend willing surrogates to clients, and will also administer arrangements for other agencies whose clients need assistance arranging Illinois births. The program includes:
— Securing an obstetrician for the surrogate.
— Facilitating hospital coverage.
— An exclusive surrogacy health insurance that allows for payments to be
stretched over five months.
— Provision of lodgings for out-of-state surrogates and their families.
— Referral to a legal specialist with expertise in third-party fertility
matters.
— Referral for independent psychological testing.
— Independent, bonded/insured escrow services for the surrogate’s
payments.
— Referral to a nutrition counselor for the surrogate.
ARR and CEO have been matching parents with gestational surrogates for a combined 15 years. “It’s a tremendous amount of work, so it makes sense for us to combine our knowledge of surrogacy and Illinois’ unique environment to help people on this path,” said Block.
A Harvard professor testifying in a case challenging California’s gay marriage ban said Tuesday that procreation is historically not the only function of marriage.
In her second day of testimony, Nancy Cott, a U.S. history professor and the author of a book on marriage as a public institution, disputed a statement by a defense lawyer that states have a compelling interest to restrict marriage to heterosexual couples for the sake of procreation.
Cott said marriage also has served an economic purpose, with each spouse doing different jobs in the partnership. As the purposes of marriage have changed, the reasons to bar same-sex couples from marrying have gone away, she said.
“It seems to me that by excluding same-sex couples from the ability to marry and to engage in this institution, that society is actually denying itself another resource for stability and social growth,” she said.
Cott conceded under cross-examination that she couldn’t predict the consequences for society of same-sex marriage.
The lawsuit — brought by two same-sex couple unable to marry because of California’s Proposition 8 — is the first in a federal court to decide the constitutionality of state bans on gay marriage.
Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker is presiding over the case without a jury.
Dear IF YOU ASK ME-
I am writing to you for some advice on a pretty complicated situation I find myself willingly being drawn into. I am English, a gay man, and 55 years of age living in England at present. I have a friend aged 49 in Texas who has recently realized that he is gay, despite having been married and the father of an 11 year old adopted son. My friend’s ex wife, who has very strong negative views regarding gays, is still on the scene and has tried poisoning the boy’s mind about his dad. Luckily the relationship between father and son is still very strong, but the mother is mentally unstable and still has access and influence over the boy. We very much hope to be able to live together in the US as soon as we are able to and the boy is ready. We need some advice on how to prepare my friend’s son on the sexuality of both of his dads and the distinct possibility of another male entering the family home to “replace” his mother with whom he has a not very good relationship. I thought, as a first step, there might be a film suitable for my friend to watch with his son to start the process of familiarization with the changing circumstances, and to show the boy that there are more types of valid relationships than the stereotypical “family”. We both understand that this may well take some time, but the useful thing is that the boy does understand and accepts that some people are gay and live together as couples, but the idea of gay couples having children, and it happening to him, will need a huge measure of acceptance on his part. Any advice you may be able to offer us would be gratefully accepted, and I would stress that the welfare, security and happiness of my friend’s son is the most important aspect of our planning.
Yours Sincerely,
Chas J Pearce
Dear Chas-
Thank you for your well thought-out question; it is a very delicate situation indeed. I appreciate and respect the fact that you are taking the time to do research in order to make the boy’s transition as easy as possible. This alone tells me that you will be a wonderful role model for your “friend’s” son.
Although there aren’t many movies available for the topic you requested, there are some great resources. One is a very mainstream, popular TV show called Modern Family on ABC here in the United States. This show features a family with 2 dads and a baby and is light-hearted and funny. If the boy hasn’t already heard of this sitcom, it might be a nice way to “normalize” his new situation a bit.
As for movies, it’s been tough for me to find the perfect film that I would recommend, given the particular situation you are in. It might be fun to do a movie night and rent Birdcage, a comedy with Robin Williams in which he plays a gay man with a daughter (played by Calista Flockheart). I’m going with fairly mainstream recommendations rather than Indie films for two reasons: one, it has been difficult for me to find the right independent film that doesn’t display the “issues” that can go into same sex parenting, and two, I think it’s important given the boy’s age, that you go with a more mainstream approach. This might help to validate things in his mind.
I also think it’s important for you to do some research as well. There are some great films on same sex parenting that I would urge you to check out for your own sake. Jack is a film about a teenage boy whose father comes out as a gay man. You might want to watch this first and see if it would be a fit for the boy. “Jack” can be purchased on Amazon.com.
There is also another resource for teenagers with gay parents that you may later want to explore. There is an organization called Colage, which is a support and advocacy organization for daughters and sons of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) parents. This would be a tremendous opportunity for the boy to meet other kids that have gone through similar emotions on the topic. I have been to a panel in which I’ve heard these children speak firsthand and they are incredibly articulate and have many great things to explain to parents that are LGBT. Colage also has a few films that you could check out; one of them is “In My Shoes”, which I found particularly interesting. It’s a documentary film by and about youth with LGBT parents.
My last bit of advice is to let the boy find his own feelings about the matter. Try to listen and be there for him when he needs to talk, but don’t push him into feeling a certain way about his new life. It’s tough at that age, and with his mother giving negative feedback, he needs to figure out his own opinion on the matter. I think you are absolutely on the right path by wanting to educate him through mediums that he most relates to- film and television.
Below are links and information to the above-mentioned resources, as well as a few more:
Books Families like mine: Children of gay parents tell it like it is Out of the ordinary: Essays on growing up with gay, lesbian bisexual, and transgender parents
For one thing, he’s smart. Scary smart. A student in the West Fork School District in Washington County, he skipped a grade this year, going directly from the third to the fifth. When his family goes for a drive, discussions are much more apt to be about Teddy Roosevelt and terraforming Mars than they are about Spongebob Squarepants and what’s playing on Radio Disney.
It was during one of those drives that the discussion turned to the pledge of allegiance and what it means. Laura Phillips is Will’s mother. “Yes, my son is 10,” she said. “But he’s probably more aware of the meaning of the pledge than a lot of adults. He’s not just doing it rote recitation. We raised him to be aware of what’s right, what’s wrong, and what’s fair.”
Will’s family has a number of gay friends. In recent years, Laura Phillips said, they’ve been trying to be a straight ally to the gay community, going to the pride parades and standing up for the rights of their gay and lesbian neighbors. They’ve been especially dismayed by the effort to take away the rights of homosexuals – the right to marry, and the right to adopt. Given that, Will immediately saw a problem with the pledge of allegiance.
“I’ve always tried to analyze things because I want to be lawyer,” Will said. “I really don’t feel that there’s currently liberty and justice for all.”
After asking his parents whether it was against the law not to stand for the pledge, Will decided to do something. On Monday, Oct. 5, when the other kids in his class stood up to recite the pledge of allegiance, he remained sitting down. The class had a substitute teacher that week, a retired educator from the district, who knew Will’s mother and grandmother. Though the substitute tried to make him stand up, he respectfully refused. He did it again the next day, and the next day. Each day, the substitute got a little more cross with him. On Thursday, it finally came to a head. The teacher, Will said, told him that she knew his mother and grandmother, and they would want him to stand and say the pledge.
“She got a lot more angry and raised her voice and brought my mom and my grandma up,” Will said. “I was fuming and was too furious to really pay attention to what she was saying. After a few minutes, I said, ‘With all due respect, ma’am, you can go jump off a bridge.’ ”
Will was sent to the office, where he was given an assignment to look up information about the flag and what it represents. Meanwhile, the principal called his mother.
“She said we have to talk about Will, because he told a sub to jump off a bridge,” Laura Phillips said. “My first response was: Why? He’s not just going to say this because he doesn’t want to do his math work.”
Eventually, Phillips said, the principal told her that the altercation was over Will’s refusal to stand for the pledge of allegiance, and admitted that it was Will’s right not to stand. Given that, Laura Phillips asked the principal when they could expect an apology from the teacher. “She said, ‘Well I don’t think that’s necessary at this point,’ ” Phillips said.
After Phillips put a post on the instant-blogging site twitter.com about the incident, several of her friends got angry and alerted the news media. Meanwhile, Will Phillips still refuses to stand during the pledge of allegiance. Though many of his friends at school have told him they support his decision, those who don’t have been unkind, and louder.
“They [the kids who don't support him] are much more crazy, and out of control and vocal about it than supporters are.”
Given that his protest is over the rights of gays and lesbians, the taunts have taken a predictable bent. “In the lunchroom and in the hallway, they’ve been making comments and doing pranks, and calling me gay,” he said. “It’s always the same people, walking up and calling me a gaywad.”
Even so, Will said that he can’t foresee anything in the near future that will make him stand for the pledge. To help him deal with the peer pressure, his parents have printed off posts in his support on blogs and websites. “We’ve told him that people here might not support you, but we’ve shown him there are people all over that support you,” Phillips said. “It’s really frustrating to him that people are being so immature.”
At the end of our interview, I ask young Will a question that might be a civics test nightmare for your average 10-year-old. Will’s answer, though, is good enough — simple enough, true enough — to give me a little rush of goose pimples. What does being an American mean?
“Freedom of speech,” Will says, without even stopping to think. “The freedom to disagree. That’s what I think pretty much being an American represents.”
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IT is almost too perfect that the first African-American president of the United States was elected in time for the 40th anniversary of “Sesame Street.” The world is finally beginning to look the way that the PBS show always made it out to be.
Top, Big Bird, still a big star on “Sesame Street.” Above, Zoe, Rosita and Abby Cadabby sing about gardening.
So it is to the credit of this daunting cultural landmark — a program that has taught generations of children to count, countless parents how to teach and is seen in 125 countries around the world — that Tuesday’s anniversary is not a frenzy of preening self-celebration. Episode No. 4187 is as child-centric and respectful of routine as any other.
The special guest — the first lady, Michelle Obama — doesn’t make her appearance alongside Big Bird until midway into a show crammed with the usual preschool didactics. The letter of the day comes first — H, as in help and hug and healthy.
The only real difference is that on this day, viewers have to count to 40.
The pedagogy hasn’t changed, but the look and tone of “Sesame Street” has evolved. Forty years on, this is your mother’s “Sesame Street,” only better dressed and gentrified: Sesame Street by way of Park Slope. The opening is no longer a realistic rendition of an urban skyline but an animated, candy-colored chalk drawing of a preschool Arcadia, with flowers and butterflies and stars. The famous set, brownstones and garbage bins, has lost the messy graffiti and gritty smudges of city life over the years. Now there are green spaces, tofu and yoga.
It’s still a messianic show, but the mission has shifted to the more immediate concerns of pediatricians and progressive parents, especially when it comes to childhood obesity. “Sesame Street” takes the Muppets, rhymes and visual verve that were developed to instill tolerance, racial pride and equality, to preach exercise and healthy eating.
Put it this way, Mrs. Obama’s message on the anniversary episode isn’t an exhortation to future soldiers, scientists and presidents to be all that they can be, but to tiny consumers to eat the freshest food they can find. “Veggies taste so good when they come fresh from the garden, don’t they?” Mrs. Obama tells a rainbow coalition of children gathered around a soil tray, an echo of her White House kitchen garden. “If you eat all these healthy foods, you are going to grow up to be big and strong,” Mrs. Obama says, flexing her fists. “Just like me.”
That foodie focus is a reflection of the times and current fads, but also of a tension in the mandate of “Sesame Street,” as it straddles the two imperatives of being a public service in the broadest sense of the word — serving the underserved — while also competing with all the other shows and satisfying the public television donor base.
It is an urban myth that Cookie Monster was turned into Veggie Monster to appease nutrition Nazis, however — that was a blogosphere rumor in the Paul-Is-Dead school of whispering campaigns. But Cookie Monster’s palate was refined during Season 36 as part of the show’s “healthy habits for life” campaign. He now also gobbles fruits and vegetables, which are labeled by the show as “anytime” foods while cookies are held in reserve as “sometime” food. And almost every episode has a subliminal message about exercise and nutrition, along with a fruit bowl.
So much carb consciousness raising makes it all the more incongruous that McDonald’s is a “Sesame Street” corporate sponsor — perhaps the most overt sign of changing mores. It was a financially driven decision, made in 2003 after public television loosened its restrictions on sponsors’ promotional efforts.
“Sesame Street” no longer has a monopoly on growing minds; if anything, it is an endangered species. There are now scores of preschool shows, and some of them also are shown without ads, like “Playhouse Disney.” Not surprisingly, fewer children are watching “Sesame Street,” but most children are watching more television than ever: a recent Nielsen Company study showed that on average children ages 2 to 5 now spend nearly 25 hours a week watching TV and an additional 7 hours either watching taped shows and DVDs or sitting in front of a computer. The top-rated show in that age group in the month of September, according to Nielsen, was “Go, Diego, Go!” on Nickelodeon. “Sesame Street” trailed far behind.
To help cover costs “Sesame Street” reached out to family-friendly sponsors like Beaches resorts and Earth’s Best organic baby foods.
To read the rest of the article go to New York Times
From- The New York Times
By: ABBY GOODNOUGH
Less than a week before Maine voters decide whether to repeal the state’s new same-sex marriage law, donations and volunteers are pouring in to sway what both sides call a nationally significant fight.
Supporters of the marriage law, which the Legislature approved in May, have far more money and ground troops than opponents, who have been led by the Roman Catholic Church. Yet most polls show the two sides neck and neck, suggesting that gay couples here, as in California last year, could lose the right to marry just six months after they gained it.
Although Maine’s population is a tiny fraction of California’s and the battle here has been comparatively low profile, it comes at a crucial point in the same-sex marriage movement. Still reeling from last year’s defeat in California, gay-rights advocates say a defeat here could further a perception that only judges and politicians embrace same-sex marriage.
If Maine’s law is upheld, however, it would be the movement’s first victory at the ballot box; voters in about 30 states have banned same-sex marriage.
Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts and Vermont allow gay couples to marry, but courts and legislatures, not voters, made it possible.
“It’s a defining moment,” said Marc Mutty, chairman of Stand for Marriage Maine, which is leading the repeal effort. “What happens here in Maine is going to have a mushrooming effect on the issue at large.”
Maine had planned to allow same-sex marriage starting in September, but put it off until the referendum is decided. It is the only state with a same-sex marriage question on its ballot this fall.
The outcome could have particular resonance in California, where same-sex marriage supporters have been debating how soon to seek a repeal of their own state’s ban.
Mr. Mutty’s group has repeatedly warned voters that if same-sex marriage survives in Maine, public schools will most likely teach children about it. That strategy proved effective in California, and even after Maine’s attorney general announced this month that the state would not require same-sex marriage to be taught, opponents have continued raising the possibility.
One of their television advertisements warns that in Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage has been legal since 2003, some teachers answer “thoroughly and explicitly” when students ask about gay sex.
But Stand for Marriage has not been able to advertise nearly as much as the lead group campaigning to save the law. That group, Protect Maine Equality, has raised $4 million, compared with Stand for Marriage’s $2.6 million. Its overarching message is that all people, including gay men and lesbians, should be treated equally under the law.
“You may disagree,” a gray-haired lobsterman says in a Protect Maine Equality advertisement, “but people have a right to live the way they want to live.”
The group has raised much of its money on the Internet, where it has also recruited volunteers from around the country with a Web site, www.travelforchange.org. Stace McDaniel, a retired teacher from Atlanta, said he decided to spend a few weeks volunteering for Protect Maine Equality after attending his first same-sex wedding this summer.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” said Mr. McDaniel, 57, who said he took out a $5,000 home equity line of credit to finance his trip. “It was a chance to do something really important. I don’t know anyone in Maine, but here I am.”
One of the volunteers working phones at the Stand for Maine offices last Thursday was Bonnie Johnstone of Portland, who said she had decided to help after hearing about the campaign at her Mormon church. But while Mormons played a huge role in California’s same-sex marriage ban — providing reserves of money and volunteers — they appear to be far less involved here, partly because the Mormon Church has a much smaller presence in New England.
The repeal effort has drawn a small number of volunteers from other states, Mr. Mutty said, including a group of students from Brigham Young University, a Mormon institution in Utah.
Stand for Marriage hired the same consulting firm that ran the California campaign against same-sex marriage, Schubert Flint Public Affairs, based in Sacramento, to produce its advertisements. And more than half of its financial support has come from the National Organization for Marriage, a conservative Christian group based in New Jersey that has fought same-sex marriage in other states.
But the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland has played the most tangible role in the repeal movement, even urging its parishes to collect donations by passing a second collection plate during Mass.
The Maine Ethics Commission is investigating whether the National Organization for Marriage has violated the state’s campaign finance laws by keeping its donors anonymous. The group has responded with a lawsuit challenging Maine’s financial reporting requirements.
With no big races drawing voters to the polls this year, both sides say that get-out-the-vote efforts will be crucial. Supporters of same-sex marriage are counting on college students, while opponents are focusing on older voters from the state’s more conservative central and northern regions.
“Their voters are going to be weather-dependent, mood-dependent,” Mr. Mutty said. “Our voters tend to vote no matter what.”
Since polls have historically undercounted opponents of same-sex marriage — and none have shown supporters of the law more than a few points ahead, anyway — Protect Maine Equality is taking nothing for granted.
“We have every reason to think this will be a razor-thin election,” said Jesse Connolly, the group’s campaign manager.
Americans like answers in black and white, a cultural trait we confirmed last year when the biracial man running for President was routinely called “black”
The flattening of Barack Obama’s complex racial background shouldn’t have been surprising. Many multiracial historical figures in the U.S. have been reduced (or have reduced themselves) to a single aspect of their racial identities: Booker T. Washington, Tina Turner, and Greg Louganis are three examples. This phenomenon isn’t entirely pernicious; it is at least partly rooted in our concern that growing up with a fractured identity is hard on kids. The psychologist J.D. Teicher summarized this view in a 1968 paper: “Although the burden of the Negro child is recognized as a heavy one, that of the Negro-White child is seen to be even heavier.”
But new research says this old, problematized view of multiracial identity is outdated. In fact, a new paper in the Journal of Social Issues shows that multiracial adolescents who identify proudly as multiracial fare as well as — and, in many cases, better than — kids who identify with a single group, even if that group is considered high-status (like, say, Asians or whites). This finding was surprising because psychologists have argued for years that mixed-race kids will be better adjusted if they pick a single race as their own.
The population of multiracial kids in the U.S. has soared from approximately 500,000 in 1970 to more than 6.8 million in 2000, according to Census data quoted in this pdf. In the early years, research on these kids highlighted their difficulties: the disapproval they faced from neighbors and members of their extended families; the sense that they weren’t “full” members in any racial community; the insecurity and self-loathing that often resulted from feeling marginalized on all sides. That simple but harsh playground question — “What are you?” — torments many multiracial kids. Psychologists call this a “forced-choice dilemma” that compels children to claim some kind of identity — even if only a half-identity — in return for social acceptance.
But the new Journal of Social Issues paper suggests this dilemma has become less burdensome in the age of Tiger Woods and Barack Obama. The paper’s authors, a team led by Kevin Binning of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Miguel Unzueta of the UCLA Anderson School of Management, studied 182 multiracial high schoolers in Long Beach, Calif. Binning, Unzueta and their colleagues write that those kids who identified with multiple racial groups reported significantly less psychological stress than those who identified with a single group, whether a “low-status” group like African-Americans or a “high-status” group like whites. The multiracial identifiers were less alienated from peers than monoracial identifiers, and they were no more likely to report having engaged in problem behaviors, such as substance use or persistent school absence.
The writers theorize that multiracial kids who choose to associate with a single race are troubled by their attempts to “pass,” whereas those who choose to give voice to their own uniqueness find pride in that act. “Rather than being ‘caught’ between two worlds,” the authors write, “it might be that individuals who identify with multiple groups are better able to navigate both racially homogeneous and heterogeneous environments than individuals who primarily identify with one racial group.” The multiracial kids are able to “place one foot in the majority and one in the minority group, and in this way might be buffered against the negative consequences of feeling tokenized.”
In short, multiracial kids seem to create their own definitions for fitting in, and they show more psychological flexibility than those mixed-race kids who feel bound to one choice or another.
Fortunately, all these questions of racial identity are becoming less important, as we inch ever closer to the day when the U.S. has no racial majority. One of these days, after all, we will all be celebrating our multiracial pride.
