GRAPHIC: Gay Parents on TV Through The Years

BY Michelle Garcia

The New Normal, featuring a gay couple and their journey to have a baby, premieres this week on NBC. The show has become a target for antigay activist group One Million Moms, which claims the depiction of same-sex parents was something unprescedented on television, and symbolized “the decay of morals and values,” the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation reports.

But GLAAD counters that same-sex parents have been depicted on television since the 1970s. Check out their rundown of gay parents on the tube.

For a larger version of the graphic, check out The Advocate’s Art Department.

UT Senate Rejects 2nd Parent Adoptions

The state senate Health & Human Services committee squashed a bill proposed by Senator Ross Romero which would enable 2nd parents to adopt children. Of course they only said that they quashed the bill, when in reality they didn’t have the courage to vote against it.

In typical Utah Senate fashion, the panel of Senators led by extremist conservative Chris Buttars (R) didn’t have the courage to vote against the bill which would have given desperate children access to both of their parents, choosing instead to just table the bill.

The committee hearing didn’t start off on a good note, with committee chair Chris Buttars whispering with his co-hort Gayle Ruzicka before the meeting started. The room was packed with supporters of the bill, including parents, children and grandparents all of whom stood in favor of watching children receive the parents they so desperately need.

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HRC Recognizes LGBT Parents During National Adoption Month

The Human Rights Campaign is proud to recognize the contributions of LGBT adoptive parents during National Adoption Month, a month set aside each year to raise awareness about the opportunities to adopt children and youth from foster care, and to celebrate adoptive families across the country. LGBT parents continue to play an important role in creating safe and welcoming homes for all children and youth in need a permanent family. 

“Like many people, LGBT individuals and couples want to provide a stable, loving home for children in foster care,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese. “The LGBT community has largely been an untapped resource of qualified, highly motivated parents who can offer welcoming, supportive families to the thousands of children and youth who are waiting, and who deserve to have a ‘forever family.’”

Below are notable facts about the breadth of adoption by LGBT families, and the challenges that these families still face:

  • According to the Department of Health and Human Services, approximately 423,773 children in the U. S. were in foster care as of September 30, 2009. Of these, approximately 115,000 are in need of a permanent, adoptive family.
  • An estimated 65,000 adopted children are living with a gay or lesbian parent
  • An estimated 2 million LGBT people are interested in adopting
  • More than half of gay men and 41 percent of lesbians want to have a child
  • Gay and lesbian parents are raising four percent of all adopted children in the U.S.
  • Although Florida has recently overturned an adoption ban on gay and lesbian parents, same-sex couples are still prohibited from adopting in Mississippi and Utah. Additionally, state courts in Michigan have ruled that unmarried individuals may not jointly petition to adopt.
  • Same-sex couples can jointly petition to adopt statewide in only 13 states and D.C.
  • Second parent adoption, where a person can petition to adopt the child of his or her partner is a state-wide option in only nine states and D.C. 
  • For more information about state laws on adoption, see HRC’s state law maps

All Children All Families

  • The Human Rights Campaign Foundation has led the conversation about increasing the pool of LGBT foster and adoptive parents through the All Children – All Families (ACAF) initiative. ACAF works to enhance LGBT cultural competence among child welfare professionals and educates LGBT people about opportunities to become foster or adoptive parents to waiting children. 
  • 50 adoption agencies have made a public commitment to welcome and support LGBT foster and adoptive parents by participating in the ACAF initiative, and ten agencies have earn our seal of recognition, which is presented to organizations that have met benchmarks outlined in the program.
  • Since 2007, ACAF Certified Trainers have delivered LGBT cultural competency and practice improvement training to over 1000 child welfare professionals across the U.S.

The Department of Health and Human Services recognizes the unique challenges that LGBT people experience during the adoption and foster care process, and offers links on their website to the resources offered by HRC and other agencies for these families and the agencies that work with them.

HRC has launched a National Adoption Month website that offers resources and events. More on National Adoption Month is available at: http://www.childwelfare.gov/adoption/nam/

Study: Gay Parenting Does a Kid Good

Children raised by gay couples show good progress through school x390 (STANFORD) | ADVOCATE.COM

Stanford University recently conducted a study showing little difference in educational achievement between children raised by gay couples and those raised by married heterosexual couples.

The study, published in Demography magazine, utilized the U.S. Census for their findings. The results indicated that 7% of children raised by heterosexual married couples were held back a year, while about 9.5% of children living with same-sex partners repeated a grade.

Children of gay and married couples had lower grade-repetition rates than their peers raised by opposite-sex unmarried couples and single parents, according to the story.

Click here to read the full story.

The Kids Speak Out on Gay Parents

The UK’s equality charity Stonewall publishes groundbreaking research examining the experiences of children with gay parents today, reports Jason Shaw.

‘Different Families’ is based on interviews conducted by the University of Cambridge with over 80 children and young people from the age of four, all of whom have lesbian and gay parents. This new  research also provides shocking insights into the prevalence of homophobia in Britain’s schools, including primary schools. The children who experience this, although not gay themselves, identify that many schools still don’t address it.

The gay parenting difference and why it doesn’t matter to marriage

Opponents of marriage equality often refer to the “untested experiment” of same-sex parenting, asserting that we just don’t know how children in these families will fare over the long haul.

They point to the fact that there has never been a significant long-term longitudinal study of such children’s welfare—that is, one that follows the same group of children over time.  

They can no longer make the latter claim…

We live in a community in which my children have known gay and lesbian people and families their whole lives. There are families we know and love with two moms, families with two dads, single gay parents, neighbors who are gay, gay people we know at work, gay people we know at school, at the pool, and on and on and on. There are gay and lesbian people on television and in the movies. Half the time, we don’t even know if someone is gay, which is as it should be.

I don’t know if the question of same-sex marriage has reached my kids’ consciousness (it hasn’t been a dinner table conversation but it certainly permeates the news) but I would imagine that they wouldn’t be able to understand why a gay or lesbian couple couldn’t get married. Neither can I.

A great article on currentmom.com (via marriageequality)