First introduced in 2008, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the bill last week to create Harvey Milk Day in honor of the first openly gay person to be elected to a high office of a major American city.

According to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle, the newspaper from Milk's adopted hometown, he's just the second California citizen to be awarded such an honor. Milk served as the city's Supervisor.

Last year's movie that won Sean Penn an Academy Award for his portrayal of Milk had increased the pressure on Sacramento to get the bill passed, and gay rights groups have spent the days since Schwarzenegger brandished his pen celebrating.

Not so some parents.

When I first started reading CRISIS: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay In America, I did not expect any great revelations. Having grown up in San Francisco to become an outspoken supporter of equal rights for all, I assumed that there would be no surprises awaiting me. Much to my surprise, however, that was not the case.

Sadly, I find myself in the unpleasant position of realizing that I have been a party to the difficulty that gay men and women face in this country in trying to be the person they truly are.

This book is full of first-person accounts of men and women growing up knowing that they were attracted to members of the same sex but being told that such an attraction was an abomination. I was reading one of them -- the author told of working hard to fit in, marrying and having a family, trying to suppress his sexuality -- and it wasn't until I got very near to the end that I realized that I knew about this particular writer -- it was Governor McGreevey of New Jersey.

A divorced Tennessee mom of two was recently told by the court that her lesbian partner of nine years can no longer "sleep over" when her kids are in the home. The reason? A "paramour restriction" imposed by a judge, despite the fact that a psychological evaluation found the woman to be a positive influence on her partner's children.

Meanwhile, the woman's ex-husband shares his home with his wife of five years, who gets to "sleep over" whenever she wants.

Why the double standard? According to the ACLU, the judge thought he was mandated by law to put the restriction in place, ignoring the fact that the family had been a cohesive unit for most of the kids' lives. The ruling, which is being appealed, has forced the couple to live in a duplex so that they can abide by the law while still being able to see each other.

An Arkansas law that bans unmarried couples from acting as foster parents or adopting goes into effect Jan. 1, and while it applies to cohabitating heterosexual couples as well, many claim the measure is intended to prohibit gay couples from taking in foster kids, even if it means that children will wait longer for placement in qualified homes.

Susan Hoffpauir is the president of the Arkansas chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, and she says adding restrictions like this to an already difficult process means fewer quality homes for kids in need.

Same-sex marriage has certainly been in the news lately, but many states are quietly working to prevent same-sex couples from adopting. Utah and North Dakota both allow the state to disqualify gay couples from being foster parents or adopting. However, a Florida judge recently struck down a decades-old law prohibiting gays and lesbians from adopting children.

Opponents of these laws say they may also jeopardize other non-traditional adoptions, including those attempted by non-cohabitating grandparents.

Here in my home state of Illinois, prospective foster and adoptive parents may be married or single, and the state is not allowed to discriminate based on sexual orientation.

With so many kids, and so few qualified parents, it seems criminal to pass up good homes simply because there are two moms or two dads. Isn't that better than having no parents at all?

For thirty years, gays and lesbians have been prohibited from adopting in Florida. Thanks to Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman, however, that is no longer the case. The decision came about as a result of a suit filed by Frank Gill who, along with his partner, has been raising four- and eight-year-old boys since 2004. The children were placed temporarily with Gill but were not able to return to their birth parents.

"This is the forum where we try to heal children, find permanent families for them so they can ... go on to lead productive lives," said Judge Lederman. "We pray for them to thrive, but that is a word we rarely hear in dependency court. These children are thriving." Meanwhile, attorneys for the Department of Children and Families plan to appeal the decision. I guess the department's primary focus is not the well-being of children and families, but perpetuating discrimination.

As for me, I'll side with the judge on this one. She summed it up far better than I could: "Based on the evidence presented from experts from all over this country and abroad, it is clear that sexual orientation is not a predictor of a person's ability to parent."

Proponents of California's proposition 8 have put out a lot of misinformation, focusing mainly on schools; they claim that unless proposition 8 passes, California public schools will have to start teaching kids that they can only marry someone of the same gender as they are. Or something like that. In fact, schools will not suddenly turn into indoctrination factories for young homosexuals, any more so than they forced children to be involved in interracial relationships after the miscegenation laws were struck down.

As this article points out, however, even the passage of proposition 8 won't keep the subject of LGBT families out of the classroom -- unless the intent is to keep the children of gays and lesbians out of the classroom. "What happens," asks Dana Rudolph, "if a child mentions 'when my mommy and mama took me to Disneyland', and another student asks about her family structure?" The fact is, short of expelling the children of LGBT parents, there is no way to keep the subject of same-sex marriage out of the classroom.

That's not what Prop. 8 is really about, however. Its proponents are simply using the old "Oh noes! Won't someone please think of the children?" line to spread FUD -- fear, uncertainty, and doubt -- but really, the kids aren't the ones who have a problem with it. And no matter what you do, there will be discussion of same-sex marriage in the classroom, along with divorce and single parents and kids who live with their great-grandparents and so on. Because the kids are living it.

This post is part of and in support of Write to Marry Day.

The Chicago Board of Education put plans for the Social Justice Pride Campus, a high school intended to serve gay and lesbian students, on hold yesterday by putting off a vote on the matter until the middle of November. Although the mayor insisted that he did not tell the board to put off the vote, the Chicago Sun-Times refers to the group as "his handpicked school board." Whether or not Daley influenced the board, he did admit to concerns about the plan.

Mayor Richard M. Daley explained his reservations, saying "You have to look at whether or not you isolate and segregate children. A holistic approach has always been to have children of all different backgrounds in schools. When you start isolating children and you say, 'Only 50 percent here, 40 percent here' -- same thing we went through with the disabled -- then you want to do that when they're adults."

Rick Garcia, political director of Equality Illinois, agrees. "There's no doubt there's violence and bullying of gay kids and something has to be done, but segregating them is not the answer," he said, adding that "instead of a school for gay kids, maybe we need a school for the bullies." Frankly, I couldn't agree more. Instead of trying to sweep the problem under the rug by hiding gay students off at their own school, why not address the cause of the problem and stop the bullying?

We all, I'm sure, do our best to treat our children fairly and equally. It is, really, the right thing to do. We don't give one kid a pony for their birthday and the other a pair of socks, we don't take one on vacation and leave the other with the babysitter, and we don't buy one kid a brand new sports car and the other a used bike. Well, one couple has made a video asking that the state do the same.

Sam and Julia Thoron have been married for nearly half a century and have raised three children. One of them happens to be gay, but that doesn't mean it's okay to let the other two get married while taking away the right of the third to do so. California's proposition 8 would do just that -- take away the right of thousands of parent's sons and daughters to get married. In the video, Julia asks "please don't eliminate that right -- for anyone's family."



It had to take a lot of guts -- and love -- for this couple to make that video. But then, that's the sort of thing parents do for their kids. Hopefully, all the other parents in the state will think about their own children and not vote to take away their right to marry this November.

So say you're in love with someone. Totally and completely. And not just them, but their kids too. So you want to get married and legally adopt the kids. But there's a problem. Perhaps you're disabled and, if you marry, you'll lose your disability benefits. Or maybe you just don't go for the whole marriage thing. Or maybe you can't get married because the state is more concerned with sex than love and you don't fit their definition of what's acceptable. So you decide to do a "second-parent" adoption where you adopt the kids without terminating the biological parent's rights.

Only, in Kentucky, you can't do that anymore. It seems a couple did that there, but when negotiations over visitation and other issues -- the adoption came after the couple split up -- broke down, the biological mother went to court saying that the adoption should never have happened in the first place. Sadly, the court of appeals agreed in principle, and now the state does not allow adoption unless the adoptive parent is married to the biological parent or the biological parent's rights are terminated.

The net effect of this? Same-sex couples can no longer adopt each other's children because they cannot marry. And the irony of it all -- because the issues were raised more than a year after it took place, the court ruled that the adoption in question is still valid. Hopefully, in time, the court will see the error of its ways and let any loving, caring, able parent adopt, regardless of marital or gender status.

In order to provide a safe haven for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning high school students, the Chicago public school system is considering opening a high school specifically for LQBTQ students. Attendance at the new school would be voluntary and open to everyone, not just LGBTQ students.

More than a third of Illinois students surveyed in 2006 said that sexual orientation is the most common reason for bullying and harassment in schools; the same number listed gender identity. Three out of four students said they had heard anti-gay remarks from other students and more than four out of five heard students say things like "that's so gay" or "you're gay."

It seems like there is a definite need for change here, but I have to say that this school sounds an awful lot like "separate but equal" to me. I'm not saying they don't need the school or shouldn't move ahead with the plan; it just saddens me to no end that it is needed.

For actress Brooke Shields, life is far from perfect. And she's not afraid to admit it. The Lipstick Jungle star was very free with her words when she spoke with TimesOnline. And she's not afraid to admit that having and raising kids is tough for the working mom. Shields, now 43, is mom to two daughters with husband Chris Henchy, Rowan who is five and Grier who is two.

She's thankful to be on a hit show like Lipstick Jungle (from acclaimed Sex in the City creator Candace Bushnell) and to have had an incredible career that started when she was a mere fourteen years old, but, states Shields, ""I'm on the set of Lipstick, committed, yes, but constantly wondering how my kids are, where they are, sad when my daughter asks if she can stay up until I get home...." Just like any other working mother. Shields also says she's acquiesced to letting her kids stay up until she gets home and letting them into bed with her, which she said she would never do. Yes, even Brooke Shields, who once sported little more than Calvin Kleins and arm candy like Andre Agassi, has to make compromises. Good to hear they're for a five- and two-year-old.

It's also refreshing to hear that a celebrity mom thinks parenting and working is tough, that she admits to not being perfect and to giving in to her kids, and that she misses them and cares about what's going on with them. Celebs act like things are so hard all the time and they have these armies of nannies and other kinds of help that regular folks like us could never dream of. Occasionally we see them out with their kids for little more than what amounts to photo ops, whether they intend such outings to be such or not. I'm sure Brooke has her share of help--it would be impossible to star in a television series and not--but at least she's being realistic and honest with us that parenting--parenting done RIGHT--is not easy, and that perfection is far from reality.

Colorado librarian James LaRue has gotten another challenge to Uncle Bobby's Wedding, the book about a little girl guinea pig's concerns that her uncle won't play with her after he gets married. The idea is simple enough -- Young Chloe loves her uncle but worries that after he gets married, he won't have time to play with her any more. None of that is why parents are getting up set about the book.

The "problem" with the book is that it just so happens that Uncle Bobby is marrying his boyfriend Jamie. It's not really relevant to the plot, nor, as I understand it, is it gone into in detail, it's just sort of a part of the background of the story. Big deal. Apparently, to some, it is a big deal and that is cause to want the book removed from the library shelves. After the first challenge, LaRue wrote an intelligent, sensitive response that explained why, in spite of (or even perhaps because of) the reasons for the challenge, the book would remain on the shelves.

Well now a second challenge has come along, this time asking that the book be removed because gay marriage is illegal in Colorado. Once again, LaRue responds in an intelligent, polite manner -- something I'm not sure I would have been able to do. He points out that it is not specified where the story takes place, whether it is in Colorado, in Massachusetts (where the author hails from), or even "in a wholly fictitious universe with its own laws." Yeah, like one where guinea pigs talk and wear clothes and get married? Ya think?

Of course, if we were to follow that line of reasoning -- removing books that depicted illegal acts -- we'd have to get rid of the mysteries, the adventures, the newspapers and news magazines... heck, most of the library would be empty. We'd even have to pull the bible off the shelf because, last time I checked, murder and incest are still illegal most places.

Via Mombian

Nearly a year ago, an Australian couple made headlines when they sued their doctors for transferring two embryos during an IVF procedure when they explicitly said that they only wanted one. There was a mix-up in communication, and the doctor transferred two, which resulted in the birth of the couple's twins. The couple ruffled feathers by suing their doctor for the cost of raising the second child, or about $331,000 U.S.

This week, the couple's case was thrown out of court after a judge decided that the doctor in the case wasn't negligent, but the mother was for changing her mind in the first place and not being clear in her wishes. Australian doctors have come out in support of the judge's decision, while the mothers say they may appeal. They stress that the court case was never about how much they love their now 4-year-old twins, but that they feel the doctor should be held responsible for his error.

It's hard for many people to imagine going to court because you got two healthy babies instead of one. But deciding how many embryos to transfer can be complicated for parents. I have friends who debated about it for weeks, because he really, really didn't want twins, but she really, really didn't want to go through IVF another time and wanted to improve their odds of having a healthy baby. The couple in Australia very clearly wanted one child, and through doctor error got two. I wouldn't have gone to court, I think, because -- like this couple -- I would have loved and cherished the children despite the confusion, and I wouldn't have wanted ever wanted them to feel unwanted. But this couple obviously felt strongly enough to take that risk.

What would you have done?

For two years straight, And Tango Makes Three was the top most challenged library book, according to the American Library Association. This year, however, another book might just take that dubious honor away. Uncle Bobby's Wedding is a story of a young guinea pig who is worried that her uncle's impending marriage will spell the end of her good times with her uncle. He explains that instead, she'll have two uncles to have fun with.

And therein lies the rub -- Uncle Bobby is marrying his boyfriend Jamie. The first of what will likely be many complaints was filed recently and ended up in the lap of Jamie LaRue, Director of the Douglas County Libraries in Castle Rock, Colorado. LaRue considered the challenge and responded with a well thought out, reasoned answer that he then shared on his website. That's a very good thing, because LaRue came up with exactly the right answers.

In his response, LaRue addresses the challenge that the subject of gay marriage, despite being incidental to the story, is inappropriate for young children. "I think a lot of adults imagine that what defines a children's book is the subject. But that's not the case. Children's books deal with anything and everything," he writes, noting that "what defines a children's book is the treatment, not the topic."

LaRue determines that the book "is a children's book, appropriately categorized and shelved in our children's picture book area." He goes on to explain that "if the library is doing its job, there are lots of books in our collection that people won't agree with; there are certainly many that I object to. Library collections don't imply endorsement; they imply access to the many different ideas of our culture, which is precisely our purpose in public life."

His response is well worth reading, even if only to remember what libraries are all about. It really is, however, a masterpiece of reasoned explanation. Hopefully, it will be widely read by librarians and serve as a precedent when other challenges come up. Kudos to Mr. LaRue for understanding the role and value of libraries and my thanks for standing up for what's right.

via Mombian

Making the choice to adopt requires a big commitment. You really have to be prepared and know what you're getting into. It's not something that can happen by accident or in the heat of the moment. In New York, you can even get certified as "Qualified Adoptive Parents" by the New York City Surrogate Court. That's what Rosario Gennaro and Alexander Gardner did.

When they went online to register with ParentProfiles.com, a website that lists prospective adoptive parents' information, however, they ran into an unforeseen obstacle -- discrimination. You see, Adoption Profiles, LLC, the company that runs the website, limits profiles to "Qualifying Husband and Wife Couples".

The same company chose to stop doing business in California rather than take on the state's antidiscrimination laws after being sued in 2004. Now they may have to give up New York as well -- Lambda Legal, a national, non-profit, civil rights organization, has filed, on behalf of Gennaro and Gardner, a discrimination complaint with the New York attorney general's office.

It's a shame that someone would let their prejudice get in the way of finding a loving home for a child that needs one. "We are committed partners who can provide a loving home for the child," says Gennaro. It's too bad that Adoption Profiles won't let a child into that loving home.