Yes, this is exactly what marriage equality proponents want to teach children. The horror.

I was two when Sesame Street first launched. As one of the first generation of children to grow up with the show, I’ve always had a soft spot for it (although I raise a skeptical eyebrow at Elmo and Abby Cadabby). It remains not only one of the best children’s shows in terms of pedagogy, but also in terms of inclusivity. That inclusivity has not yet extended to LGBT families, but as I’ve said before, they have a new chance now, under a federal administration that is not likely to yank funding if they do so, and an increasing number of LGBT-friendly corporations who wouldn’t be afraid to sponsor them.

They’ve been a pioneer in diversity before, unafraid to incorporate characters of various ethnicities, languages, and physical abilities. They had a multi-episode storyline with an adoptive single mother in 2006. Really, throwing in an LGBT-headed family wouldn’t be that much of a stretch, and would help them prove that even 40 years on, they remain a leader in teaching children not only the ABC’s, but also the diversity of the society around them.

Lisa Belkin’s “What’s Good for the Kids” looks at recent research showing that children of lesbian and gay parents tend to be more tolerant and less bound by gender stereotypes and assumptions. She relies heavily on a new book by Abbie Goldberg, Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children. (I have a column of my own coming out soon on Goldberg’s book, so I won’t go into details here, but I will point you to my interview of Goldberg from a couple of years ago.)

Belkin makes some good points, and her main one, that non-traditional families can actually be good for kids, is laudable. I have to take issue with one thing she says, however:

It is striking, then, how comparatively rarely children are mentioned as an argument in favor of gay marriage. The issue is framed as a debate over equality and justice, of personal freedom and the relation of church and state, not about what is good for kids.

First, I’ve seen a lot about how letting same-sex couples marry is good for our children, and about how not letting us do so hurts our kids.

Second, the ultra-right is always framing the debate about what is good for kids. (Several, if not all, of the sources I mention in the Maine section of my Weekly Political Roundup note this was a large reason we lost there. Ditto for Prop 8. )

If LGBT advocates have framed the issue instead as one of simple fairness and equality, that may be a matter of tactics, and isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As I’ve said before, I think Protect Maine Equality should be praised for focusing on fairness and equality, and not getting caught up in the back and forth of whether “gay marriage will be taught in schools,” one of the big issues that sank us in California.

Still, Belkin is correct in noting that the research on lesbian and gay parents, deftly compiled by Goldberg and others, shows not only that we are no worse than others, but may in fact be better preparing our children, gay or not, to live in a world where gender stereotypes are fading, straight husbands spend more time with kids, and wives take out the trash.

Will that convince people to support marriage equality, however, as Belkin suggests? My take? It won’t persuade the ultra-right, for whom the idea of blurred gender roles is as scary as that of same-sex couples getting married (and may in fact be the root cause of the latter). On the other side, those who see blurred gender roles as a good thing already tend to support marriage equality. For the undecided middle? Perhaps, although I am continually surprised at how entrenched gender roles are among the families in my neighborhood, even here in relatively liberal Massachusetts.

Still, the ultra-right has long owned the argument of “what is best for children.” If there is anything we can do to reclaim that argument from them in a compelling way for Middle America, then maybe Maine will be the last defeat of its kind.

Also of note in the NYT this weekend:

• “Can a Boy Wear a Skirt to School?” a good exploration of gender expression and identity. (The article even mentions Labels Are for Jars, whom I—and many of you—have long known around the queer-mom blogosphere.)
• “Field Guides to Fairies” is not in fact about identifying gay men, but rather a review of several new young adult books involving fairies, including Malinda Lo’s Ash, a lesbian retelling of Cinderella. (Here’s my interview with her about the book.) Many congratulations to her for making the NYT, which calls Ash “somber and lovely.”

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• As I’m sure you all know, we lost marriage equality in Maine. Everyone is writing about this. A few pieces of note are those of Jeremy at Good As You and Nan Hunter at Bilerico, who look at how the right won against a solid equality campaign; Pam on the “dying hog of homophobia”; Adam Bink, who was in the Protect Maine Equality war room on election night; and Andrew Sullivan, with whom I don’t always agree, but who says some smart things here, like “In my view, the desperate nature of the current tactics against us, the blatant use of fear around children (which both worries parents and also stigmatizes gay people in one, deft swoop) are signs that what we are demanding truly, truly matters.”

  Also worth a read is the piece at Bay Windows by Sue O’Connell who observes that we failed in Maine because: “Our message to protect our civil rights is about us, not about all of America. We’ve failed to make our cause a universal battle for civil rights. A message about us also defines the battle as one being waged against them.”

• The voters of Kalamazoo, Michigan approved an anti-discrimination ordinance that bans discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation in employment, housing and public accommodations.
• In New Jersey, the anti-equality Chris Christie beat incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine, who has promised to enact marriage equality. Garden State Equality is pushing for a new law before Gov. Corzine leaves office.
• Washington State voters approved Referendum 71, thus upholding domestic partnership rights that are equivalent except in name to opposite-sex marriages, at least in terms of state rights. This is the first time a state’s voters have approved a marriage equality measure at the ballot box.
• Lesbian and gay candidates also won a number of local races for mayors, city councils, and school boards. GayPolitics.com has the roundup. (A special nod to lesbian mom Annise Parker, who advances to a runoff for mayor of Houston.)

Other Issues

• The U.S. Senate held its  first hearing on the sexual-orientation and gender-identity inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).
• Some conservatives are asking Republican senators to support an amendment that would ban federal funding for sex-reassignment surgery under a public health insurance plan.
• Gov. David Paterson of New York has called a special session of the State Senate for Nov. 10 in order to vote on a marriage equality bill.
• Basic Rights Oregon launched a campaign to put an initiative on the Oregon ballot as early as 2012 to lift the constitutional ban on marriage of same-sex couples.
• The city of Austin, Texas, will begin offering COBRA-like health insurance benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of city employees
• The Wisconsin State Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit challenging the state’s domestic-partner registry. Conservatives claimed it violated the state’s ban on marriage of same-sex couples.

(I’ve focused on the U.S. this week because the elections gave us extra news there. Back with the around-the-world updates next week.)

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While the analysis is still coming in from Maine, it’s also worth noting that sixty-four percent of voters with children under 18 voted for California’s Prop 8, according to CNN exit polls. Among married voters with children, the yes votes rose to 68 percent. Only 44 percent of voters without children (and 45 percent of those married without children) voted for it.

Queerty, who first posted about Gagnon’s observations, suggests a strategy for the future: “If that’s true, maybe we should take a hint from huge marketers like General Mills and Nabisco: Knowing that moms make the decisions in heterosexual households, let’s cater our message to them.”

That also means we lesbian soccer moms will continue to have a critical role to play going forward. Hearts and minds are changed as much, if not more so, by personal encounters as by advertising. The next battle for marriage equality will be won on the soccer fields and playgrounds as much as on the airwaves. It will be won at the PTA meetings and potlucks where we show that we are part of the broader community, and casually mention how inequality affects our families.

Don your jerseys, folks. It’s game time.

When I first saw the Advocate headline, “Lesbian Named Part Owner of Cubs,” my first thought was, “And I thought it was hard enough for lesbians to adopt human babies.”

Politics and Law

• Lisa Neff’s piece at 365gay.com gives a touching example of how HUD’s proposed new anti-discrimination policies would impact real families.
• The Legislative Council in Tasmania, Australia, voted to recognize two mothers on a birth certificate and to make the recognition of co-mothers retrospective to 2003. (Thanks, PageOneQ!)
• The Scottish government is expected to recommend early next year that lesbians should be allowed free access to NHS fertility services. Some local NHS trusts already allow it, or will do so on a case-by-case basis, but there is no consistency across the country.
• The Montana Supreme Court once again upheld the rights of a non-bio mom in a custody case, that of Linda Filpula and Dustine Ankney (PDF). A trial court found that Filpula and the children “had child-parent relationships as a result of the joint decision of the two women,” and the state Supreme Court agreed, as Nancy Polikoff reports.

Schools and Youth

• Jonathan Zimmerman, who teaches history and education at New York University, asks, “What’s Wrong with Being Gay?” Specifically, he wants to know why the gay community’s response to the accusation that we want to “promote homosexuality” in schools has been “No we don’t” rather than “So What?” He makes the point in reference to Kevin Jennings, the openly gay assistant deputy secretary of education, who is under fire from the right; I made a similar point last year with regard to the Prop 8 campaign. Queerty dissects Zimmerman’s observation further, saying:
  

  The fearmongering campaign from zealots, and the innate reluctance from education moderates that keeps this from happening is the immediate connection between homosexuality and sex. Because that three-letter word is included in every discussion about gays and lesbians, it’s easy to scare parents and community leaders and academia as a whole from seriously engaging young people in an education about people who are not heterosexual. Algebra problems that make use of boyfriends and girlfriends (e.g., splitting the check on a date) don’t inherently involve a discussion about sex, because hetero partners are the norm. So why can’t we encourage educators to, every now and then, throw in two girlfriends in a proof? . . .

  First graders learn about classmates’ mommies and daddies, from what they do at work to how many siblings they provided their sons and daughters. It has nothing to do with putting penises in vaginas. Discussing the families of same-sex parents, then, needn’t have anything to do with genitalia and orifices, either.

  “If, at 4:00 p.m., Jane picks up Charlie from soccer practice, three miles from their house, and drives at 30 mph, and her spouse Sally picks up their other child, Susie, from karate lessons five miles away, and drives at 35 mph, which of them will arrive home first?”

• The Birmingham, Alabama Board of Education passed an anti-bullying policy inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression, and passed another policy protecting LGBT teachers from harassment.
• Illinois Superintendent of Education Christopher Koch spoke at a public forum sponsored by the East Central Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, a subdivision of the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, on what schools can do to create a safe learning environment for LGBT students.
• Elsewhere in Illinois, Dan DeLong, a 10th and 12th-grade Honors English teacher and straight, married, ally, was suspended for assigning his students an article about homosexuality in the animal kingdom. He was then reinstated after hundreds of his students protested.
• The school board in Corunna, Michigan, removed a display that the Diversity Club had put up for gay history month, showing pictures of successful gay Americans.
• An Army recruiter supervising 500 high school students during a military aptitude test
  used a gay slur and an expletive when talking to a fellow soldier, a remark overheard and reported on by several students. The head of the Denver Recruiting Battalion said such behavior is inappropriate, and the unit will be conducting an internal investigation.

Demographics

• UCLA’s Williams Institute released the first study (PDF) to examine the difference and similarities among same-sex couples and married different-sex couples based on data from the Census Department’s American Community Survey. It found that same-sex and opposite-sex spouses are similar in terms of age, education, household income, and homeownership rates. Lots of other delicious facts to digest here, too. One key one: “Same-sex spouses were twice as likely to be raising children—more than 31% of spouses are raising children as opposed to 17% of unmarried partners.”

Personal Stories

• COLAGE board member Brett Webb-Mitchell wrote a piece for Q-Notes on coming out as gay after having children in an opposite-sex marriage, and the great variety and strength of the COLAGEr’s he has come to know.

In the Life television will be airing the first 20 minutes of the 90-minute film online and on public television in November. If you want the full version for yourself, however, the DVD’s are now available at the film’s Web site. They’re only $20 each, three for $50, or ten for $100. Buy copies for all your friends, plus the schools, libraries, and social service agencies near you. (Filmmaker C Roebuck Reed is developing study guides for high school and college students, and for child service agencies to use in training foster and adoptive parents.)

Here’s my interview with Reed at Bay Windows. She calls the film “a love bomb for Middle America,” a gentle, non-confrontational way to change hearts and minds and ensure more children have the chance to be adopted.

Reed is hoping for investors to fund further distribution and showings. If you know of (or are) an angel investor, or have any clout with film festivals, please contact her at preacherssons@gmail.com.

(I have absolutely no financial interest in this; I just think it is a well done film with a very important message.)

I wrote about Maine before the election, and noted that once again, the Right was making children the focus of their attacks. “Gay marriage will mean children will be taught about it in schools,” they shrieked.

Protect Maine Equality did a better job than California’s Prop 8 campaign at not falling into the trap of protesting, “No it won’t,” implying that there was still something wrong with such teaching. Instead, they focused on how marriage equality would mean equality for all families. Still, it was not enough.

Garden State Equality is already out of the gates with television ads showing not only that marriage equality means fairness for all families, but that marriage inequality hurts families and children, in very real and tragic ways. Will it be enough?

That remains to be seen—but let’s not fall into the trap of thinking that Gov. Jon Corzine’s reelection loss means we should give up hope. As Steve Goldstein, executive director of Garden State Equality, said in an e-mail, we could still make marriage equality happen in New Jersey if we act quickly:

Jon Corzine has been an spectacular Governor for the LGBT community, deeply committed to winning marriage equality, and he will still be Governor through mid-January. He will be working with the two staunchly pro-marriage equality leaders in the legislature, Senate President Dick Codey and Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts – two of the savviest public servants you could meet. They will be joined by Jon’s running mate, Senator Loretta Weinberg, New Jersey’s all-time champion of LGBT equality. We’re thrilled to have this all-star team on our side in these last months of the Governor’s term.

To members of the LGBT community who have focused on other states, it’s time to stop treating New Jersey like Rodney Dangerfield. It’s time to give New Jersey more respect, attention and yes, resources.

Our state is every bit as sexy as the other states: We are the home state of the National Organization for Marriage, and we need your help to beat NOM on its home turf. We are also a populous state, a huge prize for the moment. In fact, when New Jersey wins marriage equality, it will increase by 50 percent the number of Americans living in a jurisdiction with marriage equality. New Jersey has roughly as many residents as all the other marriage equality states combined.

While we must keep plugging away as we can in Maine and elsewhere, all eyes should now shift to New Jersey for a big push before the gubernatorial changeover. Visit gardenstateequality.org for how you can help.

Maine is a huge disappointment, but we should also note last night’s victories. Washington State voters upheld extensive domestic partnership rights. An LGBT-inclusive anti-discrimination ordinance passed in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Lesbian mom Annise Parker took the highest percentage of votes for the mayorship of Houston, Texas. (She was below 50 percent total, however, placing her in a runoff with the second-place candidate.) Openly lesbian and gay candidates won city council seats in St. Petersburg, Florida; Detroit, Michigan; Maplewood, Minnesota; Akron, Ohio; and Salt Lake City, Utah, and a board of education seat in Canton, Ohio, among other places.

Some reasons for hope, then, despite the loss in Maine. As Susan of Crunchy Granola Tweeted last night, however, “the arc of the moral universe feels more like a rollercoaster.”

Hang on to your popcorn, folks. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. I have to have faith, though, that we can still make a difference. That faith (religious or not, take your pick) is what has sustained previous civil rights movements. When we lose it, the other side really has won. We had enough victories last night to tell me we’re not at that point yet.

Besides, defeatism is not a value I want to teach my child. Digging deep for the extra effort is.

Onward . . .

In New Jersey, the anti-equality Chris Christie is ahead of incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine, who has promised to enact marriage equality. Prepared for any contingency, Garden State Equality is already on the airwaves with new television commercials.

Once again, parents and children take the lead in the battle for hearts and minds. This time, it is Marsha and Louise, who have raised four children, two with significant disabilities. I think GSE knocks it out of the park in terms of messaging: “It won’t affect your marriage, but it will mean everything to them.”

Check out Garden State Equality’s new Web site, too.

• Change.org, who led the charge against Scholastic with an online petition and several talks with Scholastic executives, brought us the good news that Scholastic changed its initial decision not to carry the book in any of its book fairs.
• School Library Journal, which first broke the story, also gave us an update after the company reversed its decision.
• Brett Berk, aka “The Gay Uncle,” interviewed Myracle for Momlogic. She told Berk:
  

  The whole point was to have a cast of main characters that reflect the diversity of today’s elementary schools. The moms’ lesbianism is incidental. It’s not a plot point or the source of some big lesson in the book. Just like there’s a half Asian girl, an African-American girl who lives just with her dad, and a Muslim girl who wears a headscarf, there’s a girl with two moms.

  Note: The main characters are in elementary school. As Berk said, “Anyone with even an iota of expertise in how kids work (like, perhaps, one of the biggest youth publishing and distribution companies in the world) knows that the last thing a 6th to 8th grader wants to be associated with is anything having to do with 5th grade. Duh!”

• Lesbian mom Liza, who is the co-chair of her school’s Scholastic Book Fair, wrote of her disappointment in the company, and did a separate piece that got picked up by Kansas.com.
• The uproar even caught the attention of Conan O’Brien, who gives it a mention at about the 4:20 mark in this episode.
• The news also made it across the pond, where the U.K.’s Daily Prophet Guardian covered it.
• Last, but far from least, Myracle gives us an update at her own blog. She writes:
  

  Scholastic is going to include Luv Ya Bunches in its middle school book fairs! And Milla’s two moms have been invited, too! They will be there chatting about books and giving kids cupcakes, and it will be a big happy party. As for Milla, she is so proud. She just can’t stop smiling. I mean, imagine being a kid with same-sex parents and going to a book fair and not finding one single book that reflects the kind of family you have. It would be lonely-making, yeah? But Milla, she’ll see herself now. AND Mom Joyce AND Mom Abigail. And her other buds will see her family, too, and they’ll be like, “Oh, yeah, cool. Now pass me a cupcake, sister.”

  She also thanks her publisher, Abrams, for all the support they have shown her and her work.

  As it happens, last spring I interviewed another Abrams author, Erica Perl, about her book Chicken Butt!, which was illustrated by none other than Henry Cole, who also did the drawings for And Tango Makes Three and The Sissy Duckling, both beloved of LGBT parents and their children. Small world. I also did a few short reviews of other new, non-LGBT Abrams books for kids: one, two, and three. Let’s support the publishers who support inclusion!

I’ve had a few people ask what they should now do when the Scholastic Book Fair comes to their schools. My sense is that boycotting would have limited effect. The Fairs are just too huge. Also, Scholastic has made a move in the right direction, even if they have not yet included the book in elementary school fairs. The last thing I would wish is to annoy them so much that they decide not to carry Myracle’s book at all. That would not be fair to her—and this is her livelihood we’re talking about here.

At the same, time, I think we can keep the pressure on and engage them by asking the Fair reps if they are carrying Myracle’s book and/or any others with LGBT families and characters. If not, ask if they can provide those requests as feedback to Scholastic, or contact the company yourself. Tell all your friends, LGBT and not, to ask, too.

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