Tag Archives: foster care

The Week in LGBTQA – March 17, 2013

St. Patrick’s Day edition.

First, let me wish my younger brother Jim a happy birthday. He’s 41 – 17 months younger than me. In my head he’s still 8. LOL. This Week

One of most significant stories this past week involved a conversation about how we prevent rape. Gun proponents argue that women need guns to shoot their rapists. Advocates argue that as most rapes takes place with someone the victim knows and who also has access to that very gun, it is not helpful at all. Zerlina Maxwell went onto the Sean Hannity show and said that we need to teach men not to rape – period. After enduring rape and death threats among much awful cyberabuse, Maxwell continued to stick with her message and provide five suggestions on how to do this.

Reducing violence against women is a very critical issue for the LGBTQ community. A sexually violent rape culture hurts all of us.

This piece from BuzzFeed drew a lot of interest on my Twitter account – knowing a gay person more than doubles support for marriage equality. During this week, US Republican Senator Rob Portman revealed that he now supports marriage equality, a change of heart he attributes to his son’s coming out. Portman has been lauded and criticized for the politics of individuality. I think that’s fair but shortsighted. Portman is the only Republican in the Senate to support marriage equality. He doesn’t need a ticker tape parade, but a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, right? The real takeaway is our decisions to live authentic lives knowing that the welfare of the entire community can depend upon it.

Another very popular tweet was linked to a story about 10 bisexual women of color.

NOM publicly described Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ adoption of his kids as the “second best” way to be a family. Oh my.

In poverty new, Pennsylvania wage earners are not bringing home enough to pay average rents. This coupled with the lack of housing discrimination protections for LGBTQ folks is deeply troubling.

A health club in Columbus, Ohio has been fined for discrimination against a transwomen employee.

An 11 year old boy resigned from Boy Scouts over their failure to lift the ban on LGBTQ scouts and leaders. His letter to the editor explaining his decision is very powerful.

A Dutch lesbian couple has had to go into hiding with their 11 year old foster son who is of Turkish ancestry after his birth family insists his placement violates Turkish law.

Finally, this letter written by a father to assure his son that coming out was okay has made the rounds (and brought the tears.)

Courtesy of FCKH8

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Don’t Forget the Aunties …

Today, good friends of ours sent a “Save the Date” for the baptism of their adopted son, EM. EM is six months old and we first met him when he was only 8 days old! We’ve also been proud to know his older brother, JJ almost since he came home at six months.

It is very touching to be the “non-family” persons invited to these occasions – we are also looking forward to the adoption finalization. As a former foster care recruiter, that’s a moment I think will be lovely to witness.

It reminded me of a post I wrote last June in honor of the Blogging for LGBT Families Event. Family is a universal term for being part of the LGBTQ community. We should be grateful that so many of our sisters and brothers have the opportunity to include children in their immediate families, but not discount the important roles we all play in creating safe & healthy families.

I’m very proud of the time I spent as a foster parent recruiter. It wasn’t a career move I envisioned, but I was humbled by the contact I had with the foster parents and the children. I keep in touch with several families and rejoice with them as they continue on that path. I also weep when things go awry for them or the children.

It does take a special person to be a foster parent, but it also takes the rest of us to support them in that journey.

Don’t discount that aunties, my friends. While you raise our lovely little ones, I (and Ledcat) are staying on top of legislation and advocating and working pretty darn hard to make sure LGBTQ families are part of the agenda. My personal belief is that passing non-discrimination protections statewide is the best way to protect your family, but I’m glad there is legislation around bullying, sexual education and foster care with LGBTQ components. And I think its an important job to make you aware.

And we have the added privilege of a monthly or so often dinner/lunch with EM, JJ and their moms. That’s never dull. We are blessed to be in their lives.

Happy soon to be adoption day, EM. I can’t wait to tell you about it someday.

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Does the Catholic Church Have a First Amendment Right to Provide Social Services?

No. And they accept that fact. Here’s the challenge.

Anthony R. Picarello Jr., general counsel and associate general secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, disagreed. “It’s true that the church doesn’t have a First Amendment right to have a government contract,” he said, “but it does have a First Amendment right not to be excluded from a contract based on its religious beliefs.“

This is from a NYT story published in today’s Post-Gazette.

The piece follows the travails of the Church in response to increasing requirements to deliver services that are paid for with public dollars in accordance with public rules, ie, play fair. The Church has to provide contraceptive coverage in their health insurance plans if they accept public dollars because contraception is a legal medical right. The morality has nothing to do with the public dollars they accept to pay for this insurance as part of their government contracts.

The Church also has to allow same sex headed household to foster and adopt. Again, they accept public money.

The article explores how some dioceseses are spinning their charitable efforts off into secular non-profit organizations to keep the services going without further input from the church. Others are fighting back, insisting as the quote above illustrates that their religious beliefs are being violated.

The courts don’t agree. No one says the church can’t deliver services. They just have to pay for it with their own money if they want to set their own rules. How is that rocket science? After all, there’s this huge belief that if the government stopped sucking up all the charity dollars in the form of taxes, it would suddenly pour forth in a wellspring of funding for private social services and charitable efforts … the mythical private safety net.

Well, there’s little evidence to suggest that’s true. The Catholic Church shutters parishes and schools left and right. Faith based food pantries and homeless ministries struggle to care for people because of limited funding. I’m not suggesting these services go away, just that they aren’t ever going to be adequate as substitutes for government funded human service programs. The fact is — the Church has not done a sufficient enough job preaching the Good News to create a viable alternative to support the human needs of those who suffer in our world. Period.

Requiring all providers who apply for government contracts to comply with regulations is not a violation of the First Amendment. There’s a reason that its a good idea to have government oversight of programs run by an Institution that has historically hidden the abuse of children, especially if MY tax dollars pay for those programs.

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Santorum: LGBT Families “Destabilize” America

He’s at it again …

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is on the presidential campaign trail in Iowa and his appeal to the heartland is laced with bigotry and intolerance, as well as a healthy dose of hypocrisy. On Weds, Dec 7, he was in Spencer, Iowa.

He wants to maintain family structures among immigrants by deporting all of the family members, even the American citizens. To keep them together.

With regard to LGBTQ families, he suggests that regardless of technology and/or natural conception and birth of children, the fact that they don’t have a mother and father negates anything else.

Addicting Info writes:

He told a crowd in Spencer, Iowa: “I’ve had people who actually worked for me who were gays. And… if they did their job like anybody else, and we were able to work together, we did work together…. If they can do their job, they should.” This is his way of showing that he’s not a bigot, basically saying, “I’ll even hire a homo, as long as they don’t go prancing around like a drag queen or butching it up too obvious-like.” So obviously, not a bigot. (Besides, try getting something done in Washington without a gaggle of gays on your staff). If that guy from A-List Dallas was willing to be seen in public with Ann Coulter, I suspect Santorum could find a willing gay collaborator or two.

Well, I suppose they don’t know that Santorum’s PR go-to-guy (Director of Communications) was openly gay, African-American Robert Traynham (I used to call him “spokesfag” but I’m being more respectful now … oh.) Traynham bragged about being permitted around Santorum’s kids. I wonder if he got to hold the … I won’t go there.

Anyway, Robert Traynham is a gay man who helped destabilize America by lending his time, talent and energy to support a man willing to throw him under the bus to get elected. How do you remain supportive of someone whose hateful venom has only increased over the years?

What I don’t see in any of the speeches or new coverage is an explanation of HOW an LGBTQ family destabilizes another family? From what I’ve observed in 15 or so years of being a social worker is that heterosexual families, corporate America and poverty do a pretty damn good job of destabilizing themselves without any help from us.

So how? How? How?

Where is Robert Traynham these days?

httpv://youtu.be/s1gyuylWkJc

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