Transforming Jealousy. . .

into "sympathetic joy"? Tikkun has a big New Idea for relationships. And blames it on Buddhism. . .
posted by maggie at 9:15 PM | Link | 5 comments

Continuing Benefits Battle in Alaska

Yesterday, the Alaska Supreme Court issued a decision in the most recent round of disputes involving the court’s earlier order that the state was compelled by the Alaska Constitution to offer the benefits given to spouses of state employees to same-sex partners of state employees.

In its opinion yesterday, the supreme court ruled that the trial court lacked authority to scrutinize the state agency’s plan to offer benefits as long as that plan was not arbitrary or irrational. The trial court had earlier held the agency’s plan for offering benefits needed to be expanded. The supreme court did suggest that a later case might be brought to challenge the benefits plan promulgated by the agency as inadequate.

In this case, the Alaska legislature (appearing as amicus curiae) had asked the court to delay implementation of its decision to allow the people of the state to vote on the issue since the request did not come from the state as a party to the case. The legislature has enacted legislation to prevent the extension of benefits and to hold a popular referendum on the benefits issue.

As much as anything, this suggests the wisdom of the legislature acting to amend the state constitution to define marriage in 1998. Although dated, this article describes that amendment battle and the litigation from which it arose.
posted by William Duncan at 4:25 PM | Link | 0 comments

Massachusetts High Court Asked to Rule on Legislature's Obligations

Boston Globe:

"Both sides in a legal battle over a proposed ballot initiative to ban gay marriage acknowledged yesterday that the Supreme Judicial Court cannot force the Legislature to vote on whether to put it on the ballot. . .

The suit, spearheaded by Governor Mitt Romney, charges that legislators subverted the state constitution Nov. 9 when they met as a constitutional convention and took no action on the voter-initiative petition. The Legislature voted, 109 to 87, to recess before deciding whether to put the amendment on the 2008 ballot.

John D. Hanify, a lawyer representing Romney as a private citizen and 10 other plaintiffs, also conceded that the court could not force the Legislature to take a vote, but said the justices could pressure lawmakers to act by spelling out the intentions of the constitutional provision that permits citizen initiatives.

"We're not asking you to tell the Legislature how to do their business," he told the court. "We're only asking you to declare what their constitutional obligations are."
He called the recess an obvious and calculated ploy by the Legislature to duck the issue.

Supporters of the ballot measure want a decision before the legislative session ends, but the court, which legalized gay marriage beginning in May 2004, did not say when it will rule.

Backers of the proposed constitutional amendment collected 170,000 signatures to get the measure on the ballot in 2008. To qualify for a statewide referendum, a measure needs the support of at least 50 legislators in two consecutive sessions. Instead of acting on the measure, the Legislature moved to recess the joint session until Jan. 2.
. . .The Committee for Health Care for Massachusetts filed a brief siding with backers of the marriage ban, saying the convention recessed without taking action on an initiative to guarantee affordable health coverage.

posted by maggie at 12:54 PM | Link | 0 comments

Time Corrects Jennifer Chrisler Error

I dunno. I guess its too embarrassing to have published a piece on THE FACTS with such a big error. Because Time.com has corrected Jennifer Chrisler's mistake, without ever acknowledging to its readers it published such a howling blooper in the first place. Here is the letter Jennifer Chrisler sent to me, acknowledging her error and her admirable willingness to fix it. Fixing it by changing the text without acknowledging the error itself strikes me as well. . .a little self-serving on the part of Time. I wouldn't make such a big deal of it, but it is in a column accusing her opponent of actually lying about "the facts" because he disagrees with her assessment of the research. . .Here is the letter Jennifer wrote to me on this, just for the record. Again, I blame Time magazine, not Jennifer:

Maggie -

I want to thank you for contacting me with your question about the Time piece.

Your question made me re-examine the wording I used and in fact, the sentence should have read:

"According to the 2000 census, the vast majority - more than 75% - of American households differ in structure from two married, heterosexual parents and their biological children."

Obviously, this has a significantly different meaning than the original sentence and was an accidental misstatement on my part in describing the census terminology. I want this to appear accurately and am sending a letter to Time magazine as well in order to correct the piece.

As I am sure you are aware from your review of the census data, it is a complicated and nuanced set of statistics with terminology that has a long way to go in order to describe the many diverse family structures we see in our culture.

Irregardless, Family Pride feels strongly that every American family should enjoy the same rights and protections, including gay and lesbian families.

I would be happy to discuss this with you further at your convenience.

Best wishes,


Jennifer



Jennifer Chrisler
Executive Director
Family Pride

posted by maggie at 12:06 PM | Link | 2 comments

California Marriage Cases at the State Supreme Court

The California Supreme Court has announced that it will accept review of the marriage cases recently decided by the California Court of Appeal. That court ruled 2-1 in favor of the current marriage law. These cases arose from the publicity event staged by the mayor of San Francisco when he ordered the city to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in contravention of the state's marriage law.
posted by William Duncan at 6:07 PM | Link | 3 comments

Dad, Redefined/WaPo

December 17 Washington Post:

"In the 1890 Census, one generation after slavery, 80 percent of black households were mom, dad and kids. It stayed that way through the 1950s, when the census counted 77 percent of black families as united, compared to 85 percent of white families.

. . .Today, federal statistics show that 69 percent of all black children are born to single mothers, more than twice the national average and almost triple the rate of whites. In Potomac Gardens, a public housing complex on Capitol Hill where virtually all residents are black, the president of the residents' association says that of the 208 families, 180 are headed by single moms. Some dads help out a lot, others not at all.

Somewhere along the line, a certain fatalism crept in.

"There's become an almost hyper-masculine, hypersexual idea of black men that has been embraced," says Pulitzer-winning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr., whose book "Becoming Dad" examined black fatherhood. "It probably has something to do with why we leave our children in higher numbers. The thinking is, 'I can't lose the game if I refuse to play the game.' If I'm sure that I can't provide for my family and put food on table and clothes in the closet, then I can say, 'I didn't care in the first place.' "

Forty years ago, people whispered phrases like "illegitimate children." Now you hear "baby-mama drama." "He's my baby's daddy." There came to be the idea that having kids was no problem, but marriage -- that was something you'd want to think about.

"Guys are doing what they learned at home," says Tony Dugger, an activist who works on fatherhood issues with the North Capitol Collaborative, a District nonprofit. "They care about their kids emotionally, but they don't see it as odd that they don't live with them. You can't tell them they're doing something wrong because their life experience tells them it's completely normal."

posted by maggie at 9:41 AM | Link | 5 comments

New Poll: Europe Opposes Gay Marriage/Adoption

But the continent is sharply divided,regionally, according to an AP story in 365gay.com:

"European Union nations are sharply split in their attitudes toward gay marriage, with 82 percent of Dutch citizens backing it compared to less than 20 percent in several eastern and southern countries, according to a poll released Monday.

Overall, 44 percent of citizens in the 25-nation EU believe homosexual marriage should be allowed throughout the bloc, according to the Eurobarometer poll.
Support is highest in northern European nations. Behind the Dutch, 71 percent of Swedes, 69 percent of Danes and 62 percent of Belgians back the idea. In contrast, only 11 percent of Romanians, 12 percent of Latvians and 14 percent of Cypriots agree. . .

32 percent believe homosexual couples should be allowed to adopt children.

The poll conducted about 1,000 interviews in each member state, and gave a margin of error of between 1.9 to 3.1 percentage points."

©365Gay.com 2006
posted by maggie at 9:28 AM | Link | 0 comments

MY STEPSON IS IMPOSSIBLE!--advice column from Cary Tennis

[OK, like every Cary Tennis column I've read, this one is too long and very histrionic (especially at the end). But there's some really, really poignant stuff in this one... amid the cussing. --Eve]

My stepson is impossible! What's a stepmother to do?

I've been a stepchild myself, and as a mother I've raised kids with stepparents -- but I never had problems like this. ...

[From Tennis's reply:] ...You're just in the way -- between him and something he can't even express.

more
posted by Eve at 11:16 PM | Link | 0 comments

CAN YOU MENTION DIVORCE IN A KIDS' MOVIE?: Susan Burton

When I imagined the movie of my life, I never thought I would be portrayed by a teenage boy. Fifteen-year-old Dyllan Christopher--shaggy brown hair, amiable—plays the 15-year-old me—blond bob, watchful--in Unaccompanied Minors, a holiday comedy that opened on Friday. The film is based on a story I wrote several years ago for the public-radio program This American Life, in which I recalled the day after Christmas, 1988, on which my sister Betsy and I flew from our mother's house in Colorado to our father's in Michigan. We got stranded during a layover in Chicago, where a blizzard shut down O'Hare Airport. A stewardess escorted us to a drab room filled with dozens of other kids traveling alone--in airline parlance, "unaccompanied minors." This setting, where juice boxes littered the floor and boys in moon boots napped on winter parkas, becomes the jumping-off point for a kids' caper directed by Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig. The movie borrows only the basic circumstances of our experience. The Hollywood version adds a villain, a band of pals, and Wilmer Valderrama. More subtly, it reveals that divorce is still an uneasy subject for a family film.

more
posted by Eve at 11:14 PM | Link | 0 comments

Is Chrisler "Lying"?

In her response to Dr. Dobson, Jennifer Chrisler makes a pretty howling error right up front:

". . .Dobson, writing in a viewpoint in TIME magazine, put to work the time-worn tools of lies and distortion to make his argument that lesbian and gay parents are not able to provide environments for their children comparable in quality to those created by heterosexual parents.

These are the facts. According to the 2000 census, the vast majority — more than 75% — of American children are being raised in families that differ in structure from two married, heterosexual parents and their biological children. We are a nation of blended and multi-generational families, adoptive and foster families, and families headed by single parents, divorced parents, unmarried parents, same-sex couples and more. . ."

'

If you are going to accuse your opponent of "lying" about The Facts it might help to get a fact checker. (Time magazine, if its going to publish such an accusation, really ought to help out the author by providing one). This 2005 Census report on children's living arrangements (using Census 2001 data) shows that 71 percent of children in America live with two parents. Of these children, 87 percent live with their two married biological (or adoptive) parents.

Overall, the data in Table 1 show about 60 percent of American children currently live with their own biological married mom and dad(the classic "nuclear family").

Now of course I don't really think Jennifer is "lying"--just badly mislead and posing as the sole person with intellectual integrity and concern for "the facts" in this debate. I suspect she got the 75 percent figure from some website on the proportion of all household who are married with children. . .but really shouldn't somebody have saved her from her own ignorance here if she's going to go on the attack like that in Time magazine?

I'm waiting for a correction and apology to her readers from Ms. Chrisler, which in my book would show she really is a person who cares about truthful discourse. We all make mistakes.

UPDATE: I'm told Jennifer is sending a letter to Time, acknowledging that she ought to have said 75 percent of households, not families with children, are not intact nuclear families (married with children). Kudos. M.
posted by maggie at 2:24 PM | Link | 15 comments

Adult Child of Sperm Donor, Speaks

In the December 17, WaPo, by Katrina Clark, "My Father Was an Anonymous Sperm Donor,":

I really wasn't expecting anything the day, earlier this year, when I sent an e-mail to a man whose name I had found on the Internet. I was looking for my father, and in some ways this man fit the bill. But I never thought I'd hit pay dirt on my first try. Then I got a reply -- with a picture attached.

From my computer screen, my own face seemed to stare back at me. And just like that, after 17 years, the missing piece of the puzzle snapped into place.

The puzzle of who I am.

I'm 18, and for most of my life, I haven't known half my origins. I didn't know where my nose or jaw came from, or my interest in foreign cultures. I obviously got my teeth and my penchant for corny jokes from my mother, along with my feminist perspective. But a whole other part of me was a mystery.

That part came from my father. The only thing was, I had never met him, never heard any stories about him, never seen a picture of him. I didn't know his name. My mother never talked about him -- because she didn't have a clue who he was.

When she was 32, my mother -- single, and worried that she might never marry and have a family -- allowed a doctor wearing rubber gloves to inject a syringe of sperm from an unknown man into her uterus so that she could have a baby. I am the result: a donor-conceived child.

And for a while, I was pretty angry about it.

I was angry at the idea that where donor conception is concerned, everyone focuses on the "parents" -- the adults who can make choices about their own lives. The recipient gets sympathy for wanting to have a child. The donor gets a guarantee of anonymity and absolution from any responsibility for the offspring of his "donation." As long as these adults are happy, then donor conception is a success, right?

Not so. The children born of these transactions are people, too. Those of us in the first documented generation of donor babies -- conceived in the late 1980s and early '90s, when sperm banks became more common and donor insemination began to flourish -- are coming of age, and we have something to say.

I'm here to tell you that emotionally, many of us are not keeping up. We didn't ask to be born into this situation, with its limitations and confusion. It's hypocritical of parents and medical professionals to assume that biological roots won't matter to the "products" of the cryobanks' service, when the longing for a biological relationship is what brings customers to the banks in the first place.

We offspring are recognizing the right that was stripped from us at birth -- the right to know who both our parents are.

And we're ready to reclaim it. . .

Even though I've only recently come into contact with him, I wouldn't be able to just suck it up if he stopped communicating with me. There's still so much I want to know. I want to know him. I want to know his family. I'm certain he has no idea how big a role he has played in my life despite his absence -- or because of his absence. If I can't be too attached to him as my father, I'll still always be attached to the feeling I now have of having a father.

I feel more whole now than I ever have. I love our conversations, even the most trivial ones. I don't love him, and I don't know if I ever will, but I care about him a lot.

Now that he knows I exist, I'm okay if he doesn't care for me in the same way. But I hope he at least thinks of me sometimes.

clarkatrina@gmail.com

Katrina Clark is a student in the undergraduate hearing program at Gallaudet University.

posted by maggie at 10:56 PM | Link | 1 comments