On Being a Gay Parent
I was walking into my local YMCA when I noticed them: a table of Boy Scouts selling Trail’s End popcorn for a fundraising drive. While my local YMCA (Chapel Hill-Carrboro branch) welcomes LGBTQ individuals and families as full members — without any special proof of our family relationship — the same could not be said of the Boy Scouts of America. I was flummoxed in seeing the Boy Scouts in front of our YMCA branch.
n order that our full-time LGBTQ employees have equal access to purchase the benefits plan that is available to our non-LGBTQ full-time employees and their spouses and children, the non-profit organization first needs 50 non-LGBTQ full-time employees! Both of the major health care providers of North Carolina —- United Health and Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of NC -— have this rule.
When I was a full-time music therapist, usually employed to work with children and young people with emotional, behavioral or intellectual disabilities, one of the games I would lead a group of children in was called “Alike and Different.” The group would chant “Alike and different, alike and different, we [...]
For those of us who are straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer expressing or questioning parents of one or more children, we are well-acquainted with the fact that it takes at least two people to have a child. That about covers all of us. And, the recent release of Lisa [...]
Here’s the situation: I have healthcare insurance, that includes dental, death, disability and part of my retirement plan, through my employer’s comprehensive. This program covers my two children and me. My partner has his health insurance program and retirement program through the state of North Carolina because he is an [...]
“I’m scared,” he typed. Sitting in a Carrboro coffee shop behind his laptop computer he stared intensely at what he wrote before sending it to me. “I’m still not out like you are.” This email came to me out of the blue as I sat in the coffee shop working [...]
“My step-mother was of the opinion that young women didn’t need an education per se. The job of a young woman was to be barefoot and pregnant,” said Calvin. This didn’t matter anymore after Calvin changed places in his family tree. From the box marked “young woman” in the family, [...]
The U.S. federal government, along with state and local governments, have a way of reminding us that our families, headed by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer expressing/questioning parents or heads of households, are simply not part of the norm of our society. For example, when flying into the U.S. [...]
When I taught at Duke Divinity School, one of my colleagues made this audacious, bold claim: When we baptized our children as infants, we were giving them the mark of Christ that would last throughout their lifetime. The theological point is this: While saved by God’s grace, the watery mark [...]
Those of us who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer expressing, questioning and straight friends, family members and allies, live in a time of great story making and story telling. February is Black History Month and it has me thinking of our history, looking forward to Gay History Month in [...]
When I was a child, one of the favorite game shows I watched with my grandmother on her color television in her room in our house was “Password.” It was a simple game show with lots of laughter and witty banter, sometimes with Betty White on as a contestant, with [...]
I am writing this “Holiday Season” column from a hospital in North Carolina, where my teenage son is recuperating after an emergency appendectomy. I was flying back from Oregon to North Carolina, with a stopover in Houston, when I received a text from him reading “Am in the ER at [...]
The divisive debate regarding whether or not there is going to be equal access to marriage in various states took a disappointing turn when the voters of Maine rejected an already established law allowing for equal access to marriage for both straight and gay people. As was the case of [...]
One of my primary concerns when I began the process of separating from the person I was married to and moving out was the well-being of our two children. The same was true for their mom: we were both concerned on how they would not only adjust to our divorce, [...]
If the pithy phrase “A picture is worth ten thousand words” — or as Napolean once said “a good sketch is better than a long speech” — is true, then volumes have been spoken in recent years in capturing what a family looks like. This is especially true since the [...]
More than likely, those of us who self-identify as a person who is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning or queer expressing are people who have participated in what I guess can only be called a time-honored ritual or tradition of “coming out.” Every year at the North Carolina Gay and [...]
In Robert Fulghum’s simply written, yet profound book, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” we learn how our communities would be a better place if we, who are adults, would remember to practice the same rules as kindergarten children. Of course, Fulghum did not mean all [...]
I am writing this issue’s column on the cusp of July 4th celebrations. Of course, you’re not reading it until a week, maybe two, later. I couldn’t help but take the opportunity. This annual holiday weekend promises the usual array of fire work sellers in temporary tents planted on the [...]
I was mesmerized by the conversation around the Church’s governing board as we discussed what we would give the men of the congregation for Father’s Day. As a pastor for over 25 years, I’ve heard this conversation many times, always with the same formula being used: the “mothers” — a.k.a., [...]
