But bigots aren’t the only ones who know how to operate a video camera or get a message out.  Here’s how Kyle introduces this video:

Thanks so much for watching and sharing this video about my family! I’ve heard the terrible things Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and others are saying about families like yours and mine. It’s a form of bullying, and I think one of the best ways to respond is by sharing our stories. I’m proud to have two gay dads and a lesbian mom.

We have to grab onto Kyle’s insight and not let go: the homophobic propaganda on which three prominent Republican presidential candidates are campaigning is a cynical, self-interested form of bullying, plain and simple. It should be named as such, and shamed as such.  (Bravo, Dick Gregory, for “committing an act of journalism” in his Meet the Press interview with Bachman).  And after we name and shame that fear mongering and ignorance baiting, we keep on telling the true stories about our families.

In the video, Kyle encourages other kids of LGBT parents to speak their mind:

Whatever you say, you have a unique perspective that should be heard, that people will listen to, because you know things that other people don’t that can definitely help.

I would sure like to see what these Republican presidential candidates would say if they had to do a town hall-type meeting for an auditorium full of college-age kids of LGBT parents. Faced with hundreds of young people like Kyle Fa and Zach Wahls, what would they say? What could they possibly say to these young people, who know better?

From the description accompanying it at its YouTube home:

This short film features Kyle Fa, teenage son of two gay fathers and a lesbian mom. Kyle shares his unique insights about family, community and equality and the power of COLAGE, an organization for people with LGBTQ parents.

Produced by Heliana Ramirez, Leah Sanchez, Tiffany Clarke and Dave Tuller for the course New Media Technology and Public Health Leadership (PH290), Center for Health Leadership, UC Berkeley. Major funding provided by the Cal Endowment.

Heliana, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a PhD student at UC Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare, has gay dads, too. Here’s COLAGE’s YouTube channel.

First thing to report on is that I combed through and updated all twenty-some-odd links on the LGBT Parenting Resources page I list here at the yet-again-pulled-back-from-the-brink blog (design tweaks still ongoing, as the observant might note).  If you haven’t perused that page, please do. Or if you have a friend who is hunting down a compendium of resources, by all means send ‘em there. And let me know if you think I should add more.

Next, in honor of the Back-to-School season, a half-dozen bullet-pointed resources (followed by some anecdotal commentary) that may be of help:

• Dana Rudolph’s evergreen Back to School LGBT Resource List at Mombian, a compendium of super-helpful links she revised in 2008. And while you’re over there, check out her poll on Back to School Concerns: perhaps not surprisingly, our worry list goes 1-2-3: LGBT-friendliness of teacher &/or school, then academics, then social issues/ adjustment.  It’ll be a bright fall day when we only worry about items 2 & 3, eh?
• Our Family Coalition’s 10 Steps to Bring LGBTQ Family Diversity Conversations to Your School, all really important, few very easy, but we didn’t any of us accidentally become parents, did we?
• Family Equality Council’s Back to School Tool: Building Family Equality in Every Classroom, a handy-dandy PDF listing 8 things you can do as a parent, from questions to ask school administrators to policies to ask about to resources to community-building  (from the Safe Schools Coalition’s page for GLBT Parents/ Guardians)
• Another PDF gem from Family Equality Council, this one you can give a sympathetic teacher or administrator: Opening Doors: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Parents and Schools. While there’s stuff for parents, sections like “Stories Kids Tell Us About What Happens at School,” “How Educators Can Best Support Children in LGBT-Headed Families,” and “Nonjudgmental Ways to Answer Children’s Questions” are concise and invaluable.
• Requiring a bit more advance planning than a review of any of the links above, but preposterously valuable are Groundspark’s groundbreaking documentaries exploring how to talk about gay issues in elementary school, It’s Elementary (first aired in 1999) and It’s STILL Elementary (a follow-up with the teachers and students who were in the first film, documenting the right-wing attacks on It’s Elementary and its creators). Each of Groundspark’s films comes with extensive material discussing who should see the film, why address gay issues with children, curriculum guides, and additional resources. Need I say more?
• Human Rights Campaign’s Welcoming Schools: School Bullying Resources, Family Diversity Training and Tools for Educators, a phenomenal and wide-ranging curriculum resource for administrators, educators, and parents. Building a school community where all students feel welcome and see their family a part of it, inside and outside the classroom, takes years of deep commitment. So does parenthood. You’re up for it, and you have more allies than you know. Also, you can always start with baby steps, like your kids did.

I want to finish off with a few anecdotal notes for parents of kids younger than mine, who this fall are looking at the very first launch of their kid into a preschool or elementary school. Your experiences will of course range very, very widely. Ours has been in one of the most LGBT-friendly metropolitan areas we could possibly afford to live in, and still we’ve been a distinctly tiny (if mighty) minority in every schooling situation.  Meaning, never once has our daughter or son been in a class with another kid with same-sex parents (and yep, we just saw the class list tonight: year 3 in the school and yet again, not in the same class with the one other girl her age with two moms). Still, looking at 2nd grade in another 8 or so hours, we’re doing ok.  Or, more importantly, our daughter is. (Here’s some evidence from the end of her Kindergarten year: Open House.)

What has mattered?

• For as long as I could, I volunteered like crazy, both at our kids’ preschool and at the elementary school.  I wanted to know everyone and I wanted everyone to know me, and there I was in all my mannish lesbian glory, so no matter whether or not folks (parents or kids) found me, well, undeniably mannish for a woman, there I was, a familiar figure.  Now that I’m working full time, I can’t figure out how to volunteer during school hours, and it’s killin’ me. But if you have the flexibility to do this, doing good for others at your kid’s school is the A#1 fast track way to start easing your worried mind in the best possible way.
• At the preschool, I basically celebrate Banned Books week by donating a half a dozen of the best picture books featuring family diversity or kids with LGBT families.  If you can afford one, great.  (The best preschool wish list to go off of? Welcoming Schools’ PDF Picture Books for Students Inclusive of Gay Family Members and Characters.) I’ve been spending years in wonderful conversation with the director and we each are hugely grateful.  Elementary school libraries generally have far more formal acquisition processes, but strike up a conversation with your school librarian and talk with her or him about this page from the Welcoming Schools Guide on bibliographies (includes sub-pages like “Your Role as Librarian” and subsections with all manner of bibliographies, like “Inclusive of Gay Family Members and Characters” or “Highlighting All Kinds of Families,” ranging from picture books to chapter books).
• With every new school year, we make it an express point to buttonhole our kids’ caregivers and/or teachers, introduce ourselves (this part is the ordinary part), and then ask when it would be convenient for us to say a little more about our family, so that s/he can best know how to refer to us in class.  This is because though we’ve been blessed with progressive-minded folks all along, we will kick in open doors every time. Do not assume that a kindly person will have a clue about such things as:
•  how you want to be called, and what your kid calls you, or
• whether and how you refer to how your family came to be, or
• how you celebrate “Mother’s or Father’s Day” (here’s the Welcoming Schools Guide PDF on it, for instance), or
• you name it.

Do not go laissez faire on this stuff, is all I can say. Do not. I repeat: a sympathetic soul (the best we often can hope for) does not of itself lead to a clue. Remember, a great many folks who are old enough to be teaching our kids grew up when (a) LGBT parents were completely unheard of and invisible, so therefore so were their kids, and  (b) references to LGBT people of any sort were very, very often pejorative, misinformed, and negatively stereotyped. So it’s not surprising that many can only conceptualize references to gay people as pejorative among kids this age. But our kids are kids this age! “Your mom’s a lesbian” is merely a statement of fact, not an insult.

Anyhow. As Mark Twain (& others) said, sorry this is so long; I didn’t have the time to make it shorter.  Until we see parents’ day greeting cards made by Hallmark and Harvey Milk Day celebrated in all our elementary schools, the onus is on us to educate the educators.  Which starts with educating ourselves.  ***RIIIIIIING*** Can you hear it? School bell’s callin’.

{Any of you-all care to share some of your own Back-to-School tips for LGBT parents new to the whole to school thing?}

Here’s Chris’ piece for the California Majority Report yesterday:

National Organization for Marriage is Using Children as Political Pawns… Again.

The folks behind the divisive and hurtful Yes on Proposition 8 T.V. ads just couldn’t help themselves — The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is once again using children as political pawns, but this time in an attempt to elect one of their own, Andrew Pugno, to the California State Assembly by smearing his pro-equality challenger Dr. Richard Pan. The two are facing off in a hotly contested race for Assembly District 5 in the Sacramento region.

Pugno is the golden boy of the nation-wide anti marriage equality effort. His career sets him apart from your standard anti marriage equality activists and includes such highlights as: Chief of Staff to the notoriously homophobic late Senator Pete Knight, Co-Author of Proposition 8, and lead attorney for the Yes on 8 Campaign. It is no surprise that NOM is spending big to have their go-to California political operative elected to the Assembly.

NOM has spent over $112,000 to air a new television ad in which they warn that Pugno’s opponent, Richard Pan, will support the teaching of gay marriage to 2nd graders. See the ad below: [Ed note: click over to the California Majority Report page to view it.]

It is fairly ironic that NOM is divisively using children as political pawns in an effort to smear Dr. Richard Pan, a pediatrician that has focused his career on building community partnerships to increase children’s health coverage. Dr. Pan co-founded the Healthy Kids Healthy Future program, which secured health, dental and vision coverage for over 65,000 children in the Sacramento region.

Assembly District 5 was drawn as a Republican district in 2000 but has been trending more and more Democratic. The polling for the race shows that Dr. Pan will win as long as his campaign can get the message out about Pugno’s extremist past. In addition to Pugno’s anti-gay past, he has also worked to eliminate all abortions, even in the case of incest and rape.

To learn more about this race and Andrew Pugno’s extreme past, visit http://www.stopandrewpugno.com/.

To help Dr. Richard Pan, please visit http://www.panforassembly.com/

Chris Moore is the President of the Stonewall Democratic Club of Greater Sacramento and formerly served as Political Director for Equality California.

My main beef is that it’s not at all appalling — in fact, for my kids, it’s sanity-producing — for schools to teach about gender diversity and family diversity and anti-bullying in 2nd grade. I thank my lucky stars and the hard work of people of integrity in my school district that it’ll be part of my kids’ elementary education. Anyone who supported that would get my vote.

The Pugno ad includes a clip from the notorious Yes on 8 ad — the one featuring a girl reading King & King — with the voice-over speaking in urgent tones about “teaching gay marriage to 2nd graders.”  You know, because we’re just not done with mixing homophobia into the potent imperative so many of us feel to “protect the children.”  That bigoted fear-mongering is going to keep on happening until my kids — alongside the other 70,000+ kids raised by LGBT people in this state, alongside millions nationwide (4-14 million, pick your study) — spring to mind when that “protect the children” shite gets hauled out and topped with yet another fright wig.  Them, and the young people  – we’re beginning to know their names now, hell, Secretary of State Clinton is paying attention — who can’t keep living through the pain of the hate behind it, and who are dying for the opposite of hateful ignorance: loving education.

Said William Carlos Williams, in “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”:

• It is difficult
• to get the news from poems
• yet men die miserably every day
• for lack
• of what is found there

Many of you know that a memorial service for Seth Walsh is going to be held today. You know his name because he was the third young man to commit suicide this month following unremitting, unchecked harrassment by “peers” for being or seeming to be gay. He died Wednesday after ten days on life support, having been found after hanging himself from his back yard tree following another incident of harassment after school.  Seth was 13.

Billy Lucas was 15; he hanged himself earlier this month, in a barn on his grandmother’s property in Indiana, after years of harassment over the perception of his being gay.  Asher Brown shot himself in his family home in Cypress, TX on September 23.  He had come out to his stepfather just that morning; he was 13.  Services for him are on Saturday.

Tyler Clementi was the fourth gay (or perceived to be gay) teenage boy to commit suicide this month. Last Wednesday he jumped off the George Washington bridge connecting upper Manhattan to New Jersey (he was a freshman at Rutgers).  It was following the public video streaming, by his dorm roommate, of a date with a guy.  He was shy, he was an accomplished violinist, he was not publicly out; he was 18.

Read Pam Spaulding’s September 30 special to CNN on Tyler Clemetni’s death.  One of her most salient points:

While they may find acceptance by loving parents and be encouraged by a culture increasingly embracing their identity, these young people find that “being themselves” is not always well-received by an important slice of their world — school administrators, children who bully, and even teachers who subscribe to the “toughen up” philosophy. This world has not caught up, even as anti-bullying policies are being passed across the country.

Ellen DeGeneris, an ardent supporter of The Trevor Project, the “leading national organization focused on crisis and suicide prevention efforts among LGBTQ youth,” recorded this PSA:

It’s essentially a video version of this post to her show’s website, “It’s Time to End Teenage Bullying,” well worth distributing since at the bottom of it are a number of very useful links to resources.

To despondent young queer kids, the message is: hang on. “Things will get better,” she says, “people’s minds will change, and you should be around to see it.”  Dan Savage said the same thing, floored as many of us were by Billy Lucas’ death.  He wants more to say it with him, and so he started the It Gets Better Project.  Here:

My brother-in-law, a devoted “Savage Love” reader, told me about this over a week ago.  But at the time I was simply overwhelmed by another young gay suicide, and after the hardships of last year, couldn’t push past that to write anything.  That was when there were just three deaths in one month.

In the column in which he introduced the It Gets Better Project, Savage says:

We have the tools to reach out to them and tell our stories and let them know that it does get better. Online support groups are great, GLSEN does amazing work, the Trevor Project is invaluable. But many LGBT youth can’t picture what their lives might be like as openly gay adults. They can’t imagine a future for themselves. So let’s show them what our lives are like, let’s show them what the future may hold in store for them.

The video my husband and I made is up now all by itself. I’d like to add submissions from other gay and lesbian adults, singles and couples, with kids or without, established in careers or just starting out, urban and rural, of all races and religious backgrounds. (Go to www.youtube.com/itgetsbetterproject to find instructions for submitting your video.) If you’re gay or lesbian or bi or trans and you’ve ever read about a kid like Billy Lucas and thought, “Fuck, I wish I could’ve told him that it gets better,” this is your chance. We can’t help Billy, but there are lots of other Billys out there — other despairing LGBT kids who are being bullied and harassed, kids who don’t think they have a future – and we can help them.

They need to know that it gets better. Submit a video. Give them hope.

Here’s a little coverage of it at the NY Times Health blog “The Well,” by Tara Parker-Pope.

I am grateful for the attention drawn by DeGeneres and the constructive project launched by Savage.  Alongside these two high-profile individuals are countless more, including whole organizations dedicated to anti-bullying work in the schools and at large.  The Southern Poverty Law Center recently announced, in the wake of these deaths, that they are making their documentary Bullied: A Student, a School and a Case that Made History, along with its accompanying educational kit, free to every school in the country.

And Human Rights Campaign has spent years developing the Welcoming Schools initiative, revolving around a thoroughly researched and piloted curriculum, to address family diversity, gender stereotyping, and bullying in elementary school environments. I am beyond proud to say that our kids’ school district will be the first in the country to incorporate the Welcoming Schools curriculum across its K-5 classrooms; a district-wide teacher in-service on it will take place in a little over a week, and over the coming months I’m sure (as I recover my blogging bearings) I’ll have things to share about the ups and downs of its introduction into our schools.

I certainly have way more thoughts and feelings about all this than I have time or spirit to convey now. But the strongest, most obvious, most focussed thought is this, though: we are all responsible; we are all accessories. Some in a heinous way — I’m thinking here about all the high-profile, professional homophobes and demagogues who have access to media coverage (NOM, springs immediately to mind) ; I’m thinking of all the high-profile “leaders” who continue to stand by and do nothing or little to counter their hateful rhetoric. We may not be direct bystanders, like the twenty or so witnesses to a gang rape at a Richmond, CA high school a year ago. But by dint of participating in the same society, however tangentially, we are implicated.

The Richmond gang rape triggered renewed interest in what had been called the bystander effect, or the Genovese Syndrome, after the notorious 1964 Queens, NY murder. John Darley, now a Psychology professor at Princeton, was living in New York at the time and decided, with a colleague, to pursue a study of the psychological forces underlying the “altruistic inertia” that seemed to have prevented life-saving intervention in her murder.  Dacher Keltner and Jason Moss wrote about this several years ago, in a piece for the Greater Good Science Center publication: “We Are All Bystanders.” In it they cite Darley’s work, noting some practical findings about how people move from being passive to active (i.e., intervening) bystanders:

[Darley] also identified actions a victim can take to get others to help him. One is to make his need clear–”I’ve twisted my ankle and I can’t walk; I need help”–and the other is to select a specific person for help–”You there, can you help me?” By doing this, the victim overcomes the two biggest obstacles to intervention.

So. Our children are being bullied, terrorized, and hated to death. You — you reading this — can you help? Learn about anti-bullying efforts at the schools in your community; support what’s afoot. If they don’t have any, start some. Get resources like Groundspark’s Let’s Get Real, a documentary and curriculum guide about bullying and name-calling in schools, into your kids’ school. Get active in your PTA and show the Groundspark or SPLC documentaries to them — or even interested members from them — as a start. Talk with your kids about how they can become allies or “upstanders,” help build the numbers of allies and “upstanders” around them so that whether or not they’re targets or bystanders to harassment, they will not be alone.  Here’s a resource from Teach Peace; here’s another from Partners Against Hate; here’s another from Rethinking Schools; hell, download the whole Introduction to Welcoming Schools PDF, share it with your favorite teacher or administrator, and start a conversation.

___________________________________

LGBT youth contemplating suicide are urged to immediately reach out to The Trevor Project, day or night, at 866-488-7386. ALL CALLS ARE CONFIDENTIAL AND TOLL-FREE FROM ANYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES 24-HOURS A DAY, 7 DAYS A WEEK.

Eight months, two and a quarter inches, a buncha pounds, and a whole new world later. We came to the school grounds for Back to School night last September, filled with excitement and trepidation. So overwhelmed by the sensory overload of it all that we just picked our way to our girlie’s classroom and stayed put the whole evening. Didn’t even know ’til it was time to leave that people customarily floated around and toured the school.

Sitting in the pint-sized, putty-colored kid chairs, we asked ourselves what so many parents have asked before us: In this new, large community — the first of many so big we’d be lucky to know the names of all the people she’d come to know in it — would she bloom? Or wilt? And another question, not unfamiliar to many parents before us, but for us fraught in its own unique way, since our right to our parenthoods and families is far from presumptive, years from “natural.” We wondered: at what point would our difference make a difference to her? One other kindergartener out of 60 at the school has two women for parents; none has two dads. By the luck of the draw, the other kid of LGBT parents was in another class. So this year’s school journey for her would be, at least in this regard, a solo one.

Or so we thought. That was before we came to know her teacher, a rookie with instincts that years in the classroom couldn’t manufacture, and a loving kindness both rare and tailor-made for this work. Over the months our daughter’s schoolmates and their families grew to be fellow travelers — they were bound to be.  But as of Back to School night, we hadn’t gotten so far as to realize that along the journey we’d all make friends — not just our daughter.

Last night we got an answer to our question about the impact of our difference. It was on display in her classroom, and it was not what we expected. Over the course of the year, all the students had created a “Self Portrait Portfolio,” prefaced by an inspired quotation by Picasso (here’s a copy), carefully pasted by the teacher inside the front cover. Every page bore some sort of visual art except the last, which was a poem, done in a “finish the phrase” style. Its final line took me utterly by surprise.

“I like myself,” she wrote, “because I have two moms.”

There is a world of difference between “in spite of” and “because of.”  But I frankly hadn’t even begun to imagine past in spite of, until I saw because of written out in my daugther’s hand. She told us she drew the “sunset colors” behind those lines because I’m always bringing her to the window to look at the colors of the sunset. Which, as it happens, are also the colors of the sunrise.

The whole way out of the schoolyard and all down the street to the car, she spread her arms and ran and ran and ran.

“I can fly! Can  you see me? I can fly!”

[Ed note: this post is now up at BlogHer as well.]

Today’s California’s first observed Harvey Milk Day. Actions and celebrations are stockpiled here by EQCA and here on the Harvey Milk Day web page. Here’s the Milk Foundation’s site, which includes a great page on Harvey In Schools.  Our school district will be adapting HRC’s Welcoming Schools curriculum next year, as policy district-wide (first such district in the nation, thankyouverymuch!), and I reckon we’ll be working with this material plenty.  I look forward to reporting on it.

Our family  didn’t go door-to-door today, which some did (see the EQCA page), or attend a celebration out and about. We did talk about Harvey Milk, though, and liken him as someone who is, to mama’s and baba’s people, what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X are to their Auntie Rachel’s people. (Both Martin and Malcolm are celebrated in our school district; this past Monday was a school holiday for Brother Malcolm).  The word martyr is an important one, but one we haven’t broached yet. We have Kari Krackow’s kid’s book The Harvey Milk Story,  but stopped short of reading it this year.  The assassination is on the third to the last page; no graphic images but the following:

On a gray November morning, Dan White crawled through a basement window at the back of City Hall with a loaded gun.

Dan White entered the mayor’s office and, after a brief argument took place, shot Mayor George Moscone.  Reloading his gun, he hurried down the hall to Harvey Milk’s office. Five shots rang out.

Both Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk were killed.

The girl child is just too darn close a reader for us to skip a page, or even pretend to miss one and then substitute “death” for “assasination.” It’s a very sticky question, how and where to draw the lines around painful truths of adult life. I do know that once the topics of assassination and murder, the willful, malice-filled ending of someone else’s life  have been broached, Krackow’s book will be on-limits, rather than off.  Soon enough.  All this comes a-rushin’ in soon enough.

Our 3- and 5-year-old kids are well aware of death. The spirits of loved ones now dead are big parts of their everyday lives. And a dog was part of their family, then gone. They also know about the misunderstanding of people like mama and baba, even.  But assassination is another thing.  We’re going to go there, but not just yet.  It’s hard to pull the veil aside sooner than it has to be; harder still, I’m sure, to have a stranger do so before we’ve prepared them for the sight of things on the other side. As Brother Martin would often sing out in his speeches (about justice’s coming), “How long? Not long.”  I like what Brother Harvey said, too, though: “The important thing is not that we can live on hope alone, but that life is not worth living without it.”

It’s good news following a really, incredibly, phehomenally appalling ongoing civil rights debacle in Mississippi.  Appalling, essentially, since it entails adults perpetuating cruelty against young people.  You’ve likely heard about Constance McMillen — unlikely, unintentional youth LGBT civil rights symbol (a round-up of Google News search results here).  When you read below, if the latest chapter in the saga is news to you, you’ll be first sickened.  Then (I hope) heartened.

(Aside:  “private,” segregated proms are nothing new in the south.  But I suspect that “fake” proms, hosted to trick the half-dozen attendees, might be.)

The best resolution to all this would be some positive change emerging, if not immediately, then with more than “all deliberate speed,” in Constance’s home community.  Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), appalled and inspired  by  events in Mississippi — which, while not unique, have certainly been extreme — introduced a bill in late January to protect students from discrimination: the Student Non-Discrimination Act.  From Rep. Polis’ press release on the bill:

While Federal civil rights statutes expressly address discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, disability or national origin, they do not explicitly include sexual orientation or gender identity and, as a result, LGBT students and parents have often had limited legal recourse for this kind of discrimination.  By establishing a comprehensive Federal prohibition of discrimination in public schools based on actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity and empowering victims with meaningful and effective remedies (loss of federal funding and legal cause of action for victims) for discrimination, SNDA represents an enormous step toward safe public schools for all kids, regardless of their gender identity and sexual orientation.

Press your representatives to support it. If you want to put some dollars behind your voice, support the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition, which works to “train students and allies to make schools safer while fighting for long-term policy change.”  They’re sponsoring a “Second Chance” prom May 8th. Meanwhile, Constance has got the respect and hospitality of a whole lot of the rest of us, far and wide.

Now to Kate Kendall’s post, whole cloth:

We’ll Show You the Real Prom

By now you’ve probably heard of Constance McMillen. Constance is an 18-year-old from Mississippi who, when she tried to buy tickets for herself and her girlfriend to attend the prom, was promptly told not only that she was forbidden from attending with her girlfriend, but she could not wear a tuxedo. When Constance went to the ACLU—who took her case immediately and sent the school a letter demanding that Constance be allowed to attend the prom with her girlfriend—the school canceled the prom, rather than allow a lesbian couple to attend.

It’s as absurd and outrageous a homophobic story as we’ve heard in a while. But that was not the end of this saga. When an “alternative” prom organized by her schoolmates’ parents was held this past weekend, Constance and her girlfriend showed up, only to discover that they and five other students—some of whom are differently-abled—were the only ones in attendance. And that the “real” prom was actually being held elsewhere, and the event they were attending was simply a ruse to keep all the so-called “outcasts” away from the “real” prom.

Now that is just beyond the pale. The parents who set Constance up to attend a “fake” prom should be deeply ashamed of themselves. With role models like that, it’s no wonder her classmates have been so cruel. As we all know, it’s Constance who will have the last laugh, however. The ACLU is working hard on their ongoing lawsuit with the school district to ensure justice for Constance. The fight is not over, and I am so glad she is in such capable hands.

When I was Constance’s age, I would never have had the courage she has to stand up for who I was and to demand basic respect and equality. Constance has sparked a remarkable and sustained outpouring of support. Her story and her truth have inspired everyone committed to justice.

When all of us at NCLR first heard about her story, we wanted to do anything we could for her. She didn’t need legal representation—she’s got that taken care of—what she needed was a prom! So I am so pleased to announce that Constance McMillen and her friend Ceara Sturgis will be at NCLR’s 33rd Anniversary Celebration, often referred to as “the lesbian prom.”

“With everything Constance has been through at her school over the past few weeks, we’re grateful for any chance to remind her that while her school violated her rights, she’s appreciated and respected all over the country for her fight to be treated equally. It’s wonderful that our friends at NCLR are giving Constance a fun, special night,” Christine Sun, Senior Attorney, ACLU Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & AIDS Project.

If ever there were a prom for her to attend, our event is it—it is attended by nearly 2,000 people of every stripe and walk of life: young and old; lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and straight; differently-abled; and so much more. We’re so glad she can make it, and we know it will be a thrill for everyone to have her there. She will be rightly surrounded by the love and support she deserves. Make no mistake: we plan to give her a weekend she’ll never forget. It will make all these other proms and fake-proms fade into distant memory.

Sincerely,

Kate Kendell
Executive Director

We’re painfully aware of the resistance to LGBT family- and gender- diversity in K-12 curricula elsewhere, even locally.  Alameda Unified School District is 10 short miles south of here, and in a whole different ball park.  (Last year I reported on their fight here; though the anti-bias anti-bullying curriculum was passed, it’s continued to encounter resistance, now at the law suit level.)  But those of us who know the Berkeley Unified School District would expect it to recognize and support this sort of social justice-minded, community-minded curriculum, what with its storied history as the first school district of its size in the nation to voluntarily desegregate, in 1968.  Forty years later, it’s still as committed.

Regardless of political pedigree, however, any school board can only be as forward-thinking as the community it sits in, and all of us with kids in the schools here owe a huge an incalculable debt of gratitude to those at OFC and in the school district whose long, hard work made this happen.

Much more to say about this in the future, but for the moment, just the good news:

Dear Families, Friends and Allies,

We have made history!

After four years of parents, educators and administrators collaborating to make their schools welcoming and inclusive for all families, the Berkeley School Board voted this week to adopt the vibrant Welcoming Schools Guide as official district curriculum.  Click here to watch video of the district staff presenting the curriculum (you can see my testimony here).

When my son Kobi was in first grade, he came home and told me that kids at school were using gay in a “bad” way.  Kobi is not alone. Children in elementary schools all over the country hear anti-gay slurs like “that’s so gay” and are subjected to bullying when they step outside of accepted gender norms.  As parents and caregivers, we know that this impacts all our kids.

If we are truly committed to addressing societal stigma against LGBT people and gaining full equality, we need to begin by making schools safe, accepting and inclusive. Our Family Coalition works with educators not only to end bullying, but to help them convey to their students that instead of being separate, LGBT people are a part of the community. We seek to shift fear and uncertainty to understanding and inclusion.

I want to commend the many Berkeley Unified principals, teachers, parents, school board members, union representatives and district administrators for their collaboration in, and commitment to this work.  In these past four years:

•  The school board passed a policy that supports family diversity curriculum.

•  In January, OFC teamed up with the teacher’s union and several PTAs to provide a staff development training for over 50 Berkeley teachers and after school staff from every public elementary school in the district.

•  The lessons have been tested in at least four of the eleven school sites.

•  And then finally, this week, they adopted the Welcoming Schools curriculum, with a commitment to train staff, purchase books, and most importantly, get the lessons into the classrooms.

The Welcoming Schools Guide is a fantastic resource offered by the Human Rights Campaign. Welcoming Schools is a new, comprehensive guide for administrators, educators, parents and guardians who want to strengthen their schools’ approach to family diversity, gender stereotyping and bullying. It is specifically designed for use in K-5 learning environments and is inclusive of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender families and individuals in the broader context of diversity.

We savor the victory and at the same time know it is just one step on a long road. Please let me know if you want to do work like this in your school.

Best Wishes,

Judy Appel

Executive Director, Our Family Coalition

This Thursday evening I’ll be talking to our former (and future!) preschool director’s Children’s Literature class.  It’s offered for early childhood educators who are in the process of getting their credentials, and I was honored (up the wazoo) to have been asked by her to talk to them last year, too.  All must have went well enough, since she asked me a second time.

The talk was about family diversity — specifically LGBT family diversity — in literature for children. I did some amateur sleuthing, some book list compiling (so many sources!), some talking to librarians and some checking out from both the public library and our family’s library. Handouts with lengthy book lists were procured (when I update the compilation for this week’s presentation, I’ll include a post here at LD, ideally incorporating the list into a more comprehensive LD link page). The outline of the talk went  like this:

1. Intro of who I am (parent, educator, LGBT activist, but not a kid’s lit specialist by any means)

2. Some useful bits of info about “alternative” families in general (more of us than the “nuclear norm” since 2000 census; e.g. these kinds of stats) & LGBT families in particular (#s in state & county; other details about who we are, based on the 2007 study conducted by Our Family Coalition et al.)

3. Some reasons why it’s a good idea to introduce family diversity in early childhood curriculum (including the challenges people face when doing so, with local and national examples of school district battles and the “challenged” LGBT-friendly kids’ books at libraries)

4. Some suggestions about how to approach the topic

5. Some examples of some of the literature, which I sort thusly in this rough fashion and note are weighted toward the two-gal-headed families more than two-guy-headed, since that’s what I know (I hasten to add that the book lists are comprehensive & I check out and distribute titles like Daddy, Papa and Me, Daddy’s Wedding, and One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dads Blue Dads):

Early generation LGBT books: kinda head-on or “frontal,” presuming a hostile or ignorant readership and functioning to directly explain what in the Sam Hill we are:

• • Molly’s Family, by Nancy Garden
  • Heather Has Two Mommies, by Leslea Newman (the grandmama of LGBT kid’s lit books)

Books which place LGBT family diversity in context of other types of family diversity:

• • The Family Book, by Todd Parr
  • Who’s in a Family, by Robert Skutch

Books  which take LGBT family diversity as a given and ostensibly focus on something else entirely

• • ABC A Family Alphabet Book, by Bobbie Combs (topic: the alphabet)
  • Emma and Meesha My Boy, by Kaitlyn Taylor Considine (topic: how to treat a cat decently)

Books which address gender identity among younger people (as vs. “alternative” family structure), a strong/related concern for many LGBT families

• • The Sissy Duckling, by Harvey Fierstein
  • 10,000 Dresses, by Marcus Ewert

Books which address difference in other arenas than family structure and can be used in addtion &/or via analogy [ed note: oops! forgot to include this when I posted]

• • It’s Okay to Be Different, by Todd Parr
  • I Like Myself!, by Karen Beaumont

My questions to you, hive mind of LD readers, are the following:

1. How would you suggest this outline be improved upon or added to?
2. What books would you want to be sure to have highlighted, and why?
3. Anything else you think would be important for early childhood educators to know or think about, regarding LGBT family diversity in kid’s lit?

Or just share your thoughts. If you’re not registered for the commenting and want to, let me know via the LD Contact page. Or just email me something directly that-a-way.

Thanks!

At least we don’t have to worry right now about the girlie concealing her true feelings from us.

Yesterday — Day 2 of Kindergarten — they drew a little something at some point. The title of this piece is “Confused Princess,” and she is, as you might imagine, confused. I’d say a tad distressed too, but I don’t want to read too much into it.

What was she confused about? We didn’t get a straight answer about that. Not like it was necessary.

What’s that big figure behind her?

“It’s her shadow, but she doesn’t know what it is. She’s a little bit worried, and a little bit– ‘What’s going on?!’”

[Ed note: adjusted to reflect actual quote which I scribbled down on a piece of paper at the time and didn't have with me when I posted this initially.]