LGBT Youth to Call for Harvey Milk Day and More in Sacramento

Hundreds of youth from throughout California will gather in Sacramento to educate legislators and rally in support of the Harvey Milk Day Bill, SB 572, and the Mental Health Access for At-Risk Youth Bill, SB 543. More than 200 youth are expected to participate in Queer Youth Advocacy Day 2009.
The event is sponsored by Gay-Straight Alliance Network, Equality California Institute, BIENESTAR, Transgender Law Center, The Trevor Project, and the National Association of Social Workers California Chapter.

The event is set for Monday, April 20: Rally at 12:30 p.m. and legislative visits from 1:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the California State Capitol.

Hundreds of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and straight ally youth leaders from every part of California, as well as teachers, parents, concerned community members and elected officials.

Before the event, 70youth leaders arrived in Sacramento on Friday to participate in an intensive 3-day training called the GSA Advocacy & Youth Leadership Academy (GAYLA). This training will cover the legislative process, policy and administrative advocacy, media activism, and other important leadership skills for students working to fight homophobia and transphobia in school.
Learn more at www.gsanetwork.org

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Professional groups back gay marriage BurlingtonFreePress.com

Same-sex marriage rights got an endorsement Monday from four Vermont professional organizations who cited research findings that “children of lesbian and gay parents are as likely as those of heterosexual parents to flourish.”

They also said gay and lesbian parents are as likely as their heterosexual counterparts to provide healthy environments for children and that “there is no credible scientific evidence” relating parenting effectiveness to sexual orientation.

Their statement, which comes as the Vermont legislature prepares to consider same-sex marriage legislation, was released at a news conference called by the Vermont Psychological Association, the Vermont Psychiatric Association, the Vermont Association of Mental Health Counselors and the Vermont chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.

Speaking on the organizations’ behalf, Jackie Weinstock, an associate professor in the department of integrated professional studies at the University of Vermont, said the groups wanted to “set the record straight” by rebutting contentions by gay-marriage opponents that children raised by single-sex parents fare less well than their counterparts in heterosexual families.

“No study has shown that outcomes for children of single-sex families are any less positive than outcomes for children in heterosexual families,” Weinstock said. She said contrary findings sometimes cited by opponents apply in part to children of divorced parents, not exclusively to children of single-sex parents. She acknowledged that national studies of children in same-sex parents have been limited by small research samples. See Professional groups back gay marriage BurlingtonFreePress.com

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Following Attorney General Investigation, Arizona-based Antigay Adoption Service Stops Business in New York: Lambda Legal’s Clients Vindicated

Adoption.com and Parentprofiles.com, national parent profile posting websites, discriminate based on sexual orientation.

(New York, March 4, 2009) — In an announcement issued today by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the antigay Arizona-based Adoption Profiles, LLC and Adoption Media, LLC stopped doing business in New York.
The Attorney General’s announcement follows a complaint filed by Lambda Legal on behalf of a New York gay couple barred from posting their on-line adoptive-parent profile by the companies in question solely because they are a same-sex couple. Adoption Profiles, LLC and Adoption Media, LLC were violating New York laws prohibiting such discrimination.
“New York Attorney General Cuomo has sent a clear message to all businesses that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation will not be tolerated,” said Flor Bermudez, Staff Attorney at Lambda Legal. “Companies can’t come into New York and hang a sign on their door saying ‘Same-sex couples need not apply.’”
Lambda Legal clients Rosario Gennaro and Alexander Gardner knew for a long time that they wanted to have children and that adoption was the way to make it possible. The couple had a home study by a licensed social worker and obtained certification as Qualified Adoptive Parents from the New York City Surrogate Court. The couple wanted to post their profile on ParentProfiles.com and seek a match with a birth parent. However, the website’s eligibility requirements only allow a “Qualifying Husband and Wife Couple” that are “one male husband and one female wife” to use the service, thus discriminating against same-sex couples on the basis of sexual orientation, sex and marital status. The company was sued in California for violating that state’s antidiscrimination law and is no longer doing business there.
“We are thrilled that the New York Attorney General’s office made the right decision and that no couple will have to experience what we did in our effort to become parents,” said Rosario Gennaro.

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Bill would ban adoptions by unwed couples

The state had an infant, 2 weeks old, 10 weeks premature, HIV positive and abandoned at a hospital. The child wasn’t expected to live long but needed 24-hour care and parental nurturing.

Would they take the baby, asked the social worker who had evaluated and approved them for foster care.

“That was a Friday. We garage-saled all weekend and picked him up that Monday,” Morgan said. The couple later adopted the boy.

“Now we have this beautiful, healthy, happy, totally normal 18-year-old son. You tell me — what’s wrong with that?”

Morgan said he and his partner were the first openly gay couple to adopt in Tennessee.

If bills introduced in the Tennessee House and Senate this session succeed in the state’s new, Republican-dominated legislature, unmarried couples — gay and straight — could be barred from adopting.

People on both sides of the issue say their primary concern is the welfare of children. But that’s where the agreement ends about who should and should not be able to adopt in Tennessee.

The bills’ advocates say that Tennessee law was never intended to allow unmarried couples to adopt but that the state attorney general and Department of Children’s Services interpreted it incorrectly.

It’s clear children belong in “traditional” families, they say.

But those who oppose the bills say they would leave more children lingering in a state system that has made strides since a court ordered Tennessee to more swiftly connect eligible children with adoptive families.

“Remember that children in foster care don’t typically have a line of people going around the block waiting to adopt them,” said Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.

See Bill would ban adoptions by unwed couples

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Probe into gay adoption row

EDINBURGH’S most senior social worker will investigate a complaint by a couple who claim to have been forced to give up their grandchildren for adoption by two gay men.

Chief social work officer at Edinburgh City Council, Michelle Miller, will reportedly lead an investigation into the complaint.

A city council spokesman reportedly said officials had received the family’s complaint and it would be assessed by Miss Miller and a team of staff dedicated to dealing with public grievances.

The family are expected to discuss a legal fight, bankrolled by an unnamed Scottish millionaire, with lawyers later in this week.

See Probe into gay adoption row
Scotsman, United Kingdom