Williams Institute Reading Room: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resources in Law and Public Policy: Family

In this searing and uplifting memoir, a young Black queer woman fresh out of college adopts her baby brother after their incarcerated mother dies, determined to create the kind of family she never had. Nikkya Hargrove spent a good portion of her childhood in prison visiting rooms. When her mother--addicted to cocaine and just out of prison--had a son and then died only a few months later, Nikkya was faced with an impossible choice. Although she had just graduated from college, she decided to fight for custody of her half brother, Jonathan. And fight she did. Nikkya vividly recounts how she is subjected to preconceived notions that she, a Black queer young woman, cannot be given such responsibility. Her honest portrayal of the shame she feels accepting food stamps, her family's reaction to her coming out, and the joy she experiences when she meets the woman who will become her wife reveal her sheer determination. And whether she's clashing with Jonathan's biological father or battling for Jonathan's education rights after he's diagnosed with ADHD and autism, this is a woman who won't give up. Nikkya's moving story picks up where Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy left off, exploring generational trauma and pulling back the curtain on family court and poverty in America. Mama is an ode to motherhood and identity, and to finding strength in family and community, for readers of memoirs by Ashley C. Ford, Natasha Tretheway, and Dawn Turner.

A brilliant literary memoir of chosen family and chosen heritage, told against the backdrop of Chicago's North and South Sides, As a multiracial household in Chicago's North Side community of Rogers Park, race is at the core of Francesca Royster and her family's world, influencing everyday acts of parenting and the conception of what family truly means. Like Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts, this lyrical and affecting memoir focuses on a unit of three: the author; her wife Annie, who's white; and Cecilia, the Black daughter they adopt as a couple in their forties and fifties. Choosing Family chronicles this journey to motherhood while examining the messiness and complexity of adoption and parenthood from a Black, queer, and feminist perspective. Royster also explores her memories of the matriarchs of her childhood and the homes these women created in Chicago's South Side--itself a dynamic character in the memoir--where "family" was fluid, inclusive, and not necessarily defined by marriage or other socially recognized contracts. Calling upon the work of some of her favorite queer thinkers, including José Esteban Muñoz and Audre Lorde, Royster interweaves her experiences and memories with queer and gender theory to argue that many Black families, certainly her own, have historically had a "queer" attitude toward family: configurations that sit outside the white normative experience and are the richer for their flexibility and generosity of spirit. A powerful, genre-bending memoir of family, identity, and acceptance, Choosing Family, ultimately, is about joy--about claiming the joy that society did not intend to assign to you, or to those like you.

A striking and remarkable literary memoir about one family's transformation, with almost all of them embracing their queer identities. Jessi Hempel was raised in a seemingly picture-perfect, middle-class American family. But the truth was far from perfect. Her father was constantly away from home, traveling for work, while her stay-at-home mother became increasingly lonely and erratic. Growing up, Jessi and her two siblings struggled to make sense of their family, their world, their changing bodies, and the emotional turmoil each was experiencing. And each, in their own way, was hiding their true self from the world. By the time Jessi reached adulthood, everyone in her family had come out: Jessi as gay, her sister as bisexual, her father as gay, her brother as transgender, and her mother as a survivor of a traumatic experience with an alleged serial killer. Yet coming out was just the beginning, starting a chain reaction of other personal revelations and reckonings that caused each of them to question their place in the world in new and ultimately liberating ways.

They called him "pale faced or mixed race." They called him "light, bright, almost white." But most of the time his family called him "high yella." Steve Majors was the white passing, youngest son growing up in an all-Black family that struggled with poverty, abuse, and generational trauma. High Yella is the poignant account of how he tried to leave his troubled childhood and family behind to create a new identity, only to discover he ultimately needed to return home to truly find himself. And after he and his husband adopt two Black daughters, he must set them on their own path to finding their place in the world by understanding the importance of where they come from. In his remarkable and moving memoir, Majors gathers the shards of a broken past to piece together a portrait of a man on an extraordinary journey toward Blackness, queerness, and parenthood. High Yella delivers its hard-won lessons on love, life, and family with exceptional grace.

When Christian singer and speaker Staci Frenes learned her teenage daughter was gay, she found her dreams for the future--along with her lifelong faith--collapsing around her. Coming to terms with a new reality was a challenge--and an invitation--to make room for many things along the way: the inevitability of uncertainty, hope in the midst of loss, awkward and tough conversations, an expanding faith, and a greater understanding of how people are more the same than different. In Love Makes Room, Frenes helps readers see that a reimagined future may look different than our old hoped-for pictures of ourselves and our families, but it can also be wider, deeper, and more fulfilling than we ever dreamed.
*Also available online (UC users only)

Brown White Black is a portrait of Nishta J. Mehra's family: her wife, who is white; her adopted child, Shiv, who is black; and their experiences dealing with America's rigid ideas of race, gender, and sexuality. Her clear-eyed and incisive writing on her family's daily struggle to make space for themselves amid racial intolerance and stereotypes personalizes some of America's most fraught issues. Mehra writes candidly about her efforts to protect and shelter Shiv from racial slurs on the playground and from intrusive questions by strangers while educating her child on the realities and dangers of being black in America. In other essays, she discusses growing up in the racially polarized city of Memphis; coming out as queer; being an adoptive mother who is brown; and what it's like to be constantly confronted by people's confusion, concern, and expectations about her child and her family. Above all, Mehra argues passionately for a more nuanced and compassionate understanding of identity and family. Both poignant and challenging, Brown White Black is a remarkable portrait of a loving family on the front lines of some of the most highly charged conversations in our culture.

Elisabeth Spencer’s daughter Milly came out as trans at the age of twenty-one. Just a few days later, in one of life’s perfect storms, Spencer’s husband was diagnosed with an advanced terminal illness – and so she was set on course to confront rebirth in the face of death. In this compelling and poignant memoir, Spencer recalls her emotional journey over the course of her daughter’s life, as she struggles first with the mystery of Milly’s constant unhappiness, then with the revelation of her coming out, through a sense of bereavement, bewilderment and guilt, culminating in her determination to help her child become her true self. Written with remarkable warmth, generosity and honesty, The Road to My Daughter is both a deeply moving meditation on motherhood and a nuanced and compassionate reflection on trans issues, illuminating not only how it feels to witness the physical and mental processes of transitioning, and the realities behind embarking on this journey together, but also what it means to be a parent.

Inspired by her transgender son, activist Jodie Patterson explores identity, gender, race, and authenticity to tell the real-life story of a family's history and transformation. "A courageous and poetic testimony on family and the self, and the learning and unlearning we must do for those we love."--Janet Mock
In 2009, Jodie Patterson, mother of five and beauty entrepreneur, has her world turned upside down when her determined toddler, Penelope, reveals, "Mama, I'm not a girl. I am a boy." The Pattersons are a tribe of unapologetic Black matriarchs, scholars, financiers, Southern activists, artists, musicians, and disruptors, but with Penelope's revelation, Jodie realizes her existing definition of family isn't wide enough for her child's needs. In The Bold World, we witness Patterson reshaping her own attitudes, beliefs, and biases, learning from her children, and a whole new community, how to meet the needs of her transgender son. In doing so, she opens the minds of those who raised and fortified her, all the while challenging cultural norms and gender expectations. Patterson finds that the fight for racial equality in which her ancestors were so prominent helped pave the way for the current gender revolution. From Georgia to South Carolina, Ghana to Brooklyn, Patterson learns to remove the division between me and you, us and them, straight and queer--and she reminds us to celebrate her uncle Gil Scott Heron's prophecy that the revolution will not be televised. It will happen deeply, unequivocally, inside each and every one of us. Transition, we learn, doesn't just belong to the transgender person. Transition, for the sake of knowing more and becoming more, is the responsibility of and gift to all. The Bold World is the result; an intimate and exquisite story of authenticity, courage, and love.

The author, a gay Indonesian who feels he is "not much of a looker," immigrates to the USA and is inundated with shirtless joggers, same-sex public displays of affection, and the constant drive to psychoanalyze. In this poignant, witty, flippant, and trenchant collection of personal essays the author recounts his and two friends' paths to cross-cultural gay marriage and adjusting to very new lives in the USA. Yuska Lutfi Tuanakotta came from Indonesia to San Francisco in 2011 to study dance and creative writing, has two MFAs in Writing, has presented work at AWP, and was a 2014 Lambda Literary Foundation Fellow.

What happens when an introverted feminist academic tosses off her big black nerd glasses and succumbs to a brutal crush on a hard-rockin' Texas boygirl? Paige Schilt's journey introduces her to Southern belles, singing sperm donors, gay evangelicals, and tattooed sub-cultural kinfolk. A unique tale of family, illness, and resilience, Queer Rock Love reminds us that our trials and tribulations can sometimes become powerful sources of community and connection.

This powerful, moving story--which has already touched more than seven million through a viral video created by the Whittington family--is a mother's first-hand account of her emotional choice to embrace her transgender child. Now for the first time, the Whittingtons tell their story in full, offering an emotional and moving account of their journey alongside their exceptional child. After learning that forty-one percent of people who identify as transgender attempt to take their own lives, Hillary and her husband Jeff made it their mission to support their child, no matter what. From the earliest stages of exploring Ryland's clothing choices to examining the difficult conversations that have marked every stage of Ryland's transition, Hillary Whittington shares her experiences as a mother through it all, demonstrating both the resistance and support that their family has encountered as they try to erase the stigma surrounding the word "transgender."

*At Young Research Library. An intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of the latest thinking about love, language, and family, Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of "autotheory" offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the author's relationship with the artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes Nelson's account of falling in love with Dodge, who is fluidly gendered, as well as her journey to and through a pregnancy, offers a firsthand account of the complexities and joys of (queer) family-making.

Under This Beautiful Dome tells the true story of journalist Terry Mutchler's secret five-year relationship with Penny Severns, an Illinois State Senator who mentored Barack Obama. Forced to engage in an elaborate ruse to keep their relationship a secret, the two women constantly fear discovery in their conservative town. Denied legal access to the altar, they face even greater hardships when Penny is diagnosed with cancer and begins undergoing treatment. Set in the political arena, Under This Beautiful Dome reminds us why the march to legalize same-sex marriage is both personal and political.

A rural expatriate's struggle to reconcile family, home, love, and faith with the silence of the prairie land and its people. Hoffert longs for her North Dakota childhood home, with its grain trucks and empty main streets. Like most rural kids, she followed the out-migration pattern to a better life: the prairie is a hard place to stay-- particularly if you are gay. Taking a break from the city to spend a harvest season at her family's farm, Hoffert learns about making peace with faith, and belonging to a place where neighbors are as close as blood but are often unable to share their deepest truths.

[*At Young Research Library.] A heartfelt memoir by the father of a gay teen, and an eye-opening story for families who hope to bring up well-adjusted gay adults. Three years ago, John Schwartz, a national correspondent at The New York Times, got the call that every parent hopes never to receive: his thirteen-year-old son, Joe, was in the hospital following a failed suicide attempt. After mustering the courage to come out to his classmates, Joe's disclosure -- delivered in a tirade about homophobic attitudes--was greeted with dismay and confusion by his fellow students. Hours later, he took an overdose of pills. In the aftermath, John and his wife, Jeanne, determined to help Joe feel more comfortable in his own skin, launched a search for services and groups that could help Joe understand that he wasn't alone. Oddly Normal is Schwartz's very personal attempt to address his family's own struggles within a culture that is changing fast, but not fast enough to help gay kids like Joe.

[*At Powell Library.] After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation--few of whom are raising a child. Reconstructing their life together from a remarkable cache of her father's journals, letters, and writings, Alysia Abbott gives us an unforgettable portrait of a tumultuous, historic time in San Francisco as well as an exquisitely moving account of a father's legacy and a daughter's love.

At Young Research Library and College Library.

Jeanette Winterson has written some of the most admired books of the past few decades, including her internationally bestselling first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents that is now often required reading in contemporary fiction. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a memoir about a life's work to find happiness. It is the story of how a painful past that Jeanette thought she'd written over and repainted rose to haunt her, sending her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother. Witty, acute, fierce, and celebratory, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a tough-minded search for belonging;for love, identity, home, and a mother.

*At the Young Research Library and SRLF. Also available as an eBook (UC only): Homo Domesticus

[*Tower Reading Room and Young Research Library.] Why do dogs speak so profoundly to our inner lives? When Mark Doty decides to adopt a dog as a companion for his dying partner, he finds himself bringing home Beau, a large golden retriever, malnourished and in need of loving care. Beau joins Arden, the black retriever, to complete their family. As Beau bounds back into life, the two dogs become Mark Doty's intimate companions, his solace, and eventually the very life force that keeps him from abandoning all hope during the darkest days. Their tenacity, loyalty, and love inspire him when all else fails. Doty writes about the heart-wrenching vulnerability of dogs, the positive energy and joy they bring, and the gift they bear us of unconditional love.

Winner of the American Library Association GLBT Book Award Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award

"At the heart of this memoir lies a true epiphany: the author's sudden, galvanizing awareness of the suicidal consequences of homophobia. It is a chilling moment, and it is described with a writer's eloquence and a mother's rage....Dew's intense imagination, combined with her ignorance of homosexuality, was as much a hindrance as a help, and it is to her credit that she has recorded the occasionally wacky assumptions and painful readjustments of her own odyssey with such care and humor." --The New Yorker

This photographic celebration of queer love and excellence gathers fourteen LGBTQ+ power couples, offering a glimpse into the journeys that led to their meaningful relationships and thriving careers. From designer Debbie Millman's ardent courtship of writer Roxane Gay to the romantic and creative relationship forged between Perfume Genius bandmates Mike Hadreas and Alan Wyffels on stage during their first world tour, this beautiful book offers a closer look into the lives of fourteen inspiring LGBTQ+ couples and the meet-cutes, success stories, and personal reflections that made them the role models they are today. These icons come from a range of backgrounds--they are trailblazers who lead research labs, kitchens, and news organizations; create life-giving art and music; and tell queer stories in award-winning books, films, and television shows. With in-depth original interviews by journalist Hannah Murphy Winter and intimate photography by their wife, Billie Winter, this diverse collection is a jubilant celebration of queer love and an empowering reminder to younger LGBTQ+ generations of their limitless possibilities.

Embrace the Queerness of your family, take ownership of your journey, and use your voice to bring light to your communities. When Nia Chiaramonte came out as a trans woman to her wife Katie, she knew she would be met with a loving response. But she was less sure where this would leave their relationship, their marriage, and their family. Even murkier was what would happen when they began to bring their extended family, friends, and broader community alongside them on their journey of identity formation as a Queer family. They needed a guide for what lay ahead. Now, drawing on their own experiences as well as their expertise in psychology, spirituality, and family systems, Nia and Katie Chiaramonte offer the tools they wish they'd had for their journey. Embracing Queer Family is a guidebook for Queer families on how to live into their true selves and strengthen their communities through radical love, acceptance, and mutual healing. With hands-on tools for learning and reflection in each chapter, this needed resource tackles issues of inclusion and acceptance and offers practical advice for how individuals and families can honor themselves and find transformation for their whole community through love. Whether you are a Queer person on the journey of self-awareness, an ally looking for resources, or a family member seeking advice for how to navigate a loved one's coming-out process, this book is for you.
*Also available online (UCLA users only)

From the stars of the Netflix documentary "Life in the Doghouse" and founders of one of the most recognized rescue organizations in the world, the poignant story of how Danny and Ron found each other during a time they each needed rescuing, and how they transformed their home into a haven for dogs in need. Danny & Ron's Dog Rescue is an organization like no other. Because an abused or neglected dog can only recover and learn to trust again when it is in a loving home, Danny and Ron decided to open their doors. Danny and Ron treat each neglected, abused, and misunderstood animal like a member of the family; the dogs eat organic food from their own bowls and are even allowed to sleep in the bed. In this heartwarming book, Danny and Ron chronicle their journey helping more than 13,000 dogs in need, telling the stories of many furry friends that have come into their lives and of their own "rescue" as they came out together late in life. At any given time, there are upwards of 70 dogs lounging, frolicking, recovering, and cuddling under their own roof. For many of these wonderful canines, their house saved them from death. For Danny and Ron, saving and protecting innocent and defenseless canines and finding them forever homes is their passion and life mission. Forever Home is their story--a message of acceptance, kindness, and, of course, love. It is a reminder that hope and joy can arise from the darkest circumstances, and that we all can make the world a better place for ourselves and our animal friends--it starts at home, with patience, empathy, and an open heart.

Today, about half of all adults are unmarried. Many of those are in significant relationships--some intimate, others based in friendship, finances, or family ties--but the law offers them few protections. Amid the growing recognition that modern families take all shapes, More Than Marriage presents a refreshing vision for the future. With this book, noted family-law expert John G. Culhane takes us on a guided tour of how the march toward marriage equality spun off a number of other legal statuses, and explores how the law has expanded and where it falls short. This lively living history is grounded in relatable, in-depth interviews that give voice to the millions of Americans building family structures outside the protections of marriage--whether by choice, necessity, or exclusion. Culhane proposes an updated legal status that offers flexible and portable benefits for a diverse range of commitments and needs. As More Than Marriage shows, this "choose your own adventure" structure more accurately reflects, and more equitably protects, the many kinds of families we choose to build.

This volume provides a close look at the ways in which LGBTQ2 people form familial bonds. It brings together stories from non-binary families across continents and cultures and recenters care as a foundational value for creating familial ties. This volume therefore addresses a gap in the literature concerning non-binary family configurations by going beyond the legal battle for non-binary partnership rights. In recent discussions on marriage equality, the notion of familial bonds, which was important in early discussions on non-binary family research, has been decentered in favor of legal and homonormative understandings of individual rights. This volume centers familial bonds as the first step toward reimagining how to do research on the family and adds to research on family studies as well as gender studies. Students and researchers of sociology, anthropology, social work, gender studies, family research, well-being research, and anyone else working on or with non-binary families will find this book highly topical and interesting.
*Available online (UC users only)

Why LGBTQ adults don't end troubled ties with parents and why (perhaps) they should. Families We Keep is a surprising look at the life-long bonds between LGBTQ adults and their parents. Alongside the importance of "chosen families" in the queer community, Rin Reczek and Emma Bosley-Smith found that very few LGBTQ people choose to become estranged from their parents, even if those parent refuse to support their gender identity, sexuality, or both. Drawing on interviews with over seventy-five LGBTQ people and their parents, Reczek and Bosley-Smith explore the powerful ties that bind families together, for better or worse. They show us why many feel obliged to maintain even troubled--and sometimes outright toxic--relationships with their parents. They argue that this relationship persists because what we think of as the "natural" and inevitable connection between parents and adult children is actually created and sustained by the sociocultural power of compulsory kinship. After revealing what holds even the most troubled intergenerational ties together, Families We Keep gives us permission to break free of those family bonds that are not in our best interests. Reczek and Bosley-Smith challenge our deep-rooted conviction that family--and specifically, our relationships with our parents--should be maintained at any cost. Families We Keep shines a light on the shifting importance of family in America, and how LGBTQ people navigate its complexities as adults.

Lesbian, bisexual, and queer families formed after the dissolution of a marriage face a range of obstacles. In Queer Stepfamilies, Katie L. Acosta offers a wealth of insight into their complex experiences as they negotiate parenting among multiple parents and family-building in a world not designed to meet their needs. Drawing on in-depth interviews, Acosta follows the journeys of more than forty families as they navigate a legal and social landscape that fails to recognize their existence. Acosta contextualizes the legal realities of LGBTQ stepparent families and considers the actions these parents take to protect their families in the absence of comprehensive policies or laws geared to meet their needs. Queer Stepfamilies reveals the obstacles these families face in family courts during divorce proceedings and custody cases, and highlights their distrust of courts when it comes to acting in their children's best interests, especially in the event of an origin parent's death. As LGBTQ families continue to make social and legal strides in acceptance and recognition, this important book shows how queer stepparents find ways to make their unconventional families work, despite the many social and legal obstacles they encounter. Acosta provides a fresh perspective, broadening our understanding about families in the twenty-first century.

This textbook offers a comprehensive overview of research on LGBTQ-parent families. The new edition of the textbook provides updated information and expands on the range and depth of current research. The volume features contributions from scholars in psychology, sociology, human development, family studies, gender studies, sexuality studies, legal studies, social work, and anthropology. In addition, the textbook offers an international perspective, with coverage spanning many diverse nations and cultures. Chapters highlight key research, exploring sexual orientation in relation to other key social identities, such as gender, race, and nationality. Chapters also discuss new, emerging areas of research, including asexuality and immigration. The textbook concludes with a section on the growing sophistication of research methodology in the study of LGBTQ-parent families. The second edition includes new chapters discussing: LGBTQ-parent families and health.   LGBTQ foster parents. LGBTQ adults and sibling relationships. LGBTQ-parent families and poverty. LGBTQ-parent families and separation/divorce. LGBTQ-parent families and religion. LGBTQ-parent families and grief/loss. Methods, recruitment, and sampling in research with LGBTQ families. Teaching/pedagogy on LGBTQ-parent families.  LGBTQ-Parent Families, 2nd Edition, is a valuable updated resource for graduate students as well as veteran and beginning clinicians across disciplines, including family studies, family therapy, gender studies, public health, social policy, social work and child and adolescent psychology as well as related disciplines across mental health and educational services.

A photographic celebration of the love and relationships of queer people of color by a former New York Times multimedia journalist. "Thank you, Jamal Jordan, for showing the world what true love looks like."--Billy Porter Queer Love in Color features photographs and stories of couples and families across the United States and around the world. This singular, moving collection offers an intimate look at what it means to live at the intersections of queer and POC identities today, and honors an inclusive vision of love, affection, and family across the spectrum of gender, race, and age.

Although there are far more opportunities for LGBTQ people to become parents than there were before the 1990s, attention to the reproductive challenges LGBTQ families face has not kept pace. Reproductive Losses considers LGBTQ people's experiences with miscarriage, stillbirth, failed adoptions, infertility, and sterility. Drawing on Craven's training as a feminist anthropologist and her experiences as a queer parent who has experienced loss, Reproductive Losses includes detailed stories drawn from over fifty interviews with LGBTQ people (including those who carried pregnancies, non-gestational and adoptive parents, and families from a broad range of racial/ethnic, socio-economic, and religious backgrounds) to consider how they experience loss, grief, and mourning. The book includes productive suggestions and personal narratives of resiliency, commemorative strategies, and communal support, while also acknowledging the adversity many LGBTQ people face as they attempt to form families and the heteronormativity of support resources for those who have experienced reproductive loss. This is essential reading for scholars and professionals interested in LGBTQ health and family, and for individuals in LGBTQ communities who have experienced loss and those who support them. See additional material on the Companion Website: www.lgbtqreproductiveloss.org/

What unique challenges face LGBTQ individuals in relationships or who are separating or divorcing, especially now that same-sex couples may marry? What issues might complicate the ending of relationships when children, multiple partners, or multiple parents are present? How do gender, gendertransition, ethnicity, immigration status, economic status, geography, and other characteristics shape the experiences of divorcing or separating LGBTQ people? Finally, how can therapists and lawyers most effectively assist LGBTQ people whose relationships and families are dissolving?LGBTQ Divorce and Relationship Dissolution: Psychological and Legal Perspectives and Implications for Practice brings together social science and legal perspectives to examine the timely topic of relationship dissolution and divorce among sexual and gender minorities. The first edited book to tackle this topic in an informed, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary matter, this volume gathers and expands current knowledge on topics such as LGBTQ people's relationship and dissolution patterns; the divorce and child custody rules and processes that now apply to many LGBTQ families; and the surrounding political and cultural environment in the United States. It will also address practical issues such as mediation with same-sex couples who are separating or divorcing, financial planning, and family therapy for sexual minority parents and their children in the context of divorce/dissolution. With chapters contributed by leading scholars and practitioners from law, political science, psychology, sociology, and other disciplines, LGBTQ Divorce and Relationship Dissolution will be an invaluable resource for academics, practitioners, policymakers, and LGBTQ people. It will also be of interest to students in psychology, counseling, law, and LGBTQ and gender studies.

Illustrating the fascinating intersections of online media and new kinship, this book presents a study of the increasing numbers of single women and lesbian couples reproducing by using donor sperm. It explores how they connect with each other online, develop intimate digital communities and, most importantly, locate their children's hitherto unknown biological half-siblings, throughout the world. The author discusses how these new families - consisting of only mothers - engage in extended families involving large numbers of "donor siblings". The new families challenge previous understandings of kinship, and provide illustrations of how norms of gender, sexuality and family are challenged, negotiated and maintained in contemporary times. A crucial study of contemporary formations of family, gender and race, Mediated Kinship discusses the racial aspects of the world's largest sperm bank exporting Danish sperm (termed "Viking sperm"), and explores the narratives of whiteness and imagined racial superiority that circulate among mothers, as well as the racialisations accompanying commercial online sperm sales. By analysing contemporary families of donor-conceived children in the context of legislation, reproduction technologies and online media, the book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in race and ethnicity, whiteness, gender, sexuality, kinship and the sociology of the family.

Over the past two decades, same-sex couples raising children have become more visible within US political and popular culture. Thanks to widely circulated images of well-mannered, well-dressed, and well-off two-parent families, a select number of LGBT-identified parents have gained recognition as model American citizens. In Familiar Perversions, Liz Montegary shows how this seemingly progressive view of same-sex parenting has taken shape during a period of growing racial inequality and economic insecurity in the United States. This book evaluates the recent successes of the "family equality" movement, while asking important questions about its relationship to neoliberalism, the policing of sexual cultures, and the broader context of social justice organizing at the turn of the twenty-first century. Montegary's investigation of the politics of LGBT family life takes us on a journey that includes not only activist events and the courtrooms where landmark decisions about same-sex families were made, but also parenting workshops, cruise ships, and gay resort towns. Through its sustained historical analysis, Familiar Perversions lays critical groundwork for imagining a queer family movement that can support and strengthen the diverse networks of care, kinship, and intimacy on which our collective survival depends.

Ozzie and Harriet, move over. A new couple is moving into the neighborhood. In the postmodern era, advances in medical technologies allow some individuals categorized female at birth to live in accordance with their gender identities, as men. While a growing body of literature on transgender men's experiences has come to the forefront, relatively little exists to document the experiences of their partners. In Queering Families: The Postmodern Partnerships of Cisgender Women and Transgender Men, Carla A. Pfeffer brings these experiences to light through interviews with the group most likely to partner and form families with transgender men: non-transgender (cisgender) women. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with fifty cisgender women partners of transgender men from across the United States and Canada, Pfeffer details the experiences of a community that often seems unremarkable and ordinary on its surface. Cisgender women who partner with transgender men who are socially "read" as male are often (mis)perceived as part of a heterosexual couple or family. Yet not all cisgender women who partner with transgender men are comfortable with this invisible existence and comfortable normativity. Instead, many of the cisgender women Pfeffer interviews hold deeply-valued queer identities that may be erased in their partnerships with transgender men.Queering Families details the struggles and strengths of these postmodern "Harriets" as they work to build identities, partnerships, families, and communities. Pfeffer's interviewees discuss the implications of visibility and invisibilty in their everyday lives as they face barriers or pathways t o legal and social inclusion. They carve out new lexicons for partners' bodies and their own sexualities, transformed through gender-affirming hormones and surgeries. They plan and construct families with and without children, some drawing upon alternative reproductive technologies to bear the biological offspring of their transgender partners. With remarkable depth and insight, Queering Families explores a shifting social landscape that challenges the very notion of what constitutes a "same-sex" or an "opposite-sex" relationship, marriage, or family.

A personal, intimate account of the extraordinary ways that today's families are being created. From adoption and assisted reproduction, to gay and straight parents, coupled and single, and multi-parent families, the stories in Modern Families explain how individuals make unconventional families by accessing a broad range of technological, medical and legal choices that expand our definitions of parenting and kinship. Joshua Gamson introduces us to a child with two mothers, made with one mother's egg and the sperm of a man none of them has ever met; another born in Ethiopia, delivered by his natural grandmother to an orphanage after both his parents died in close succession, and then to the arms of his mother, who is raising him solo. These tales are deeply personal and political. The process of forming these families involved jumping tremendous hurdles--social conventions, legal and medical institutions--with heightened intention and inventiveness, within and across multiple inequities and privileges. Yet each of these families, however they came to be, shares the same universal joys that all families share. A companion for all those who choose to navigate the world of modern kinship, Modern Families provides a "fascinating look at the remarkable range of experiences that is broadening the very idea of family" (Booklist).

America's War on Same-Sex Couples and Their Families is a legal, political, and social history of constitutional amendments in twenty American states (with 43 percent of the nation's population) that prohibited government recognition of all forms of relationship rights (marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships) for same-sex couples. Based on 175 interviews with gay and lesbian pairs in Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin, the volume has great human-interest value and chronicles how same-sex couples and their children coped within harsh legal environments. The work ends with a lively explanation of how the federal judiciary rescued these families from their own governments. In addition, the book provides a model of the grassroots circumstances under which harassed minority groups migrate out of oppressive state regimes, together with an estimate of the economic and other costs (to the refugees and their governments) of the flight from persecution.

Most people think of love and contracts as strange bedfellows, or even opposites. In Love's Promises, however, law professor Martha Ertman shows that far from cold and calculating, contracts shape and sustain families. Blending memoir and law, Ertman delves into the legal cases, anecdotes, and history of family law to show that love comes in different packages, each shaped by different contracts and mini-contracts she calls "deals." Family law should and often does recognize that variety because legal rules, like relationships, aren't one size fits all. The most common form of family--which Ertman calls "Plan A"--come into being through different kinds of agreements than the more uncommon families that she dubs "Plan B." Recognizing the contractual core of all families shows that Plan B is neither unnatural nor unworthy of legal recognition, just different. After telling her own moving and often irreverent story about becoming part of a Plan B family of two moms and a dad raising a child, Ertman shows that all kinds of people--straight and gay, married and single, related by adoption or by genetics--use contracts to shape their relationships. As couples navigate marriage, reproductive technologies, adoption, and cohabitation, they encounter contracts. Sometimes hidden and other times openly acknowledged, these contracts ensure that the people they think of as "family" are legally recognized as family in the eyes of the law. Family exchanges can be substantial, like vows of fidelity, or small, like "I cook and you clean." But regardless of scope, the agreements shape the emotional, social, and financial terrain of family relationships. Seeing the instrumental role contracts will help readers better understand how contracts and deals work in their own families as well as those around them. Both insightful and paradigm-shifting, Love's Promises lets readers in on the power of contracts and deals to support love in its many forms and to honor the different ways that our nearest and dearest contribute to our daily lives.

Modern Families brings together research on parenting and child development in new family forms including lesbian mother families, gay father families, families headed by single mothers by choice and families created by assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF), egg donation, sperm donation, embryo donation and surrogacy. This research is examined in the context of the issues and concerns that have been raised regarding these families. The findings not only contest popular myths and assumptions about the social and psychological consequences for children of being raised in new family forms but also challenge well-established theories of child development that are founded upon the supremacy of the traditional family. It is argued that the quality of family relationships and the wider social environment are more influential in children's psychological development than are the number, gender, sexual orientation, or biological relatedness of their parents or the method of their conception.

In 1993, the nation exploded into anti-same sex marriage fervor when the Hawaii Supreme Court issued its decision to support marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. Opponents feared that all children, but especially those raised by lesbian or gay couples, would be harmed by the possibility of same-sex marriage, and warned of the consequences for society at large. Congress swiftly enacted the Defense of Marriage Act, defining marriage as between a man and a woman, and many states followed suit. Almost a decade before the Hawaii court issued its decision, however, several courts in multiple states had granted gay and lesbian couples co-parenting status, permitting each individual in the couple to be legally recognized as joint parents over their children. By 2006, advocates in half the states had secured court decisions supporting gay and lesbian co-parenting, and incurred far fewer public reprisals than on the marriage front. What accounts for the stark difference in reactions to two contemporaneous same-sex family policy fights? In Below the Radar, Alison Gash argues that advocacy visibility has played a significant role in determining whether advocacy efforts become mired in conflict or bypass hostile backlash politics. Same-sex parenting advocates are not alone in crafting low-visibility advocacy strategies to ward off opposition efforts. Those who operate, reside in, and advocate for group homes serving individuals with disabilities have also used below-the-radar strategies to diminish the damage caused by NIMBY ("not in my back yard") responses to their requests to move into single-family neighborhoods. Property owners have resorted to slander, subterfuge, or even arson to discourage group homes from locating in their neighborhoods, and for some advocates, secrecy provides the best elixir. Not every fight for civil rights grabs headlines, but sometimes, this is by design. Gash's groundbreaking analyses of these strategies provide a glimpse of the prophylactic and palliative potential of low-visibility advocacy.

As more states strike down laws restricting marriage to "one man and one woman," same-sex relationships are becoming more visible and more socially accepted. Nevertheless, many couples still experience significant stress because of their same-sex status. In every life context - family, work, neighborhood, religious communities, and in social and legal contexts - same-sex couples have to make decisions about disclosure, how to respond to prejudice, and how to cope with negative feelings about themselves and their experiences. This book helps couples work together to identify, develop, and use their strengths and skills to successfully navigate these issues and flourish. Tough tasks like confronting prejudice will never be easy, but thanks to the stories, tools, and resources presented in this book, readers will learn to manage such situations in a positive way. Learning activities in each chapter guide couples to become more aware of the causes of stress in their relationship, and to take positive actions to strengthen their commitment. Readers will learn how to cultivate the strengths of their LGBTQ identities, assert appropriate boundaries, create supportive relationships with others, and contribute authentically to their families and communities.

Also on Westlaw (ID/password required); Search LGFAMLAW

Written in an accessible Q&A format, here, finally, is the go-to resource for parents hoping to understand and communicate with their gay child. Through their LGBTQ-oriented site, the authors are uniquely experienced to answer parents' many questions and share insight and guidance on both emotional and practical topics. Filled with real-life experiences from gay kids and parents, this is the book gay kids want their parents to read.

Untangling the Knot: Marriage, Relationships & Identity, an anthology of essays and creative nonfiction, delves past the mainstream focus on marriage equality--beyond the knot-- to examine the broad scope of issues facing members of the LGBTQ community. The collection sheds light on what marriage equality actually means for queer communities. By confronting the concept of tradition through personal discourse, this volume seeks to create conversation amongst the diverse members of the LGBTQ community and their straight allies to prompt a larger, grander, and more realistic vision of what marriage equality really means for those living in the United States. Untangling the Knot: Marriage, Relationships & Identity includes the voices of many individuals who are underrepresented in the modern discourse surrounding LGBTQ rights, and these unique perspectives may change the direction of that conversation for good.

Nancy J. Mezey's LGBT Families presents a comprehensive yet accessible understanding of LGBT families today by drawing upon and making sense of the burgeoning scholarly literature about LGBT families from the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries. It pays particular attention to how structures of race, class, gender, sexuality, and age shape LGBT families, and how members of such families negotiate the social landscapes within which they exist. The book will help readers better understand the formation, experiences, challenges, and strengths of LGBT families, and addresses two main questions: Why are new family forms so threatening to certain groups of people in society? and How are new family forms beneficial to the society in which they exist?

"Amigas y Amantes" (Friends and Lovers) explores the experiences of sexually nonconforming Latinas in the creation and maintenance of families. It is based on forty-two in-depth ethnographic interviews with women who identify as lesbian, bisexual, or queer (LBQ). Additionally, it draws from fourteen months of participant observation at LBQ Latina events that Katie L. Acosta conducted in 2007 and 2008 in a major northeast city. With this data, Acosta examines how LBQ Latinas manage loving relationships with the families who raised them, and with their partners, their children, and their friends. Acosta investigates how sexually nonconforming Latinas negotiate cultural expectations, combat compulsory heterosexuality, and reconcile tensions with their families. She offers a new way of thinking about the emotion work involved in everyday lives, which highlights the informal, sometimes invisible, labor required in preserving family ties. Acosta contends that the work LBQ Latinas take on to preserve connections with biological families, lovers, and children results in a unique way of doing family.Paying particular attention to the negotiations that LBQ Latinas undertake in an effort to maintain familial order, "Amigas y Amantes" explores how they understand femininity, how they negotiate their religious faiths, how they face the unique challenges of being in interracial/interethnic relationships, and how they raise their children while integrating their families of origin.

In Radical Relations, Daniel Winunwe Rivers offers a previously untold story of the American family: the first history of lesbian and gay parents and their children in the United States. Beginning in the postwar era, a period marked by both intense repression and dynamic change for lesbians and gay men, Rivers argues that by forging new kinds of family and childrearing relations, gay and lesbian parents have successfully challenged legal and cultural definitions of family as heterosexual. These efforts have paved the way for the contemporary focus on family and domestic rights in lesbian and gay political movements. Based on extensive archival research and 130 interviews conducted nationwide, Radical Relations includes the stories of lesbian mothers and gay fathers in the 1950s, lesbian and gay parental activist networks and custody battles, families struggling with the AIDS epidemic, and children growing up in lesbian feminist communities. Rivers also addresses changes in gay and lesbian parenthood in the 1980s and 1990s brought about by increased awareness of insemination technologies and changes in custody and adoption law.

Mignon R. Moore brings to light the family life of a group that has been largely invisible--gay women of color--in a book that challenges long-standing ideas about racial identity, family formation, and motherhood. Drawing from interviews and surveys of one hundred black gay women in New York City, Invisible Families explores the ways that race and class have influenced how these women understand their sexual orientation, find partners, and form families. In particular, the study looks at the ways in which the past experiences of women who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s shape their thinking, and have structured their lives in communities that are not always accepting of their openly gay status. Overturning generalizations about lesbian families derived largely from research focused on white, middle-class feminists, Invisible Families reveals experiences within black American and Caribbean communities as it asks how people with multiple stigmatized identities imagine and construct an individual and collective sense of self.

*Also eBook (UC only): Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage

*At Young Research Library and SRLF.

*Amazon links to newest edition; reading room has 1st ed.