Back in the 90’s, I attended my first Family Week in Provincetown and had so much fun. Everyone was open and sharing, interesting and interested. Whether walking on the beach, playing in the water, shopping along the main street, exploring art galleries, or stopping for a drink or ice cream cone along the beach, every family was having a good time.  By everyone, I mean the two moms with their son building his first sandcastle on the beach, the two dads walking and holding their children’s hands as they explored the shops on Commercial Street, and the clusters of parents and kids doing a variety of things together or separately everywhere I looked.
 
I first attended Family Week to give a workshop for LGBT parents who had been or were still in a heterosexual marriage. At the time, the organization was called the Gay and Lesbian Parents Coalition International, but more than parents were there. Kids of LGBT parents were there, too, some with their parents and some as part of their own organization. Family Week, indeed, meant time and space for all family members to be together for a single purpose: celebrating families, from toddlers to former straight spouses, to single parents, to couples to everything in between.

Originally posted at People for the American Way by Jen Herrick. 

It’s clear that, for the President, this isn’t just about couples getting married. It’s also about couples raising children with the sense of security that comes from family equality.

Just an hour after the big news broke, family equality was front and center at the New York Stock Exchange.

Our friends at Family Equality Council rang yesterday’s closing bell in celebration of International Family Equality Day.

PFAW and the African American Ministers in Action Equal Justice Task Force have joined with Family Equality Council and a broad coalition to support a wonderful bill called theEvery Child Deserves a Family Act, which would withhold a portion of federal funding from entities that discriminate in adoption and foster care placements based on the LGBT or marital status of prospective parents, or the LGBT status of the children involved. 

Originally posted at Red Zone Solutions by Kaali Cohen. 

It has been almost three weeks since my one year old Yorkshire Terrier was taken from our home. The anguish our family has felt at times has been unbearable. There are many moments when I am wondering how is she doing? Are the individuals who have her taking good care of her? Is she scared? Does she think we abandoned her and have stopped trying to find her? Does she like her new home? Will she ever be returned?

Many would think that she was just a pet but to us she was a member of our family. These feelings made think about how children that are taken from their home must feel? In honor of Foster Care Month I’d like to examine some of these same feelings that youth in the child welfare system experience.

This National Foster Care Month, we celebrate the love and sacrifice of foster parents across the country. CJ McGregor and his husband Richard are two parents who exemplify that love and sacrifice.  After moving to Massachusetts from New York in 1996, CJ and Richard decided it was time to start building their family. CJ is a Unitarian Universalist minister and Richard a children’s mental health counselor and special education advocate.  They were both very aware of the full-time commitment of being a parent and the extra effort it may take to raise a child who’d had a rough start in life.

But in 1998, CJ and Richard attended an adoption event to meet a little boy named Tony and fell in love. Coming from a traumatic childhood, Tony had some behavioral problems and had already been placed with over 12 foster homes and suffered through one failed adoption. Finally the adoption went through and Tony was able to join his forever family. A few months later, Tony was diagnosed with autism. While this was a devastating realization for the whole family, the diagnosis gave them the opportunity to move forward with the tools they needed to build the best life possible for Tony.