Blogging for LBGT Families, a little late

Mombian organized an excellent thing, Blogging for LBGT Families, on June 1. I'm late to the party, and haven't quite come up with much of my own angle on the topic, other than to state the obvious: we here in the Granola family are a big fan of families, LBGT and otherwise. We wish more people who claim to want to protect and nourish the American family would spend less time advocating nutty legislation in state and federal legislative bodies. We wish more resources were available to help families stay together; we wish more resources were available to women considering placing children for adoption, so that placement decisions aren't coerced; we wish more resources were available to adoptive families, so that parental leaves and social support were as available as they are for families having biological children. We wish more resources were available for schools and teachers so that family diversity is a celebrated part of educational practice and structure.

One of the reasons we love our block--and have just spent much time and money adding a bedroom and common room to our house so that we can stay here--is that it is incredibly diverse. "This doesn't seem like a midwestern place," our geographically-biased out-of-state visitors will say. Our little block in the midst of our city has 4 lesbian families with 11 children under the age of 7 between us, 3 families with 7 adopted children between us, 3 multiracial families, 3 intergenerational households, and 3-5 lgb families without kids, not to mention probably 7 senior citizen households on the block. It's the best way any of us can think of to say "our family is normal." We can just look out the window and find people who are like us. And find people who are different. We couldn't ask for better social support.

At Mombian, you can see the big list of the 130+ blogs who participated. I've not read all the posts yet, but the ones I've seen so far are quite interesting. I especially liked Shannon's post about the conflict between her and Cole's short- and long-term views about gay marriage. Like Shannon, I think Politica and I are as married as we need to be in terms of our own relationship and family, but I'd jump at the chance to be legally married and end the fears I have about our family status being disrupted in the next session of our state legislature, and thus gain the legal protections and economic advantages that my legally married friends have. But in the big picture, I wish all those rights weren't so tied to marriage, or to jobs (the primary way many Americans get health insurance at all). So read Shannon. She's eloquent, as always.

If you're more in the mood for picture books about family issues, here are some suggestions. We're big on using books to help support the stories we tell Curious Girl about families. Wikipedia has a short entry on books with LGBT themes. Here's a link to one site with a relatively interesting list of children's books on adoption. If I weren't packing to head out to my sister's for a few days, I'd make my own list; apologies for the linky shortcuts here instead. If any of you have seen a children's book about having a sperm donor, anonymous or known, I'd love to hear about it.