Boston Review program on the future of marriage available online

In March, I spoke on a panel sponsored by Boston Review. It is now available online here. Harvard historian Nancy Cott, known for her expert testimony in the California litigation challenging the constitutionality of Prop 8, was the primary speaker. (You can read the transcript of her testimony in the Perry litigation by going to this website and clicking on days 1 and 2 of the transcript). If you have not followed her assessment of the history of marriage and why allowing same-sex couples to marry is consistent with that history, this talk is a concise summary of her work. Other speakers were Mary Bonauto of GLAD, Michael Bronski, and an opponent of marriage equality.

It was especially interesting to me that more than one audience member challenged the panelists to think about arrangements other than couples. Audience questions and our responses are included on the video.

Lesbian and Gay Families on The Kojo Nnamdi Show

I'll be appearing on the Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU-FM at noon (EST) tomorrow. I'm appearing with Oakland attorney and author Fred Hertz, who will discuss his book, Making It Legal: A Guide to Same-Sex Marriage, Domestic Partnership, and Civil Unions. I've read Fred's book and it's an easy-to-follow analysis of the various laws across the country that recognize same-sex couples.

I'll be discussing the local situation...quite a varied picture, given super-DOMA state Virginia on the one hand, and super gay-friendly DC on the other. Maryland falls in between, and Delaware, which doesn't get much attention despite its location as a magnet for LGBT folks escaping the DC heat, gave me one of the summer's biggest surprises with its new parentage statute.

There's much to report that has happened since the publication of Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage. I'm thrilled to have the chance to explain local LGBT family law. Please call if you have questions!

Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: The Five Minute Version...and the kindle

Haven't read Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage? Keep meaning to but you can't seem to make the time? Don't have time to watch one of the many full length book talks you can find on the web, like this one on Book TV?

Well, the folks at The Center in New York City (that's the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Community Center for long) have put together a five minute clip of my talk there last spring. Enjoy!

And if it's carrying around the book that has been holding you back, I'm pleased to report that it's now available in a kindle edition.

Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage at Dartmouth and on You Tube

I was honored to present this year's Roger S. Aaron Lecture and the Law Day keynote address at Dartmouth College in April. Here it is on You Tube.

SEIU resolution values all families

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has been reading my book, Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law

Here is the full text of Resolution # 109 Adopted at the 2008 SEIU Convention

Valuing All Families

Members of SEIU work hard every day to provide for their families and build for them a better future. Our members’ love of and commitment to their families reflect true family values.

Members of SEIU live in a broad array of family structures. Many of us care for and live with family members– including aging parents, grandchildren, adult siblings, and more – who are not recognized by our employers or our government as “family” because they are not related to us by marriage, blood or adoption.

Laws and policies that narrowly define “family” as limited to two legally-married adults of the opposite sex raising their biological children are often used against immigrants, people of color and the working poor who are more likely to live in family structures that differ from this model.

Narrow definitions of family exclude many relationships that our members call family, including relationships with individuals for whom we have primary care-taking responsibility and relationships with individuals with whom we share economic and emotional interdependence.

Government and employer-provided benefits should support individuals with day-to-day responsibilities to care for and financially support minor children and dependent adults in all family forms, and should protect interdependent adult relationships.

Therefore be it resolved:

This convention affirms SEIU’s commitment to valuing all families, and to protecting the widest possible range of family structures.

SEIU will make it a collective bargaining and legislative goal to ensure that all of our members’ families are respected, protected, and enjoy equal rights and benefits.

SEIU will support and advocate for legislative efforts, at all levels of government, that allow workers to define for themselves who will be considered their family.

SEIU will oppose efforts to penalize working people who live in family structures different from the nuclear family model, such as “overcrowding” regulations that seek to restrict who is permitted to live together in one household and have been used to target immigrant communities and communities of color.

Thanks for Nicole Berner, SEIU Associate General Counsel, for bringing this to my attention (and telling me it was based on my book). Berner notes that this resolution allows SEIU to take positions consistent with the resolution without the need for further consideration or action. Thanks also to SEIU General Counsel Judith Scott for her decades of devotion to the labor movement.

Another award finalist!

Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage has been honored for the second time in a week! The Lambda Literary Foundation has named the book a finalist for this year's Lambda Literary Award in the category of LGBT Nonfiction. Award winners will be announced in New York on May 28.

Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage chosen as award finalist

The Publishing Triangle has recognized Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law by naming it a finalist for the Judy Grahn award for lesbian non-fiction. The winner will be announced at a reception in New York on May 7, 2009. I was inspired by Judy Grahn in my early days as a lesbian feminist (circa 1973), so I am especially thrilled to be nominated for an award that honors her and her work.

Creating Change conference coming up

Support of adoption by LGBT individuals and couples on the White House website? It is amazing, but the White House doesn't control adoption law. States do that, and, like Arkansas in the last election, states can decide to limit adoption to married couples, to single people who live alone, or to whomever they want (subject to Constitutional challenge like that of the ACLU to the Arkansas law).

For updates on state, as well as federal, politics, and on movement building and racial justice and trans issues and all sorts of things, head to Denver next week for Creating Change, the annual conference sponsored by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The conference begins with two day-long institutes on Wednesday and Thursday, followed by a nine workshop sessions and four plenaries through Sunday afternoon.

I'll be there, doing a Beyond Marriage 2009 workshop, with Nicky Grist of Alternatives to Marriage Project, Terry Boggis of Center Kids, and immigration activist Debanuj DasGupta. The whole program book is now on line, so you can check it out yourself. Freedom to Marry will be there, and certainly there will be talk of marriage and a Prop 8 debrief. But this is the place if your issue is NOT marriage and you want to connect to activists from around the country.

I'm excited about many of the participants, but I'll just highlight two. Pam Chamberlain of Political Research Associates will be there, and her group does critical work on fighting the right wing (and no, they're not going away just because we elected Barack Obama). PRA has recently published scathing reports on what's wrong with federal marriage promotion. John D'Emilio will also be speaking, and his article in the Gay and Lesbian Review remains one of the clearest and most scathing critiques there is of the gay rights movement fight for marriage.

If you come to the conference, please come to Beyond Marriage 2009 and introduce yourself to me!

UPCOMING FEMINIST CONFERENCE ON MARRIAGE AT UCLA

I'll be speaking later this month at a conference at UCLA called, "State of the Union: Marriage in the Shadow of Electoral Politics." It's sponsored by the Center for the Study of Women, with co-sponsorship by, among others, the Williams Institute, the country's pre-eminent gay rights research center.

If you're familiar with my book you don't need to come to hear me, but some of the other speakers are less well known outside academia than they should be. So if you can get to LA, you might want to come by to hear them.

Take Cornell government professor Anna Marie Smith. She's been decrying so-called "welfare reform" for its policing of female sexuality. Along with Martha Fineman and Gwendolyn Mink, she wrote, "No Promotion of Marriage in TANF [Temporary Assistance to Needy Families]," a critique of the Bush administration's emphasis on marriage promotion. Two chapters of her book, Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation, the introduction and the chapter "Feminist Visions," can be read on her website.

At the conference, Professor Smith will be critiquing Barack Obama's "responsible fatherhood" initiatives. From the first moment I heard Obama speak about such matters, I've been wondering if his vision was any more feminist, any more supportive of single mothers raising children, than the policies of his two predecessors. I'm looking forward to finding out.

NYU sociology professor Judith Stacey will speak at the conference about the relationship between legal recognition of same-sex marriage and legal recognition of polygamy. Professor Stacey is a strong feminist and a long-time supporter of LGBT families. She has testified as an expert witness in support of same-sex marriage and in support of gay and lesbian parenting. She bucked conventional wisdom some years back when, in a co-authored article, she questioned the position of gay rights advocates that children raised by lesbians or gay men were no different from those raised by heterosexuals. Instead, she argued that children raised by lesbian and gay parents were indeed likely as a group to show some differences from children raised by heterosexual parents, although she was emphatic that differences did not mean deficits, and she rejected any discrimination against same-sex couples raising children. When right wing groups used her article to oppose LGBT parents, Professor Stacey loudly denounced those groups and their misue of her work.

This time around Professor Stacey will be challenging those in the LGBT community who wish to distance themselves as far as possible from the arguments in support of polygamy, plural marriage, polyamory, or any other non-monogamous form of sexual union. Here's a blog posting that presents some of her ideas.

It's going to be a great day. If you do come, please introduce yourself to me!

THANK YOU, QBLISS!

QBLISS has named Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law the "Outstanding Book of the Year" and has awarded me the PRIDE in Literature Award. Thank you! I'll be attending Mid-South Pride in Memphis, TN, June 14, 2008 to receive the awards.