Category: In the News

A lesbian couple wanted to have a baby. They got an all-girl set of quintuplets

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quintuplets

Heather Langley and Priscilla Rodriguez’s lives just became five times busier with quintuplets.

A lesbian couple who wanted to have another child opted ended up with more than they expected. Instead, Heather Langley and Priscilla Rodriguez welcomed home gorgeous quintuplets.

Hadley, Reagan, Zariah, Zylah, and Jocelyn are only the second set of all-girl quintuplets ever recorded in America. They join their older sister, Sawyer, in a very happy home.

Due to the pandemic, Rodriquez was unable to accompany Langely to her doctor appointments and wasn’t in the room when she found out they were having five babies instead of one. Langely texted her partner to break the news.

“She was incredibly shocked,” Langely told Metro. “She responded to my text saying ‘please tell me this is a joke’. She didn’t believe I was being serious at first because you rarely hear of people being pregnant with five babies.”

“I immediately felt scared when we found out there was going to be five because I feared my pregnancy would be worrying and complicated,” she confessed. “I was also panicking about how we would take care of five babies and how on earth we would pick and agree one five names, let alone one. However, after the initial shock and the news had sunk in, I realized how special and unique our babies were going to be.”

“At around 19 weeks we had a scan to find out the gender of the babies,” she added. “The midwife just kept saying ‘another girl.’ I could not believe we were going to have five more girls. I just kept thinking, ‘Wow that is a lot of girls, what are we going to do with them all?’ We would have six in total.”

“And then when we found out that they were going to be the second-ever set of all-girl quintuplets in the US, we felt so blessed with how rare and extraordinary they were.”

Quintuplets occur naturally in 1 in 55,000,000 births.

LGBTQNation.com by Bil Browning, January 27, 2021

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Source: Time for Families

As Biden Lifts a Ban, Transgender People Get a Long-Sought Chance to Enlist

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The president’s order, reversing a Trump administration policy – the Transgender ban, creates opportunities for young people whose dreams of serving in the military had been sidetracked.

Nic Talbott has wanted for years to be an Army intelligence officer. Instead, he has been a Walmart shelf stocker, an Amazon delivery driver, a substitute gym teacher and currently, a night-shift courier for a veterinary lab — all because he is transgender and therefore was banned from serving in the military.Trump LGBT

But as he has driven his shift through the dark hills of Appalachia, he has wondered if years of deferring his dreams might end after former President Donald J. Trump left office.

“All I want is a chance,” he said.

Mr. Talbott, 27, has been trying to join the military for much of his adult life. He has a college degree, top physical scores, a spotless record and everything else that would make him an enticing candidate. “The only thing keeping me from serving my country is one word on my medical record,” he said, shaking his head.

That changed on Monday when President Biden signed an executive order reversing the ban on transgender troops that was imposed by the Trump administration. Mr. Biden’s order also called an immediate halt to involuntary discharges of transgender troops who were already serving, and for the Pentagon to review the files of any troops forced out under the ban in recent years. The order requires the secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security to report on progress within 60 days.

“Simply put, it’s the right thing to do, and is in our national interest,” the White House said in a statement.

The president’s signature clears the way for a generation of young transgender Americans like Mr. Talbott who have spent years waiting out the ban, faithful that in a nation that is increasingly tolerant, the ban would be overturned in court or reversed by a new administration. That has often meant putting life on hold, delaying careers, education and other commitments.

Because regulations created during the Obama administration can simply be reinstated, the move could mean that transgender recruits will be able to join up within weeks, according to Aaron Belkin, director of The Palm Center, a think tank that advocates for L.G.B.T.Q. policies in the military.

“Basically, you just have to flip a switch,” Mr. Belkin said. He described Mr. Biden’s order as an overdue recognition that no one who can meet the standards should be barred from military service. “Today, those who believe in fact-based public policy and a strong, smart national defense have reason to be proud.”

NYTimes.com, by Dave Phillips, January 25, 2021

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President Biden Issues Most Substantive, Wide-Ranging LGBTQ Executive Order In U.S. History

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Biden Executive Order

Today, the Human Rights Campaign responded to the release of an executive order that implements the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the consolidated cases Bostock v. Clayton County, Altitude Express v. Zarda and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC.

The Order is included in a series of Day One Executive Orders that also includes executive actions launching a “whole-of-government” response to address racial equity, improving response to the COVID-19 pandemic and reducing its economic impact on the vulnerable, and combating climate change.legal surrogacy in New York

“Biden’s Executive Order is the most substantive, wide-ranging executive order concerning sexual orientation and gender identity ever issued by a United States president. Today, millions of Americans can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that their President and their government believe discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is not only intolerable but illegal. By fully implementing the Supreme Court’s historic ruling in Bostock, the federal government will enforce federal law to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in employment, health care, housing, and education, and other key areas of life. While detailed implementation across the federal government will take time, this Executive Order will begin to immediately change the lives of the millions of LGBTQ people seeking to be treated equally under the law. The full slate of Day One Executive Orders mark a welcome shift from the politics of xenophobia and discrimination to an administration that embraces our world, its people and its dreamers. We look forward to continuing to engage with the White House, Department of Justice, and other agencies to ensure that Bostock is properly implemented across the federal government.”

Alphonso David, President, Human Right Campaign

On June 15, in a landmark ruling in the consolidated cases of Bostock v. Clayton County, Altitude Express v. Zarda and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC, the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is a form of prohibited sex discrimination. In July 2020, HRC spearheaded a letter along with other leading LGBTQ rights organizations to call on the Department of Justice to not delay the application of the law and fully enforce the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision. However, the Trump Justice Department failed to adequately instruct the federal government to implement the ruling, leading to dangerous misinterpretations like the one the Department of Education released last week and that issued by the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division on Sunday.

HRC.org, January 20, 2021

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Falsely claiming someone is gay is no longer defamation per se, N.Y. court rules

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Gay Defamation?  The “profound and notable transformation of cultural attitudes” toward LGBTQ people affected the court’s decision.

Falsely accusing someone of being gay is no longer considered defamation per se, a New York appeals court ruled recently.

Defamation is a false statement that damages someone’s reputation. To win a defamation suit in most cases, plaintiffs must be able to show that the statement against them is false and that it caused them to suffer damages or harm, such as losing their job. Defamation per se is a false accusation that is so damaging that plaintiffs don’t have to prove that they suffered damages.gay defamation

Under New York law, examples of defamation per se include falsely accusing someone of a heinous crime or having a “loathsome disease.” Falsely claiming that someone is homosexual had also been lumped in.

“It meant that it was so shameful and such a disgrace that it was just assumed that obviously your reputation has been injured and you don’t have to prove that element” of damages, Eric Lesh, executive director of the LGBT Bar Association of New York, told NBC News.

In late December, however, the Supreme Court of the State of New York’s Second Department — one court below the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court — overturned that decades-old precedent when it ruled that a false claim of homosexuality is no longer defamation per se. Such a false claim can still be considered defamatory, but plaintiffs will have to prove that they’ve been damaged by it.

The case, Laguerre v. Maurice, began in 2017, when Jean Renald Maurice, a pastor at the Gethsemane Seventh Day Adventist Church in Brooklyn, publicly claimed at a church meeting of 300 people that a church elder, Pierre Delor Laguerre, “was a homosexual” and that he “disrespected the church by viewing gay pornography on the church’s computer,” according to the court opinion. The allegation led to Laguerre being relieved of his responsibilities and thrown out as a member of the church.

The Second Department court ultimately dismissed Laguerre’s defamation claim, citing Yonaty v. Mincolla, a 2012 ruling by the Supreme Court’s Third Department that found that previous decisions labeling false claims of homosexuality as defamation per se were “inconsistent with current public policy and should no longer be followed.” That decision also ruled that “it cannot be said that current public opinion supports a rule that would equate statements imputing homosexuality with accusations of serious criminal conduct or insinuations that an individual has a loathsome disease.”

The Second Department agreed, writing that the “profound and notable transformation of cultural attitudes and governmental protective laws” for LGBTQ people influenced its decision. The court cited a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Lawrence v. Texas, which found that laws criminalizing homosexual conduct were unconstitutional, and the court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges establishing the right to same-sex marriage throughout the country.

January 14, 2021, NBCNews.com by Jo Yurcaba

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Hungary amends constitution to redefine family, effectively banning gay adoption

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The new Hungarian constitution defines family as “based on marriage and the parent-child relation. The mother is a woman, the father a man.”

BUDAPEST –  Hungary amended the definition of family in its constitution Tuesday to allow an effective ban on adoptionby same-sex couples, another win for the ruling conservatives but decried by one pro-LGBTQ group as “a dark day for human rights.”conversion therapy

The nationalist Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orban has worked to recast Hungary in a more conservative mold since winning a third successive landslide in 2018, and anti-gay verbal attacks and legislation have become common.

In recent years Orban, facing a unified opposition for the first time, has doubled down on propagating his increasingly conservative ideology, deploying strong language against immigrants and Muslims who he says could upend European culture.

The new Hungarian constitution defines family as “based on marriage and the parent-child relation. The mother is a woman, the father a man.” It also mandates that parents raise children in a conservative spirit.

“Hungary defends the right of children to identify with their birth gender and ensures their upbringing based on our nation’s constitutional identity and values based on our Christian culture,” it says.

Hungary has never allowed gay marriage but still recognizes civil unions. Adoption by gay and lesbian couples was possible until now if one partner applied as a single person.

Although there are exceptions when single people or family members can adopt children, “the main rule is that only married couples can adopt a child, that is, a man and a woman who are married,” Justice Minister Judit Varga wrote.

The legislation passed on Tuesday follow the passing of a new law earlier this year banning gender change in personal documents and ideological battles over children’s books showing diversity positively.

NBCnews.com, December 15, 2020 by Reuters

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Deb Price, a First as a Columnist on Gay Life, Dies at 62

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Deb Price

If Deb Price wrote for mainstream Americans about same-sex couples in everyday situations, she thought, society would have a harder time denying them equal rights.

Deb Price

Photo courtesy of NYTimes.com

As the nation’s first nationally syndicated lesbian columnist who wrote regularly about gay life, Deb Price certainly covered pointed issues, like the debate over gay people in the military.

But she also turned to small matters of everyday domesticity, telling readers, for instance, that she and her partner, Joyce Murdoch, had bickered over whether to get air conditioning in their new convertible. She wrote about gardening together. She described attending Ms. Murdoch’s high school reunion.

She wanted to convey that being in a committed same-sex relationship wasn’t all that different from being in a heterosexual one — except maybe for the presents.

“We watch our siblings get eight silver trays, 12 pickle forks, a fondue pot and a trip to Hawaii for settling down,” she wrote. “And then our relatives give us a hard time or nothing at all.”

Ms. Price sought to demystify gay life for Middle America. If her readers could see same-sex couples in ordinary situations, she reasoned, they would find them less foreign and less frightening — and would have a harder time denying them equal rights.

She wrote 900 columns over 18 years and believed that they might have had something to do with the reversal in cultural attitudes that led to the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015.

www.nytimes.com by Katherine Q. Seelye, December 10,2020

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Indiana Asks the Supreme Court to Let It Strip Equal Parenting Rights From Same-Sex Parents

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Indiana strip equal parenting rights

The justices have shown interest in an Indiana case that could begin the rollback of marriage equality and Strip equal parenting rights from Same-Sex Parents

On Monday, Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill asked the Supreme Court to strip equal parenting rights from same-sex parents. He did so at the request of the court, which is considering taking up his case. Hill implored the new conservative majority to rule that states may deny married same-sex couples the right to be recognized as parents of their own children. The case gives SCOTUS an opportunity to start chipping away at Obergefell v. Hodges by allowing states to withhold marital privileges from same-sex spouses. If the majority wants to begin eroding Obergefell, they will probably start here.Indiana strip equal parenting rights

What’s strange about this case, Box v. Henderson, is that it poses a question the Supreme Court has already answered—twice. The plaintiffs are eight married lesbian couples in Indiana who used a sperm donor to conceive. When a married opposite-sex couple uses a sperm donor, Indiana recognizes the birth mother’s husband as the child’s parent. When a married same-sex couple does the same thing, however, the state refuses to list the birth mother’s wife as the child’s parent. In both instances, the second parent has no biological connection to the child; Indiana’s decision to extend parental rights to the nonbiological husbands of birth mothers, but not the wives of birth mothers, is sheer discrimination.

On two different occasions, the Supreme Court prohibited this kind of mistreatment. In Obergefell v. Hodges, the court held that the Constitution entitles same-sex couples to marriage “on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex couples.” Most courts understood that this requirement compelled them to provide the equal benefits to married same-sex parents. In Florida, for instance, a federal judge held that Obergefell “plainly requires” the state to list married lesbian couples as the parents of a child conceived with a sperm donor, since the state grants this right to married opposite-sex couples. (Florida’s Republican attorney general settled the case in apparent recognition that an appeal would be doomed.) When the Arkansas Supreme Court kept a birth mother’s wife off their child’s birth certificate, SCOTUS shot it down without even bothering to hear oral arguments. In 2017’s Pavan v. Smith, the court unequivocally ruled that states must issue birth certificates on equal terms to same-sex and opposite-sex couples. It announced a rule: If a state lists a birth mother’s husband as a parent despite his lack of biological connection, it must list a birth mother’s wife as a parent, too.

Slate.com by Mark Joseph Stern, November 24, 2020

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Kansas Supreme Court expands parental rights of same-sex couples

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Kansas Supreme Court expands parental rights of same-sex couples

The Kansas Supreme Court issued two decisions Friday with far-reaching implications for same-sex couples, finding that parenting intentions at the moment of a child’s birth are critical to establishing parental rights.KAnsas supreme court same-sex couples

Both cases involved birth mothers who conceived through artificial insemination and were fighting petitions by their former same-sex partners to establish parentage after their romantic relationships had fallen apart. In both cases, the women had not married and they did not have written or oral co-parenting agreements.

The court found that under the Kansas Parentage Act a woman needs only to show that she acknowledged maternity at the time of the child’s birth and show evidence that the birth mother consented at that time to share the care, custody and control of the child.

The cases — one from Butler County and the other from Crawford County — were sent back down to the lower courts for further proceedings consistent with the rulings.

“The court must avoid giving either party a veto after the arrangement has been put in place and into effect at the time of the child’s birth,” the state Supreme Court said. “Allowing unilateral action by either party to thwart the maternity of the other after a child has arrived and vital bonds with both have begun to form is unacceptable.”

Provisions in the Kansas Parentage Act support the idea that it is at the moment of birth when state law deems a child to have either one parent or two, the court said.

The court stopped short of requiring a formal contractual arrangement, but said a demand that each individual makes up her mind at the time of birth incentivizes stability for the child. It likened it to the existence of premeditation when a trigger is pulled, saying the evidence of what is in the mind of the person pulling it may come from words and actions before, during and after the event.

LJWorld.com, November 6, 2020 by Roxana Hegeman

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State Department no longer fighting in 2 cases involving citizenship of same-sex couples’ children

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State Department Citizenship

State Department no longer fighting in 2 cases involving citizenship of same-sex couples’ children

The State Department no longer fighting in 2 cases involving citizenship of same-sex couples’ children.  Two families are celebrating a decision by the U.S. State Department to stop fighting in two cases involving the citizenship of children of same-sex couples.Birthright citizenship

On Monday, the department withdrew its appeal in one case, and decided not to appeal a district-court decision in another, according to a statement released by Lambda Legal, a legal advocacy organization that focuses on the rights of LGBTQ people.

Earlier this year, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland held that Kessem Kiviti, the daughter of same-sex married couple Roee and Adiel Kiviti, had been a citizen since birth.

Kessen was born in Canada via surrogacy. When her parents — both born in Israel and naturalized citizens — applied for her a passport, the State Department said that she didn’t qualify. They argued that she was only biologically related to Adiel, who had lived in the U.S. for less than five years.

The couple sued, and on June 19, a court held that for the children of married parents, the law required no biological connection to a parent, for the child to be born a citizen.

The State Department appealed, but has now withdrawn it.

NYDailynews.com, by Muri Asuncao, October 28, 2020

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2 Supreme Court justices slam 2015 gay marriage decision

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Justice Clarence Thomas suggested the Supreme Court needs to revisit the gay issue because it has “created a problem that only it can fix.”

The Supreme Court, already poised to take a significant turn to the right, opened its new term Monday with a jolt from two conservative justices who raised new criticism of the court’s embrace of gay marriage.marriage equality

The justices returned from their summer break on a somber note, following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, hearing arguments by phone because of the coronavirus pandemic and bracing for the possibility of post-election court challenges.

The court paused briefly to remember Ginsburg, the court’s second woman. But a statement from Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, underscored conservatives’ excitement and liberals’ fears about the direction the court could take if the Senate confirms President Donald Trump’s nominee for Ginsburg’s seat, Amy Coney Barrett.

Commenting on an appeal from a former county clerk in Kentucky who objected to issuing same-sex marriage licenses, Thomas wrote that the 5-4 majority in a 2015 case had “read a right to same-sex marriage” into the Constitution, “even though that right is found nowhere in the text.” And he said that the decision “enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots.”

Thomas suggested the court needs to revisit the issue because it has “created a problem that only it can fix.” Until then, he said, the case will continue to have “ruinous consequences for religious liberty.”

The court turned away the appeal of the former clerk, Kim Davis, among hundreds of rejected cases Monday.

Chicago.sun.times.com, October 5, 2020 by Mark Sherman and Jessica Gresko

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