LGBT Parenting

LGBT individuals and couples become parents in a variety of ways, including adoption, foster parenting, donor insemination, surrogacy, and having children from previous heterosexual relationships. The ACLU challenges unequal treatment of LGBT parents by courts in child custody cases and policies that exclude LGBT people from becoming adoptive or foster parents.

05/03/2013
LGBT Parenting

Mother’s Day Comes Early for Iowa’s Married Same-Sex Couples

By Amanda Goad, LGBT Project at 12:34pm

Same-sex couples have had the freedom to marry in Iowa since 2009. Melissa and Heather Gartner are among the thousands of same-sex couples who have married there. But when Heather gave birth to their daughter Mackenzie in 2010, the Gartners discovered that there were some loopholes in the "marriage equality" they thought their home state of Iowa had achieved. The Iowa Department of Public Health refused to list Melissa Gartner as Mackenzie's parent on her birth certificate. That left Melissa in the awkward position of lacking legal proof of her relationship to the baby, should she need to travel with Mackenzie or arrange medical care for her when her wife isn't on hand to sign paperwork.

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01/31/2013
First Amendment

School Promises In Settlement To Stop Removing Library Books For 'Advocacy Of Homosexuality'

By Joshua Block, LGBT Project at 4:49pm

Last year, Davis School District in Utah removed a children’s book about a family with two moms...

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11/16/2012
LGBT Parenting

Celebrating Forever Families on National Adoption Day

By Nikki Fisher, ACLU of Florida at 5:56pm

Thanksgiving and the year-end holiday season are right around the corner. During this time of year, families gather to eat together, laugh together and generally celebrate being together.  In the past two years in Florida, those families have included gay men and lesbians who have adopted children and given them loving homes. But it hasn’t always been that way.

For 33 years, Florida law categorically banned gays and lesbians from becoming adoptive parents. As a result, many children who could have been placed in a loving, permanent home were denied that opportunity, spending years in the foster care system and in many cases, aging out without ever being adopted.

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