Tag Archives: Proud Parents

Mother Has Perfect Response to Anti-Gay Vandals Targeting Her Bisexual Daughters

Miranda DeLong, who identifies as bisexual, returned from work with a transgender friend to find her garage doors spray painted with the words: ‘I’m Gay.’

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She immediately woke up her parents and her younger sister, who is also bisexual, and the family gathered outside to inspect the damage.

The sisters were in state of shock and their parents were furious, but their mother responded in the coolest way possible.

Instead of covering the graffiti in the original white, Erin and her daughters repainted the door in rainbow colours.

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Our kids are our everything, and to see them hurt is worse than being hurt ourselves.

We decided that some announcements deserve more than gray spray paint. We made it rainbow so we could include all sexualities, we have many LGBT friends that visit our house and we wanted them to all feel accepted. It was a way to support them all.”

The DeLongs then posted the before and after photos on the Stop Homophobia and Have A Gay Day Facebook pages, where the family have received an outpouring of support.

Writing on the Have A Gay Day page.

A couple nights ago someone thought it was a good idea to spray paint “I’m gay” on my house at an attempt to insult/humiliate my sister and I, we’re both bi and many of our friends who spend time at our home are lgbt members. Today, me and my mother painted it rainbow. Being gay is rad!!!”

Are Lesbian Parents, Better Parents – New Study Suggests So

A new study published in the June issue of Demography, finds children of same-sex parents are getting more one-on-one time with their parents than children with different-sex parents, according to a new study .

The authors looked into the ways the 44,188 participants of the 2003 – 2013 American Time Use Survey spent time interacting with their children, in an attempt to measure the difference in outcomes of children raised by same-sex parents and different-sex parents.

Overall, women (regardless of the gender of their partners) and men coupled with other men spent ‘significantly more time’ with their children than a male-female couple.

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This results in children of same-sex couples receiving one hour more child-focused parent time than children of different-sex couples – an average of 3.5 hours per day.

Authors Kate C. Prickett and Alexa Martin-Storey wrote in a post for The Society Pages.

A key implication of our study is that the focus on whether same-sex parents provide depreciably different family contexts for healthy child development is misplaced

If anything, the results show that same-sex couples are more likely to invest time in the types of parenting behaviors that support child development.

In line with a recent study that has continued to highlight that poverty — more so than family structure — is the greatest detriment to parenting practices, it’s hard not to see how delegitimizing same-sex families in ways that create both social and economic costs for them, pose a greater source of disadvantage for children.”

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If This Life-affirming, Love-affirming, Family-affirming Photo Doesn’t Make You Smile, Then Nothing Will

A North Carolina lesbian couple’s photos, showing each of the partners pregnant, has all the world smiling after they were posted on Instagram.

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A photo posted by Mel Roy (@therealmelroy) on

The picture first was taken in 2014, when Vanessa Iris Roy was pregnant with the couple’s son, Jax. The second was taken in January of this year, when Melanie Roy was pregnant with their daughter Ero. That’s Jax playing at their feet.

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Melanie told reporters

Vanessa and I have always said we would both like to carry. The woman’s body is incredible. The way it creates and grows another human being is amazing. We hope that our picture is that sign that some women may need to encourage them to carry a child.”

After a couple of months on Instagram, the side-by-side motherhood photos went viral. The Huffington Post reports they garnered more than 150,000 Likes on a Brazilian advocacy group’s Facebook page.

Melanie told The Huffington Post

It’s crazy to see that people were referring to my family as an inspiration. We are still in complete shock.”

Comedian Sabrina Jalees: “I Came Out and My Muslim Dad Stood By Me”

This video by with Comedian Sabrina Jalees and her father Sayed is a great example for struggling parents of LGBT children, no matter their background.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdMl5k2S1K0

“Before I realized I was gay, I was kind of homophobic. I mean, that’s disgusting! Two women—together? Ugh. Really, I guess, I was just afraid that that was me.”

Sabrina Jalees

Jalees grew up in a multi-ethnic home (her mother is from Switzerland, and her father is from Pakistan) in Toronto.

Comparing her ‘Coming Out’ to cliff diving, Jalees knew that tell her family about her sexuality would be hard, but she felt very strongly that she needed to tell her parents.

“I came out to my parents, because I wanted to keep my relationship with them.”

Sabrina Jalees

Right after she told her father, she remembers him, after a long stretch of shocked silence, saying, “Well… We didn’t raise you guys to be liars”, and from that moment on, Sabrina knew things were going to be reasonably all right.

While she was growing up, Sabrina’s family played host to her various aunts, uncles and cousins, moving to Canada and the US from Pakistan, and Sabrina became very close with her extended family.

Even though she knew it was difficult, she believed very strongly that to be true to both herself and her relationship with her family, she needed to tell them about her life and her recent marriage.

In an email to her aunts, uncles and cousins, she wrote:

I got married this past summer to an amazing woman named Shauna. Although some of you do know, I’ve found it hard to be open with all of you about this part of myself. I really avoided “coming out” for a long time because I love all of you and didn’t want anyone to see me in a different light or judge me. I do not want to keep hiding this from you because I feel that if I continue “not mentioning” this part of my life I’ll completely drift away from you guys.

There were no responses. Sabrina quickly realized that none of her extended family members were planning to write back to her. Many de-friended her on Facebook. Eventually, she heard from one of them that the official family line was, “our support for Sabrina ends here.”

“I thought there would be more of a conversation around it. I never expected them to just shut off and throw me out.”

Sabrina Jalees

Her parents embraced her life, and made sure the rest of the family knew it.

 

Why It’s Important To Respect a Child’s Preferred Gender

This an important documentary to watch. By Barbara Walters, the film explores what it means to be a transgendered child.

Looking into the lives of three families that made the decision to love their kids and help them through a world that’s not (yet) designed for them, Walters interviews doctors as they explain the importance of using correct pronouns; and the families themselves as they explain what it’s like to really love their transgender children.
Powerful and moving watching.

20/20 – A Story of Transgender Children

Making a Difference – ‘Love Leaf Books’ by Sarah and Amanda Berry-Williams

Sarah and Amanda Berry-Williams are two women making a difference for themselves, their family and other gay parents.

We are a family of five : two moms, and three kids, who believe that all families are important and special. We want every parent to feel included in every aspect of their child’s life, and this includes the baby book.

Amanda Berry-Williams

They have come up with a series of baby books – entitled Love Leaf Books

My wife Sarah and I started Love Leaf Books because when we had our children, we couldn’t find any affordable baby books that fit our two-mom family (two moms, three kids). We ended up with one really ugly book for our first son, which only referenced ‘Parent’ throughout, and was as generic as it could be. For our second son, we simply crossed out ‘Daddy’ throughout, and wrote in Mama. It looked bad. It felt bad. And it made us want to give other families like ours the option of an affordable baby book that really FIT them. Really recognized them as a family.

Amanda Berry-Williams

Their books are personalised throughout and hand made to order.

After months and months of preparation, my wife and I opened our little store on Etsy, and have since sold over 350 books (to four countries!) in less than a year. We’ve made books for straight couples, single parents, two moms, two dads, transgendered parents, etc. We’ve made books for families created through surrogacy or adoption. Any family is a family, whether that be Mom, Dad, and Baby, or Two moms, a co-parenting dad, and two foster siblings. We just want every family to feel recognized and honored as the family they are.

Amanda Berry-Williams

The inspiring due are based in the US, but are selling their books in Australia, the UK, Ireland, Canada, etc.

You can purchase the books on etsy – www.etsy.com/uk/shop/loveleafbooks

Arielle Scarcella Teaches Her Mum Some Lesbian Slang

The self described ‘lesbian Jiminy Cricket’ Arielle Scarcella, has massive YouTube following. She have been posting videos for the past 4 years, which break some of those lesbian and gay taboos. We love her work and we love her latest post where she discusses lesbian slang with her mother.

My mom and I have a pretty good relationship. She’s seen me through 4 girlfriends and 8 years of being out of the closet. So I thought it would be fun, to test my moms knowledge of lesbian culture / slang. How many of these do you know?

Arielle Scarcella