The Outspoken Generation by The Family Equality Council: These children of LGBT parents are living proof that their same-sex parents raise healthy families.

The post The Outspoken Generation by The Family Equality Council first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Zach Wahls, the now famous son of lesbian moms.

BY ZACK FORD
ThinkProgress

Conservatives have launched a new offensive against same-sex parenting, accusing them of child abuse simply for raising a loving family. Lost in that rhetoric is the experience of the tens of thousands of children actually being raised by gay and lesbian couples — children who would enjoy greater protection if their parents could marry.

The Family Equality Council is working to change that through its Outspoken Generation project. Chaired by Zach Wahls and Ella Robinson, daughter of Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, Outspoken Generation champions the voices of children of same-sex couples so that they can challenge the myths about what it means to have two moms or two dads. In a new video, Wahls, Robinson, and several others talk about what wonderful experiences they’ve had and how the only difference they really experienced was the stigma their families endured.

Read more at ThinkProgress.org

The post Outspoken Generation: Children of gay parents speak out first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Zach Wahls became an overnight sensation when the speech he gave to the Iowa legislature in support of gay marriage went viral. The Eagle Scout, raised in a lesbian family, eloquently argued that gay and lesbian families are no different than opposite sex families. That the sexual orientation of his parents had nothing to do with content of his character. Within hours of the video of Zach Wahls’ speech being posted on YouTube, he was being contacted by major media outlets, including the Ellen DeGeneres Show and The Daily Show with John Stewart. The video of his speech has more than 2,000,000 and Zach has just released a memoir “My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family.”

I caught up with Zach Wahls in Provincetown, Mass., for Family Week, an annual gathering of LGBT families after he read from his book.

You’re in Provincetown for Family Week, did you ever have anything like this when you were growing up?

We never did. We had our own family summer get togethers. It was not in Provincetown. It was in Lake Geneva in Wisconsin.

Read more at LesbianLife at About.com

The post A chat with Zach Wahls: Lessons of love and strength first appeared on Lesbian.com.

Zach Wahls and his two moms pose for the NoH8 Campaign.
Photo credit: Adam Bouska

BY RYAN GRIM
Huffington Post Gay Voices

Zach Wahls, who rose to Internet stardom with a moving plea before the Iowa legislature on behalf of gay marriage, spoke Thursday at the Democratic National Convention.  Wahls had addressed the Iowa legislature last year as it debated marriage equality and told the story of being brought up by two mothers. Video of his testimony went viral. After the first wave of viewership died down, Upworthy gave it another boost, and the video has since been viewed more than 20 million times.

“Governor Romney says he’s against same-sex marriage because every child deserves a mother and a father,” Wahls said Thursday night, according to his prepared remarks. “I think every child deserves a family as loving and committed as mine.”

Read more at Huffington Post Gay Voices

The post Zach Wahls speaks at DNC first appeared on Lesbian.com.

In 1969, the same year as the Stonewall riots, Charles Leslie and his late partner Fritz Lohman organized their first exhibition of gay art. Theirs was an act of daring during turbulent times and the initial step toward creating what now stands as the only completely gay-and lesbian-focused museum in the world, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art.

The museum, which houses a permanent collection of over 6,000 objects from over three centuries of gay and lesbian art, received a Museum Accreditation from the State of New York last month and announced roughly eight major exhibitions a year, as well as plays, poetry readings, artist and curator talks, panel discussions and film screenings, a membership program and a research/archive function. The museum will also publish a quarterly newsletter, “The Archive,” focused on everything gay and lesbian in the art world.

Lesbian Boy Scout troop leader supporters to present petition
Zach Wahls, the former Eagle Scout and gay rights activist who gained notoriety when his YouTube video about his own gay mothers went viral last year, will be attending the Boy Scouts’ national annual meeting on Wednesday to present the organization with a petition calling for the reinstatement of the Ohio mother who says she was removed as her son’s Boy Scouts den leader because she is a lesbian. More than 283,000 people signed the petition on Change.org asking the Boys Scouts of America (BSA) to allow Jennifer Tyrrell to return as leader of her son’s Tiger Cub den.

Tyrrell said she was removed from the volunteer post after nearly a year of service. “Throughout the year, my cubs performed volunteer service at a local soup kitchen, collected canned goods for area churches to distribute in food baskets, participated in bell-ringing for the Salvation Army, and, at the time of my removal, were working on a conservation project for a state park,” she said.

Tyrell will not be present at the presentation in Orlando, but claims that her membership was revoked shortly after she was elected treasurer of the pack and found some inconsistencies in the group’s finances.

“Within a week of reporting these findings to the council, I received notice that my membership had been revoked, based on my sexual orientation, citing that because I’m gay, I did ‘not meet the high standards of membership that the BSA seeks,’” Tyrell said.

Guess who’s coming to dinner
It’s been 45 years since Katharine Houghten, portraying a young white woman, brought Sidney Poitier, playing a young, idealistic African American physician, home to meet her supposedly liberal parents in 1967’s “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” but today we learned there may be an equally awkward dinner party in the works as conservative Christian leader Tony Perkins announced his willingness to dine at the home of a married lesbian couple who extended the invitation in hopes of “opening up his heart.”

The Family Research Council head received the dinner invitation from Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of the Family Equality Council, a gay rights group, after Perkins shared during a CNN appearance that he had never been to a married same-sex couple’s home. Chrisler and her wife have twin 10-year-old sons and another child on the way.

“Even if nothing comes of the experience, at least you can say you spent time with our families and knew us and still deny us our equality,” Chrisler’s invitation stated. “But I know you will find that our families have much in common and share the same hopes and dreams for our children.”

The post News: New York creates first gay museum first appeared on Lesbian.com.