Tag Archives: queer families

London Workshop for Catholic LGBT Families

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A constant theme during the 2014 and 2015 synod assemblies on marriage and family, and of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation that followed it, was the importance of listening, and accompaniment for families in unconventional situations. This certainly applies to same-sex couples, but it also applies to families with LGBT members. These ideas are coming into increasing prominence, following the recent publication of Fr James Martin’s book, “Building a Bridge”.

In London, the LGBT Catholics Young Adults Group have arranged a workshop to do exactly this.

Walk with me

A day workshop for Catholic family members of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people. We hope that listening to input from both Mgr Keith Barltrop, chaplain to the LGBT Catholics Westminster, and the experiences of other family members of LGBT people, will enable those taking part to truly walk with their LGBT family members and accompany them on their journey.

Suggested donation of £10 which will include lunch.

 For more information and to register to this event please fill in the form below or contact us on lgbtcatholicsyag@gmail.com.

 (You can also download the poster below by clicking here.)

Denver Nuggets’ Kenneth Faried Makes His Two Muslim Moms Proud

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Minutes after Jason Collins revealed he was gay on April 29, a certain Denver Nugget fired up his iPhone to send out an urgent tweet. He wanted to be the first to give a standing ovation, the first to say the world was a better place. It took him about 60 seconds to type his words in, and, presto, Kenneth Faried was in the fray again:

Wow this is amazing all smiles. So so happy Jason Collins came out &announce he was openly GAY…ALL SUPPORT OVER HERE #ATHLETEALLY #LGBT

Predictably, there were immediate tweets about his tweet. Some were heartfelt and upbeat:

Choosing new fave NBA players based off Jason Collins reactions; shout out to Kenneth Faried for the best one.

But others were darts right back at him:

Kenneth Faried supporting Jason Collins … he a f** too

Kenneth Faried a lil too happy Jason Collins came out the closet lol

I’m not a hater, but I dunno how I feel about Kenneth Faried’s tweet about Jason Collins. You happy to find out a man is gay?

It was like grade school all over again — Kenneth Faried being called “gay boy” … Kenneth Faried wanting to ball up his fists … Kenneth Faried having to stick up for his mom … and his other mom.

Faried, Mcgeeski

Every rebound tells a story. So Kenneth Faried has hundreds of them. His first tale is about his father, Kenneth Lewis, and his mother, Waudda Faried, who weren’t a couple as much as they were basketball buddies. The two had met while Waudda was working at a warehouse in Newark, N.J., and although they never married, they would together take their young son, Kenneth, to Newark’s inner-city blacktops.

At first, 5-year-old Kenneth used to watch from a bench while Waudda and Kenneth Sr. played in pickup games. Waudda would be the only female on the court, but because she tied her hair into tight braids, wore a baggy shirt and was fearless on the court, she’d unintentionally blend in with no one knowing. That’s how talented she was. She had been a star player in high school, the kind of baller who could either lower her shoulder on her way to the basket or step back to shoot the 3. She would also talk ad nauseam. Whenever she’d drain a shot, she’d yap, “Can’t guard me” or “Gonna be a long night.” If one of her male opponents got riled up, Kenneth Sr. would protect her. There was never a dull moment.

continue reading at  ESPN.

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Gay marriage Not thinking about the children

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THOSE who oppose gay marriage often argue that having gay parents is hard on children. This has been a hard argument to make, because there simply isn’t that much data about the effects of growing up with gay parents, and what little there is—such as the 2010 study that found a 0% rate of child abuse in lesbian households—tends to undermine it. Some will believe that has changed this week with the publication of a new study by Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas, on “adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships.” As Mr Regnerus explains, in an accompanying essay at Slate, there are significant differences between that group and those who grew up in intact biological families (ie, a mother and a father, no adoption, no divorce). “On 25 of 40 different outcomes evaluated, the children of women who’ve had same-sex relationships fare quite differently than those in stable, biologically-intact mom-and-pop families,” he writes, “displaying numbers more comparable to those from heterosexual stepfamilies and single parents.”

The study has been greeted with fierce criticism, and for good reason. Mr Regnerus’s methodology stacked the deck against gay parents. There aren’t that many young adults around who grew up with openly gay parents, so he drew a bigger circle. Anyone who reported that either of their parents had a same-sex relationship while they were growing up was put into the “lesbian mothers” or “gay fathers” category, regardless of whether their parents had been married or divorced, whether the kids were adopted or biological, whether the parents seemed happy or not, whether the same-sex affair was a one-time encounter or the basis of the household, and so on. (By this silly standard, the number of children growing up with a gay parent is about to skyrocket.)

-more at Economist

As I read the study, it’s not remotely comparing gay parents with straight parents – it’s comparing parents who are faithful to their spouses, with those who are not. To draw a comparison between gay and straight parents from his sample, he should have compared parents who had a same-sex extra-marital affair, with those who had an opposite- sex extra-marital affair. This he has not done, but the chances area there would have been minimal difference.

The real lesson, as the Economist points out in their conculuding paragraph, is that children need stable families. For those who are being raised by same- sex parents, that probably means we should support gay marriage – for the sake of the children.

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Does a new study indict gay parenthood or make a case for gay marriage?

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Is same-sex marriage a good idea? Or is an intact biological family the best environment for raising a child? The answer may turn out to be yes and yes.

That’s the curious implication of a study reported yesterday in Social Science Research andoutlined in Slate today by its principal investigator, sociologist Mark Regnerus. The study, which found inferior economic, educational, social, and psychological outcomes among children of gay parents, comes across as evidence that homosexuals are unfit to raise kids. But the study doesn’t document the failure of same-sex marriage. It documents the failure of the closeted, broken, and unstable households that preceded same-sex marriage.

-full analysis as Slate

 

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