Green Dads's blog

By Brian Frank

Finding a religious practice has long been a difficult area for openly Gay, Lesbian,Bisexual and Transgender people, even more so now that increasing numbers of us are raising families. With the arrival of children, many of us are seeking to raise children with the benefits of a religious community as part of their lives yet are hampered by bias, both overt and covert, against GLBT people. In response to this concern, Family Equality Council has launched a new LGBT family-inclusive faith curriculum focused on making faith communities more welcoming and affirming of LGBT families called All in God's Family: Creating Allies for Our LGBT Families. All in God's Family is a multimedia resource that seeks to engage faith communities and faith leaders in conversation on how best to embrace our families, from lessons on scripture to activity suggestions and more.

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Photo by brainchildvn

Prof. Patterson passed along this call for gay dads to participate in an online study about our lives and  families.  If you qualify for this study, then please consider participating.  Studies such as this one are an important means of gaining support in the psychology and social work communities, who can be powerful allies in the cause of GLBT parenting.  Further, each new study adds to the body of factual evidence available to us when advocating for our families.

Are you a gay/bisexual dad?  Would you be willing too answer some confidential online questions about your life and about your family?

As I was leaving for work this morning, Darius was playing with these aqua doodle mats you can draw on with a water filled pen. I was very happy to see him content and occupying himself, he even filled the pen with water without too much assistance from either of us. He's seems to be taking an interest in creating things lately like art. The art teacher at school told us she has seen an increased interest in him lately, he even asked for more paper to do another picture recently.

A Story of Love and Betrayal

by Brian Frank

Dear Orson:

How could you do this to me? You've been such an important part of my life for so many years; how could it come to such an impasse between us? Surely you already know my story, yet how easily we seem to forget such things when it's convenient. So let me remind you ...

Born ten years after you, I was a child of both the Space Race and the Cold War, and seemingly became a science fiction fan while still in the womb. I'm a fairly typical fan of my generation, from a time when science fiction hadn't yet penetrated mainstream movies and television, when Star Trek was just another cancelled television series and Star Wars was just a gleam in George Lucas' eye. For me and those like me, science fiction was first and foremost about books, and your books have always held a special place in my life.

We'll always have Ender's Game, your novel about the brilliant child Ender who becomes drafted into the draconian Battle School and unwittingly becomes a genocidal war criminal in Earth's first interstellar war against aliens. I read Ender's Game while struggling through engineering school at Carnegie-Mellon University, and it resonated with me in the way that it continues to resonate with young people struggling to make their mark in the world against what can seem to be impossible odds. Then you wrote Speaker for the Dead, and I found myself deeply moved by the love story between Ender and the tragic widow Novinha on the planet Lusitania, and his decision to marry her and become a father to her family of six troubled children. Read the rest of this article.

Review by Brian Frank

Fatherhood Dreams a film by Julia Ivanova

Fatherhood Dreams is a documentary about gay men taking three different paths to fatherhood: adoption, co-parenting, and surrogacy. Randy and Drew are married partners who adopt baby Jack, Stephen is co-parenting his two daughters with his ex-wife and her lesbian partner, and Scott becomes the father of twins through surrogacy. The focus of the film extends beyond these men to also include Jack's birth family, Stephen's co-parents, and the surrogate mother working with Scott. Fatherhood Dreams was directed and produced in Canada, and one interesting aspect of the film is the contrast between the situation for gay fathers in Canada and America, proving that the political really is personal. Paradoxically, while Canada is ahead of the U.S. in the matter of gay marriage, the barriers to gay parenting there are much higher. A large part of Scott's story, for example, deals with the quasi-legal nature of surrogacy in Canada.

Read the rest of our review and watch a trailer at Green Dads Blog

Brian was interviewed for a Ramble Redhead podcast. The interview is in two parts and the first part is posted now. You can find out all about how we first met over 17 years ago in this first part and even hear about what happened on our third date. Read More

by Brian Frank

On the streets, online and in the broadcast media, Americans are proudly - and loudly - proclaiming that, last night's election was an historic event that marks a turning point for our great country.

Yes, America is now filled with a new hope. That is, unless you're gay.

America is now filled with a new pride ... unless you're gay.

America is now filled with a new optimism ... unless you're gay.

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