COLAGE

Green Dads reports that COLAGE registration has opened for Family Week 2009.

COLAGE offers programming for youth every year at Family Week in Provincetown.

NewsBlaze reviews Meema Spadola's film about kids of lesbian and gay parents.

Spadola's documentary - called Our House: A Very Real Documentary About Kids of Gay & Lesbian Parents [2000] - is threaded with interviews involving families like ours. Incidentally, Spadola is the daughter of a lesbian. The director uses her own life lessons to examine the diverse experiences our children.

On Mother’s Day, Jay Bakker [pictured], son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, brought a group of LGBT families to worship at Lakewood Church, in Texas - the largest mega-church in the U.S. After the service, Bakker met privately with Lakewood’s pastor, Joel Osteen, to talk about faith, family, and LGBT people.

After the meeting, Bakker released the following statement:

We'll be in Cape Cod July 26 thru August 2 celebrating new and old friendships with families like yours. Each summer, Provincetown is transformed into a huge playground for kids with GLBT parents. And Family Equality Council is once again hosting a large part of this massive event. COLAGE will again offer its workshops and activities too.

Current estimates indicate there are more than seven million LGBT parents with school-age children in the United States.

A new report called: Involved, Invisible, Ignored: The Experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Parents and Their Children in Our Nation’s K-12 Schools, examines and highlights the school experiences of LGBT-headed families - using results from surveys of LGBT parents of children in K-12 schools and of secondary students who have LGBT parents.

The Convention & Visitors Bureau describes Saugatuck and Douglas as "harbor villages that celebrate diversity". And the area is populated with liberal-minded voters who rejected a recent vote to ban gay marriage. This month Saugatuck/Douglas is preparing for a six-day gathering for dozens of gay and lesbian families by hanging rainbow flags in the downtown area.

Parenting can be challenging and there are times when you wish for more support. If you want to reach out and you're searching for a local group, learn more about Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere (COLAGE). COLAGE has supported and educated families run by gay and lesbian parents since the 1980's.