Author: rainbowamory
He/They.
Court takes couple’s children because father is transgender
Imagine if this were your nightmare.
Daniel and Cindy are young parents whose world has been turned upside down because Daniel is transgender. He transitioned over a decade ago when he was 19, and few people know that he is transgender. When Daniel and Cindy decided to have children, they told Cindy’s parents that Daniel is transgender because they were conceiving in vitro with donated sperm. And, I suppose, they must also have trusted that her parents would continue to accept their son-in-law.
This was a mistake.
Cindy gave birth to healthy twins 2 ½ years ago, and Daniel and Cindy and the twins have been very happy – except for one problem. Cindy’s parents make rude comments about Daniel being transgender, and they do it in front of the twins. Requests for them to stop are met with mirth. Daniel and Cindy put up with this behavior for a long while, but as the twins are getting older, they worry that the negative comments are harmful, and they don’t want to be forced to try and explain concepts to their young children that are beyond their ability or need to understand – in vitro, transgender.
Daniel and Cindy made the difficult decision that the grandparents are no longer welcome in their lives. The grandparents got angry and sued for custody of the children. The twins have two loving parents. Child Protective Services have never been called; there have been no police reports of abuse; neither parent has a criminal record.
Last week, a court removed the twins from their home and gave custody to the grandparents. The reason? Their father is transgender.
Daniel and Cindy are working with a lawyer to try and get their children back. Will they get them back? Who knows? What we do know that the children have pulled out of their home and are living with two people who demean and ridicule their father.
And if they do get the children back, their lives will never be the same. Everyone in town either knows or soon will know that Daniel is transgender, and he will likely lose his job. If the children are gone too long, they may not trust their parents when they return. Daniel and Cindy will either spend savings or go into debt to pay legal fees. And they go to bed every night distraught because their children are not with them. They don’t know if their children are crying for them, but surely their children must be confused.
This isn’t a story made up as an example of what might happento someone who is transgender. This is really happening to a young couple and their twins. I’ve changed the names because the case hasn’t hit the news, so perhaps the family will be able to maintain some privacy.
The take away? While it may not be discrimination for the grandparents to be hateful to their son-in-law; it certainly is discriminatory for the Court to make a custody decision based on the father’s transgender status. Transgender non-discrimination laws would give these parents and their children better legal protections to be a family free from government interference. Also, if Courts are permitted to take children from otherwise good parents because one parent is transgender, who’s next?
Support the passage of anti-discrimination legislation in support of transgender people, whoever you are, wherever you live.
Hi, I’ve just started using tumblr and was looking around a bit when I stumbled onto this blog. I’m actually quite surprised that there’s all this stuff around being bi. I saw a post of someone indicating that they suffered hate by homosexuals at a pride parade, what in the heck? I’m a guy, and I am into people, I see no reason to discriminate against any gender or whatever. I find this quite normal and am genuinely surprised to find this community on tumblr. Please tell me about it.
Luckily, Tumblr is actually pretty bi-friendly if you follow the right blogs. So far, I’ve had about 98% positive interactions on here. What a lot of the discussion and posts I put up about bi erasure and homophobia has to do with the LGBTQA community at large. That post you’re talking about, though, has just as much to do with racism as it does with biphobia.
Followers POLLS
Hi, just wanted to say THANK YOU new followers for following me 🙂 If you haven’t yet voted in the polls, I’d really appreciate it if you take a moment to throw in your vote for both, or which ever one applies to you. You can find them along the sidebar of the main page.
The polls are just for the sake of interest, and also so I can better decide what kind of stuff to put on the blog.
Also, questions or submissions related to the theme of my blog are welcome anytime!!
Thanks :3
Quotes from the book “Cousins: A Unique and Powerful Bond”
So I began reading this book, as part of my own research, and wanted to share excerpts from it for the blog. 🙂 The book is called, Cousins: A Unique and Powerful Bond, by Johanna Garfield – Published in 2000. I will type up more relevant sections as I come across them (especially the stuff about cousin marriage later on). But here are some bits from the Introduction:
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‘They’re all been explored, analyzed, chronicled: mothers and sons, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, brothers and sisters. But the cousin relationship has, up to now, received surprisingly little attention. Why? Described by one friend as “magical siblings,” the relationship can vary from genuine friendship to utter indifference, from love to hate, can have sexual overtones, and can reverberate throughout the memories of childhood and family with much of the same emotional intensity as that reserved for genuine siblings.’ -page xv, Introduction.
’[…] I was able to talk with Anna Quindlen, formerly author of the much admired New York Times column, “Life in the Thirties,” and later a regular on the Op-Ed page, about many aspects of her cousin relationships. Like me and like the Kennedys, she’d grown up surrounded by an enormous group of cousins, with many of whom she remains extremely close to this day. Referring to the issue of cousins’ importance in her life, she said, “I think it’s a real interesting issue, because about half the people I know I don’t even have to discuss this with, because it’s so much a part of their lives, too. The other half are people who are totally perplexed by it. Like, each of their parents had maybe one sibling, and they lived in Arizona or somewhere else far away. And they just don’t understand.”’
She also told me that she based a number of the characters in her novel Object Lessons on her cousins, and that it includes a number of cousin relationships.’ –page xxi-xxii, Introduction.
‘I began to remember other books I’d read – books besides Eight Cousins [by Louisa May Alcott] – in which cousin relationships were important. The close friendship between the two male cousins in Laurie Colwin’s novel, Happy All the Time, for instance, or the tragic love between cousins Simon and Mariella in Rosamond Lehmann’s Dusty Answer, a novel I found deeply moving as an adolescent.’ –page xxi-xxii, Introduction.
‘In two more recent novels, Mary Gordon’s The Other Side and Ursula Perrin’s The Looking-Glass Lover, cousin relationships are central to the stories. Jane Austen’s books are full of cousinly romances and cousinly friendships, and she herself received a marriage proposal from a cousin.’ -page xxi-xxii, Introduction.
Gay interracial dating black and white mixed couples
Though this is touted as a bisexual blog, I want you to know that you’re most welcome if you’re asexual but biromantic.
I’m kind of confused on where I’m supposed to put my boobs when I bind. Like do they go to the side or up or down? My chest isn’t very big but they just feel so uncomfortable no matter which direction I put them.
From Chest Binding 101 :
It might seem silly, but you’re probably going to need some help figuring out how to put on your new binder, particularly if you purchased one of the longer styles.
- Put your binder inside out and upside down.
- Step into your binder and pull the bottom of it up, ideally to your belt line. The binder should still be inside out and upside down.
- Use the sleeves as handles to pull the top of the binder (the end closer to your feet) up to your shoulders.
- Put your arms through the sleeve holes and adjust your chest to your needs. You may need to pull the bottom of the binder out from underneath itself if you don’t want it folded under. For others, leaving it folded under may help stop the binder from rolling up.
Don’t be disappointed if you look in the mirror and it looks like you have one big boob in the middle of your chest. You just need to adjust your chest. Reach in from the neck hole and push your chesticles down and out. You’re basically pushing your nipple toward your armpit to achieve the flattest looking chest possible.
I hope it helps!
rainbowamory 