Pride month comes with great celebration and victories, but not without its struggles for LGBTQ+ parents.
Grandma goes viral for supporting bisexual grandchild
Twitter user @Lexie_Galaxie was getting ready to celebrate D.C. pride when her grandmother stopped and called out her bisexual pride flag. . . for needing to be ironed.
“I got up this morning to get ready for #DCPride.” Lexie tweeted. “My grandma walked into my room, looked at my bi flag, and said, ‘Oh, this needs to be pressed out!’ Such a simple gesture, but it holds so much love and meaning for me.”
Over 33,000 retweets and 243,000 likes later, it’s safe to say that Grandma is famous now. After seeing her tweet gain views, Lexie went on to share what it was like to come out to her grandmother and how much she loves her.
It took me years to come out to her out of fear that she would see me differently, but nothing changed. She said, “Okay, that’s fine.” She taught me to love and accept all people, and she has always been supportive of me.
— Lexie 💖💜💙 (@lexie_galaxie) June 9, 2018
Gay and lesbian parents told what kind of children to adopt by French agency
A French adoption agency is under fire after saying that heterosexual couples get first pick of children for adoption. Head of adoption services Pascale Lemare, in the Seine-Maritime region of Normandy, was interviewed by France Bleu at a local radio station when she said that there were, “parents who correspond better to the required criteria.”
Bleu pushed, asking if this explicitly meant that same-sex couples were less lucky to be able to adopt a younger child. Lemare said no, but also described same-sex couples as atypical when it comes to social and biological norms. If a same-sex couple has “open” expectations about the child they are looking to adopt they can indeed adopt a child Lemare also stated.
“If their plan includes children with atypical profiles… if homosexual couples have open expectations, they can indeed adopt a child.”
Pope says gay families are not “real” families
Barely one month after Pope Francis was praised for telling a man that it didn’t matter that he was gay and that God and the pope loved him that way, Pope Francis implies otherwise regarding his feelings on the LGBTQ+ community.
“It is painful to say this today: People speak of varied families, of various kinds of family,” but “the family [as] man and woman in the image of God is the only one,” the Pope shared with onlookers in Vatican Square.
During his talk he also condemned abortion, comparing it to Nazi practices, and praised women who stay with their cheating husbands.
Verizon shares heartwarming stories of acceptance in their latest commercial
In honor of Pride, Verizon is celebrating the experience of coming out to your parents by teaming up with PFLAG and showing clips of vloggers calling their parents and coming out to them over the phone. PFLAG is the an organization dedicated to uniting families and allies with people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer.
Mormons to accept same-sex parents in their records
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints operates on the stance that those who identify as LGBTQ+ or experience same-sex attraction are not sinning and are not prohibited from being involved in the Church, but that “sexual purity is an essential part of God’s plan for our happiness. Sexual relations are reserved for a man and woman who are married and promise complete loyalty to each other.”
With the Mormons having these views on LGBTQ+ relationships, it is a big step for the Church as they begin to accept the names of people in same-sex relationships for their database, Family Search, beginning in 2019.
“The goal of FamilySearch.org is to capture, store, and provide records and an accurate genealogy that represents past, present, and future families of the world,” according to a statement from the Church. “To support this goal, same-sex relationships, including same-sex parents and same-sex couples, will be provided in FamilySearch Family Tree.”
