Steps in the right direction for Gay Parents

Being the world travelers that we are, one of the first things we did after Anna was born was get her a passport. Granted, she has never left the US, but we felt it necessary for her to have one. What’s the use in having a passport if you don’t use it you ask? Well, we had family living abroad at the time, and there was talk of taking her to the UK if they were still there when she was older. Anna is bi-coastal and is a great traveler, whether it’s the Big Apple or the Castro, she did great on both trips. The application was pretty straightforward. We actually ended up making an appointment at the post office seeing our situation isn’t exactly in the norm. The person at the post office doing the intake didn’t flinch as she looked at the birth certificate, court orders and other documents that make up our family. Anna actually had her passport returned in less than a month. When we were going to the UK in 2006, we had to pull our connections with our Senator to get ours expedited and in our hands prior to our departure. They arrived less than 24 hours before we were scheduled to fly out. Talk about stressful.


But now word comes from the State Department that they are no longer going to have Mother and Father on passports. This is great news for us non-Mother/Father type families in the world, Straight or Gay. It will now be parent one and parent two.

Let’s face it; families aren’t the typical Ward and June Cleavers anymore. We’re grandparents raising kids, we’re single Moms and single Dads, we’re evolving, and I applaud the State Department for realizing that it isn’t always Mom and Dad. Perhaps if the YMCA here in Jackson would recognize “households” instead of IRS defined families, they might get more members and I wouldn’t have to go through the humiliation of proving that I am married to Tod in order to get our family membership approved.

A link to the article is here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/07/AR2011010706741.html