Queer Families Queer Politics

This book addresses the themes of visibility, transgression, and resistance, as well as the intersection between the personal and political in the contexts of relationships, parenthood, and political activism. Giving special attention to families of color, immigrants, and poor families, the authors examine the risks entailed in coming out and the significance of class, race, and sexual and gender identity in this process. Parenting also creates dilemmas of visibility as queer families negotiate malls, schools, and workplaces, as well as the medical, legal, and political institutions that regulate their families.

American culture is at war over "family values." And with the issue of gay and lesbian marriage often at the center of this discourse, notable thinkers like Andrew Sullivan, William Eskridge, Urvashi Vaid, and Torie Osborn have engaged in the battle. But why, Valerie Lehr asks, debate over the right of gays to take part in a socially defined institution designed to perpetuate inequalities among people?

Bronze Medalist, 2007 Independent Publishers Book Award in the Gay/Lesbian Category The Family Flamboyant is a graceful and lucid account of the many routes to family formation. Weaving together personal experience and political analysis in an examination of how race, gender, sexuality, class, and other hierarchies function in family politics, Marla Brettschneider draws on her own experience in a Jewish, multiracial, adoptive, queer family in order to theorize about the layered realities that characterize families in the United States today. Brettschneider uses critical race politics, feminist insight, class-based analysis, and queer theory to offer a distinct and distinctly Jewish contribution to both the family debates and the larger project of justice politics.

A definitive collection of original essays on queer politics From Harvey Milk to ACT UP to Proposition 8, no political change in the last two decades has been as rapid as the advancement of civil rights for LGBTQ people. As we face a critical juncture in progressive activism, political science, which has been slower than most disciplines to study the complexity of queer politics, must grapple with the shifting landscape of LGBTQ rights and inclusion. LGBTQ Politics analyzes both the successes and obstacles to building the LGBTQ movement over the past twenty years, offering analyses that point to possibilities for the movement’s future. Essays cover a range of topics, including activism, law, and coalition-building, and draw on subfields such as American politics, comparative politics, political theory, and international relations. LGBTQ Politics presents the full range of methodological, ideological, and substantive approaches to LGBTQ politics that exist in political science. Analyses focused on mainstream institutional and elite politics appear alongside contributions grounded in grassroots movements and critical theory. While some essays celebrate the movement’s successes and prospects, others express concerns that its democratic basis has become undermined by a focus on funding power over people power, attempts to fragment the LGBTQ movement from racial, gender and class justice, and a persistent attachment to single-issue politics. A comprehensive, thought-provoking collection, LGBTQ Politics: A Critical Reader will give rise to continued critical discussion of the parameters of LGBTQ politics.

Vital information on family services, custody, and access rights for gay parents! Queer Families, Common Agendas: Gay People, Lesbians, and Family Values examines the real life experience of those affected by current laws and policies regarding homosexual families. The book will help policy makers, lawyers, social workers, and the general public better understand these families. Here you will be able to compare the progress of policy in the U.S. and Canada for gay and lesbian parents and their children and explore relevant legal approaches in the two countries. In Queer Families, Common Agendas: Gay People, Lesbians, and Family Values, a range of strategies for advancing the rights of sexual minority parents are considered for legal feasibility and political viability. You will gain insight into the contradictions in policies and practices that ultimately disadvantage children based on their family origins, and you will discover alternative approaches for improved services to homosexual families. Queer Families, Common Agendas explores: family law and protection of women-headed households legal definitions of motherhood and fatherhood in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom family and adoption idealogies concerning gay families and their rights to adopt new ways to make social services responsive to minority families the lesbian and gay “agenda” the value of family and the family of values--as opposed to the worn-out phrase “family values” Queer Families, Common Agendas serves as a primer to assist you in understanding the legal struggles that lesbian and gay families are facing today. You will explore concerns about family law, protection of women-headed households, motherhood, fatherhood, adoption and family ideology, and how to make social services responsive to gay and lesbian families. This excellent reference provides you with the necessary background and techniques to create services that are responsive and effective with sexual minority families.

After years of intense debate, same-sex marriage has become a legal reality in many countries around the globe. As same-sex marriage laws spread, Queer Families and Relationships After Marriage Equality asks: What will queer families and relationships look like on the ground? Building on a major conference held in 2016 entitled "After Marriage: The Future of LGBTQ Politics and Scholarship," this collection draws from critical and intersectional perspectives to explore this question. Comprising academic papers, edited transcripts of conference panels, and interviews with activists working on the ground, this collection presents some of the first works of empirical scholarship and first-hand observation to assess the realities of queer families and relationships after same-sex marriage. Including a number of chapters focused on married same-sex couples as well as several on other queer family types, the volume considers the following key questions: What are the material impacts of marriage for same-sex couples? Is the spread of same-sex marriage pushing LGBTQ people toward more "normalized" types of relationships that resemble heterosexual marriage? And finally, how is the spread of same-sex marriage shaping other queer relationships that do not fit the marriage model? By presenting scholarly research and activist observations on these questions, this volume helps translate queer critiques advanced during the marriage debates into a framework for ongoing critical research in the after-marriage period.

"From Harvey Milk to Barney Frank, and from ACT UP to Proposition 8, in the past few decades, no political change has been more significant than the civil rights advancements of LGBTQ citizens. LGBTQ Politics is the first authoritative reader to approach the complexity of queer politics from a political science persective, bringing together original contributions from leadings scholars in the field on key issues in LGBTQ politics. These original essays cover a wide range of essential topics, including marriage equality, transgender discrimination, gay and lesbian political candidates, LGBTQ human rights advocacy, HIV prevention, and LGBTQ movements of the Global South. The volume also includes a number of critical essays that reflect upon the state of political science as a discipline that has struggled to address queer politics. Contributors draw from a variety of subfields in political science, including comparative politics, political theory, American politics, public law, and international relations. Essays that focus on mainstream institutional politics appear alongside contributions grounded in grassroots movements and critical theory. While some essays express concerns that the democratic basis of the LGBTQ movement has been undermined, others celebrate the movement's successes and offer visions for the future. A comprehensive, thought-provoking, and authoritative collection, LGBTQ Politics: A Critical Reader is required reading for anyone looking to learn about the politics of sexuality"--Back cover.

Family law is a site of social conflict and the erasure of non-traditional families. This book explores how conservative religious and progressive queer groups can cooperatively work together to expand family law's recognition beyond the traditional state-sponsored family. This book also looks to future arenas of queer and religious political cooperation beyond family law.