Author: Brett

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1006/24/cnr.01.html

Aired June 24, 2010 – 09:00   ET

 

KAREEN WYNTER CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Rich Vaughn and Tommy Woelfel have been together for nearly nine years and married for two. Twenty-two months ago, their family doubled in size with their little twins, Abe and Austin. Sons born via surrogate. The couple has noticed something new in entertainment that they like.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want to dance for my baby.

TOMMY WOELFEL, GAY PARENT: I think everybody likes to see a story on television that they can relate to.

WYNTER: Vaughn and Woelfel hope (ph) TV shows like “Modern Family,” “Glee”, and the new film “The Kids are All Right” represent a growing trend in Hollywood story lines, gay parents.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Your mom and I sense that there’s some other stuff going on in your life which we just want to be let in. Are you having a relationship with someone?

JULIANNE MOORE, ACTRESS: I think the entertainment world reflects popular culture. I think that this is what happening in the world. So, what you’re seeing in television and film is what’s going on in our society at-large. It’s a great thing.

WYNTER: Not everyone thinks it’s a good thing including Dan Gainor from the Culture and Media Institute which says its mission in part is to preserve and help restore America’s culture, character, traditional values, and morals against the assault of the liberal media elite.

DAN GAINOR, CULTURE AND MEDIA INSTITUTE: It’s bad for society to promote homosexuals — particularly, homosexual lifestyle and gay marriage, and that’s what this is doing.

WYNTER: For Gainor, a traditional values require one male and one female parent.

GAINOR: Hollywood has done a great deal of work causing acceptance in American culture for homosexuality.

WYNTER: It’s for that very same reason that GLAD, a gay advocacy group has lauded such programming and telling CNN, quote, “stories like that of “Modern Family’s” Mitchell and Cameron are shedding new light on the hundreds of thousands of children being raised by loving and committed gay parents and the unfair natures of bans on adoption by gay and lesbian couples that currently exist in Florida, Utah, Mississippi.

GAINOR: Again, what they are trying to do is normalize something that a lot of people certainly in those states don’t want to normalize.

WYNTER: There in lies the debate for many. Is gay parenting normal?

Do you think you’re normal?

RICH VAUGHN, GAY DAD: As far as parenting, I think we’re completely normal. We get frustrated. We’re tired. We have great moments. Lots of great moments. And everything about our lives is revolving around the kids. And that’s completely normal.

WYNTER: Kareen Wynter, CNN, Hollywood.

PHILLIPS: And another reminder for you, our special doc airs tonight. Soledad O’Brien follows a same-sex couple in their struggle against the legal and personal obstacles to become parents. Watch “Gary and Tony Have a Baby” tonight, 8:00 p.m. eastern time.

Also, coming up next hour —

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Straight ahead in CNN NEWSROOM. We’re gay in America, and we want you to hear our stories.

www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2011/12/11/led-child-who-simply-knew/SsH1U9Pn9JKArTiumZdxaL/story.html

The twin boys were identical in every way but one. Wyatt was a girl to the core, and now lives as one, with the help of a brave, loving family and a path-breaking doctor’s care.

Jonas and Wyatt Maines were born identical twins, but from the start each had a distinct personality.

Jonas was all boy. He loved Spiderman, action figures, pirates, and swords.

Wyatt favored pink tutus and beads. At 4, he insisted on a Barbie birthday cake and had a thing for mermaids. On Halloween, Jonas was Buzz Lightyear. Wyatt wanted to be a princess; his mother compromised on a prince costume.

Once, when Wyatt appeared in a sequin shirt and his mother’s heels, his father said: “You don’t want to wear that.’’

“Yes, I do,’’ Wyatt replied.

“Dad, you might as well face it,’’ Wayne recalls Jonas saying. “You have a son and a daughter.’’

That early declaration marked, as much as any one moment could, the beginning of a journey that few have taken, one the Maineses themselves couldn’t have imagined until it was theirs. The process of remaking a family of identical twin boys into a family with one boy and one girl has been heartbreaking and harrowing and, in the end, inspiring — a lesson in the courage of a child, a child who led them, and in the transformational power of love.

Wayne and Kelly Maines have struggled to know whether they are doing the right things for their children, especially for Wyatt, who now goes by the name Nicole. Was he merely expressing a softer side of his personality, or was he really what he kept saying: a girl in a boy’s body? Was he exhibiting early signs that he might be gay? Was it even possible, at such a young age, to determine what exactly was going on?

Until recently, there was little help for children in such situations. But now a groundbreaking clinic at Children’s Hospital in Boston — one of the few of its kind in the world — helps families deal with the issues, both emotional and medical, that arise from having a transgender child — one who doesn’t identify with the gender he or she was born into.

Being gay in this Southern city was once a lonely existence. Most people kept their sexuality to themselves, and they were reminded of the dangers of being openly gay when a gay church was bombed in the 1980s. These days, there are eight churches that openly welcome gay worshipers. One even caters to couples with children.

http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/gender-sexuality/myths.html

 

“The New York Court of Appeals ruled this morning that the state Constitution does not guarantee a right to marriage for same-sex couples, and that state lawmakers, not the courts, are better suited to consider the issue,” reports The New York Times. Thus, Massachusetts remains the only state that permits same-sex marriage.

It is time to redouble our efforts to understand the diversity in family forms that led to 44 couples pressing this case. Media images of lesbians and gay men create the impression that most of them are white urban dwellers who have high incomes and whose main preoccupations are shopping for expensive clothes, preparing gourmet food, or eating at upscale restaurants. As a result, a variety of stereotypes and misconceptions exist about lesbian and gay families with children. The Council on Contemporary Families recently drew up a quiz to test your knowledge of this population. The research material was prepared by Gary Gates, Ph.D, a Senior Research Fellow at The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Growing numbers of gay couples across the country are adopting, according to census data, despite an uneven legal landscape that can leave their children without the rights and protections extended to children of heterosexual parents.

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/12/05/4100062/true-blood-and-social-media-star.html

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., Dec. 5, 2011 — /PRNewswire/ — Gravity Summit LLC is pleased to announce that Janina Gavankar, who plays Luna Garza on HBO’s hit series True Blood, will be the recipient of the Gravity Summit Excellence in Social Media / Entertainment Award at the 4th Annual Gravity Summit – Social Media for Sports & Entertainment event that will take place at UCLAon February 22, 2011.