Flagging energy

I'd really like to keep a record of our campaign trail, but I'm sooooo tired.

We're at a crucial time in Queensland - the Premier has announced her intention to recognise same sex parents, and now there's a Community Consultation (what new information are they going to learn from that? you may ask) and then there will be a vote.

The Opposition leader has vowed to defeat it.

I've got a facebook group, a yahoo group, and I'm keeping two other lesbian mum mailing lists posted (trying to get them interested - no response so far)

It's disheartening so far.

I hope someone else gets involved in writing letters.

I'm trying to think generously about other people - reminding myself of all the causes I hear about and don't do anything about, even though I support them.

If Queenslanders are reading, you have until September 18 to write to the Department of Justice.
You can read the consultation documents here
and you just send an email here legalpolicysubmission@justice.qld.gov.au

Apparently the anti-same sex marriage groups sent in 10,000 submissions - that was federal, but still, they're pretty active. The pro-same sex marriage mob sent in 12,000, yay us. I was a tardy contributor to that, feeling ambivalent about marriage as a whole, but in the end thought the symbolism of the inequality was more powerful than making (or not) a point about the inappropriateness of marriage as a foundation stone for society.

(My general enthusiasm, optimism and will to live may currently be influenced by Pearl being quite ill and crying for ohh, three days straight now, pretty much the whole time when she's not sleeping. It's quite mentally exhausting. Louis is getting fed up with playing quietly at my feet while I rock her and tonight started shouting in quite a demanding, teenage fashion - MUM! MUM!)

Yes, I am aware this post is fairly incoherent.

Can you help me destroy the fabric of society?

I know, I know, where have I been? But now I am in the centre of a media storm, it's that exciting, and I need your help to work this out, so please comment...

The government has announced plans to recognise same sex parents here in Queensland. Yesterday L & I were on the local TV news (I'm trying to get a copy) and in the main rag here, and today I wrote an opinion piece, sharing the page with a family-values type.

Now a current affairs show is proposing a 'discussion' with people with different perspectives, including us. L is not so sure this is a good idea - that it will just validate the loopy fringe groups. I'm wondering whether it would be useful to be there, and come across as normal.

Their reasons why we bad are always predictable - I need to be clear on what I think in response, even if I don't actually say them.

I am trying to hold onto the idea that we are all concerned with the best interests of the child.

Reasons most commonly cited why we shouldn't have children:

- The Great Sky Fairy says it's wrong (aka 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve')
As I don't believe in this version of the Great Sky Fairy, this argument is irrelevant so I am not going to argue verse for verse, although I could. As we are a secular state, it is also irrelevant to lawmakers. Although I really try to resist the temptation of getting into a theological argument, I am sorely tempted to point out that if you believe in a God that made Adam, you must also think S/he made Steve.

- It's not normal/natural
Actually it is normal, it's just not positioned at the centre of the bell curve. Normal - naturally occurring - is different to common.

- We don't need to pander to the desires of a minority
I would say that how we treat our minority groups is a measure of us as a society

- The children will be bullied
Umm, and when did your child bullying my child become a reason for me not to have children?

- The children need the complementary love of a man and a woman
Children need loving men and women in their lives. I think it would be unhealthy for the parents to be the only role models in any family. The nuclear family is a modern invention, and perhaps not so relevant to many gays and lesbians, who form strong interconnected communities in the absence of biological connections. Good parents can find an abundance of positive role models of many different ages, races, abilities and interests

-The traditional family will collapse
Assuming this is a bad thing (because it would just be too mind-boggling to consider that perhaps the 'traditional' ie current Western family structure is not the best or even only way to bring up children), how exactly will that collapse happen?

- It's just sick and disgusting and I don't like it
Yeah, sorry about that. There will be things you don't like in the world.

Have I missed any general themes?
What would you say in response to them?

It's funnier if you say it out loud

I find it endearing when people can't spell. Dad, whose first language is not English, is an appalling speller. I have to read his letters aloud so the phonetic renderings make sense. L, despite being exceptionally clever, can't spell. So here's another dad-ism, repeated with the greatest affection:

Dad: 'Where should I get off the train?'
Me: 'Yer*****ton
Dad: 'Hang on, I'll write it down...how do you spell it?'
Me: 'Y...'
Dad: 'Y for William?'

Qld: Same sex parenting briefing paper

Just FYI.
If I knew how to do a fold, I would (any tips?) It's quite long.

******


Action Reform Change Queensland (ARCQ) is a community-based organisation in Queensland which advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality through campaigns for legal and social change, and public education. ARCQ was formed in 2003 with participation from individuals and established community groups.
Key Points
· A significant number of same-sex couples either currently have children or aspire to have children.
· Queensland law does not currently recognise the de facto partner of a lesbian mother as a parent when accessing Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), in contrast to the way it treats the male de facto partner or husband of a heterosexual mother.
· Extending legal recognition to co-parents in same-sex relationships would ensure they can both perform day to day parenting tasks and fulfill their parenting responsibilities.
· Protecting the best interests of a child is one of the most important principles of international law.
· Research demonstrates that children raised by same-sex couples experience the same developmental outcomes as those raised by heterosexual couples.
· HREOC have found that legal discrimination against people in same-sex relationships and their children amounts to the breach of a number of international human rights obligations.
· Access to a regulated system for altruistic surrogacy should be available in Queensland and should not discriminate between couples on the basis of relationship status or sexuality.
· Adoption, parentage presumption and access to altruistic surrogacy should be available to same-sex couples with the non-biological parent recognised as the child’s parent – reform the Adoption Act 1964, Status of Children Act 1978 and the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 2003.
· A 2008 Galaxy Poll demonstrates that the majority of Queenslanders support law reform.

SAME SEX PARENTING RECOGNITION IS IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF CHILDREN
Protecting the best interests of a child is one of the most important principles of international law and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in particular.
A significant proportion of same-sex couples also parent children. 4,386 children live in same-sex families in Australia (ABS, 2007). This figure does not include children of non-resident or single lesbian or gay parents, or adult children living out of home. It is estimated that 20% of lesbians and up to 10% of gay men are parents. One study has found that 42% of young lesbians intend to have children in the future.
Some children are born to one member of a same-sex couple during an earlier opposite sex relationship. Many children are born to lesbian couples using donor sperm and Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). Some children are being born into and raised by gay male couples with the help of a female friend or through a surrogacy arrangement. A few children may be adopted by one or both members of a same-sex couple.
Under family law, a child’s two legal parents are generally the woman who bears the child (the birth mother) and the male partner of the birth mother, if there is one (the birth father). These are generally the two people who are recorded on the child’s birth certificate as parents, which will be evidence of the legal relationship throughout the child’s life. In Queensland, this includes the male partner of the birth mother where the pregnancy arises from ART, in that it presumes that the male partner produced the sperm even when there is another donor. Alternatively, if a child has been adopted, the child’s legal parents will include the parents who adopt him or her. Adoptive parents can also be added to a birth certificate.
A child born to a lesbian couple will generally have a birth mother and a lesbian co-mother. The birth mother will be a legal parent under the current family law system. A child born to a gay couple will often have a birth father and a gay co-father, as well as a birth mother. Alternatively, a child may have two gay co-fathers as well as a birth mother. If there is a birth father, he will be a legal parent.
The lesbian co-mother or gay co-father(s) can apply to the Family Court of Australia for a parenting order, as ‘other people significant to the care, welfare and development’ of the child. But the lesbian co-mother and gay co-father(s) will not be treated in the same way as a birth parent.
Extending legal recognition to co-parents in same-sex relationships would ensure they can both perform day to day tasks without question, such as writing permission notes for school, collecting children from childcare or sport, making decisions in relation to their children’s education, taking a child to the doctor and making decisions in a medical emergency. Addressing the legal status of the parents also gives certainty to the children in relation to inheritance and other legal processes that may relate to the death or illness of a parent. Children would further benefit from the legitimising of their family structures afforded by legal recognition
The failure to recognise gay or lesbian co-parents of a child may breach a child’s right to identity under the articles 7 and 8 of the CRC. It may also breach Australia’s obligation to support and promote the common responsibilities of both parents in raising a child (article 18).
In Western Australia (WA), Northern Territory (NT), the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and New South Wales (NSW), the birth mother and lesbian co-mother of an ART child are presumed to be the legal parents of the child, if they are in a genuine relationship when the child is born. They are both noted on the child’s birth certificate, to the exclusion of the sperm donor. Tasmania allows children in the care of a same-sex couple to be adopted by the non-biological partner. The Commonwealth and Victorian Governments have recently announced that they will make changes to recognise parents. Queensland and South Australia generally do not recognise children parented by same-sex couples. However, section 18B of the Status of Children Act 1978 provides that Queensland recognises lesbian co-mothers as parents if they are registered in WA, NT, ACT and soon in Victoria.
In the case of a lesbian co-mother of an ART child there is unlikely to be a competing interest. In the case of other lesbian or gay co-parents, there may be consensual agreements between the various people seeking to raise a child. The HREOC Inquiry supported amendments to legislation which open up additional options for a lesbian or gay couple to attain legal status and therefore better protect the best interests of their child.
A considerable amount of sociological and psychological research has been conducted over the past 25 years to examine the effect a parent’s sexual orientation has on the welfare and development of their children. The findings comparing lesbian and gay parents to heterosexual parents refute common stereotypes and concerns about lesbian and gay parenting.
It has been clearly demonstrated that the sexuality of a child’s parents has no connection to the child’s moral and cognitive development, well-being or happiness. When comparing children of heterosexual parents to children of lesbians and gay men no significant differences have been found in the social adjustment, social acceptance, or sociability of the children. Nor has any difference in the children’s peer relations such as quality of friendships or popularity been illustrated. In addition, no discernible differences have been found in the children of heterosexual or homosexual parents regarding a child’s gender role identification or sexual orientation.
The most important factor in a child’s upbringing has been identified as the care and love put into a child’s life. Lesbians and gay men display matched capability at loving and caring for their children as their heterosexual counterparts. For further information see the GLRL report, Meet the Parents.

FORMAL RECOGNITION OF SAME SEX COUPLES WILL PROVIDE FOR DOCUMENTATION, VALIDATION AND RESPECT
The 2006 Census reported 24,681 same-sex couples in Australia (ABS, 2007). The Australian Bureau of Statistics acknowledges this figure is an underestimate as some couples may be reluctant to publicly disclose their same-sex relationship status, or may be unaware that same-sex couples will be counted in the Census.
Queensland has recognised same sex de facto couples since reform in 2002. The Discrimination Law Amendment Act 2002 (Qld) amended a wide range of existing Acts to introduce the term ‘de facto partner’ as a category of ‘spouse’ or to replace the term ‘de facto spouse’ with ‘de facto partner’. The new definition of ‘de facto partner’ is as follows: either 1 of 2 persons who are living together as a couple on a genuine domestic basis but who are not married to each other or related by family.Thus, a same sex partner in Queensland now has access to entitlements available to a ‘spouse’.
The Tasmanian reforms in 2003 introduced a relationship register alongside the introduction of the term ‘significant relationship’. A couple (same-sex or opposite-sex) who registers their relationship as a significant relationship will have prima facie proof of the existence of that relationship. Tasmanian law does not require the couple to live together in order to prove a significant relationship. A registered couple has prima facie proof of the existence of their relationship, so cohabitation need not be a fundamental element of proving a ‘significant relationship’. Registration of a relationship does not confer legal rights in itself but it may assist in demonstrating the existence of a de facto relationship. Civil union laws are now in place in the ACT as from May 2008. The new laws allow same sex couples to enter a legally recognised civil partnership. They also allow a civil ceremony to be conducted by the Registrar General.
Both NSW and Victorian consultations with the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community highlight a significant level of desire for symbolic and ceremonial forms of relationship recognition. 80% of Victorian respondents and 74% of NSW respondents thought marriage should be available to Australian same-sex couples. In NSW, 70% of participants also believed civil unions should be available.
There are various models of civil unions in other countries.
Sometimes it is difficult for a couple to provide the evidence necessary to prove the criteria for a genuine domestic relationship. This may be particularly difficult for a same-sex couple who has not yet declared their sexuality to friends, family or workplaces for fear of the public reaction. Further, some same-sex couples have told stories of decision-makers who are resistant to the possibility that a same-sex couple can be a genuine couple.
Several people told the HREOC Inquiry that a formal ‘piece of paper’ could assist same-sex couples in proving the genuineness of their relationship and in asserting the rights that flow from such a relationship. The NSW Law Reform Commission believes that the advantages of registration schemes include greater certainty and recognition. They comment:
Registration has the benefit of certainty. That certainty removes the need for legislative preconditions such as requiring cohabitation. The parties to a relationship can be readily identified, and have demonstrated that they know about, and agree to be bound by, the legislation and its provisions. It would give people who do not wish or are legally unable to marry, such as gay and lesbian couples, the opportunity to have their relationship registered and formally recognised by the State. It also provides a system of recognition for people who do not wish to live together, but want to acknowledge their relationship of mutual support.
The ALP National Conference passed a motion on 27th April 2007 stating in part:
Labor will take action to ensure the development of nationally consistent, state-based relationship recognition legislation that will include the opportunity for couples who have a mutual commitment to a shared life to have those relationships registered and certified...based on the scheme that has existed in Tasmania since 2004.
These sentiments were echoed by Labor during the 2007 federal election. The then Shadow Attorney General, Joe Ludwig, gave repeated commitments to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender communities around Australia that a Rudd Labor Government would act on the Inquiry’s recommendations as a first term priority and negotiate nationally consistent, state-based relationship recognition legislation.
The Victorian Government is at present considering its options with regard to which model of registry arrangement it will adopt. It is understood that there is serious consideration of duplicating arrangements that were adopted in Tasmania.
It is important to acknowledge that a relationship recognition scheme will not satisfy all lesbian and gay couples, many of whom aspire to full equality through marriage or desire the option to choose marriage as do heterosexual couples. However, a relationship recognition scheme with a ceremonial element would be a significant step towards addressing these aspirations and removing the sense of social exclusion that lesbian and gay couples currently experience.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community commissioned a Galaxy Poll in 2008 to explore the views of Queenslanders on a number of key issues. In summary, the poll found that:
· 60% of Queenslanders think that same sex couples should be able to have a civil union.
· 67% of Queenslanders think that children with same sex parents should have both parents recognised by law.
· 96% of Queenslanders think that more should be done to prevent homophobic bullying against gay and lesbian students in Queensland schools.


June 2009

I don't seem to have many photos of Pearl and Louis together - often my attempts come out like this - one child in each corner of the frame, heading in different directions.






However Pearl has recently invented a game that necessitates much close contact. It involves Pearl chasing Louis...







Wrestling him to the ground...

Leaping on him...

And then them both falling about laughing.

Deep? You've come to the right place

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.

The babies have decided that this is their going to bed lullaby. If I try and sing anything else, say, Rockabye baby, or Hush little baby, don't you cry, or my own favourite, Bring me little water, Sylvie, they pop their heads up and insist, "Woe, Woe, Woe" in ever more urgent tones. So Woe, woe, woe it is, over and over and over again, until they both fall asleep.

Usually this takes about twenty minutes, but tonight, due to an unfortunate late afternoon car trip resulting in an unfortunate late afternoon nap, it took an hour. Seven til eight pm I spent singing Row row row your boat, over and over. It became like a meditation, like following my breath...innnnnn....and ooooouuutttt.... which I did for five days once, on a retreat. And I realised what incredible layers there are to that simple song, how it encapsulates wisdom of ages in its innocuous lines. A guide to life, all there in a child's rhyme!

Consider...

Row, row, row: You have to be active, not passive. You'll need to do a bit of rowing in life - don't just sit there!
your boat: You can only row your boat, not anyone else's. Keep your mind on your own business.
Gently: There's no need to be frantic about it. Go placidly among the strife and turmoil of this world, etc
down: Don't bother fighting against the current. Take your natural path in life.
the stream: It's okay. It's a stream, not a raging torrent. You are safe.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily: Maintain optimism. It is what it is. It's a stream. You're rowing in it. Be happy about it.
Life is but a dream: This is the truly deep bit. Don't take it all too seriously, it's just a dream. Which poses the question, what do we wake up to, when we wake up from this dream that is life?

Is this gut feeling intuition...or neurosis?

Because, you know, people do say to mothers all the time, trust your instincts. And I really can't tell if this yukky feeling in my stomach is anxiety, or some sort of warning. I know I'm over-protective. But a certain level of hypervigilance is realistic, surely?

I've been trying to convince myself for some time that my concerns about my mother looking after the children are just based on my anxieties. She spends a day a week with us, and is an enormous help, and adores them, and when I'm supervising her I'm absolutely delighted to have her around and involved in the twins' lives. But she's so absent-minded.

She cannot remember to put her hot cup of tea away from the edges of the tables - I'm always moving them out of reach. Last week she kicked a full cup over, narrowly missing Louis, and we have a friend's child who has had skin grafts from a hot cup of tea incident, so I'm abnormally careful.

She cannot remember to close the wire door when she goes out the back to helpfully hang out the washing - the babies are pretty good with stairs now, but I'd prefer they didn't do it unsupervised. It's a wooden staircase that gets slippery when it rains, with stupid ornamental stones (rental house) at the bottom. And it's only got a handrail, not a proper banister, so it's possible to slip sideways and fall out the side of the stairs, if you are small.

Wednesday evening when I got home, she'd put Pearl in her car seat but omitted to do up the belts.

Last week she was helpfully sorting some cardboard into the recycling for me, and Pearl walked past her and out the front gate. Louis and I were picking lemons at the other end of the garden, so I just said calmly, "I'd rather you went after Pearl than did that," and she did.

I've been telling myself that when I'm around she probably relinquishes a lot of responsibility, and that she'd be more focussed when she has them by herself, but I've been more hesitant to leave them with her since they've both been toddling.

Friday she looked after the babies for us at her house for a couple of hours. L went to pick them up and the side gate was open. She lives on a busy road so this really feels like the final straw. The kids were inside at the time, but the back door was open (it's one of those kitchen flows out to the patio kind of arrangements, so the kids just wander in and out). L pointed out the gate (and I had asked her to mention it to Mum when L dropped the kids off) but Mum said, "Oh, it's alright, I'm watching them." Which is all very well but she was in her pyjamas when L had dropped the kids off, so presumably at some point she'd had a shower, and possibly gone to the toilet, so there would have been moments of inattention. I mean, why not just shut the gate?

Are these normal oversights? What do other people expect of their mothers? It feels like a really big deal to say my mother is not capable of looking after her grandchildren.

I used to be standing out the front with a placard. Think of the rainforests!

It's been raining for days.

Rainy days are hard work. Hopefully in another year they'll be old enough to be diverted by things like fingerpainting, and cooking, and cut-and-pasting, and building forts out of two coffee tables, a sofa and a few blankets. And videos! Lots and lots of loooooong videos.

We've been to the museum. We've been to all the libraries. We've been to the art gallery. We've been to the highly expensive hell that is an indoor playland.

Today, we spent the afternoon in the undercover play area at M*cD0n*lds.

Actually it wasn't so bad. The play equipment is incredibly safe (covering every liability possibility) and the afternoon only cost $4 for a coffee and a McSc0ne. Scary. First we discovered C0ffee C1ub (lots of high chairs, lots of space for prams, lots of other parents there so no disapproving looks from exasperated, sophisticated cafe goers) and now M*cca's.

Is there any further to fall?

Onward to the workforce

I've just scored myself a job - well, it resembles a job in all ways except for the bit where you get paid. I'm going to go in one day a week and do some 'interning' as we call unpaid labour, with a small film production company. Mostly corporate films, some docos, some ads.

L and I have been discussion my job situation. Come July 1, I'm going to be losing the single parents' pension, as the federal government has decided that two people of the same sex do actually have the potential to constitute a couple. Nice, on the whole, and I'm grateful that I had 18 months' maternity leave paid by Centrel1nk. As I've explained in other posts, we're still not recognised in Qld, which means that although L is my partner, she is not seen as the babies' parent. So the fight goes on.

But I digress. I want to talk about going back to work.

At the moment, L has the babies on Thursdays. Financially, it would be nice if L worked four days and I worked three, but we don't really want to put the kids in childcare. I think Louis would be okay, but Pearl is still very clingy. Overall I don't think a bit of childcare is bad, and I've read up on the research (full time long day care from 3 months old = bad; anything else = neutral and the home environment is much more important in determining outcomes. No evidence to support oft-quoted theory that childcare is necessary or particularly beneficial for socialisation and academic achievement UNLESS the home environment is dysfunctional, then childcare can be a protective and positive factor). We had been envisaging leaving Louis and Pearl with Grandma for a day or two but honestly, I don't think she's up to it. Or I'm not up to it. I worry too much. Mum adores the children but she's a bit...absent minded. I think it's very hard to be on top of two toddlers; maybe it's not until you have twins yourself that you become able to do the constant division of attention. Like, if Pearl injures herself, Mum will drop everything and concentrate on Pearl's distress; all well and good except that Louis meanwhile is wandering off in another direction. You can never, ever give undivided attention to one child, when you have two toddlers, and I think that's a learnt skill. Mum gets insulted when I imply that her experience of bringing up three children is insufficient in some way. I think kids of different ages are hard in a different way; it's like comparing, I don't know, care of cats to care of dogs.

Anyway, the point is, that L and I are considering childcare, maybe one or two days a week. And I'm considering whether I want to work; that is, I think about working on the days when I'm not planning to home-school them. And I have lots of mad ideas for home based businesses that are incredibly interesting but not at all lucrative; part of the problem is that I don't think we should be consuming any more than we are, so how can I convince people to buy more stuff? And we're figuring out how we are going to get along on one income, and I've subscribed to a (free) email list that sends me handy hints on how to cook for a family of five for a week using only one potato and some generic label soy sauce (This week's tip: save all your laundry washing up and do it on one day each week - then you only do full loads so you save on water and electricity and washing powder, "I've saved $1200 over twelve months doing this!" writes Lynette from Upper Kumbukta West).

Sorry! How did I get to be here discussing laundry schedules?

We're here, we're queer, and...we ARE going shopping

Yesterday we went along to Qld Pride. The march was a lot of fun, and going in on the train was a hoot - the whole carriage was filled with a range of queer folk: we staid suburban lesbians with our twin pram, a gorgeous gaggle of fifteen year old boys with Duran Duran hairdos and self-consciously camp mannerisms, a brace of old leathermen and some young dykes with trim short hair and low slung jeans not held up by their low slung belts. We met up with a bunch of friends and formed a pram posse, somehow ending up marching between some spunky FTM trannies (I loved their banner: "LGBT - the T is not silent"!) and the aforementioned leathermen.

The Brisbane rally is absolutely nothing like the Mardi Gras parade. It's a political rally, not a celebratory parade. We marched through the streets; those so inclined were chanting, I'm not sure what; some were blowing whistles. Lots of cars gave us cheery honks. In depressingly true Queensland style, not a single word of it was mentioned in the print media, although L gave a radio interview to a local commercial radio station and I was interviewed for a documentary some enthusiastic young things were making about workplace discrimination (my quote: have never experienced it, but am concerned that L won't be able to get parental leave if she needs it, as she's not legally recognised as a parent).

After the feelgood high of the rally, the fair day was something of fizzer for me. It was, umm, one dimensional - a one dimensional representation of the queer community. And what was represented was the partying, market-to-the-high-disposable-income, heavy drinking scene. A bunch of stalls handing out pamphlets, multiple tents selling alcohol, and a stage pumping out music that was too loud. I think I would like something more participatory: a couple of alternative stages; a healing or health space where you could get massages, and fruit juice, and tarot readings; maybe another space where you could do demonstration things, like bootscooting or muu thai or whatever is the latest queer fad; and a KID SPACE.

Like everyone else in the Brisbane queer community, instead of just criticising, I should get involved and do something about it, or else shut up.

It was nice to bump into people. That's really the point of those events, isn't it? Gathering everyone? It's just, you know, it seems a bit sad that we're all gathered there and all we can do is drink and listen to loud music. There's more to being glbT (not silent) than drinking and partying and s*x, but it's all I see reflected in the gayboy media, and L0TL's (Aus lesbian mag) not much better.

Reporting in

Date night menu:
Chicken pie - comfort food from the Womyn's Weekly Cookbooks, because it's freezing. Can you believe a top of only 19C (66F)? Thank god it's only a cold snap, not an actual winter that anyone would recognise, and back to more reasonable temperatures next week.*
& a cheat dessert - I made sugar free banana coconut mini muffins for the babies this morning, so I made a couple of big ones as well, and have made a sticky lemon syrup from to pour over them, warm, with ice cream. Two birds with one stone, and all of that.

*One of the problems with living in a warm climate, and a reason why I'm entitled to grizzle about overnight temperatures dropping all the way to 6C, is that the houses here are completely unsuited to cold weather. No insulation. No heating. The windows don't close properly - the jambs don't meet up. We can see the ground underneath the house through some of the floorboards. So unlike Melbourne, where cold nights can be quite snug (discounting days in student housing), 6C outside pretty much means 6C inside. Brrr and grrr.

No movie due to disorganisation. L's trying to convince me that Si1ent W1tness counts but I'm not convinced - too many close ups of autopsy techniques.

Now what are they up to?

It's kind of long - five minutes. But riveting! The other kid is their cousin, Jaya, who is one month older. I make a brief appearance - I wear glasses.

Should I stop posting pictures of the babies? Am I putting them at risk? Of what? I said I was going to stop when they turned one. But here I am, still posting. I mean, I presume my audience is clamouring for pictures of them and how can I disappoint you?

Try this

Friday night is date night:
Tonight I cooked one of my favourite meals. Incredibly simple, reliably delicious and you can make it with anything. Really the only compulsory ingredients are the lemon & the fresh herbs, both of which we have growing in the garden, so I can always make it.

Here it is:
Vegie pilaf

• 2 cups of cooked grain (brown rice, white rice, millet, quinoa, cous cous, risoni...)
• chopped onion/leek/red onion/spring onion (any one will work)
• 2 cloves garlic
  
• about 2 cups vegetables, chopped finely - I use a max of 4 different vegies ( peas, corn, carrots, cauli, broccoli, green beans, mushrooms, silverbeet...)
• rind and juice of half a lemon
• generous handful or two of chopped fresh herbs (mint, parsley, basil, chives...)
• Some nut type thing for garnish (flaked almonds, pine nuts, sunflower seeds...)

• Stirfry the onion, garlic & lemon rind
• Add the chopped vegies & stir fry until just cooked
• Add the pre-cooked grain, lemon juice and herbs, and heat through.
• Serve & sprinkle over the nuts.

Just like that, it is a fabulous side dish. But behold my innovations:

Vegetarian dinner: stir through a tin of cooked chickpeas and some cubed fetta when I add the grains
Carnivore dinner: stir through some prior cooked meat (tonight I added chicken; I haven't tried red meats but I reckon a gourmet sausage would work well. Fish would be great, too) that is cut up into small chunks, again at the same stage as you add the grains
Cold salad dish: don't add the herbs until after you take it off the heat and cool it, so they don't wilt. Also stir through something fresh, like chopped cucumber or snowpea sprouts. I took this to a barbecue and it was a hit.

I was also going to make a chocolate cake with cherry-chocolate sauce but the babies didn't go down until 8.30 (7 being their ostensible bed time) so date night is a bit of a write-off, apart from the excellent dinner.

You may well ask, why am I using the precious few moments of date night remaining, blogging?

Crossdressing toddlers

Today we went off to a birthday party lunch for a gayboy friend of ours, and in honour of the occasion I dressed Louis in a t-shirt that says, When I grow up I want to be a princess.

We had planned to go to a playground en route to burn off a bit of energy, and Lovergirl took his T-shirt off and tucked it in the nappy bag. 'It's okay with our friends, but I don't want him getting teased in the playground for our sense of humour,' she said.

In the end it was irrelevant because we were running late and didn't make it to the park, so the t-shirt went back on, but I'm turning it over in my head.

How much gender role playing do we do with and to our children? How much gender role indoctrination is appropriate? There's a line, I think. I want the children to be proud of their sex - it's good to be a boy, it's good to be a girl. I think it's okay, even important, to have 'boy's things' and 'girl's things' - I like the idea of the 'Dangerous book for boys' & 'Daring book for girls' although I haven't actually read them. But I don't want them to feel they have to conform to gender stereotypes.

Cruising around the internet, I was reading another lesbian mum blog which made me feel a bit sad. I'd be hard pressed to find it again, but they described their two children as "all boy" and "a hundred per cent girl". Maybe they didn't intend it, but it sounded defensive to me - look at our PERFECTLY NORMAL children! No traces of gay-training here! I wrote a couple of days ago about creating my own pressure to be a 'perfect family', to demonstrate that lesbian-headed families are completely valid. I keep coming back to gender roles - what I'm modelling, what I'm teaching them. If I was in a relationship with a man, would I think so much about whether it is okay to dress Louis in girl's clothes? Will people think we are ashamed of his sex? That lesbians hate men therefore we are trying to emasculate our boychild?

Naturally none of these issues come up when we dress Pearl in overalls and little red t-shirts with trucks on them. She just looks cute and tomboyish.

We have good friends whose son was crazy about pink, and frills, and sequins, and glitter, until he started kinder. Then the kindergarten teacher spoke to a psychologist about her concerns, and called in the mums, and said he had to wear more appropriate clothes to kinder. I don't know all the ins and outs of the mothers' decision making, but they approached it with him by saying he needed a kinder 'uniform' (he had a big sister who wore a school uniform so that was okay) but he could still wear anything he liked at home. In the end he gradually grew out of the pink frilly stuff all by himself.

As they develop, I find it eerie to see just how much gender-stereotypical play Pearl & Louis are starting to engage in. It could just be coincidence, as Suze pointed out some posts ago. And it's not all-encompassing - Louis is crazy about trains, buses and motorbikes, but also loves flowers and putting on necklaces (he's particularly fond of pearls, but any shiny beads will do). Pearl carries a stuffed toy with her everywhere, and chases after Louis, shoving bits of food in his mouth - Louis, on the other hand, never tries to feed Pearl. However Pearl is the more physically active of the two, rarely sitting still, and also much more bossy.

In a few years my children will be wandering through all sorts of situations unmediated by my presence. Children can be cruel little reflections of their parents' bigotries without the thin veil of social niceties that stops most adults acting on their own prejudices. I don't want my children to be teased or bullied. But I want them to avoid this by being resilient and confident, not by being conformist.

I don't want my boy to feel shame about wearing pink, or girls' clothes. If he feels shame about doing things associated with girls, what is that teaching him about girls? About the validity of being soft and gentle? But also, I don't want my children to suffer because of my beliefs about how society should be.

One of the maxims I keep in the back of my consciousness is, If you want to live in a world without homophobia, act as if you already do. For me this means being out about my family in any situation where I would normally talk about my spouse and kids. No evasive partner tactics, or avoiding pronouns. A world without homophobia would also allow men and boys to wear pink, and aspire to be princesses, or train drivers, or princess-train drivers.

Because God's word is unchanging...

Wow! Did you know that the Christian church used to officiate at same-sex unions?

The most famous were St Sergius & St Bacchus

In the definitive 10th century account of their lives, St. Sergius is openly celebrated as the "sweet companion and lover" of St. Bacchus. Sergius and Bacchus's close relationship has led many modern scholars to believe they were lovers. But the most compelling evidence for this view is that the oldest text of their martyrology, written in New Testament Greek describes them as "erastai,” or "lovers".

[...]

Prof. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the "Office of Same-Sex Union" (10th and 11th century), and the "Order for Uniting Two Men" (11th and 12th century).

These church rites had all the symbols of a heterosexual marriage: the whole community gathered in a church, a blessing of the couple before the altar was conducted with their right hands joined, holy vows were exchanged, a priest officiatied in the taking of the Eucharist and a wedding feast for the guests was celebrated afterwards. These elements all appear in contemporary illustrations of the holy union of the Byzantine Warrior-Emperor, Basil the First (867-886 CE) and his companion John.

There's some controversy, of course, with more conservative commentators arguing this was simply a sort of rite for men (and one recorded case of two women, in Dalmatia) to formally adopt each other as 'brothers'. Ha!

Mikhela needs

I just read this meme on Elsewhere's blog and it made me laugh. You put your name followed by 'needs' into google and write down the first ten responses.

1. M needs help!!
2. M needs a stylist
3. M needs our prayers
4. M needs care a loving family offers
5. Little Miss M needs your help
6. M needs to be in brackish water
7. M needs a smack
8. M needs new shoes
9. M needs a friend
10. M needs leg amputation

LEG AMPUTATION?? And it was all going so well, except perhaps for the smack in brackish water.

Self care strategy 1

One outcome of my diary of a week of parenting was realising I needed to look after myself a bit better. I'll tell you more about that some other spare ten minutes, but as I was pondering how to do this a social worker friend invited me to join a trial parenting group she is running for the first time. So I did. She's using this model called Hand in Hand Parenting which seems nice, if eerily like co-counselling. Did everyone else go through a co-counselling stage? Or is it a hippie thing?

I won't bother explaining it too much - everyone else seems to be such instinctively good parents so it's probably what you would do anyway (unlike me, who needs to research everything and actually think about what to do - I would very rarely trust a gut reaction. On crying, for example, my impulse when they were first born was to put them outside in the pram and let them go at it. I never did this as I believe it is Bad For Babies but I followed my cognitive processes & extensive research, not my 'instincts'. Interestingly, the baby-outside thing was what my parents did for us, that being the parenting wisdom of the day, although of course I have no memory of it. )

Oh bugger there's a baby.

Gotta go.

Later:

I realised a couple of things during the first workshop. One is that I feel like we have to be a 'perfect' family to justify lesbians having kids. The standard of good parenting feels so much higher, in order to prove that we are not disadvantaging our kids in any way for the dreadful lack of heteronormativity in their lives. It's not enough to be within the normal range of okay families - we have to be fabulous. Never any disagreements between L & I, never any moments of feeling like parenting is all too hard. It's like I'm looking for permission -

Oh bugger there's a baby.

Gotta go.

Erudition

If you recorded my speech today, this is what you would have captured:

• Bus! Yes, bus.
• Up you get. It's okay, you're not hurt.
• Dog! Yes, dog.
• Away from the toilet. Don't touch. Yucky.
  
• Pearl, stop it. NO Pearl.
• It's okay, darling, you're okay, she didn't mean it.
• Car! Yes, car.
• Sit down please. Sit down in the car. Sit down. Sit down.
• Cat! Yes, cat, oh, no, that's a possum.
• Bus! Yes, bus.
• Bike! Yes, bike.
  
• Bus! Yes, bus.

Shall I go on?

However, it is date night tonight and I am cooking Spanish chicken & chorizo rice and lemon yoghurt cake, both in this month's De1ic10us. The movie of the evening is S3ven P0unds. If only these snotty coughing babies would go to bed.

Dilemma of distance & ageing parents

Raining and raining here -the backyard is flooded and Brisbane has been declared a natural disaster zone. I'm mostly concerned with how to keep the children entertained. If they were older I would declare natural disaster days as video-and-cooking days. As you can see from the photo, today Granny helped out with some extended reading but I don't know how many days of that the babies will bear.

Lately I'm feeling a little homesick and anxious about my ageing father in Melbourne. Careerwise, we'd be foolish to move, and Brisbane life is easy - small city, good networks, pretty parks. However I worry about Dad. When I left Melbourne he was in his mid sixties, still working...now he's in his early seventies and clearly old. Change happens quite fast, at both ends of life.

How do others manage long distance families as parents age? Will I regret it, if we don't move back?

Impromptu lobbying

Today we went to a local Catholic school fete. Guess who was there? Our local member, the Premier of Queensland.

L said, 'I'm going to speak to her, come on!' I trailled after her, trying to look confident; after all, she doesn't look like a lesbian unless she's with me.

Anna smiled at her; after all, she looked like another fete mother, child on hip. Then L introduced herself, and me, and the babies, '...and I'd just like to say how much I support the surrogacy reform and how we're really hoping that same sex couples in Queensland will be brought up to speed with the rest of the country in terms of parenting rights.' (I'm paraphrasing but she was impressively articulate at such short notice).

Anyway poor old Anna. You could just see her face freeze over. She must have been thinking, Jeez, can't I even go down to the fete and get myself a tray of coconut slice any more? She smiled politely and said, in that well-practised non-committal politician-speak way, 'Well, you're very welcome to make a submission and we look forward to hearing from you.'

At the time I was disappointed, but really, what was she going to do, get into a conversation about our children? She has to say nothing, even though I suspect that actually she personally is supportive. And as L pointed out, she was with a gaggle of well-dressed women; they could well have been influential local Catholics and it could have been quite an awkward moment for her.

For a Catholic school fete, it was really quite catholic - we bumped into four other lesbian families we knew, and I spotted one other suspicious two-women-plus-child combination, and a couple of men who I'm willing to bet had a very nicely decorated apartment and a small white fluffy dog.

And we have some very nice lime and coconut fairy cakes for dessert.