February 15, 2006: It’s really exciting to have been mentioned in USA Today today (doesn’t that double “today” sound weird? But there’s no way around it, I suppose). Thanks for coming by to take a look.

A special welcome to any LGBT people who have found the show through the article. I hope you’ll check out the show and join our community of listeners and readers. We are building beautiful families of choice, and like any family, we succeed best when we stick together.

And if you’re straight – welcome aboard, too! I hear from a lot of straight people who like the show – and that was even before Brokeback Mountain. (I actually have thought about changing the name of my show to Brokeback Papa, as in “Oye, is my back broken from shlepping these kids around all day!”)

My family consists of my wonderful partner of fourteen years, our adopted son Sasha, who is now 5 and a half and the cutest boy in the world, and our blossoming 18-month old foster child, whose name and picture I don’t place on this blog since he isn’t legally ours.

I first became aware of the importance of speaking out against anti-gay bigotry, especially as it affects the children of LGBT parents, when my partner and I were falsely accused of child abuse by a person who didn’t approve of Sasha having two dads. Sasha, who was not yet verbal at the time, was put through a series of painful and invasive medical procedures to verify that no abuse had occurred. That incident made me realize that children LITERALLY suffer when their parents are the victims of bigotry.

I wound up writing about that incident for Newsweek. You can read that article here. I’ve continued to write and speak out as a gay parent ever since, and I host a web page with resources for LGBT parents.

When I became aware of podcasting, I figured that was just another way for me to get out the truth about our families. The good people at The Podcast Network were gracious enough to host my show – even though they faced some criticism from people who didn’t approve of giving families like mine a place to speak out.

On every show, I try to tell you a little about my family, I cover one or two news stories of interest to our families, and, most importantly (because who wants to listen to me all the time?) I interview an expert on the field of LGBT parenting. The show has featured author and advice columnist Dan Savage, several executive directors of LGBT groups that advocate for our rights, authors of books on LGBT parenting issues, and a gay man who was parenting eight high-need foster children. You can get a listing of all past shows by clicking on the “Podcast” category at the right.

I could go on, but if I bore you too much here, you may never want to be bored by the show! If you’re new to podcasting, and you want to hear the show, check out the tips in this post. If you’d like to see pictures of me, my partner and Sasha, see below or click here. (I’m the one on the left below.)

Lastly, feed free to leave your thoughts by clicking on the “comments” section below. Likewise, you can see other people’s comments by doing the same. Welcome aboard!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 15th, 2006 at 12:20 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.