Number of gay couples who adopt tripled over last decade

The number of gays and lesbians adopting children has nearly tripled in the last decade despite discriminatory rules in many states, according to an analysis of recent population trends.

"It's a stratospheric increase. It's like going from zero to 60," said Miami attorney Elizabeth Schwartz, who has coordinated more than 100 adoptions for gay and lesbian families in the last year. "I think many really dreamed of doing this but it wasn't something they ever thought would become a reality."

About 21,740 same-sex couples had adopted children in 2009, up from 6,477 in 2000, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. About 32,571 adopted children were living with same-sex couples in 2009, up from 8,310 in 2000. The figures are an analysis of newly released Census Bureau estimates.

- latimes.com

Related articles

• Census: More same-sex couples in more places 
• Australia: Cairns Regional Council to adopt 'alternative' to formalised gay marriage 

• Adoptions spiked among gay couples in past decade (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Nation Sees 'Stratospheric' Increase in Adoptions by Gay Couples (towleroad.com)
• Foster Children in Florida Finally Get Forever Families (blogher.com)
• Catholics Don't Let Gays Adopt. Could The "Peoria Solution" Fix That? (queerty.com)

Jake Shears, US/UK. Singer, Scissor Sisters

b. October 3, 1978

Jason F. Sellards, aka Jake Shears, is the lead male vocalist for the American music group Scissor Sisters.

Born in Arizona as the son of an entrepreneur father and a Baptist mother, Shears grew up on San Juan Island, north of Seattle. While living on San Juan Island, he attended school at Friday Harbor High School, where he was bullied. At 18, he moved into a dorm at The Northwest School in Seattle and finished high school there.Shears came out to his parents at the urging of Dan Savage, who later called his advice "the worst I've ever given". (In 2010, he participated in Savage's It Gets Better Project.)

At 19, he was introduced to Scott Hoffman (Babydaddy). Shears and Hoffman hit it off immediately and, a year later, both moved to New York. For a while, Shears was a fixture on the New York gay and electroclash scene.

Shears and Hoffman formed the Scissor Sisters in 2001 as a kind of performance art lark, playing outrageous shows in clubs like Luxx, the heart of the electroclash scene in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where Shears lived. After a couple years struggling in New York (working with record label A Touch of Class, who produced "Comfortably Numb" and "Filthy/Gorgeous"), the Sisters finally found success in the UK and Ireland—ending 2004 with the biggest-selling album of the year in the UK.

He was listed at number 45 on the DS list of "50 Most Influential Gays", 2011:

Flamboyant, talented and a dab hand with a sequined costume wouldn’t even begin to do him justice. The Scissor Sisters front man came out to his parents as a teenager and has never looked back. Although the band’s hits may have dried up in recent years, his determination not to shy away from challenging his audience hasn’t. Take the artwork for their last album Night Work, for example, which featured the clenched buttocks of a male ballet dancer. “I had to fight like hell for that picture,” he says. “I had one of the guys from my record company call me up and tell me it was going to be one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made in my whole career. I just thought if it was going to pose any challenges for us, then those are challenges we can transcend.”

AP Exclusive: World War II vet, ousted for being gay, finally receives ‘honorable’ discharge - The Washington Post

Nearly 70 years after expelling Melvin Dwork for being gay, the Navy is changing his discharge from “undesirable” to “honorable” — marking what is believed to be the first time the Pentagon has taken such a step on behalf of a World War II veteran since the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

The Navy notified the 89-year-old former corpsman last month that he will now be eligible for the benefits he had long been denied, including medical care and a military burial.

Dwork spent decades fighting to remove the blot on his record.

“I resented that word ‘undesirable,’” said Dwork, who was expelled in 1944, at the height of the war, and is now a successful interior designer in New York. "

 -more at The Washington Post 

'via Blog this'

Wisconsin Democrat could be first openly gay U.S. senator - latimes.com

"Rep. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin launched her bid for the Senate on Tuesday, an effort that if successful would make her the first openly gay senator in U.S. history.

The label Baldwin is more interested in running on is "progressive fighter," which is the title of the YouTube video her campaign released Tuesday announcing her candidacy.

"I've made standing up for the middle class my top priority, and I've never hesitated to speak my mind," she says in the video."

   -full report at latimes.com