Just a couple of years ago, Barbara Walters did an extraordinary job covering trans kids on a 20/20 special. Same network. I figured it would be just as good.

Well some of it was... The journey of a couple to understand their son who always knew he was a girl - including their decision to allow him to start a new school year, at age 10, as a girl. (The child's older sister goes into the classroom first to explain to the situation to the other students. Priceless.) The mom who wrote a book, "Princess Boy," because her son said that's what he was. Even the 19-yr-old MTF who finances her surgical procedures by earning money as a sex worker was powerful. It was hard to watch but it felt real.

But there was a catch - a big catch.

I'm glad to see Brenner get the visibility she deserves for building an organization with no drug company funding and beholden to no corporate interests. A separate article in USA Today explains BCA's "Think Before You Pink" campaign.

I still don't expect anything as mainstream as USA Today to so visibly highlight an activist lesbian. Her ALS diagnosis is painfully sad, but she is a fighter, and that fight comes through in the story. Millions of readers will learn from reading this article a lot about Barbara, about breast cancer politics, and about how one lesbian can make such a big difference.

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Well, Gary Gates is now at the (also incomparable) Williams Institute at UCLA, and yesterday he released the first state maps (again color-coded) with data from Census 2010. Turns out there are 11,259 same-sex couples in Alabama, 27% of whom are raising children. There are 4,248 same-sex couples in Hawaii, 23% of whom are raising children.

Gates has also prepared an explanation of his methodology. The FAQs are here, with a link to a longer and more technical brief. Next week, Williams will release reports on California, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming. Census data by state will be released weekly over the course of the summer.

Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), which has represented Janet Jenkins in the Vermont Supreme Court proceedings in this case, released a statement this morning.

Could this be the same Sabrina McKenna who took me to a karaoke bar in Honolulu maybe 20 years ago? Sure enough, there was her name and (old) home telephone number (no cell phones then) in my address book. I met Sabrina at a conference when we were both clinical law professors. I told her I was coming to Hawaii for a visit and she invited me to call her. The karaoke evening followed.

Now she joins a tiny group (four to be exact) of openly gay justices on the highest courts of states. (There are two in Oregon and one in Colorado). Her confirmation vote in the state senate was unanimous.

But who are her parents?

The official Rufus Wainwright website says that Rufus Wainwright is her father, Lorca Cohen (Leonard's daughter) is her mother, and Rufus's partner, Jorn Weisbrodt, is her "Deputy Dad." Some early press coverage of Viva's birth referred to Lorca as a "surrogate," and Rufus took the time to specifically reject such a characterization. In this lengthy feature in The Guardian, Rufus refers to the child's "three parents."

Although the people of Hawaii cut short the process begun by that court ruling by passing a constitutional amendment, the ruling served the purpose of demonstrating that is was possible to bring a court challenge and succeed. The rest is history, and of course it is history still in the making.

Well today Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie signs a bill creating civil unions.

This case really bothers me.

The newspaper coverage is simply matter of fact. I cannot distinguish this coverage from the coverage a paper would give any other first baby of the year.

I hope the couple is planning to consult Reno attorney Kimberly Surratt, who knows all things about protecting our families in Nevada.

Congratulations all around!

If Congress passes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) during Feldblum's term, she will be one of the commissioners responsible for issuing regulations and enforcing the law.

Feldblum is also the partner of Bilerico contributor Nan Hunter.

Relatively speaking, it is cheap and reliable, but it alters the legal context of everything that follows. In Quebec, the law explicitly recognizes that assisted reproduction can include reproduction through sexual intercourse if the understanding is that the man will not be a father and is engaging in the sex act to allow the woman (or the woman and her partner) to be the only legal parent/s of the child.

The impetus for this unique construct was the desire to make it as easy as possible for lesbians to have children and to shield them from the discrimination and cost of using fertility services. No law like that exists anywhere in the United States (or the rest of the world as far as I know).

In a handful of cases here where a man and woman (lesbian or not or unknown) have made an agreement that only the woman would be a parent and that the man was assisting her through "artificial insemination by intercourse," no court has ever upheld the agreement. If it gets to court, the man has legal rights and responsibilities.

Only Nevada and the District of Columbia have created a status that is also open to different-sex couples (both jurisdictions called the status "domestic partnership" but because it extends to those who register virtually all of the state-based legal consequences of marriage it is the same as what others states call a "civil union."). The Hawaii civil union bill which was vetoed earlier this year by the state's Republican governor also included different-sex couples.

Phyllis Frye has serious activist creds. I remember her in the 1970s, bravely standing for transgender rights when that made her a virtual loner. The Houston Chronicle story on her appointment notes that thirty years ago, in the same Houston City Council chamber, she succeeded in getting the city to repeal its ban on cross-dressing. Before there were groups devoted to trans rights, Phyllis gathered and shared resources, spoke at numerous conferences, and took a stand wherever she saw injustice. Her website documents her life and her contributions.

Congratulations are definitely in order as Phyllis embarks on this next stage of her illustrious career.

Psychiatrist Nanette Gartrell and her colleagues have been studying these children and their families beginning in 1986. Their research findings are the response to all the naysayers who argue that there is no longitudinal research on the children raised in planned lesbian families. Turns out there is.

Here are the punchlines on the data in this report.

None of the children had been physically or sexually abused. They were less likely (and for the boys much less likely) than an age- and gender-matched group from the US National Study of Family Growth (NSFG) to be sexually active. And those who were sexually active were older at first contact than the NSFG group.

In a segment on Democracy Now this morning, Adam Skaggs of the Brennan Center for Justice puts the Iowa vote in the larger context of judicial elections across the country. His report on the funding of state court judges elections is a sobering look at both the present and the future.

There are no same-sex marriage cases going through state courts at the moment, but the issues that affects LGBT parents are all in state courts.