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ABC: A Family Alphabet Book. Bobbie Combs. Illustrated by Desiree Keane & Brian Kappa. 2001. 32p. (gr ps-3) Two Lives Publishing.
From the Back Cover: Have fun with the kids, moms, dads and pets in this delightful book that celebrates alternative families as it teaches young children the alphabet.

About the Author: Bobbie Combs is a children’s book consultant and one of the owners of Two Lives Publishing. She lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

This is the first full-color collaboration between Desiree Keane and Brian Rappa. Brian is a graduate of Philadelphia’s Hussian School of Art, and Desiree holds a BFA from Rosemont College. Both Desiree and Brian live in New Jersey.


Adopting Ahava. Jennifer Byrne. Illustrated by Oana Vaida. 2013. 44p. (gr ps-3) Dodi Press.
Jonathan didn’t think anything could beat the excitement of being adopted by his two Jewish mamas, but his eighth birthday comes close. His mamas take him to a dog shelter to adopt a puppy of his own! After looking at all the cute, squirming tail-waggers, Jonathan makes an unexpected choice. In Adopting Ahava, Jonathan shows readers that all kinds of people—and pets—create happy, loving families.

Adopting on Your Own: The Complete Guide to Adoption for Single Parents. Lee Varon. 2000. 388p. Farrar Straus & Giroux.
From the Publisher: The first guide of its kind, covering all stages of the adoption process. Adopting on Your Own addresses the questions and concerns of prospective single parents. Lee Varon, a practicing therapist specializing in adoption counseling and the single mother of two adopted children, helps readers make an evenhanded assessment of whether adoption is right for them, then leads them through the different stages of arranging and financing the adoption. She weighs the advantages of open versus closed and international versus domestic adoption for the single parent, and demystifies potentially daunting steps such as choosing an agency and preparing for the home study. Adopting on Your Own also offers up-to-date information on the latest developments in interracial adoption policy, the legal rights of gays and lesbians to adopt, and the evolving attitudes of agencies and social workers toward single-parent adoptions. Throughout the book, Varon draws on personal anecdotes and the experiences of her clients to offer honest, insightful advice on every step of the adoption process.

About the Author: Lee Varon is a social worker with a doctorate in social welfare policy and the co-director of the Adoption Network, a counseling and referral agency that focuses on single parents. She lives with her family in Cambridge, MA.


Adoption. Tracey Vasil Biscontini, ed. 2009. 176p. (gr 7 up) (Issues on Trial) Greenhaven Press.
Contentious issues such as the death penalty, civil liberties, and reproductive rights touch on people’s deeply held beliefs. Greenhaven Press’s Issues on Trial series captures the passion and depth of those debates, examining how the courts have helped to shape each issue through their rulings. Each volume focuses on a specific issue and includes primary sources like the text of court rulings and dissenting opinions, as well as secondary sources such as analyses and views of the rulings. Offering both historical and contemporary material, each Issues on Trial volume offers a wealth of information on issues currently confronting society.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Protecting the Parental Rights of Unmarried Fathers
Case Overview: Stanley v. Illinois (1972)
Chapter 2: Defining the Rights of Fathers of Illegitimate Children in Adoption Cases
Case Overview: Caban v. Mohammed (1979)
Chapter 3: Putative Fathers Must Register to Protect Their Right to Contest Adoptions
Case Overview: Lehr v. Robertson (1983)
Chapter 4: Denying Same-Sex Couples the Right to Adopt
Case Overview: Lofton, et al. v. Kathleen A. Kearney (2004)

Adoption by Lesbians and Gay Men: A New Dimension in Family Diversity. David M Brodzinsky & Adam Pertman, eds. Foreword by Susan Golombok, PhD. 2012. 266p. Oxford University Press.
From the Dust Jacket: The practice of adoption has changed dramatically over the past half century, with profound implications for children and families. Perhaps the most remarkable and controversial transformation during this time has been the growing willingness of adoption professionals to place children with sexual-minority individuals and couples. Yet, despite considerable research showing that lesbians and gay men can make good parents, they continue to experience difficulties and barriers in many parts of the country in their efforts to adopt and raise children. Indeed, while progress in this area has been significant, it has been impeded by the homophobia and heterosexist attitudes of adoption professionals and the judiciary; by numerous stereotypes and misconceptions about parenting by lesbians and gay men, and by a lack of adequate guidelines and training for establishing best practice standards in working with this rapidly growing group of adoptive parents.

Adoption by Lesbians and Gay Men explores the gamut of historical, legal, sociological, psychological, social casework, and personal issues related to adoption by sexual-minority individuals and couples. Leading experts in a variety of fields address—and often shatter—the controversies, myths, and misconceptions hindering efforts by these individuals to adopt and raise children. What makes this book all the more valuable is that it provides insights and specific recommendations for establishing empirically validated best practices for working with an important sector of our society, for treating all prospective and current parents fairly and equally, and, perhaps most importantly, for increasing a still largely untapped resource for providing families for children who need them.


About the Author: David Brodzinsky, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of Clinical and Development Psychology at Rutgers University and Research Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.

Adam Pertman is Executive Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.


All Families Are Special. Norma Simon. Illustrated by Teresa Flavin. 2003. 29p. (gr ps-3) Albert Whitman & Co.
From the Publisher: When Mrs. Mack says she will soon be a grandmother, her students realize that teachers have families just like they do! Suddenly everyone in the class wants to share information about his or her own unique family. Sarah tells of flying to China with her parents where they adopted her sister, Rachel. Christopher tells about his parents’ divorce. They are still a family, but now he and his brother spend a few days every week at their dad’s apartment. Nick lives with his parents, five siblings, and his grandparents—they need to order three large pizzas for dinner! And Hannah tells how she loves to garden with her two mommies.

All Families Are Special enhances Norma Simon’s classic All Kinds of Families and her more recent All Kinds of Children. Her newest book provides contemporary examples, including blended and international families. Children will be pleased to find families similar to their own here, and to talk about what Mrs. Mack says―“No two families are the same, but every family is special.”


Alternate Currents. Arleen Alleman. 2013. 294p. Xlibris Corp.
A mystery set in Seattle, Washington. As Darcy and her fiance, Mick, are preparing for their wedding, their planning and their lives are interrupted when a good friend mysteriously disappears. Soon, Darcy finds herself in Seattle immersed in the world of domestic partners, alternative reproductive technology, and social bigotry. A shocking child abduction and two murders leave authorities with few clues, as Darcy tries to help and becomes a victim herself.

An American Family. Jon Galluccio & Michael Galluccio, with David Groff. 2001. 274p. St Martin’s Press.
From the Dust Jacket: This is the story of Jon and Michael Galluccio, two gay men living in New Jersey, who become foster parents to Adam, a premature baby born with the AIDS virus and addicted to crack, heroin, marijuana, and alcohol. While nursing Adam through the many medical emergencies of his first year and surviving the daily dramas that all new parents go through, they realize that this child, their son, could be taken back from them at any time by the state, and they decide to try to legally adopt him together. Refused by the state—even as it asks them to care for another at-risk infant—they decide to fight for their son in the courts, and win, setting a precedent for all unmarried couples in New Jersey.

Soon Adam has a younger sister, Madison, and eventually Madison’s half-sister, a teenager named Rosa, who has lived most of her life in a group home, joins the Galluccio family. And in the midst of all this, Jon, himself an adopted child, decides to embark on a search for his own birth mother.

This heartwarming story shows that the American family is vibrantly alive and extending itself in remarkable new directions.


About the Author: Jon and Michael Galluccio live in Paterson, New Jersey, with their three children, Adam, Madison, and Rosa. Their story has been widely followed in the press, with reports in Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as on The Rosie O’Donnell Show, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, and NBC and CBS News.

David Groff is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in the Men on Men 2 and Men on Men 2000 fiction anthologies, as well as in Out magazine, Poetry, New York magazine, POZ, and other periodicals. He is the editor of Out Facts and Whitman’s Men, and co-author with the late Robin Hardy of The Crisis of Desire: AIDS and the Fate of Gay Brotherhood. He lives in New York City.


The American Family. Karen Duda, ed. 2003. 182p. (The Reference Shelf, Vol 75, No 2) HH Wilson.
From the Publisher: The books in this series contain reprints of articles, excerpts from books, addresses on current issues, and studies of social trends in the United States and other countries. There are six separately bound numbers in each volume, all of which are usually published in the same calendar year. Numbers one through five are each devoted to a single subject, providing background information and discussion from various points of view and concluding with a subject index and comprehensive bibliography that lists books, pamphlets, and abstracts of additional articles on the subject. The final number of each volume is a collection of recent speeches, and it contains a cumulative speaker index. Books in the series may be purchased individually or on subscription.

Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, “The Adoption Maze” by Kim Clark and Nancy Shute, from U.S. News & World Report [Mar 12, 2001] (pp. 5-11) and “The Battle to Be a Parent” by Richard Tate, from The Advocate [Jan 30, 2001] (pp. 143-149).


American Family: Things Racial. Stacy Cusulos, MDiv & Barbara Waugh PhD. 2010. 197p. CreateSpace.
From the Back Cover: American Family takes one family’s heartbreaking personal story about racism and homophobia and turns it into a much-needed catalyst to reopen the dialogue about racial prejudice in America. It is a book for:

• Anyone who cares about understanding and healing racism in America

• Anyone who loves someone who has faced discrimination or racial prejudice

• Any parent who has had to fight the system to get their child treated fairly

• Anyone who has faced discrimination or racial prejudice themselves


About the Author: Barbara Waugh, Ph.D., is the author of Soul in the Computer: Story of a Corporate Revolutionary. She recently retired from Hewlett-Packard after 25 years, where most recently she was Director of University Relations for Africa and the Middle East and for women globally.

Stacy Cusulos, M.Div., is a consultant on work force diversity, the author of two published case studies examining issues of race and gender, one of which was filmed, and an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.


Baby Steps: How Lesbian Alternative Insemination Is Changing the World. Amy Agigian. 2004. 250p. Wesleyan University Press.
From the Dust Jacket: Each year hundreds of children around the world are born to lesbian mothers who conceived through alternative insemination. This unique form of family-making creates families with no legal or psychological father, and challenges some of our most basic assumptions about what it means to be a family. How and why do lesbians use insemination to build their families? How could the practice best be protected by law? Is insemination the ultimate in lesbian liberation, or is it a sell-out to nuclear family norms? How are race, class, feminism, and human engineering involved? Drawing on legal findings and personal interviews, as well as medical and psychoanalytic research, sociologist Amy Agigian looks at the impact and potential of this form of reproduction.

Baby Steps is the first in-depth discussion of the issues and questions raised by lesbian insemination, and this book has been designed to serve the interests of general readers and health care providers as well as teachers and students in women’s studies, gay and lesbian studies, sociology, legal studies, and bioethics.


About the Author: Amy Agigian is Associate Professor of Sociology at Suffolk University in Boston, where she is also founder and director of the Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights. She has been published in Gender and Society, Disability Studies Quarterly, and Women’s Studies International Forum. She received her B.A. in Women’s Studies ad Comparative Religion from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Brandeis University. She makes her home in Somerville, Massachusetts.


Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family. Amy Ellis Nutt. 2015. 279p. Random House.
From the Publisher: When Wayne and Kelly Maines adopted identical twin boys, they thought their lives were complete. But it wasn’t long before they noticed a marked difference between Jonas and his brother, Wyatt. Jonas preferred sports and trucks and many of the things little boys were “supposed” to like; but Wyatt liked princess dolls and dress-up and playing Little Mermaid. By the time the twins were toddlers, confusion over Wyatt’s insistence that he was female began to tear the family apart. In the years that followed, the Maineses came to question their long-held views on gender and identity, to accept and embrace Wyatt’s transition to Nicole, and to undergo an emotionally wrenching transformation of their own that would change all their lives forever.

Becoming Nicole chronicles a journey that could have destroyed a family but instead brought it closer together. It’s the story of a mother whose instincts told her that her child needed love and acceptance, not ostracism and disapproval; of a Republican, Air Force veteran father who overcame his deepest fears to become a vocal advocate for trans rights; of a loving brother who bravely stuck up for his twin sister; and of a town forced to confront its prejudices, a school compelled to rewrite its rules, and a courageous community of transgender activists determined to make their voices heard. Ultimately, Becoming Nicole is the story of an extraordinary girl who fought for the right to be herself.

Granted wide-ranging access to personal diaries, home videos, clinical journals, legal documents, medical records, and the Maineses themselves, Amy Ellis Nutt spent almost four years reporting this immersive account of an American family confronting an issue that is at the center of today’s cultural debate. Becoming Nicole will resonate with anyone who’s ever raised a child, felt at odds with society’s conventions and norms, or had to embrace life when it plays out unexpectedly. It’s a story of standing up for your beliefs and yourself—and it will inspire all of us to do the same.


About the Author: Amy Ellis Nutt won the Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for her feature series “The Wreck of the Lady Mary,” about the 2009 sinking of a fishing boat of the New Jersey Coast. She is a health and science writer at The Washington Post, the author of Shadows Bright as Glass, and the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller The Teenage Brain. She was a Nieman Fellow in journalism at Harvard University and Ferris Professor in residence at Princeton, and was for a number of years an adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in Washington, D.C.


Becoming Patrick: A Memoir. Patrick McMahon. 2011. 322p. Deep Root Press.
From the Back Cover: When Pat McMahon risks the love of the mother who raised him by seeking out the mother who gave him away, he transforms from a mild-mannered engineer into a frenetic detective. After he overcomes the challenges of existential angst, bureaucratic roadblocks, and unemployment, the phone call to his first mother releases a torrent of long-buried feelings. During a sometimes turbulent long-distance unfolding, he absorbs her shocking revelations and comes out as gay once again. Their eventual reunion creates a profound bond, even as he navigates waves of conflicting emotions, merges past with present, and embarks on a new future rooted in truth and insights into the universal quest for identity and human connection. He is Becoming Patrick.

About the Author: Patrick McMahon is a writer, photographer, and musician. Born in Chicago, raised in its suburbs and in Missouri, he currently resides in San Diego.


The Best for Me Because Both Mommies Love Me. Dr Ondrea Kay Leal-Georgetti. Illustrated by Avery Liell-Kok. 2014. 28p. (gr ps-3) AuthorHouse (UK).
This is a comforting story about love. This book is about an adoptive mother, a birth mother, and a child. The story is about the excitement of open adoption through the eyes of a child. The book emphasizes that the child feels love from both her birth mother and her adoptive mother. The child understands that adoption was chosen for her out of love.

Between Mom and Jo. Julie Anne Peters. 2006. 240p. (YA) Megan Tingley.
From School Library Journal: Nicholas Nathaniel Thomas Tyler has four first names and two mothers. As the only child in his class with gay parents, he endures the taunts and prejudices of classmates and adults over the years as best he can, drawing reassurance and strength from his parents. Challenges nearly overwhelm him, though, when their relationship ends; Jo moves out, and Nick, now a teenager, is left with Erin, his birth mother. Peters captures the voice of an adolescent sorting through the memories of his childhood in poignant prose that rings with truth. As Nick develops from a boy to a young man, he must address his own sexuality, his ties to his family, and his need to assert his individuality. This novel is a timely exploration of the struggles faced by same-sex couples and their children, and while the issues are significant, the story is never overwhelmed by them. Because Jo lacks biological or legal relationship to Nick, he can be cut off from her with no recourse, which makes his experience slightly different from that of other children of divorcing parents. This coming-of-age novel powerfully portrays the universal pain of a family breakup. It also portrays what is still a weird situation to many people (as reflected in the behavior of Nick’s babysitter) as totally normal from one young man’s point of view. — Beth Gallego, Los Angeles Public Library, North Hollywood. © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Beyond Expectation: Lesbian/Bi/Queer Women and Assisted Conception. Jacquelyne Luce. 2010. 278p. University of Toronto Press.
From the Publisher: An in-depth study of lesbian, bi, and queer women’s experiences of thinking about and trying to become a parent, Beyond Expectation draws on extensive interviews conducted with eight-two women during the late 1990s in British Columbia. Jacquelyne Luce chronicles these women’s reproductive experiences, which took place from 1980 to 2000, a period that saw significant changes in attitudes toward and regulation of assisted reproduction and in the status of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender parents and same-sex partners.

Beyond Expectation looks closely at the changing contexts in which these women’s experiences took place and draws attention to complex issues such as “contracting” relationships, mediating understandings of biology and genetics, and decision-making amidst various social, legal, and medical developments. Luce juxtaposes the stories of her interviewees with the wider public discourses about lesbian/bi/queer parenting and reproductive technology, while highlighting gaps in existing legislative reforms. Most important, Beyond Expectation gives voice to the lived experiences of lesbian, bisexual, and queer women in their endeavor to negotiate kinship at the intersection of reproduction, technology, and politics.


About the Author: Jacquelyne Luce is a research fellow at Zeppelin University.


Billie Girl: A Novel. Vickie Weaver. 2010. 238p. (LeapLit) Leapfrog Press.
From the Back Cover: Abandoned as an infant because of her incessant crying, and left hanging from a tree in a makeshift sling, Billie Girl is rescued by a passing couple, then turned over to a homeless boy who sells her for $5 to the two women who raise her—women who carry a startling secret. Billie Girl’s life, a gender-bending puzzle filled with dark humor and lessons on killing out of love, is a series of pivotal encounters with strangers who struggle along with what they are given. Twin themes of sexuality and euthanasia run throughout Ina journey from hard-dirt Georgia farm to end-of-life nursing home, Billie Girl comes to understand the mercy of killing.

About the Author: Vickie Weaver is a 2006 Pushcart Prize Nominee. Her unpublished collection Below the Heart was a semi-finalist in the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction in 2008, and placed in the top ten of The Parthenon Prize 2007. Her short stories have appeared in Timber Creek Review, Roanoke Review, Alligator Juniper, and the anthology Women. Period. Weaver, who attended college in her mid-40s, settled into the writing life after earning an MFA from Spalding University in Louisville, KY. She teaches at Indiana University East.


Bitter in the Mouth: A Novel. Monique Truong. 2010. 304p. Random House.
From the Publisher: Growing up in the small town of Boiling Springs, North Carolina, in the 70’s and 80’s, Linda believes that she is profoundly different from everyone else, including the members of her own family. “What I know about you, little girl, would break you in two” are the cruel, mysterious last words that Linda’s grandmother ever says to her.

Now in her thirties, Linda looks back at her past when she navigated her way through life with the help of her great-uncle Harper, who loves her and loves to dance, and her best friend Kelly, with whom Linda exchanges almost daily letters. The truth about my family was that we disappointed one another. When I heard the word “disappoint,” I tasted toast, slightly burnt.

For as long as she can remember, Linda has experienced a secret sense—she can “taste” words, which have the power to disrupt, dismay, or delight. She falls for names and what they evoke: Canned peaches. Dill. Orange sherbet. Parsnip (to her great regret). But with crushes comes awareness. As with all bodies, Linda’s is a mystery to her, in this and in other ways. Even as Linda makes her way north to Yale and New York City, she still does not know the truth about her past.

Then, when a personal tragedy compels Linda to return to Boiling Springs, she gets to know a mother she never knew and uncovers a startling story of a life, a family. Revelation is when God tells us the truth. Confession is when we tell it to him.

This astonishing novel questions many assumptions—about what it means to be a family and to be a friend, to be foreign and to be familiar, to be connected and to be disconnected—from others and from the past, our bodies, our histories, and ourselves.


About the Author: Monique Truong was born in Saigon and currently lives in New York City. Her first novel, The Book of Salt, was a New York Times Notable Book. It won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the 2003 Bard Fiction Prize, the Stonewall Book Award-Barbara Gittings Literature Award, and the 7th Annual Asian American Literary Award, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and Britain’s Guardian First Book Award. She is the recipient of the PEN American Robert Bingham Fellowship, and was awarded the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton for 2007-2008.


Blood Strangers: A Memoir. Katherine A Briccetti. 2010. 300p. Heyday Books.
Blood Strangers is a captivating, multi-generational story of an alternative family. In her memoir, Katherine A. Briccetti writes about three generations of missing fathers: her father’s closed adoption in the 1930s, her own adoption by her stepfather in the 1960s, and finally, the second-parent adoption of her sons by her partner in the 1990s. Fascinated from an early age by the holes in her family tree, Briccetti takes it upon herself to search for her father’s birth parents. As her search begins to reveal more tantalizing clues about the family she never knew, she is forced to confront her own tenuous relationship with her two fathers—the father who gave her up as a little girl and the stepfather she struggles to connect with in her adult years. But when she forms her own family with Pam, her longtime partner, Briccetti learns that families can be made under many different circumstances.


Photo by Robert Horne
The Boy at the Window. John Boyd Brandon. 2005. 207p. iUniverse.com.
B>From the Publisher: Scott Morgan and Vallie Taylor are two young, gay men who decide they want nothing more than to adopt a child. They contact Happy Home Adoption Services in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to find out what their chances might be to adopt.

They are investigated, finding out they do qualify. Prepared to adopt a newborn or toddler of any race, they find a fourteen-year-old gay teenager, Nicholas, desperately needs a home. They take the time to get to know him and decide to make him their new son. Nicholas is elusive, never smiling and does not make eye contact, but he agrees to be adopted.

Nicholas starts high school and begins having trouble with a bully. Scott, Vallie, and the rest of their family do what they can to help. Nicholas goes through a frightening experience, which helps him finally realize what a real family is and how much his new family really loves him.


About the Author: John Boyd Brandon (seated in photo) is an artist who lives in Jemez Springs, NM, with his partner of 26 years, Roy Joe Lee. He earned an M.F.A. from Northern Illinois University. John has enjoyed painting and printmaking as well as writing for many years, creating some interesting pieces. The Boy at the Window is his second novel, a sequel to his first, Appropriate Applause (2004).


Breaking the Surface. Greg Louganis, with Eric Marcus. 1995. 288p. Random House.
From the Dust Jacket: No one who watched the 1988 Olympics on television will ever forget seeing Greg Louganis hit his head on the diving board during the ninth dive of the springboard preliminaries. Millions felt his pain and then held their breath as the two-time gold medalist returned to the board only minutes later, with four stitches and a waterproof patch, and executed what was perhaps the best dive of the 1988 Olympics.

People around the world knew they were witnessing a singular moment of extraordinary courage and perseverance. Many still remember the dramatic images of the days that followed: Greg’s spectacular diving despite the patch and the stitches, Greg smiling as he tapped his heart to show how hard it was beating, Greg on the platform praying before his final dive, Greg winning his third and fourth gold medals, the very symbol of the Olympic spirit.

At a team banquet after the diving was over, Greg thanked his coach, Ron O’Brien, saying, “Nobody will ever know what we went through, nobody.” And apart from O’Brien and a handful of people close to Louganis, nobody did know—until the publication of this book—that several months prior to the ’88 Olympics, Greg had tested positive for HIV.

Breaking the Surface is the unflinchingly honest story of a man breaking free of a lifetime of silence and isolation. Born to a young Samoan father and Northern European mother, adopted at nine months by Pete and Frances Louganis, Greg began performing at age three in local dance and acrobatic competitions. He started diving lessons at age nine, and at sixteen he won a silver medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. But despite his astonishing athletic skill and artistry on the diving board, Greg struggled with late-detected dyslexia, prejudice toward his dark skin coloring, and anguish over his sexual orientation, which he felt compelled to hide.

Being in the spotlight intensified difficulties with personal relationships and substance abuse. Like many other elite athletes, Greg found that the highs that came with winning never compensated for the lows. But despite his demons and personal disappointments, he always conveyed a warmth and grace that people remembered long after the ’88 Olympics.

Greg returned to national prominence when he stepped forward at the 1994 Gay Games in New York City and then urged the U.S. Olympic Committee to move the 1996 volleyball preliminaries from the Georgia county that had passed a resolution condemning gay people.

By speaking out at this time, Greg hopes to raise awareness about a number of key issues, including AIDS prevention and research and domestic violence. “I’m doing it now,” he says, “because I want to tell my story in my own words while I still have the chance. I’m finally ready to tell my story. I hope you’re ready to hear it.”


About the Author: Greg Louganis is a four-time Olympic gold-medal diving champion. He lives in Malibu, California, where he raises and trains Harlequin Great Danes.

Eric Marcus is the author of several books, including Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1945 to 1990; Is It a Choice?; and the forthcoming Why Suicide?


Brendan Wolf: A Novel. Brian Malloy. 2007. 289p. St Martin’s Press.
From the Dust Jacket: Who is Brendan Wolf? It all depends on who you ask.

• To the staff of a Minneapolis nursing home, he’s the devoted partner of a much older man who’s recently suffered a debilitating stroke.

• To the women of a conservative, Christian pro-life organization, he’s the tireless volunteer grieving over the recent loss of his wife and their unborn child.

• To one gay activist, he’s the unaffectedly charming, yet directionless and unemployed, man that he’s fallen hopelessly in love with.

• To his brother and his brother’s wife, he’s the lynch-pin of a scam that will net them enough money to start their lives over somewhere new.

• To the general public, he’s an armed and dangerous fugitive.

All of these people—and yet none of them—Brendan Wolf is an ambivalent lover, reluctant conspirator, counterfeit Christian, and, most of all, an unemployed daydreamer obsessed with a dead man.

From the author of the award-winning The Year of Ice, this is a tour de force—a compelling, hilarious, heartbreaking novel about one utterly typical, and completely original, figure: Brendan Wolf.


About the Author: Brian Malloy’s debut novel, The Year of Ice, won the American Library Association’s Alex Award, was a Booklist Editors’ Choice for the “Best of 2002” and a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award and the Violet Quill Award. His first novel for young adults, Twelve Long Months, will be published in 2007. He has taught creative writing at the University of Minnesota, the Loft Literary Center, and Emerson College.


Brent: The Heart Reader. Wynn Wagner. 2012. 256p. Lulu.com.
Brent is a tarot reader, a young man whose adopted family doesn’t like tarot readers or gays or Swedes or anything else that Brent can bring to the discussion. One of his tarot readings is for a young Sioux man, and that’s where Brent’s old life stops. Brent’s finds a whole new life that is full of wonder and adventure, as he learns to read his own heart first. Viking meets Sioux—fireworks. Brent: The Heart Reader is the tender and sexy story of self-awareness and acceptance as this wounded healer lets himself fall in love with a wonderful man.

Bringing Him Home: A Memoir. Aaron Cooper. 2008. 301p. Late August Press.
From the Publisher: On the day Aaron brought five-year-old Jon into his life, a foster child abandoned by a drug-addicted mother, Aaron was an orphan of sorts himself, estranged from the deeply religious parents who for years regarded him, their gay son, as some freak of nature, an abomination in God’s eyes. Once treasured as their gifted male firstborn, he had endured their criticism and condemnation, their bribes and entreaties to forsake the path to what they called a lonesome and wasted life. Finally he cut them off, and with his life partner resolved to create a new family.

Adopting Jon was the way.

A memoir that reads like fiction, Bringing Him Home traces the gay couple’s fifteen-year ordeal parenting a youngster with extraordinary disabilities: the psychological fallout of early emotional neglect, plus Attention Deficit Disorder more severe than doctors had ever seen. The story follows Aaron’s journey from the joy of bringing home one beautiful boy, to the disheartening frustration coping with the child’s intractable defiance, to the ultimate devastation when they could no longer co-exist under one roof.

Despite the emotional toll, the couple shepherded Jon through boarding schools, mental hospitals, doctors and counselors and juvenile hall. They brought to him an unwavering commitment and loyalty that challenged the homophobic grandfather’s belief that homosexuals live lonely and wasted lives.

In Bringing Him Home, three generations wrestle with dashed dreams and the fundamental powerlessness parents face with their children. It is a story of how and why parents love their kids as they do, and how expectations of a child, when rigid and ill-fitting, fuel the deepest unhappiness in both generations.

A tale of reconciliation and reunion, love and acceptance, Bringing Him Home celebrates the triumph of an open heart over ancient prejudice.


About the Author: Aaron Cooper, Ph.D., is a Harvard-educated writer and clinical psychologist with The Family Institute at Northwestern University. He is the author of the award-winning parenting book, I Just Want My Kids To Be Happy: Why You Shouldn’t Say It, Why You Shouldn’t Think It, What You Should Embrace Instead (Late August Press, 2008). His work has appeared in the Off the Rocks anthology (Newtown Writers, 2005) and on BigUglyReview.com. Bringing Him Home won first place in the 2008 Indie Excellence Book Awards (gay-lesbian category).


Brothers by Bond. Brenda Cothern. 2012. 146p. CreateSpace.
Johnny Baxter has been Mike Morgan’s best friend for the last seventeen years and his adopted brother for the last fifteen. They have been attached at the hip since they were kids, all through high school and even through the Army with the buddy system. From being stationed as MPs in Germany to graduating the police Academy and riding in the same patrol car night after night, where one was found, so was the other. They shared everything. Until six months ago ... when Johnny got divorced. Mike’s feelings for his best friend and brother changed; became more than just brotherly love and avoidance was his way of coping. However, the night he traded shifts to avoid his brother, once again, was the night he almost lost him. And more than anything else, that is Mike’s biggest fear. Author Note: Contains m/m sexual practices and is intended for readers of legal age in the country in which they reside.

Building the Family of Our Dreams: A Primer for the LGBT Community. The American Fertility Association. 2011. 19p. (Kindle eBook) American Fertility Association.
A comprehensive handbook for gay men and gay women on becoming parents. All aspects including third party reproduction and adoption.

Challenging Conceptions: Planning a Family By Self-Insemination. Lisa Saffron. 1994. 220p. (Originally published as Getting Pregnant Our Own Way in 1986; an updated edition was self-published in 1998.) Cassell (UK).
From the Back Cover of the 1994 Edition: Challenging Conceptions is a powerful and inspiring book about the experience of lesbian couples and single women creating their own families independently of a social father.

In an authoritative and accessible manner, Saffron sets out the medical, social, political and legal realities of independent motherhood, including a step by step —guide to self-insemination. She provides the reader with essential advice and information on seeking and screening donors, getting pregnant, and on what to do when self-insemination isn’t working.

Through a series of interviews, the author charts the personal experiences of a wide range of mothers, co-parents, children and donors and we learn from their unique perspectives the happiness and fulfilment which their ‘alternative’ families have brought to their lives.

Challenging Conceptions is an invaluable resource for lesbian couples and single women wanting to become mothers. It is a positive affirmation of every woman’s right to choose a family and future of her own.


About the Author: Lisa Saffron was involved with the creation in the 1980s of the Women’s Health Information Centre where she worked for many years. She has written extensively on donor insemination and women’s health, and is the author of Getting Pregnant Our Own Way. She lives in London with her partner and daughter.


Child, Family and State. Stephen Macedo & Iris Marion Young, eds. 2003. 401p. (NOMOS XLIV: Yearbook of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy) New York University Press.
From the Dust Jacket: In an era in which our conception of what constitutes a “normal” family has undergone remarkable changes, questions have arisen regarding the role of the state in “normalizing” families through public policy. In what ways should the law seek to facilitate, or oppose, parenting and child-rearing practices that depart from the “nuclear family” with two heterosexual parents? What should the state’s stance be on single parent families, unwed motherhood, or the adoption of children by gay and lesbian parents? How should authority over child rearing and education be divided between parents and the state? And how should the state deal with the inequalities that arise from birthright citizenship?

Through critical essays divided into four parts—Adoption, Race, and Public Policy; Education and Parental Authority; Same Sex Families; and Birthright Citizenship—Child, Family, and State considers the philosophical, political, and legal dilemmas that surround these difficult and divisive questions. An invaluable resource in these contentious debates, Child, Family, and State illuminates the moral questions that lie before policymakers and citizens when contemplating the future of children and families.


About the Author: Stephen Macedo is Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values, and Director of the University Center for Human Values, at Princeton University.

Iris Marion Young is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.


Chimpy Discovers His Family. James LaCroce, PhD. Illustrated by the Author. 2010. 74p. (gr ps-3) CreateSpace.
Chimpy Discovers His Family is the story of an orphan who dreams of being adopted. When Chimpy meets his ideal parents, Juan and Benji, he is confused to find that they can’t adopt him because they are gay. Refusing to accept this, Chimpy begins an amazing journey. Chimpy Discovers His Family affirms that it doesn’t matter who your parents are as long as they love, understand, and accept you. It’s a story for anyone who has ever felt different. About the Author: James LaCroce uses drawings and words to bring Chimpy’s journey to life. He is an author and psychologist who lives and works in San Francisco, CA. He has been using Chimpy as a part of his work with children and families for the past ten years and has found that adults and kids love him. In his free time, Dr. LaCroce enjoys spending time with his family and his dog, Enzo.

Chimpy Saves the Neighborhood. James LaCroce. Illustrated by the Author. 2014. 34p. (gr ps-3) CreateSpace.
The adventures of everyone’s favorite chimp continues in this follow-up to the critically acclaimed graphic story, Chimpy Discovers His Family. Chimpy and his best pal, Matthew Chicken, attempt to protect their neighborhood from violence targeting the LGBT community and end up having another adventure. James LaCroce takes on the serious issue of violence against the LGBT community through use of words and drawings that is engaging for people of all ages.

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