2×02 Family Equality

Daddy Squared: The Gay Dads Podcast show

Summary: For our Family Equality Day special we brought on Stan J. Sloan, CEO of Family Equality Council, to speak about the work of the organization and about gay men who don't have kids and would like to connect with LGBTQ families. International Family Equality Day celebrates the diversity of LGBTQ families around the world, and takes place every year on the first Sunday in May. By celebrating International Family Equality Day, <a href="https://www.familyequality.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Family Equality Council </a>raises awareness among politicians and the general public about the need for equal treatment and recognition for all families, regardless of the sexual orientation or gender identity of their family’s members. To mark this important day of visibility that kicks off Family Equality Week, we turned to Stan Sloan, Chief Executive Officer of Family Equality Council, to talk about the organization's work and how each of us can contribute for the sake of a better future for our kids' generation. “Our research has shown that 77% of millennial LGBTQ people are contemplating having children and 63% of them are actually planning on it, which represents a huge explosion in the decade ahead for LGBTQ families,” Stan says. “The goal of Family Equality Council is that every one of those millennials who wants to plan a family is able to do so. Our goal is to help people no matter where they are geographically, no matter what their income level, live their dream of becoming a parent.” Family Equality Council now has <a href="https://www.familyequality.org/family-support/national-network-lgbtq-family-groups/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">over a hundred chapters</a> spread out across the United States that are doing synchronized activities to raise the visibility of LGBTQ families. "Every time we raise our visibility, discrimination that people are still facing in red states and rural areas gets easier.” - Stan J. Sloan An issue that we wanted to tackle on this family-oriented episode is gay men who don’t have kids and want them, somehow, in their lives. “Those of us who are in our fifties and sixties and seventies, when we were young we never imagined that we would be able to get married, let alone the idea of forming our own families,” Sloan says. “There’s a small fraction of us who pressed for it and they did make it happen but for the vast majority of us it just wasn’t an option, it was not something that we thought about. “For folks around my age there was a pain in feeling we didn’t have that option and ‘excuses’ like ‘I’m too old now’ or ‘I’m too selfish’ were things that we kind of told ourselves to ease our pain a little bit. If I was younger Jan and I would be having a baby, I feel certain of it. And I’m not. No criticism, of course, of younger people who are not having kids, but I’m pretty sure we’d have kids if we were a generation younger.” Family Equality Council’s mission is to advance legal and lived equality for LGBTQ families, and for those who wish to form them, through building community, changing hearts and minds, and driving policy change. One of the most prominent activities of Family Equality Council is <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.familyequality.org/events/family-week/" target="_blank">Family Week in Provincetown.</a> This is the largest annual gathering of lesbian, gay, bisexual,

2×02 Family Equality

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