By David K. Seitz © 2007
Most everyone participating in the national conversation about LGBT people would agree that children with LGBT parents play an important role in that conversation. We hear “think of the children!” from our family advocates and from our social conservative opponents in equal measure.
But in a culture that widely held to a “children are to be seen and not heard” ethic not two generations ago, invoking the well-being of “the children” often plays out conceptually. What about the children? What do they think?
Well, plenty, of course! So says Meredith Fenton, program director for Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere (COLAGE), a national organization currently serving over 60 chapters. COLAGE operates on the premise that children with LGBT parents should not only be seen and heard, but given opportunities to grow and lead in community with one another.
COLAGErs, as they are called, do this in a range of ways, building community in volunteer-run, autonomous chapters throughout the country. Though chapters vary widely in structure, size, and activity, COLAGEr empowerment and leadership, says Fenton, are the common denominators.
“Our youngest chapter leader is 12 years old,” she says. “We have chapter leaders who are teenagers. We have chapters run largely by adults. COLAGE Boston, COLAGE Bay Area, and COLAGE New York all have adults kind of running programs for other adults, but also mostly focused on young people.
“We even have chapters run primarily by parents. COLAGE New Orleans is run by a dad who has a younger kid, but he definitely also woks with the older kids in that chapter, to make sure they’re having a say. A parent might do all the logistical work, but the COLAGErs run the organization.”
Empowerment also comes through chapter autonomy; the national COLAGE organization functions as a resource for member chapters.
“We help organizations explore the options,” Fenton says. “Some do an event every month, some every couple of months. Eventually, we encourage chapters to think about some of the projects that might interest them, about some of the laws in their state we might want to think about ways to impact. But even then, it’s about what they want, if they want us to do an event or speak or do a training or strategic visioning workshop with them.”
Importantly, Fenton points out, support from the national organization comes from folks who’ve been there.
“One of the things that’s really unique about the COLAGE model is that we ourselves [referring to staff and adult organizers] are adults with LGBT parents,” she says. “We have an intergenerational model of peer support. This lets the youth have access to adults who have likewise had the experience of LGBT parents. The adults, acting as de facto big siblings, help uniquely celebrate all that’s uniquely fabulous about our parents.”
Fenton says this further helps to create COLAGEr-only spaces, which are a critical part of the COLAGE experience. COLAGEr-only chapter meetings and discussions create space for children, youth, and adults with LGBT parents to nurture unique identities in community.
The safety and support found in COLAGEr-only spaces, furthermore, helps many participants to find their voices as advocates for their families in the political arena. Fenton says individual COLAGE chapters have seen success in policy advocacy on a broad swath of issues in recent years. True to COLAGE’s autonomous, grassroots form, each chapter sets its own agenda, looking to the national organization for key resources (notably including the media-savvy National Speak OUT network) and strategic support.
“A lot of the policy issues that COLAGE ends up impacting are state-level policies, many state-level laws that either promote or attack family recognition: civil unions, domestic partner benefits, second partner adoption, marriage, those kinds of things that touch on family formation,” she says. “We’re also very concerned about things that would impact parents’ rights toward adoption or foster care, or even access to reproductive technologies.”
Most recently, COLAGErs have influenced key decisions around family recognition.
“One of the exciting things that happened last year during the school year was that both New Jersey and Connecticut, and young people who were part of COLAGE were part of securing those rights,” says Fenton. “In New Jersey, a young woman named Sydney testified before the judiciary committee about her two moms and what it meant to her to be able to have her family protected equally to other families.
“The same thing happened in Connecticut. One of our younger girls, Becca, spoke out for marriage equality, for partner recognition. She definitely made a difference. Legislators told her that they were rethinking their vote after hearing her talk about her experience having two dads, what that’s led to in school, and what it’s like. She really made them rethink what it’s like to not have recognition.”
Policymakers, of course, are merely the latest to wake up to what COLAGErs have to say. Between the ubiquity of children, youth, and adults with LGBT parents—if “we are everywhere,” so, by extension, are our children—and the flexibility, community, and success of the COLAGE model, Fenton says the organization has seen an explosion of interest across the country.
“We’re always getting requests from folks who want to start new groups,” she says. “Youth need to know that they’re part of a community, that they’re not alone.
“With the pride and empowerment that come with community, then they want to take ownership over it. Once this happens, youth begin to build the skills and opportunities they need to be leaders, to make the kind of world they want to see, not just regarding LGBT families, but on any issues that impact youth.”
© 2007 by David K. Seitz, and published by Rainbow Rumpus. All rights reserved.
