From the Equality Maryland press release:

“The American Civil Liberties Union and Equality Maryland today denounced the divided Maryland Court of Appeals decision upholding a state law that bars same-sex couples from marrying and accessing the hundreds of family protections provided to married couples and their children under state law.

The vote in the case was 4 to 3. One of the dissenting judges said the legislature should either be required to adopt civil unions or marriage. The other two said that the case should be sent back to the lower court for a trial to see if government has a good enough reason to bar same-sex couples from marriage.

The majority opinion rejects the ACLU’s arguments that barring same-sex couples from marriage is sex discrimination. While the court agrees that marriage is a fundamental right, it says there is no fundamental right to marry someone of the same sex. The court says gay people aren’t entitled to special protection from the court because, although there has been a history of unfair discrimination against gay people, as a group gay people are not politically powerless. The court then uses the least demanding form of constitutional analysis to determine if the ban violates the state’s equal protection guarantees, and says that excluding same-sex couples from marriage might rationally be related to fostering procreation, so the state can continue to deny same-sex couples the ability to marry and its family protections.”

Speaking of fostering procreation, I was really hoping that my baby might be able to enjoy some of the benefits of having legally married parents, but bigotry and ignorance have won the day in Maryland.

Alrighty, that said, who do I think I am? I live in the DC metro area. My partner and I have been together for six years. She works for Big Grassroots Queer Organization (not the one that owns it’s own multi-million dollar building in downtown DC but you know, that other one, the one that has been around for over 30 years) in fundraising. She walks the line between being “trans identified” and “gender-queer” and you’ll have to ask her what exactly that means and you might get a different answer on any given day. We have three fairly well-behaved but spoiled feline children. We had a very long trying to conceive process that culminated in 1.5 cycles of IVF and a pregnancy currently 21 weeks along. It is downright surreal after all we went through that there is now a baby girl thumping around in my belly. If you go to my personal blog and click on the fertilicoaster tag you will find all the details. We used a known donor who will be “special uncle” to our child(ren.) I am in a Phd program in Applied Developmental Psychology. This means that I am getting a research degree in psychology and human development with a focus on applied uses of that research and knowledge. I am not getting training to be a therapist or counselor or to do psychological testing. I am getting training in teaching and communicating research findings to policymakers, educators, administrators, and others who are interested in child development research. Most people with a degree like mine go into research either at a research consulting company or university. I intend to (eventually) do child advocacy work, policy work, or consulting. I finished all my classes last spring so now there is just that pesky dissertation to complete.

I have plenty to write about out of my own head, but I’d just love it if you would ask me questions. They can be related to stuff you are currently seeing in your own kids, stuff you are worried about for later, or about stuff you see reported on the news and wonder about or anything else related to human development. Supposedly I am qualified to teach all this stuff to undergrads, so test me!