Daily Mail UK Article: Gay Father Battles Lesbian Couple To See His Two Kids!!!
The gay father, the lesbian partners and a battle over the future of two children
By Vanessa Allen and Colin Fernandez
Last updated at 1:38 AM on 9th November 2010
Battle: The country’s most senior civil judge, Lord Neuberger, is hearing the case brought by a lesbian mother against the gay father of her children
A gay man who fathered two children with a lesbian was at the centre of a bitter ‘tug of love’ custody battle yesterday.
The mother and her civil partner took legal action after a judge ordered the children should spend almost half the year with their father, including more than 100 overnight stays.
The women argue that they are the main carers and the children should live with them, with more limited contact with the father.
The brother and sister, aged nine and seven, are ‘aware of difficulties between mummy and daddy’, the Court of Appeal was told. Relations between the women and the man broke down over claims he was domineering and controlling.
Family groups said the case highlighted the potential pitfalls of conceiving children by artificial insemination, outside of a relationship.
Yesterday the court heard that the 51-year-old man, a wealthy company director, placed an advert in the Gay Times newspaper in 1999, pleading to become a father.
It read: ‘Gay guy wants to be a dad. White, handsome, solvent 30s, professional in happy relationship, non-scene, has everything but kids.
‘Looking for a similar female couple who wants to have kids. I require a little involvement. I have a lot to offer.’
The lesbian couple replied and the children were conceived through artificial insemination.
Both women were happy for the father to have contact with the children, but have been their main carers since birth and considered themselves their parents, the court was told.
Alex Verdan QC, for the father, said the man had always been clear that he wanted to be involved in the children’s lives and upbringing.
The barrister said the father had taken the children to doctors’ appointments and paid their school fees, adding: ‘This is not a case of two mummies.’
But the mother, 41, claimed the father had tried to ‘marginalise’ her 39-year-old partner of 20 years, despite the pair ‘marrying’ in a civil partnership ceremony.
Complicated: The children were fathered using sperm from a man who advertised in ‘Gay Times’. The biological mother has accused the man of trying to marginalise her lesbian partner (file picture)
The father, who lives in a three-storey townhouse on the coast in West Sussex with his long-term boyfriend, took the case to court earlier this year. In June he was awarded a shared residence order which meant the children would spend almost half the year with him. County court judge Simon Barker QC said at the time that he had been struck by the intensity of the women’s dislike for the children’s father.
But the women appealed, claiming it was in the children’s best interests to live with them.
June Venters QC, for the women, told the Appeal Court that the children needed to know which house was their permanent home and ‘who we all are in their lives’. She said the women feared the children would be emotionally scarred by the increasingly hostile custody battle, adding that there was a lengthy history of accusation and counter-accusation between the warring sides.
The women claim the father favoured his son over his daughter when he bought the boy a puppy.
They have also accused him of trying to ‘overpower’ them.
Miss Venters said: ‘They genuinely are motivated by concerns for the children, not by hostility towards the father.’
Mr Verdan, for the father, said the women had made ‘a very hostile application’ to have the father stripped of his parental rights.
He said the father had offered to agree to a ‘three-way residency order’, to include the mother’s partner, but it had not been accepted. The trio, who have not received legal aid for their custody battle, were unavailable for comment last night.
The case will be settled by the country’s most senior civil judge, Master of the Rolls Lord Neuberger, sitting with Lord Justice Patten and Lady Justice Black. They are expected to rule later this year.
Norman Wells, of the Family Education Trust, said: ‘This case raises a whole host of questions about the ethics of artificial insemination by donor. Just because we have the technology to do something doesn’t necessarily make it desirable or socially beneficial.
‘It is always a recipe for disaster to try to create children to order by artificial means to satisfy the desires of natural parents who are unrelated and lack a shared commitment to parenting.’
SF Gate Article: Where Are The Black Academic Scholars & Why Is Black Studies Becoming White Dominated?
What black studies lacks / Phenomenon is either a nod to our common heritage or a rip-off
The problem with black studies programs is that there are too few black professors teaching in them.
A few weeks ago, a group of academics met at the Oakland Marriott hotel for the annual American Studies Association convention. These professors taught American studies all over the world — including in Japan, China, Russia, Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. In addition to being recognized for bringing more international scholars to American studies, Emory Elliott, a professor at UC Riverside, was chosen as president of the organization because he has a reputation of being able to attract African American scholars.
“I grew up in a racially mixed neighborhood in Baltimore,” he said when I talked to him later by telephone. “I wasn’t supposed to go to college. I was known in the neighborhood as the white kid.” Each year, Elliott goes to traditional black college such as Morehouse and Spelman, recruiting students for his doctorate program.
At the convention, I met in the lounge with a group of black scholars and professors: Doug Daniels and Clyde Woods, both of UC Santa Barbara; Rashida Braggs of Stanford University; James Miller of George Washington University, and Werner Sollors of Harvard, the only member of the group who is white. Miller was having a conversation with Sollors about the lack of black scholars at the convention, in academia, and, even, African American studies.
“The fact of the matter is that African American studies emerged at a historical time when thousands and thousands of working-class blacks hit the predominantly white institutions back in the ’70s and caused moral panic in the country,” Miller said. “There was an urgent need to accommodate to the demands of the folks coming in.”
Sollors agreed.
“When you talk about African American studies,” Miller went on, “you are not always talking about African American scholars.” He glanced at us and laughed. “I’d say that there are more white scholars in African American studies than there are African Americans.” He took a swig of his beer. “You can see this as a good thing, as a sign of progress — a sign that the mainstream has really appropriated African American studies as a common heritage — or you can see it as a rip-off!”
We all laughed. Assistant Professor Kalenda Eaton of the University of Nebraska voted for rip-off. She said she had attended many sessions at the conference, but had seen only a few black presenters. For example, when she went to the session called “Afro/Asian Art and Activism in the 1960s and Post-60s Era,” she expected to see black participants, but although the room was packed, there were no blacks on the panel and only one or two in the audience. She was disappointed.
Out of 300 sessions in three days, about 60 were about black topics. Of the 1,300 presenters, only about 30, or 2.3 percent, were African American.
In walking through the book display at the conference, I saw many books published by university presses. Many of these books had black faces on the cover, but when I turned them over, there was invariably the white face of the author.
I caught up with Emory Elliott at the reception and asked about the lack of black professors teaching in the African American studies programs across the country. He admitted the failure of the association to solve this problem, but he explained that there were not enough blacks with the training to take over these opportunities to teach African American culture.
“We were the victim of our own success,” he said. “When black professors began to come into the university system, they were sent to American studies, because American studies was interdisciplinary. But when black studies became its own program, the black professors moved out of American studies, leaving it to white men.”
That evening at a reception, I asked Kalenda Eaton what she thought of the white scholars and their interest in black studies. Although she has been to many conventions where black studies is a hot issue, Eaton said she believes that what is missing from most white scholars is “the genuine feeling” for scholarship.
“Most of the white scholars are not arrogant,” she said, “But too many of them are.
“The most troubling thing,” she said, “is when they are surrounded by white colleagues who give them support so that they don’t have to be accountable to any black person, or even to see one. Whites don’t openly challenge them. Whites write the books so they don’t have to pay any mind to what blacks have to say. They don’t have to be confronted by blacks.”
Although black scholars won’t say it in public, she told me, many of them say in private conversations what they really think: that too many white scholars are interested in black studies “because of the opportunity.”
“For the past 10 or 15 years, (black culture) has been a hot topic,” she said. You always find whites theorizing about us, and finding us to be fascinating.”
And, despite the best efforts of committed white professors such as Sollors and Elliott, the problem of too few black professors in black studies programs persists.
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