DADsquared℠

By Dara Fisher On Sunday morning I was in the car with my husband on our way to Palm Springs to enjoy my only day off when I used my phone to go online and see what was going on in the World.    At the moment, I am working about 75 hours a week between my real job and the new position I took at a local non-profit for kids so I haven’t been tuned into most of what is happening these days.    As I went through my Facebook feed, I kept seeing Orlando so I clicked on a link and it felt like I had been punched in the chest.   I couldn’t breathe and trying to speak to my husband about what I was reading was difficult because I couldn’t stop crying.   There are so many things wrong with this horrific event.   First and foremost, we have lost 49 members of our community.   That, in and of itself, is a tragedy.   Beyond that, this was the result of so many things that our wrong with the human race.   I have th...

By Dara Fisher Recently I had a conversation with a friend from high school that caused the wheels in my head to start turning.   He is gay, though we’ve been friends since before he came to that realization.   He jokingly called me a “fag hag” and I was taken aback.   I’ve had several people call me that name before but they were folks that didn’t know me personally or at least well enough to know that my existence in the gay community is one I was born into, not chosen as a social situation.   This friend however is very familiar with my family and knows my gay parents.   When I protested his label by saying that I’m not a fag hag but rather a member of the gay community, he informed me in no uncertain terms that I was not actually part of the gay community because I am not a lesbian myself.   We had a few little exchanges and ultimately, we left at the agree to disagree point because he wasn’t willing to listen to my poin...

By Dara Fischer Henry Amador recently wrote an excellent article for The Next Family entitled, "Eight Things These Gay Dads Don't Want To Hear"  The article was so clever and hit the nail right on the head.  After reading the blog, I got to thinking about all the questions I have been asked over the years being raised by gay parents, yes, a gay mom and a gay dad! I have picked just a few to share. 1. Are you adopted? No, I am not adopted.  I am genetically 50% my Mom and 50% my Dad.  Though depending on which parent I had ticked off that day, those percentages would increase or decrease.  I also have two non-biological parents, my Terri, whom I have written about before and my Mom’s partner.  I do not differentiate between my parents.  Though I will admit to liking Terri more than my Dad most of the time.  Dad can cook but Terri was a hairdresser who could not only perm my hair but brush it without ripping it out....

Henry and his husband live in Florida, where they were one of the first gay couples to adopt after the state’s infamous ban on gay adoption was struck down. Now he’s paving whole new roads of awareness by becoming a voice for gay fathers everywhere. He writes for DADsquared ,  It's Conceivable Now ,  Gay Parenting Magazine  and  ErgoBaby Alison Aucoin is the happy single (not co-parenting) lesbian mom of a 5½ year-old daughter she adopted from Ethiopia. She runs her own consulting firm that provides organizational development, fundraising, and grant writing services to non-profit organizations around the country and also writes for  The Nervous Breakdown . "Who am I? That’s simple. I am a gay parent that’s treated like a second class citizen and I am done taking it.  Every day I am in the battlefields, in my kid’s ...