Articles written by: Polly Pagenhart

sideling Polly has been blogging about her experience as a lesbian parent since 2006, at Lesbian Dad, which has been recognized with awards from the Weblog Awards, the Bloggies, About.com, Red Tricycle, Circle of Moms, and Babble. She lives with her partner and their two elementary school-aged children in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she works for her regional LGBT family org. On Twitter, she's @LesbianDad.

Coke and Chevy step up with LGBTQ families in Olympics ads
News & Politics

Coke and Chevy step up with LGBTQ families in Olympics ads

If you’ve been watching the Olympics and paying attention to the commercials, you’ll have seen a few signs that is hasn’t just been President Obama, Billie Jean King, and LGBTQ activists transmitting messages about LGBTQ people and families. I wasn’t watching – got no cable, plus, unlike some of my […]

Does this new navbar make us look phat?
News from the community

Does this new navbar make us look phat?

You know you are lost to the geekery of website design when redoing the internal page structure and navigation are cause for a thrilling announcement.  And yet! All outward-facing signposts also indicate real internal things, and so too does our spanking-new navigational bar layout indicate an evolution in our focus. […]

Lee Free, Charmin Ultra, and Mor Erlich, of Sez Me. [PHOTO CREDIT: MOR ERLICH]
Culture / Media

TGIF Video: Sez Me!

My kids watch stuff on screens, as do many, many kids. Before I was a parent, I was convinced they never would – you know, because they’d be busy doing macramé, carving quill pens out of bird feathers we’d have found on a hike, writing poetry in iambic pentameter, and […]

"Being fathers is getting our daughters up at 5:30 am making breakfast getting them dressed for school and putting them on the bus by 6:30 .This is a typical day in our household . It's not easy but we enjoy every moment and eveny minute of #fatherhood . #proudfathers #blackfathers #prouddads #gaydads" [PHOTO CREDIT: KORDALENKALEB]
Culture / Media

Instagramming family while Black and gay

Since last September, Kordale and Kaleb have been posting Instagram photos of their everyday lives as they raise their three kids in Atlanta, GA. They bought a beautiful 5-bedroom house, and are leading the fabulously ordinary family life of hard-working, corporate-employed, college grads. With this one exception: because they are both […]

No Name Calling Week: January 20-24
Family / School

No Name Calling Week: January 20-24

Two of my favorite organizations, Groundspark and GLSEN, are up to something I’m a huge proponent of: celebrating kindness. No Name-Calling Week is happening January 20 through 24th. And one of the great things about it is that you’ll have a precious opportunity to access two of Groundspark’s documentary films for free: […]

PHOTO SOURCE: POLLY PAGENHART
Life

2013: The Year in VQ Review

A person can get pretty stumped trying to sum up an entire year. Hell, James Joyce used up well over 600 pages just trying to depict one day in a guy’s life. Still, one must try. This year has been a really big one for us VillageQ people, and a […]

PHOTO CREDIT: POLLY PAGENHART
Family / Grief & loss

Grief for the holidays

Last Saturday night, dozens of friends, neighbors, and family gathered ‘round our piano for a holiday caroling party.  We’ve held one every year since we moved into our home, but this year, I kept myself busy in the kitchen, and sang not one note.  Every year since we moved into […]

VQ Comes Out: Polly Pagenhart
Life

VQ Comes Out: Polly Pagenhart

Our last VQ Comes Out installment closes out October and LGBT History month. It’s been quite a journey, with nine different stories. We all have come out in a huge variety of ways – slowly and painfully, quick and painlessly – yet with some fascinating commonalities.   Gathering them together here […]

TGIF Video: Harvey Milk implores you to come out
Media / News & Politics

TGIF Video: Harvey Milk implores you to come out

Buttoning up a full day of National Coming Out Day posts is an audio clip, playing over accompanying still pictures, of a speech Harvey Milk gave November 7, 1978, the night the Briggs Initiative was defeated. Failed gubernatorial candidate Briggs authored and championed California Proposition 6, which would have mandated […]

TGIF Video: It Gets Better, the Wells Fargo version
Media

TGIF Video: It Gets Better, the Wells Fargo version

It’s been over three years since Dan Savage and Terry Miller uploaded an eight and a half minute video to YouTube with the simple, focussed message: “It gets better.”  Over  50,000 user-produced videos and millions of views later, the It Gets Better Project is a non-profit organization with global reach (web sites […]