Half Of Hispanic Lesbian Couples Have Kids

A new analysis of census figures reports that more than half of America's Latino lesbian live-in couples are raising a child.
By comparison, 32 percent of white lesbian couples are raising a child, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute. The Institute used 2000 Census figures that tracked same-sex households in which respondents identified another person in the home as their "unmarried partner."
The findings are no surprise to Alicia Vega, a board member of Amigas Latinas, a Chicago-based organization for Hispanic lesbians. The numbers, she believes, reflect traditional Latino culture in a couple of ways.
Vega said newcomers to Amigas Latinas meetings are often women who have been married to men or have tried to live as heterosexuals. The women, said Vega, have attempted to fulfill a traditional Latino role of women as wives and mothers, she said.
Either arriving in this country as immigrants or breaking away from cultural expectations, the women who come to Amigas Latinas meetings are often distraught.
"They'll say, 'I think I'm a lesbian and I don't know what to do,'" Vega said. Some already have children.
Even after Latinas declare their orientation, they do not lose the culture's value in family, added Vega, 35, who, with her partner, Maria Cuevas, 38, is aiming to have children through artificial insemination.
Fifty-four percent of female Hispanic same-sex households are raising at least one child under 18. In Chicago, 59 percent of Hispanic lesbian couples are raising a child. Half of the lesbian Hispanic couples in Chicago are raising a biological child of one of the partners.

Report also looks at men

The report, which also looks at same-sex households of men, was produced to support same-sex marriages by illustrating a cross section of the country's gay and lesbian population, researcher Jason Cianciotto said.
The report stated that 41 percent of male Hispanic same-sex couples were raising at least one child under 18, compared to 19 percent of white male homosexual couples.
Hispanic same-sex couples are so designated if either partner is Hispanic.
Cianciotto writes that Hispanics generally hold more conservative social views on homosexuality than other Americans. A national survey of Latinos by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2002 found that 72 percent believe that homosexual sex between adults is "unacceptable," compared to 59 percent of whites.
Rick Garcia, the policy director of Equality Illinois who has been with his male partner for over 20 years, said while Hispanic families may be more likely to disapprove, the value of family tends to trump outright rejection by relatives.
Vega, a Mexican-American social worker, said her "traditional" parents disapproved when she told them she was a lesbian. "It was a devastating experience, particularly for my mother."
Vega legally married her partner in Canada in June of 2004 but had a ceremony in Oak Brook a couple of months later.
Vega wasn't sure her parents would attend. At the last minute, they did -- and walked her down the aisle.
from Chicago Sun-Times