A day to celebrate all parents, including LGBTQ parents, in NC
There is Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and now in North Carolina, a day to celebrate parents who fall outside that gender binary.
A state lawmaker is working to make North Carolina, once known nationally for HB2, more inclusive.
Rep. Vernetta Alston, a Durham Democrat, is one of few openly LGBTQ members of the General Assembly. She and her wife, Courtney, have two small children.
Gov. Roy Cooper signed a proclamation Friday that makes Dec. 6 Gender Expansive Parents’ Day. Alston submitted the formal proclamation process this summer. The Dec. 6 date was chosen because it does not conflict with any other commemoration. And also, Alston “wanted to bring a little joy to 2020.”
Making it an official day shows support for the LGBTQ community generally, she said in a phone interview Friday, but it also is about “recognizing we’re a community that’s diverse and ... to recognize specifically this subset of parents that can get lost in conversations about parenting.”
Alston’s children are three months old and 3 years old.
“I identify as female, but for me, in our life, for our kids, my wife is their mom,” Alston said, so Mother’s Day applies to her wife. Their family celebrates Alston on a different day in May.
“Why should I, or anyone situated similarly, celebrate in isolation?” she said. Now folks who don’t fit into a gender binary, which means classifying everyone as female or male, can celebrate on the same day, she said.
Durham resident Cara Isher-Witt and her wife have an 18-month-old child and another on the way. Isher-Witt carried their first child and her wife is pregnant with their second.
“I was surprised but really pleasantly so because I didn’t know anything like this was in the works,” Isher-Witt said about the day in a phone interview on Friday. She said the proclamation feels really validating. It is symbolic, but more than that.
“About halfway through my pregnancy, I realized I didn’t want to be a “mom” or a “mama” — I wanted desperately to be a parent. We landed on “Baba.”” Isher-Witt’s wife is celebrated on Mother’s Day. This year they decided to celebrate Isher-Witt’s parent role on July 4, and called it “independence from binary day.”
She said the first time she heard the term gender expansive, she liked it because she feels like her gender is expanding.
“I’m LGBTQ, I’m queer. Non-binary leaning is a way I describe myself,” Isher-Witt said. A proclamation for Gender Expansive Parents’ Day is symbolic in that it is just words on paper, she said. People in small towns may not hear about it and it doesn’t make her immediately safer on the streets.
“But symbols are important. People get really emotional and with good reason about symbols ... To take something so traditional as a parents’ day and effectively queer it, is to say also, this is for [us] too,” Isher-Witt said.
Gender expansiveness isn’t a trend or a cry for attention or anything else people say to negate something, she said. It says, “we see you.”
Isher-Witt said she will likely celebrate Sunday with a hike and “good family time.”
The executive director of Equality NC, the LGBTQ rights group, told The News & Observer in an email Friday that they are “thrilled” Cooper has chosen to celebrate the diversity of families across the state, and applauded Alston’s leadership.
“There is no one set way to define a family, nor is there is any one specific way to define parenthood,” Kendra R. Johnson said.
“Equality NC hopes that families and parents all across our state feel a sense of pride today in this proclamation that gender identity or expression doesn’t define parenthood — love does,” Johnson said.
Since serving on the Durham City Council, Alston has worked quietly to make government more inclusive. She was elected to her first and only council term in 2017, and initiated conversations with city leaders about making language more gender inclusive on city applications and forms. In early 2019, Alston, who is African American, was uninvited to speak at a Black History Month observance at Immaculata Catholic School in Durham, where she was once a student. After outcry from Immaculata students and parents, she was reinvited to speak, and did.
At the time, Alston applauded students “for the lessons they are teaching all of us about resilience, overcoming bigotry and the power that we have to create change when we stand up for each other.”
Alston was appointed to the state House District 29 seat left vacant after Rep. MaryAnn Black died in March of this year. Alston was elected unopposed to the seat in November. Alston is an attorney who worked previously for the Center for Death Penalty Litigation.
HB2 and the NCGA
The General Assembly’s long session begins in January.
Part of the controversial House Bill 2 — known as the “bathroom bill” because one of its provisions required North Carolinians in schools and other government buildings to use the bathroom corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate — expired Tuesday.
While HB2 was mostly overturned, a ban on local governments passing new LGBTQ protections had remained. That’s now gone. Local governments have not yet passed any new protections, The News & Observer previously reported.
Alston said she doesn’t approach her work in the legislature any differently than she does any other day of her life.
“I’m always prepared to be unique in those kinds of spaces, as one of only a few openly LGBTQ, Black folks, woman or all of the above,” she said. “It’s no different than going into a grocery store.”
Alston doesn’t yet have specific plans for proposing new legislation this session. She said she’s doing research and talking to stakeholders about possible LGBTQ policy issues to pursue.
The United Nations proclaimed an annual Global Day of Parents starting in 2012.
The proclamation Cooper signed on Friday says that “all parents, regardless of gestational relationship to a child, gender identity, or gender expression, deserve to be celebrated for the love and nurturing they give to their children.” The proclamation also recognizes the “work and sacrifice of non-binary, agender and other gender expansive parents ... is key to our efforts to create a more inclusive State.”
Alston said her family might celebrate Gender Expansive Parents’ Day on Sunday with a walk or something else that falls within COVID-19 guidelines.
One thing she’d like to do, like many parents of young children: get to sleep in.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Domecast politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Megaphone, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published December 4, 2020 at 5:40 PM with the headline "A day to celebrate all parents, including LGBTQ parents, in NC."