Score one for equality.  Well, at least for same sex parents anyway.

Starting sometime in 2011, passports will become “gender neutral” when it comes to identifying parental units.  Up until now, guardians were named as Mother or Father.  Now, interestingly enough, passports will classify guardians as either “Parent 1” or “Parent 2”.

To some, the whole passport dilemma may seem insignificant.  But, in all honesty, the recent switch is another categorical win for same sex parents.  Slowly but surely, recognition for modern families with two mommies or two daddies is becoming more mainstream.  The state department said the “improvements” were being implemented “to provide a gender neutral description of a child’s parents and in recognition of different types of families.”

You can, once again, thank the folks at the HRC for getting the ball rolling on that one.  Fred Sainz, vice president of the Human Rights Campaign, called the change “a positive step forward for all American families. It was time that the federal government acknowledged the reality that hundreds of thousands of kids in this country are being raised by same-sex parents.”

Of course, Fox News had a screaming headline over the weekend saying:  “Is safety being nixed in favor of political correctness?” No, safety is not being nixed, but feeling like a second-class citizen sure is.   Think about two mommies, one of them forced to check the “Daddy” box on the application.  It’ll soon be a thing of the past.  And so will explaining semantics to some arbitrary TSA agent.