'People now recognize we are out there'
As gay families gain visibility, they hope for more acceptance

By JOHANNA CROSBY  STAFF WRITER Cape Cod Online May 16, 2004

Like a lot of other parents, Laura Gill and Marie Hartley go to parent-teacher conferences and volunteer at school. Their 5-year-old daughter's friends come to their Brewster house for play dates.

Marie Hartley, right, and Laura Gill of Brewster have been a couple for nearly a decade. They are co-parents of Bennett Gill Hartley, 15 months, and Ella Gill Hartley, 5, and trade roles as stay-at-home mothers. (Times photo by RON SCHLOERB)

"We haven't experienced discrimination to our faces, but what people say at home is hard to know," says Gill. "Our sense is parents are telling their children there are all kinds of families."

Openly gay families are a recent phenomenon. Once a closeted minority, they've been drawing more attention recently with the debate over gay marriage, which is due to become legal in Massachusetts tomorrow.

"We were invisible a few years ago. But people now recognize we are out there," says Beth, an Outer Cape woman who did not want her family's real names used for this story. She is raising two children with her lesbian partner, "Kate."

In the '60s and '70s, gay and lesbian parents were generally raising children from previous marriages to heterosexuals that had ended in divorce. But since then, a growing number of same-sex couples have become parents through adoption and advances in reproductive technology, including artificial insemination by known or unknown donors, egg donation, in-vitro-fertilization and, for gay men, surrogate mothers.

It's hard to determine the number of gay and lesbian families in this country. Estimates vary widely.

The U.S. Census Bureau didn't begin gathering figures on same-sex households until 2000. Gary Gates, a demographer with the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social policy research organization in Washington, D.C., reviewed the 2000 Census data and estimates that there are 100,000 female same-sex couples and 67,000 male same-sex couples with at least one child under 18 in the home. He also estimates that 250,000 children are being raised by same-sex couples.

But others put the figure much higher. According to the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association, 4 million gay and lesbian parents are rearing 8 to 10 million children. Other reports and surveys estimate that anywhere from 1 million to 10 million children are being raised by gay parents. Based on those estimates, somewhere between 1 to 12 percent of children have gay parents.

For this story, it proved difficult to find gay men on the Cape who were raising their children in a same-sex household. That may be a reflection of the fact that a higher percentage of lesbians are parents than gay men, according to Judith Stacey, a researcher on gender issues and a professor of sociology at New York University. One-third of lesbian households and one-fifth of gay male households have children, according to the U.S. Census Bureau of Household and Family Statistics.

Besides paving the way as role models, gay personalities with children, such as Rosie O'Donnell and singer Melissa Etheridge, have given gay parents high visibility, says Elenita Muniz of Brewster, a longtime gay and political activist.

"The more exposure people get (to gay families), the more comfortable they get with them," says her partner, Judy Fenner of Brewster.

"We have come a long way," says Beth, Kate's partner. "You see it in the gay marriage debate. People are saying what's important for families is stability and love, not protecting (the institution of) marriage by keeping people out. But there's still a stigma toward gay families."

Society has become more accepting and tolerant of gay families, but not in all areas, agrees Kate. "People who have conservative religious beliefs are deeply offended."

Kate and Beth, who grew up in the Midwest, find less negativity toward gays in Massachusetts and the Cape. "But we are guarded because we never know if people are on our side," she says.

Attitudes toward gay families vary in different parts of the Cape, observes Deborah Ennis, facilitator of the Lesbian Moms Support Group that meets monthly at the Cape Cod Children's Place in Eastham.

"On the Outer Cape, there is more of a sense of openness because Provincetown is nearby," Ennis says.

The 20 families in the group, who come from different areas of the Cape, report feeling quite accepted, Ennis notes. "There aren't a lot of prejudices or horror stories. But there is some curiosity. Other parents don't know what to make of it."

Homophobia, however, still exists. Two lesbian-headed families declined to be part of this article because they feared repercussions.

"We want people to see gay families as normal," says one lesbian mother who lives in the Mid-Cape area. "But it's scary to come out."

Kate and Beth, who are in their 50s, have been a committed couple for more than 24 years. They agreed to be interviewed only if pseudonyms were used to protect their two children from harassment from peers.

The couple moved to Provincetown 15 years ago. Their sexual orientation was closeted at first because Kate feared being fired from her new teaching job. When she found people in the school system were generally supportive, the couple decided to come out. (They have since moved to another Cape town).

"We don't pretend to be something we are not," Kate says. "It's a matter of self-respect and setting an example for the children. We are proud of who we are. If we deny (that we're gay), they will say, 'What's wrong with our family?' "

"Some people hate you and think what you are doing is sick or wrong," Gill says.

The couple moved to Brewster in 1995.

"We choose to live where we are accepted and can be part of the community," says Gill, who describes their neighborhood as "welcoming."

The couple is very open about their relationship, but say they don't flaunt it. When Hartley became pregnant through artificial insemination, some acquaintances were reluctant to ask her about the particulars.

Although their new community has not been entirely welcoming, Kate says the attitude toward their family is generally positive. Both her and Beth's parents, however, disapprove of gay relationships for religious reasons.

It's not uncommon for lack of acceptance to come so close to home. Although Hartley's parents are totally accepting of their family, Gill's parents have conflicted feelings.

"It was difficult for them in the beginning because they are conservative," she says. "But they can't resist liking the children."

Fenner says her friends and relatives became more comfortable with the fact that she's a lesbian when she joined a family. Her parents regard Muniz and her daughter as part of their family.

Fenner and Muniz have always been open about their 12-year relationship. They say they were one of the first lesbian-headed families to "come out" on the Cape. The couple raised Muniz's daughter, Bryony, from her third marriage.

The two women have organized gay pride marches in Hyannis since 1990 "because we wanted people to know we are your neighbors," Muniz says. In the beginning, they got jeers. But now, they receive signs of support.

They find the Cape has become more accepting - or at least tolerant - of gay families in recent years.

"When we first went to parent-teacher conferences, teachers were kind of shocked to have lesbian parents," says Muniz, a publications director at a private school. "But it's less of a deal nowadays because more gay families are out."

Fenner thinks they have helped to break ground, making it easier for other gay families to be accepted by straight society.

"What has been valuable to gay parents is being assimilated into the community," says Gill, a teacher. "We share the same issues as heterosexual parents."

Groups that support the traditional family unit of a Mom and Dad believe same gender families are detrimental to children.

"It's extremely unfortunate for anyone to deliberately create motherless and fatherless families for children," says Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council, a nonprofit Christian organization based in Washington, D.C. "There is an overwhelming body of research that children do best when they are raised by their own biological, married mother and father."

Sprigg adds that "an important developmental task for children is to develop a healthy and stable gender identity. Children raised by homosexuals are handicapped by not having a mother and father in the home to model male and female roles."

A man and a woman bring "something different to family life as role models that cannot be substituted in same-sex families," says Ed Vitagliano, a spokesman for the American Family Association, a Christian organization based in Tupolo, Miss. "The current model of marriage and family exists for a reason. Tampering with (the natural law) will lead to a devastating series of consequences, especially for children who are part of a vast social experiment."

Whatever the viewpoint, it's obvious that differences begin at birth: Physically having children is a complicated matter for gay male and lesbian couples.

"You have to make it happen," says Hartley, 40. "But there are no unwanted pregnancies. It's calculated and intentional."

She and Gill, 41, met in Washington, D.C., and have been a couple for almost a decade. Originally, each woman planned to give birth to one child through artificial insemination. But Gill, an elementary school teacher, had fertility problems. So Hartley bore both children, with help from a straight male friend who was her sperm donor. The man, who is now married with children, relinquished all parental rights.

"Ella knows he's Papa," Gill says. "But how active a role he plays in (our children's) lives is up to him."

Gill adopted Ella and 10-month-old Bennett. She and Hartley are listed as co-parents on the children's birth certificates, giving each of them the same rights and responsibilities.

Ella calls Gill "Mama" and Hartley "Mommy."

"She knows families come in their own shapes and sizes," Gill says.

The women have traded roles as stay-at-home mothers. Currently, Hartley is working part time as a physician's assistant and Gill is at home with Bennett.

"It's such an amazing gift to have a child," Gill says.

Kate and Beth weighed the pros and cons for eight years before they added children to their life together.

"You are bringing a child into the world into a relationship that is discriminated against," says Beth, who is divorced but did not have children with her husband. Some of the questions the two women asked: Would it be fair to children? How would people react? And how would it affect our relationship?

But they decided to go ahead and see the positives to becoming parents.

"Kids totally change your perspective whether you are gay or straight," Beth says. "You learn how to be more selfless. They call you to be better because you are going to be a model for them."

Beth, who is a nurse, also finds that having children "connects you to the rest of the world. Because we are a lesbian couple who are parents, we have to live in the real world, where (straight people) are the majority." Yet she says she finds she has much in common with heterosexual parents.

Beth gave birth to a boy through artificial insemination by a known donor. She stayed home for three years to take care of him. Although the biological father has given up parental rights, he's an important member of their family. The couple also adopted a girl from a private agency several years later.

"We've worked hard to create our own family in our own way," Kate says.

The pair are legal co-parents. Their children have Beth's last name and use Kate's surname as their middle name. They call both women Mom in private but use their first names in public.

"Judy was suddenly there in our lives," says Muniz, who has joint custody of Bryony. "I told Bryony that some people love women and I love Judy."

There was a period of adjustment. Bryony missed her father, Muniz says, and was homophobic. But she thinks Bryony would have resented any adult, gay or straight, taking her father's place. Therapy helped.

Now, Muniz says, "our sexuality isn't an issue with my daughters."

Fenner, 49, who owns a boat-repair shop, never intended to be a parent but was willing to give it a try because of her relationship with Muniz.

"Being a stepparent is very challenging," she says. "Bryony and I had to work through that discomfort and learn to like each other."

Through the years their relationship has evolved into a close one.

Raising children in a straight society, however, poses special challenges for gay parents.

Some couples are not yet ready for them: "We know of lesbian couples who hide their relationships even from their children," Muniz says. Some are out only to their close-knit circle of family and friends.

A lesbian mother who lives in the Mid-Cape says she and her partner don't discuss their sexuality with others.

"It is sort of a 'don't ask, don't tell' situation," she says.

Gill and Hartley were nervous about reactions to their family when their daughter Ella first started attending a private preschool. They found the teachers and staff supportive. Ella's friends come to their house to play, and Gill volunteers at her school. Yet Gill acknowledges they feel "a little self-conscious and on display" when they attend school meetings with other parents.

The women have gay and straight friends and belong to a lesbian mother's support group and a church that welcomes gay families.

"It's important to show the children there are other families like this," Hartley says. "It also gives them a support group."

In the beginning, Kate used to worry about the reaction of heterosexual parents to their family. But parents of their children's friends are very accepting, she says.

"The community likes and respects our children," Kate says. "They are good kids, therefore people think we must be fine. Both of us are professionals and people approve of that. We are viewed as eccentrics but really nice people."

Yet the two women don't always feel comfortable in parents groups.

"The feeling goes around the room that our children have two moms," Kate says. "People want to be polite, but most of the time it causes some awkwardness."

"We were born in heterosexual households, and look at us," Hartley says.

Gill and Hartley are rearing their son and daughter to be "whatever feels right for them" regarding sexual orientation.

"We want Bennett to have positive male role models," Hartley says. "We realize that it's important. He has lots of men in his life," she says, including four uncles and various neighbors and friends.

Not surprisingly, the gay parents reject the viewpoint that children do best in a traditional family with a mother and father. Lesbian and gay parents who have a stable relationship can offer a child the same love and security as a heterosexual couple, Kate says.

The three couples think gay marriage will have a positive impact on their families - not only legally but socially and emotionally.

Beth and Kate, who now have domestic-partner status, think marriage will validate their relationship to society and offer legal protection for their children.

Now, "we are not allowed to have a legal relationship to each other even though we are parents to our kids," Kate says.

Gill and Hartley plan to wed as soon as it's legally possible so they can be each other's next of kin. They wear rings they exchanged during their commitment ceremony in 1987, but look forward to trading them for wedding bands.

Muniz and Fenner say they probably will get married.

"It wouldn't change the level of commitment we have for each other," Fenner says. "We just want equal rights."