Get Used to It: Ep. 123, "Out Parenting"

(typewriter clacking) (mid tempo funky music) - Hi, welcome to "Get Used To It". I'm Sheila Kuehl and I'm your leader for the next hour to take you through whatever the heck it is we're talking about today. And it's a very interesting subject actually. In our gay and lesbian community, we have had a lot of experience over the past several decades with parenting, with families. It's been a real focus for people in the community. And today I have four guests who in very different ways, decided to become parents, have been parents, and have some experiences to share with us, all of them long time activists in the community. Bill Weinberger is an attorney in private practice and a long time activist as I said. He's on the board of GLAD and chair of the religious school committee at Kol Emeth Temple. Welcome Bill. - Nice to be here. - To his left, although we don't know left right or whatever, this is Ellen Ledley. Ellen is a clinical social worker in private practice, also a longtime activist. And of course, as all of our guests are a parent. Welcome, Ellen. - Thank you. Great to be here. - Phill Wilson, who has been on the show, oh I'd say a few times before is the executive director of the Black AIDS Institute. Welcome Phill. - Good to be here again. - And Michael Kearns, who describes himself as an artist activist, but has really been a pioneer in his one man shows about AIDS, HIV, gay and lesbian issues, and also one of the funniest warmest men around. Welcome, Michael. - Thank you. - Bill, I'm gonna start with you. - Okay. - The idea of the show is, you know we've talked to people from time to time who have talked about their kids or talked about families, but I've never really done a show just talking specifically with four of our longtime friend activists who have some pretty long experience now, 10, 11 years, I think in your case being a parent. Tell us a little bit about your family situation, how you decided that you would become a parent, and kind of what it's been like for you. - Well, actually my experience is six years since he was born. - A little more than six years. - Of course. I forgot. - It seems longer at times, but. (everyone laughing) - I think it's just me who's getting old and not everybody else. - Yeah I, I can't remember a time when I didn't wanna be a parent. From the earliest time, I'd always wanted to be a parent and early on in my teens and then when I realized that I was gay, late when I was 25, I still wanted to be a parent and I didn't lose the dream or the hope about it. I just didn't know how I would do it and it's something I always had in the back of my mind. And so then finally when I was in my late 30s, early 40s, I decided I don't wanna wait any longer. And so I looked at different resources and I decided to do it. And I actually worked with a surrogate and it happened finally. - So working with a surrogate, you mean you contracted with a woman to have- - Well, I worked with an agency called Growing Generations and they found a surrogate and an egg donor. And that's how we did it. - So you bring Kevin home and suddenly you're a parent. Did anything change for you? - Just a little. (both laughing) I remember bringing Kevin home. I remember the day like it was yesterday and just thinking like, "Oh my God, I don't know what to do." And I had a moment and my partner said, "Get it together." And then my twin, I have a twin brother who has two daughters and he happened to call and I said, his name is Dick. And I said, "Dick, I don't know what to do." And he said, "What makes you think you should know what to do? Have you ever had a kid before? (everyone laughing) You're going through the same thing we all do." And so that was actually very reassuring to me. It's like other people have done it, I can do it. It also changed me I guess psychically in that from that point on it's like anything I thought about in terms of at home, my time, my career, my job, everything, all my decisions involved him. It just changed, just that complete shift and it just happened. It's like, it's not like, "Oh my God. I forgot to think about him." That was part of my decision making. - Now a lot of our parents, thinking that they were being very caring of us have been, in the past, had been kind of negative about our starting families. Do you wanna bring a child into this kind of prejudice? What's it gonna be like for them at school? As I said, thinking that they were helpful and I don't know whether any of your relatives were the same, but did you have any thoughts kind of on your own thinking about, "Well, I'm a gay man. I'm in a relationship. What's it gonna be like for this kid? Is this really a good idea?" - No, I never had any doubts about that. I always had a sense I'd be a good parent. And I don't parent my son the way my parents parented me. I've learned from that although sometimes I see I just could easily slip back into that, which my partner has no problem pointing out. But, and so I knew that I would... He would be raised in a loving home and I didn't get any discouragement from anybody really. Some of my gay friends said, "Well, why do you wanna do that?" My parents were immediately encouraging. They said, "We will always love to have another grandchild." So, I mean, it wasn't even a sense of any hesitation there. - So bringing Kevin up and starting school, has it made a difference? Is he treated differently in school because he has two dads? - Well, when we were looking for schools, we made sure that we picked a school that either had kids with lesbian or gay parents, or currently have kids with lesbian or gay parents. Because I don't mind being a pioneer myself and I'll choose to do that, but I'm not gonna make the choice for my son. And so, that's just my personal belief. So, he was... He's treated like everybody else at this age. I think I've heard from my friends with older kids that sometime during adolescence, there's some difficulties and the parents have been very accepting and very sympathetic and sensitive because I remember when Kevin first started at the school a year and a half ago. One of the mothers at a school event came up to me and said, "Well, how have you explained your relationship with, to Kevin and how he is there?" And she said, "Because my son or my daughter," I can't remember which, "has asked me and I'd like to sort of be congruent with what you're saying." And I thought that was really nice. And someone else came up to me, "My son has asked me about, 'Is Kevin's mommy dead?' And so I wanna explain to her... I don't know how to explain to him the situation." And so I was helpful and she thanked me and. - Do you think it's made a difference to the parents and other parts of your community that you come in contact with? Because for so many years, we were seen as people who were not family people, did not have children, were not seen as parents. Do you think it's made a difference in the way your own community group thinks of you? - Well, I mean the different communities that I'm in, in terms of my neighborhood and the school community, I think it has to have some kind of effect. And probably in that, I don't feel treated any differently than any other parent really. And I think my partner feels the same way. Kevin's invited to wherever any other kids are invited. I'm not aware of him not being. Their kids come over to our house. And so, if there's an effect, I think it's that, it's like, "Okay, well, like everybody else. They're just like everybody else." I think in the LGBT community, sometimes I get like, "Wow, you're doing such a great thing. You're such a role model." And it's like, I did this 'cause I wanted to have a kid. That's how I feel about it. And I'm glad if I can be a role model and if it maybe encourages others who are thinking about that it can be done. So I think it has an effect there as well. - Ellen, you had a slightly different experience. You were co-parenting some kids that were growing up with your partner and then made a decision to adopt Ruby. Tell us about your experience and your thinking about making that decision. - Well, when I got together with Patty, she had had two children already from her previous marriage and they were eight and 12. And so I became the wicked stepparent immediately. When they started actually understanding our relationship, as they got older, we had to go through some pretty difficult things with both of them. One of them, actually, I was sort of really not the issue, but I became an issue kind of for 24 hours in a way. Like, let's focus on the lesbian thing, but then that sort of passed. But with our son, it was a longer process 'cause I think that he would have preferred to have a stepdad. - [Sheila] Mm hm. - He missed that. So that became sort of part of the dilemma of our relationship was that I wasn't the stepdad that he wished he'd had. - [Sheila] Mm hm. - But what happened for me was that as challenging and as difficult as parenting those two kids were, which it was. We went through just about every issue you could go through, drugs, alcohol, gangs. You name it, a lot of things. I realized that I really liked parenting. I really liked being engaged with young people in that way. And I thought, you know what? I wanna have one of my own. I wanna start at the beginning. And so... And Patty, who probably would not have done that if it weren't for me. I think she was ready to move on to a different stage of her life, but she was totally supportive and totally got into it and loves kids and loves Ruby as much as I do. And we're... So we're parenting again and our older kids are adults. And so Ruby has very older siblings who she adores and who adore her and actually interesting thing I hadn't really been thinking about, but she, in some way brought our family together. Like the final step of becoming an integrated, whatever you wanna call it, step family, blended family, whatever language you use because of their love for each other. And then I became a little bit more of a person in that final way because I was her mother. - [Sheila] Mm hm. - So, wherever the issues were about me not being quite real or being kind of invisible, which that's what happens with step kids a lot. They really... We became much more cemented as a family. And so it's been really great and Ruby's 11. And so these 11 years have been really quite amazing. And the other interesting part is that all three of our kids are biracial and all three of them are adopted. So Patty adopted them, her older kids when she was married. And so they all have interesting histories. They all come from different places and that's something that they share as well. So the adoption issue is an issue that we deal with and also being biracial and having two white moms and Ruby is being raised as a Jew. I'm Jewish and Patty's not, but we're doing that as well. So there's a lot, we're very kind of a complicated, interesting family. And our experience is kind of different from Bill's in that Ruby has often been the only something. She's been the only family with gay parents, actually in her, all of her schooling. And she's the only black kid in her Hebrew school class. And so she's had to kind of deal with that in different ways, which has been, I think it's strengthening and it's also been challenging. And I was... I really liked some of the things Bill was talking about in terms of the relationship with parents and stuff. I think that's really interesting. And with kids 'cause actually the issue of what the kids are curious about, especially at that age. I had a child come up to me when I was picking Ruby up from first grade. They'd been reading a book that was this great book about a dad and his son and it was the sweetest book. And so Ruby, she's just out there. She goes, "Oh I don't have a dad." And so, "You have to have a dad." "I don't have a dad." "You have to have a dad." It was like they had this long discussion and finally it was Ruby said, "Oh. Yeah, I have a birth dad, but I have two moms." So then when I came to school that day 'cause all the kids were like they didn't get it. They were trying to understand the biological part, the family part. What's this about? And so one of the kids came up to me and said, "How come you didn't marry a man?" (people laughing) So the kids were really curious and that was always a good thing. It was pretty natural and they were curious. They wanna understand about how these things work. So, I think it's actually, a lot of times the kids who I think bring the consciousness raising aspect to all of this. - Well, it's interesting how in a way each of you and I think Phill and Michael too when I was talking to them, it's not all about how the parents are gay. 'Cause there are so many additional issues that every family has. In the old days, you had mixed religion families as you still do and mixed racial families more and more and more now. And it's, people actually brings the kids to have to, and their parents to kind of have to deal with it, but sort of where that minority sort of in the middle of the hate griddle at the moment and wonder how, if it impacts in a way, does Ruby or the kids, do they have a sense of it's bad to be gay and they have to struggle with that? - I think Ruby goes in and out of that. There are times when she'll be happy to have people think that Patty's her grandmother or she'll not want people to see the two of us together with her. So yeah. She deals with that. And so I asked her recently, I said, "Do you?" 'Cause she was being, what I felt was, she was being kind of nasty to Patty and so I said, I asked her later, I said, "Were you not wanting the parents to know that you have two moms?" And she said, she looked at me like, "No, it's the kids." So it wasn't the parents. I assumed it was about the parents. So it's was interesting. So she does kind of struggle with that in situations. And sometimes we can't tell. When she was younger, it was hard to tell, is she... Are some of the things that are happening to her socially, is that because she has two moms? And the school that she was at, the public school that she was at from kindergarten through third, there was a high Hispanic population in that school, Catholic. It was like we didn't know what was going on behind closed doors or what was being said at times, not in terms of the teachers or the administrators or overall kind of on the conscious level. But whether there were things going on, sort of that we didn't know about in terms of whether people were uncomfortable. So we did, I did, it took me a few years to get it into the school, but we got "That's a Family" shown to all the, I think third, fourth and fifth grade classes, ends with discussions, but it took like two years to actually make that happen because of the school district having, "Were people gonna complain?" And all this kind of stuff. But so we did start to do some consciousness raising about that, about the different kinds of families and our school had every kind of family that was in that tape. - [Sheila] Mm hm. - There were all kinds of families, all kinds of differences. So that's the bottom line really. - [Sheila] Totally. - Acceptance of kids and families as they are, all the different kinds of families we are. - Well, Phill, you had a different kind of family actually. Not so different growing up, but kind of made some choices to form a family. Talk about long time activist. If we added up all five of us, it'll probably be, I don't know, 150 years maybe, but what... Tell us a little bit about your situation and what led to your decision making process. - Well, first of all, I began with children that were verging on teenagers. I took custody of my nephews when they were 10 and 12. Prior to that, they spent summers with me, but when they were 10 and 12, we made the decision that they would come to live with me permanently and that was interesting. Like Bill, I had always knew I was going to be a father. I never even thought about not being a parent. And when I was younger, I didn't think it would happen this way. And one of the great things about being naive is that you get to do things that otherwise you wouldn't get to do because you didn't know that you couldn't do them. (Sheila laughs) And so I'd always had a relationship with my nephews and they weren't doing well where they were. And I decided, well they should come live with me permanently. And so my family's from Chicago. I flew to Chicago and I said, "I've decided the boys should come to live with me. And we should have a family discussion to work that out." And we did. That evening we worked it out. And, so, and what's interesting about it is that like Bill, people often say to me, "You did a great job and you're such a role model." What have you and I'm always surprised by that because I don't think I did any more than I should have done. I am a part of my family and being a part of that family, I have a responsibility and there were two young men who needed some help and I could provide that help. And the catalyst around that is as many of us, we find ourselves in these rooms of talking heads, now about this problem or that problem. And I felt myself in a room talking about quite frankly, the plight of black boys and halfway through this particular day, I thought, "Well, if everybody in this room would do something with some black boy in their life, this problem would go away." And I got home and I thought, "Well, there are two boys in my life and I could do something about that." And so I did. And that's how it started. - Still though, I think there... I can't imagine that people wouldn't have said, "Phill Wilson, HIV affected, activist in the AIDS community, he's gonna take on two, almost teenage boys. What's it gonna be like for him? And what's it gonna be like for them?" Your friends must have said, "You probably don't know how this is gonna change your life, Phill Wilson." And other people may have said, "What's he doing taking on those boys?" So what was the response sort of in your own community as you would define it? - Well, in my nuclear family, my siblings and my parents, it was really a non-discussion. My parents didn't blink a minute. My sister didn't blink a minute. My boys are actually cousins and not brothers. I have two brothers and they were the oldest son of each of my brothers. My brothers had a hesitation, not for any of the issues one would think, not because I was gay or I had AIDS, or any of that kind of stuff. But because it was the final commentary on whether or not they could do their parenting. And so they had some resistance around that. But a interesting thing in the course of that evening, my mother actually looked at each of my brothers and my brothers were not hostile to the idea, but they were a little reluctant. And this was actually a shock to me. My mother looked at each of my brothers and said, "If you want to have a mother, you will do this." - [Sheila] Huh. - It was that clear that this is the best thing for them, for the boys and like Bill, everything in my life changed. And it did not require any thought whatsoever. But from that day on, every decision that I made considered what was in the best interest of them. Some of my friends were wondering, "Don't you have a full enough plate already?" This actually happened two years after I was in the emergency room where the doctors didn't think I was going to survive at all. I was in a coma at the intensive care unit, not the emergency room at Kaiser Permanente. And the doctors had given me a matter of days to live. And so people were really, really surprised. And then there was the issue of not only the boys being teenagers coming into a family where there were gay parents, interracial couple and parent living with full-blown AIDS and they're boys and athletes. So we had to deal with the whole thing of Corey was a football player and ran track and all that kind of stuff and all those circles to deal with. But we didn't really have any issues along that line in the high school, the biggest story that we had, actually, we traveled a lot and we took the boys to Israel and Egypt one year. And going through immigration in Tel Aviv, actually we were leaving actually. And they're seeing these two men, one white and one black, and these two boys and as a family unit just really, really messed them up completely. (people laughing) They just could not figure that out. Now they held us for about two and a half hours going through the security process before they, and we were leaving. One thing we were coming in, but we were leaving at that point, but that was the only time where it kind of came up in that way. - What's it been like for the boys? - I think it's been good. It's interesting. They did not miss a beat on any of the issue of sexual orientation or on AIDS. Although we did have an episode where I got sick and that was scary to them, very, very scary to them. And Corey who's the younger of the two came to me while I was in the hospital and he said, "Uncle Phill, if you die, who gets the house?" (people laughing) And that was the first time he had ever been able to kind of articulate that as a possibility. And I said to him, "Well, actually, if I die now, the person who owns the house now will keep the house and that's the bank." (people laughing) But that was kind of an issue. I think that they were, on the issue for them, it was less an issue around any of those external social issues and more about how our relationship changed. Because prior to them living with me permanently, I was the uncle and our time was uncle time. It was getting gifts or getting postcards from all over the world or going on trips or going to uncle's hotel and swimming in the swimming pool, which is very, very different when you're a family unit and you have to deal with chores and homework and curfews and discipline and all of those kinds of things. And so during the first year, there was a lot of resistance because they felt that they had gotten the short end of the stick because they had lost the uncle. And we had to work through that. - Well, Michael, you, last but not least, people were quite intrigued when you made the decision to become a dad. - Intrigued is one word. - Intrigued is one word, yeah. Tell us a little about- - Hysterical would be another. Mean would be another. - You were never mean. - Well it's interesting. I'm going to. I'm gonna tell you though because I've related so much to both of the men saying, I wanna tell you a little story. When I was about seven or eight years old, I asked for a doll for Christmas and my mother having had my father in and outta mental institutions had a little bit of savvy about psychological things. So she thought, of course, "Oh my God, the kid's gay." So she takes me to a psychiatrist at six or seven and they put me in a room full of all these toys. And the psychiatrist is looking at me through a window. And of course, I go to the doll house and start putting together the house. This is in St. Louis, Missouri in approximately 1957. The psychiatrist meets with my mother afterwards. She says, he says, "Whether he's gay or not isn't the issue. He wants to be a parent." - Ah, how great. - Wow, intriguing. - Wow. - So there you are- - And here I am. And you know that story, just that's the bottom line. It's not about my being gay. It's separate. It's who I am. The other thing is I find interesting is, all these contingents, all the various black, white, gay, straight, mother, no mother, father, Tia, she's never had a straight dad. She's never had a black dad. She's never had a black or white mother. I'm what she knows. People impose their own stuff on the situation. They look at the situation, "Poor thing doesn't have a mother" Well, she... Yes, there are realities that she will deal with. Not at 11, but somewhere down the line, I know she's gonna go through some stuff. So did I go through some stuff. So did we all go through some stuff. But in other words, the child is in intent upon being loved and respected and cared for. That's it basically. Back to your question. This is an interesting thing. I was HIV positive and this was pre-protease inhibitors. And people said I was crazy. It was in the press. People said, "He's selfish. He's crazy. There's something wrong with him. Will he be able to stop going to the sex clubs long enough to be a father?" Well, it has nothing to do with it. I can go to a sex club and be a father. It's preposterous. What does that mean? You're not sexual when you have a child, just vicious, vicious, but this is what's interesting. Not one female, gay, straight, young, old, black, or white that I spoke to discouraged me in spite of the HIV. It was never an issue with women because women somehow... Well, first of all, they understand and acknowledge and I've talked to a lot of men who have this feeling. It sounded like Bill had it. Phill's situation was different. They have a physical sensation that I had. I knew what the yearning, the clocks ticking. I'd see kids at the grocery store. I'd see kids on the playground and I had a yearning. It was not something you could define. It was physical. It was a physical sensation that was a yearning to be a father. And the HIV wasn't gonna stop me. You can call it selfish, audacious, stupid, and crazy. Well, I did it and it's 11 years later and I'm still here and she's here and she's a great kid. And my situation's a little different at the school too. This seems like it's unrelated, but it is. It is related. We do a silent auction at these private schools. You know all about that. And that's part of what a parent does is they're on these committees and everything. And I've been doing this fundraising committee. Well, it's so interesting to me that this year, this silent auction, which is normally a mommy thing, is being produced by men, other straight men. And I feel that my being a part of that community has somehow allowed that dynamic to happen because these men, they don't look at me. They know I'm gay, but they don't think of me as gay. They think of me as somebody who's has a kid there and who's working on the fundraising committee. And okay. It's okay for them. They can have permission to be silly and think about the glamor aspect and the fun aspect, which is normally the mommies. So I think that that's sort of a interesting thing. And I mentioned it to somebody and they said, "You're right. It would never be all men running the show." In that respect, in doing something that is normally would be a mommy thing. - So you're freeing the men? Freeing the dads. - I think to some extent. - [Sheila] Yeah. - And the kids too. Tia, her class, I think I mentioned that they recently did a thing on people who were discriminated against, including everything. And it was just an amazing experience to see these 11... They looked at the skinheads. Tia looked at Nazis. They looked at every population because something had happened at the school and they take every opportunity to use anything that, any friction that happens to turn it into a learning experience immediately. Now they're gonna spend the rest of the year, they obviously do math and all those things concentrating on discrimination and the many ramifications of it, but several of the kids and I think, again, this had something to do with their conscience talk and Tia didn't choose. She didn't choose the KU Klux Klan or, but several kids in her class chose to talk about gays and lesbians being discriminated against, which bolstered her and. - I find actually in the school setting, at least my boys were primarily in high school that what, two things happened. One is that the other parents discover how much you're just like them. - [Michael] Yes. - Now the things that I worried about were the things that they worried about. But the other thing I think that happens, and this is very important I think for gay lesbian parents is that we discover how much we're like them. We spend most of our lives talking about how we're different and when you are a parent, what you discover is that you're not so different, the same issues back and forth. When the boys were playing football toward the end of his senior year, Corey was in a very serious football accident. I was at almost all the games for the entire four years he was in high school and of course, seconds after it happened, I was on the field, and the rest of the parents totally freaked out, just as we would've been, if any of our kids had been injured. And we took 'em to the hospital and the whole thing. And I think that it's a good thing. Not only that the other folks understand that we have so much in common, but I think it's also important for us to realize how much we have in common with the larger society. - Well, I think that's one of the things that brought me to wanna do this show because mostly we make choices in our lives that are not about the larger political issues. You didn't decide to become parents to make a political statement, not any of you and not anyone I know, very personal decision. And yet there is a component to it in the world where one of the ways that we were always defined was as childless people, not engaged in families, selfish, only about sex, child molesters. So, tell me if you see in the broader contexts of your lives, a change in that attitude? - It's a tough one. I think that we, every time we walk onto that playground or that campus, I think it's a quiet act of revolution in terms of being gay or lesbian. I'm not sure that we're changing the world and I know don't think that's our intention, but I do think that the thing that the point that Phill made, I'm not sure I'm answering the question, but it's kind of distilling and getting rid of issues around color issues. I know Bill says he calls and says, I call and say, "I'm Tia's dad." I don't call and say, "I'm Tia's gay white dad." I'm Tia's dad. So there's this humanness, which would be nice if this was reflected in the whole world if we didn't constantly have these lines of demarcation along socioeconomic levels, long gender levels, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I think in that respect, we're showing people that those things really aren't, what's important. What's important is love, soul, heart, taking care of each other and being a family. I mentioned this year that I think that two of the movies this year, which we've heard a lot about, but everybody talks about Bear Broke Mountain as a, "Broke Back Mountain" as a gay love story. I see it as a family movie. I think that they wanna create a family. They want, the one cowboy wants to set up housekeeping. Transamerica. It's a family. To me, these movies are about family. And I think that that's what so many of us came from such wacko families and then had to deal with homophobia, our own and everybody else's that it was like, "Do I want a family? Do I wanna launch into this? What does it mean?" Well, I have more of a family in 11 years than I ever had in my life. It's first time I've had that- - I think also in response to your question, I think however we are and however we live our lives has an impact on other people. I think just being an out gay man before I was a parent, in terms of who I came in contact with, either whether when I was single or in a couple had an impact on other people in terms of how I lived my life and who I was and just how I was living it. And I think that having a kid does have an impact on people. There's someone in my life who I know is a fundamentalist Christian, and I know this person is against marriage equality, and yet I see this person every day. And she's so accepting. She's always asking about my partner. She's always asking about our child. She always is so welcome to hear about it. So has she changed about marriage equality? Probably not. But just knowing me has had an impact on her and somehow that's gonna change things. - [Michael] Yeah. - And I also think that particularly in cases, I think in our four cases, we chose to be parents. And there is something about choosing to be a parent in these ways that I think certainly makes a commentary. And I also think that it delivers a healthy message to children. I know in the case of my two boys, being a part of our family and seeing kind of how we live and how we are just be certainly has influenced the way they think about themselves in a healthy way. And I also think that it influenced their circle of friends, because as Bill talked about, we also were a house where a lot of the other kids came. They spent time at our house. And so they got a chance to have this interaction. And while there was an understanding that the two adults in this family were men and gay men. And also because upon occasion, they would see my picture in the newspaper or on television. So all the kids knew who Corey and Winfred's dad was. And, but it does get, it creates a new conversation when people know you. I always say that people can't love us if they don't know us, so it's important that they know us. - Well. I wonder if it also created a different sense of our own selves. Definition is a really important thing. I don't know. Ellen, you're the therapist. And so I'm not gonna wander around too close in here, but. - [Ellen] Go for it. - Go for it. Okay. There's a way it felt to me like our community thought of ourselves as not straight and having to define ourselves early on as not straight. We had nasty words for people who were parents. They were participating in a society that was all about status quo and we were not. And it was important. But it became a kind of a funny trap for us in a way. First of all, a lot of us already had kids and they were suffering ostracism because they had been mostly in marriages and it kind of became a dead end. And then there was suddenly this new thing that was happening, where we started to claim our space as family members, as the opposition was defining themselves as the family group and focus on the family and family this and family that. What they were saying was they were family. We were not. So do you think it's changed the way we think about ourselves too? - Yeah, I think, absolutely. It feels like it's happened very organically and very sort of underneath, under the ground, almost that... I remember, in the mid '70s, people who had kids, it was really like no one wanted to know about it and childcare was not an... You shouldn't be asking for anything for, to take care of being able to go to events with kids. It was all very adversarial. It was like, you were different and you were not really, you were an outsider within the community, at least within the lesbian community, that was my experience. And so I feel like just very slowly over time, it's like, it's so natural now. It's like, there're always gonna be people with kids and young lesbians and gay men are having kids much younger. - [Michael] Right. Right. - I think it was really started with sort of more older, older gay people. And now it's happening where people are sort of thinking, "Well, am I gonna have kids?" They're thinking about it in their 20s and in their early 30s, much younger about whether they wanna have kids, because I think it's part of the culture now. And I do think it's changed how we are experiencing ourselves. That this is part of our identity now. It's not the anti-marriage 'cause that's the other issue. It's connected to that 'cause there was a whole feminist tract about that. We weren't gonna get married. Now we're fighting for marriage. So there's a lot of changes that's happened about marriage and about kids. So, and I think we are changed within us. It feels so natural now. So natural. - I think one of the things that caused so much resistance among gay men about me in many instances was just the internalized homophobia and the issue around being potentially a child molester. That came out in some conversation. Do you have that gene because you're gay? There's so much. Every time we turn on the news, there's some story about a gay child molester. - [Sheila] Did that come from other gay men towards you? - Subtly and not so subtly. You never heard that? An internalized sort of fear that that could be acted out around a child. I've never gotten that from a heterosexual person. - But much of your career, in terms of the work that you've done in your show, has been about sex. Not that that defines you, but you've really sort of pushed the envelope in terms of saying what you actually said in the very beginning of our conversation. - Yeah. - Which is I can't be a sexual person and a dad. - Right, right. - And yet, in a way, if you're gonna define gay men only as sexual people, then it makes everybody a target. And I think another way they tried to separate, especially the men. The women were trying to define a lesbian sensibility that wasn't a married woman with kids because that's all women had been. - Right. Right. Exactly. - Absolutely. - Women had no connection with being married or having kids. And it was about party time actually before AIDS. And then somehow our communities came together and learned an awful lot from each other- - And we, by the way, I wanna make this point. I think that it was the lesbians who began the adoption. I know that inspired me. I saw that played out among women far more than I did among other men, especially 11 years ago. So, that's one of the, my inspirations were lesbians who had adopted. - Well, it's interesting because one of the things that happened in my circle of friends early on, we had a pool party. And it's a pool party where all of the adults were black gay men and there were about 12 or 15 men that attended this party. And there were 32 children at this pool party. And so one of the things that was so natural for me is that in, among my peers, black gay men, almost all of us were that caretaker uncle that we were paying for someone to go to college or high school or we were the one that were being called. We were in some very significant way. So it was very, very natural to kind of move into that arena. So a lot of my inspiration, although there are a number of lesbian friends who had adopted or had natural, but a lot of it was just a natural continuation of the experience that my peers and I were having all along. - It's fascinating because the black culture, that's just so true of the exposure I've had to Tia's family. Yeah and the black people by and large take care of their own. And the meaning of family is heightened in that culture. And I can say that. I could have written about it. I could have done characters about it. I could say I was dealing with my own racism and dealing with racism in the big picture, but I know what it is now. I go to visit Tia's family. I know what family means to them and what it means to some other people. It sounds like reverse racism on my part being, but I think that what Phill is saying is so. You can learn from these 80 year old grandmothers who are taking care of infants. It's incredible the amount of dignity and respect that is given to the idea of family. And I think that we as gays and lesbians can do the same thing in our own way. And I think we are. And I think that it, the other thing that we haven't mentioned is Tia could have been in 15 foster homes by now, thrown across the room, killed, lost in the system, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Many gays and lesbians are saving these kids. But it's absolutely a fact. And in terms of the racial difference and all that, none of that really at the end of the day is the issue here. The issue is to love them, take care of them, instill them with some sense of self and I think that we've opened another door. All the pain of AIDS, and when people say to me, "Why did you adopt? You have AIDS." I said, "One of the reasons I adopted was 'cause I'd seen so much death." I'd seen so many people go from five days to four days to three days. I wanted to see the opposite of the movie. I wanted the movie in reverse. I wanted to see the baby go from one to two to three to four. I wanted to be affirmed by life instead of dealing with death after death, after death, after death. And it's worked and it's been incredible. - I think that, hasn't that been a big part of gay male experience in terms of having kids? 'Cause I've heard that from other gay male friends that that issue of having experienced so much loss and death. - That was what delayed my having kids. I'm not HIV affected, but in the early '90s, my partner died, my two other people very close to me died I didn't even know was HIV positive. And I was like, "How can I think about a future for myself?" Much less just psychologically that's what was going on. And then, it took me several years to sort of come to a point where, "Okay, this is what I wanna do. I do see hope. And I wanna bring a new person into my life." And Kevin's Hebrew name, which he got is Brissa Haem, which means life. And that was a very conscious choice. - Well, I think a lot of communities have actually responded the same way. You find just nature wants the birth rate to go up when there's been a war and people find all different reasons to explain it, but it happens everywhere because it's, and it's not always a conscious psychological choice. It's really an urge to affirm life. - [Michael] And replace loss. - And the interesting thing that you said about saving lives because a lot of people say, "Well, how is it for the kids? But rarely do they say, "How would it have been for these kids?" - It's actually obscene, absolutely obscene. I think about the states who are passing laws that prohibit gay and lesbian adoptions, and I think an alternative is and there are all these children that end up in these horrible situations and we have a society that feels perfectly comfortable in having children grow up in a foster care system where they get abused and then magically, when they turn 18, they just are let go with no resources, no skills, and no support. And they think that's okay. - And no family. That's right. And no family. - No sense of family. It's so tragic. - Well and the Catholic church just continued, discontinued their whole adoption program rather than have to comport with the non-discrimination laws. - But it's a real way that just the sort of development is changing the issues. It's not just about us. The whole foster and adoption issue is about, we are possibly saving these people. And that sort of turns the issue around completely, 'cause it's not about us. And I know, I think it's in Ohio where they, at the last, in the 2004 election, they passed this really draconian anti-domestic partnership, anti-marriage initiative. And then someone, some legislator tried to take it further. And I think the Republicans, a lot of Republicans shot it down and it had to do with adoption, something of adoption and foster parenting for LGBT community. And they said, "No, this is wrong." - Well, I remember I went to, I think it was the gay parade in San Diego and there was a small town that was sort of fallen apart. It was physically fallen apart and they didn't have very good economics, et cetera. And so half the population of the town marched in the gay parade and said, "Please come live here." (people laughing) We're going to make the neighborhood better. We're gonna bring our kids and be families there. And it was, I thought it was very interesting. - [Michael] That's great. - And I don't think we should make too lightly of the fact that this change in perception about us actually is connected to greater acceptance I think globally, or at least in the United States of our community. Those numbers keep going up every year. We discovered it with coming out where that was the big thing. It's like you know one. I'm one. - [Michael] Right. - You have to deal with that. And now, sort of now you have to deal with- - [Michael] You know one with a kid. - Now you no one with a kid. - Right. - Exactly. - Or two true or three or lots of kids, et cetera. - And a lot of those people at Tia's school, they're younger and they're hipper and they're... But, and they've probably been around gay people. They haven't had as much intimate relationship with a gay man as they have with me. It's just clear. And it's like Bill said, I'm just being me, but they're seeing that live and in person, as opposed to on a sitcom or something they've read or somebody they went to high school with that they heard, of later. They're seeing it day to day, me picking up the kid and doing this and talking to her and talking to the other kids and bringing their kids to my house. And it's an amazingly powerful and I don't miss a minute of it. I've never had, there's never been any reticence about kids staying over at my house or... Never, it's just totally accepted. - So let's say a million people are watching this show and there's probably some of them who are gay or lesbian. That's just how it works. And we're on in a lot of different cities. What would you say to them? Just if they're having some ambivalence about whether they want to parent or not, thinking, "Oh, there's homophobia in my town or I don't know whether it's gonna change my life so much that I won't really be gay anymore." I don't know what people would think, but what would you say to them? - Well, I certainly would say that all of the things that you think might be there might be there and none of that matters. At the end of the day, if you in fact have love to give to a child, you should do that. And if you have an opportunity to take care of a child, you should allow yourself that gift. Because at the end, that's what it's really about. When I think about my life, I'm turning 59. I think about my life. There's nothing that I've ever done that comes anywhere close to being as important as having been a parent. - Bill? - I would agree with that last comment. And before I had a kid, I'm not sure I would have, but it's definitely true. And it is such a personal decision and I'd say to the hypothetical or not so hypothetical person you're referring to, if you wanna do it, do it. Whatever problems are there, if your parent, you're gonna sort of figure out how to resolve it somewhere or another, for better or for worse. You'll muddle through. And the important thing is if you wanna do it, don't deprive yourself of the experience and don't deprive the potential child of the experience. - [Sheila] Good. Ellen? - I don't know if I have anything to add. I think very eloquent about it. I's something that life is, all growing up is has its challenges and being a parent, not being gay has its challenges. If you really wanna be a parent and you love children, work it through. Go see a good therapist. Figure it out 'cause there's no reason to not. - I think that the bigger question is not whether you're gay or lesbian and what issues that's gonna bring up or black, white, but is are you parent material? That's another question entirely. A lot of people might think they wanna be a parent or they might romanticize the idea of being parent, but being a parent is a very complicated, tough day in, day out 24/7 job. They are never out of your mind. I can't tell you how many times I've thought of Tia during this last hour. I mean, repeatedly. Is she okay? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Is it the... It just never and you take stamina. It takes physical, emotional and unselfishness. So those are the questions I'd say to anybody, gay, straight, black, white, or whatever, are you up to this job? And then if you're up to the job, all the other things, as every parent has a zillion trillion challenges, individual based on who that kid is and who they are and who they are in the world and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I think being a parent is what they need to consider and they should look. And I fostered to make sure I was able to do it. At my age, et cetera, I had foster kids for four months. I had two boys, and instead of it being a bad experience, it only made me want one more. And believe me, those boys were not easy, but it let me know, "Yeah, I can do this." - I think you're all wonderful. Thank you for being on the show. Thank you, Phill and Bill and Ellen and Michael, and thank you for being with us. I think this is... My intention was to kind of show you a few examples of what's happening in the community around family, around kids, around our own feelings about ourselves and I think in the larger world about us. And we are about family so get used to it. (mid tempo funky music)