Today's More Tolerant Climate Makes It Easier for Gay Couples to Choose to Be Parents

By Deb Price

In our imaginations, Joyce and I can easily see a chubby, curly-headed toddler waddling across our tiny kitchen, spilling Cheerios and milk with every shaky step and looking absolutely adorable. Yet when we return to reality we can't see actually becoming anyone's mothers: We are childless by choice.

Time was, just a few years ago, when most of us who're gay felt parenthood just wasn't an option. Accepting being gay meant having to also accept a childless future, unless of course you already had children or ended up falling in love with someone who did. Raising a child in a society thoroughly saturated with anti-gay prejudice seemed just too difficult to all but the most stout-hearted among us.

Times and options changed, though, as homophobia began to wane a bit. Young and not-so-young lesbians ardently plunged into motherhood in numbers great enough to set off the much-publicized lesbian baby boom. Here and there, male couples opted for full-time fatherhood.

Soon, most folks had seen and read enough to understand that gay people make perfectly fine parents. When attorneys for the state of Hawaii tried to pin their argument against gay marriage on the myth that gay parenting harms children, Judge Kevin Chang ruled the evidence just didn't support that notion. Overall, less than one-third of Americans - just 31 percent in an October Newsweek poll - still think gay people "cannot be as good parents as straight people."

These days, for an amazing number of heterosexuals, accepting gay people almost instantly goes hand-in-hand with pressing us to become parents. Pressure they once reserved for one another now gets directed at us as well. So while a multitude of backward laws and family courts keep shouting "Don't you dare!" at openly gay couples, the child-rearing message we're now hearing from straight friends or even mere acquaintances is, "Why don't you? You really should, you know."

For Joyce and me, the atmospheric changes meant we had to shelve our wistful, too-bad-we-can't-have-a-baby attitude. A child or three was possible. Once we brushed aside our idealized vision of parenthood, we saw that's not how we want to contribute to the future.

Other gay couples are absolutely in sync in wanting to love, teach, nurture and protect children of their own. For them, too, at least the decision about parenthood comes easily. And it's wonderful to see how many of them are already raising truly delightful children.

But for our Dallas friends Cece (pronounced "C.C.") Cox and Lisa Means, reaching a joint decision on motherhood was agonizing, a process ultimately summoning all their maturity, honesty and commitment.

When they first met, Lisa, who's always wanted children, was drawn to Cece's easy laughter. ("She even thought my bad jokes were funny.") Cece, who harbored vague ideas of adopting, was attracted by Lisa's "big heart - not to be confused with big hair, common here in Texas," Cece jokes. Their early years together were devoted to building their relationship. Serious discussion of children would have to wait.

The couple's options narrowed when, at 32, a hysterectomy cost Lisa her dream of giving birth. But talk of parenthood kept being sidelined. Finally, Lisa demanded a decision.

"We had always agreed that we would both be in it 200 percent or not in it at all," Cece explains. Reluctantly, she confessed to Lisa, "I feel like I'm trying to talk myself into having kids. And that's not right." She'd watched kids - ones she dearly loves - alter the lives of brothers and friends in ways she doesn't want her own reshaped.

Lisa responded with grief, not anger. Seeing the tears of the woman she's loved for a decade, Cece cried, too, because "I felt like I broke her heart."

Both Cece and Lisa know that too many people of all sorts become parents for the wrong reasons - to please a partner or a wanna-be grandparent; to gain respect; to prove a relationship's worth; to have the ultimate status symbol of adulthood; to pass on a family name.

"A lot of people might think you're selfish for not having children," Lisa says, "but I think you're selfish if you have children and they aren't the center of your universe."

The option to have children is a blessing. What children need is for adults considering parenthood to choose wisely.

Article from The Detroit News, January 31, 1997, 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI, 48226, Fax +1 313-222-6417, print run 481,766, Email to Letters@detnews.com.