Baby Steps: The Voyage of Lesbian and Gay Families from the Shadows to the Center of Civil Rights Debates

Researching lesbian and gay parents used to be a lonely business.  In the 1970s, when I started my work, lesbians, and to a lesser extent, gay men, regularly lost their children in custody disputes whether these occurred in court or were handled more informally.  But gay rights folks were not much better on this issue.  “Family” was famously defined by gays and lesbians as the opposite of what they were, an institution that had probably rejected them and generally felt alien and heterosexual.  These discussions continued over the decades, with lesbians and in growing numbers gay men simply asserting their right to parenthood, whether it originated in heterosexual unions or, to a growing extent, was undertaken once these parents were firmly situated in lesbian or gay identities.  Despite controversies that continued over these shifts, by the time marriage equality came to the attention of the Supreme Court, the children of lesbians and gay men had come to situate a position that justified allowing their parents to marry.  In other words, children had moved into the center of lesbian and gay rights debates and were prompting forces that otherwise had been opposed to marriage and other rights to change their position, for the sake of the children.  This paper will trace the evolving position of children and parenthood in struggles over lesbian and gay rights, suggesting some ways of thinking about the significance of these “baby steps.”