‘PARENTS’ ON CHANNEL 28 : GAY DOCUMENTARY AIMS AT STRAIGHTS

A documentary with an unusual slant on homosexuality and intended for heterosexual audiences has found its way onto public television as a result of the upcoming Gay Pride Week, celebrated in most major cities around the country, including Los Angeles.

The one-hour program, “Not All Parents Are Straight,” is scheduled to be broadcast on KCET Channel 28 tonight at 10:30, following the “American Playhouse” presentation of “Waiting for the Moon,” a fictional film about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas (at 9 p.m.).

“It takes a lot of convincing to get straight people interested in a program about gay family life, and yet this is the very audience we, as straight film makers, want,” said Kevin White, a San Francisco-based film maker, in outlining the circuitous route the documentary has taken to air dates this week on most of the country’s major public television stations.

The documentary, which premiered at San Francisco’s Roxy Theater last February, profiles six families in which children are being raised by gay and lesbian parents. The stories are told from the children’s point of view through on-camera interviews, but the problems encountered by their gay or lesbian parents are also explored candidly.

White said he aimed the documentary toward straight audiences, “because I know it would have helped me to have seen it when I was about 16.”

He said that his father, and some years later, his mother, “came out” in their respective homosexual relationships, and that “it would have been easier” if he had known he was not alone as a child of gay parents. He also said he felt an advantage making the documentary because “I’m a part of both worlds.”

White said he and his wife, Annamarie Faro, spent more than four years raising funds and producing the $120,000 documentary. Noting that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting early-on rejected their requests for funds, White said in a telephone interview from San Francisco that primary funding has been provided by individuals--straight and gay--and by small foundations.

“It’s always difficult for independent film makers to find funds for documentaries, but this particular subject matter is the kiss of death,” White said, pointing out that public television’s traditional corporate underwriters, “across the board,” rejected funding requests.

He said Public Broadcasting Service officials enthusiastically agreed to acquire the documentary to offer to PBS’ 300 stations “specifically during Gay Pride Week,” but he expressed the hope that many stations also will air the documentary later “so there is a better chance that straight audiences will view it.”

White polled 45 stations in major markets around the country and found that 27 plan to carry the documentary during Gay Pride Week. He said a dozen others were considering a later air date. And he reported a range of reactions to the subject matter, from the major Miami station, which he said “flatly rejected” the documentary, despite a large gay population, to a Lincoln, Neb., station, which enthusiastically agreed to show it.

“That is exactly the kind of market we want it seen in,” White said, referring to the response of the Nebraska station. “Programs like this tend to get pigeonholed, as in the Gay Pride Week framework, and when they do, they are more likely to be limited to gay audiences. It’s the straight audience that we want to see it and that needs to see it.

“The whole point is to show straight television audiences what gay families have to go through, and in so doing help to re-evaluate straight people’s ideas about gay people,” White said.