TV Reviews : ‘We Are Family’: Gay Parenting in 3 Homes

As the last of eight programs presented “in acknowledgement of” Los Angeles’ Gay Pride celebration, KCET is airing a WGBH/Boston-produced documentary on gay parents and foster parents tonight at 10 p.m. Writer-producer Aimee Sands probably didn’t have the L.A. event in mind when she made “We Are Family,” but the hour certainly fits the “celebration” bill--to its detriment.

Sympathetically narrated by NPR’s Susan Stamberg, “We Are Family” takes us into three homes--one in Boston where a black, deaf boy has been adopted by two lesbians, another in New Hampshire where a juvenile delinquent has been similarly cared for by two gay men, and another in New York City where two teen-age girls live part of the time with their natural (and gay) father, with the approval of his ex-wife.

Approval, in fact, is the prevailing tone here. The parents approve, the children approve, the one and only family therapist that the producers repetitiously quote approves, and the single doctor interviewed here approves.

“We Are Family” says, quite correctly, that there’s a controversy about gay parenting, particularly adoption by gay partners. Every controversy has two sides, but you won’t find a fair discussion of opposing views here. Not only was Sands unable to find a “gay family” household where everything wasn’t Mary Poppins hunky-dory, but she also presents only one voice in opposition--an aged New Hampshire legislator who’s quoted only briefly and selectively (and who died soon after she was filmed).

For all its good intentions and good parents (and the selected gay grown-ups certainly do seem to fall between the admirable and the saintly, though everybody’s clearly on their best behavior), “We Are Family” trivializes a significant public issue, and perhaps undermines the very cause it wishes to support.

Everything Sands tries to get across here may be valid, but her technique is one-sided and namby-pamby. Even many supporters of gay foster parenting are going to find the program platitudinous, and the undecided are more likely to be turned off rather than taken in by the biased, and ultimately boring, presentation.