Meet a Family That Values the Tradition of Tolerance

Katherine and Laura are lesbians. They are also a lot of other things: mothers, working professionals, Irvine homeowners, intelligent and thoughtful human beings.

Chances are if you were to live next door to Katherine and Laura and their two teen-age sons, you would find them to be good neighbors. Their front yard is tidy, the pool in back sparkles clear and blue, and, inside, they’ve just had the hardwood floors sanded and buffed.

But, then again, you might not realize that Katherine and Laura are lesbians. If you did, you might feel less neighborly toward them.

Maybe you would be listening for raucous parties--how many different sexual partners are they supposed to have?--or maybe you wouldn’t want your children playing with theirs because you never know what might happen.

Even as I write this, the absurdity of such ideas brings a smile to my face. But then it fades, fast.

The Irvine Values Coalition, a group that says it supports traditional family values, would like you to believe in such a scenario. If you live in Irvine, they would like you to vote yes Tuesday on Measure N, which would eliminate gays and lesbians from protection under the city’s Human Rights Ordinance.

What that means, for Katherine, Laura and their children, is a vote that would sanction discrimination and hate.

“It hurts the children so much,” Katherine said over a cup of coffee in the couple’s living room the other day. “I didn’t want the boys to see some of the stuff, the flyers they stick under the door, what they say in the newspapers. It would be so hurtful. Talk about destroying families. . . . These people are telling our children that their parents are no good.”

Katherine, 36 years old, and Laura, 41, have lived as a couple for 10 years. Their children, one each from previous marriages to men, have shared in most of that time. Katherine and Laura like to think it can always be that way.

“We chose to live here, especially for the kids,” Katherine says. “The school system is excellent. You feel safe here. It’s a nice place to live.”

Such sentiments, of course, hardly distinguish Katherine and Laura from their neighbors. But I venture to say that the neighbors do not fear having their names printed in a newspaper. Katherine and Laura do. The names I am calling them are not their own.

They tell of vandals who ransacked the apartment of a friend after her picture accompanied a newspaper article about lesbians last year. The furniture was slashed and the walls spray-painted. The woman was later assaulted.

But fear floats, too, just under the surface of Katherine and Laura’s everyday life.

“I had a fellow come to work on the pool the other day,” Laura says. “And he starts going on about, ‘Hey, you two girls live here together, huh?’ And so I told him we were cousins, about how we’re saving money this way and how our families think it’s a great arrangement, and on and on. I took him off the track. It made me feel a lot safer.”

It is harder, the women say, for their children. From an early age, they have told them that people may ridicule, or even hate them, simply because their mothers have chosen to love another woman.

“If my friends found out, I’m not sure they would still be my friends,” says Laura’s son, the youngest of the two boys. “I hear what they say about lesbians and gays. It hurts me. But I can’t just jump out and say, ‘Stop it. It’s not right.’ ”

“I can take care of myself,” Katherine adds. “But I don’t want the boys growing up feeling this hatred and discrimination. Right now, their friends come over. If we were to label our relationship, I don’t know if those friends would come back.”

As I sit talking with Katherine and Laura, it strikes me that they seem to have much more patience and understanding than I might if I were in their place.

My relationship with my husband, for example, should be of no one’s concern but my own. In a more enlightened time, Katherine and Laura would not feel compelled to talk to a journalist about the intimate details of their lives.

But the Irvine Values Coalition, in a sense, has forced their hand. They understand that a single ordinance cannot obliterate discrimination, but they worry that the passage of Measure N will only harden it.

“This is not a bedroom issue,” Katherine says. “This is a human rights issue, that we don’t have the rights and privileges that a heterosexual does. What does what we do in the bedroom have to do, for example, with not letting me into the emergency room when (Laura’s son) was injured? They wouldn’t let me in because I was not a parent.”

“I don’t know how to prepare myself for this issue,” Laura says. “If the measure passes, I think I’m going to cry a lot. But I’m going to have to figure out how to be strong. . . . I don’t want to be bitter.”

“People don’t really listen,” Laura’s son adds. “They have this negative stereotype about gays and lesbians stuck in their heads.”

If Measure N passes, he says, “I would be really scared. . . . There would be no stopping anybody. I would be really worried for my family.”