On the Set : Mom and Mom : ‘SCHOOLBREAK’ TELLS A STORY ABOUT ACCEPTANCE FROM A KID’S VIEW

Affable, 15-year-old Will Jurgenson, who has just moved to town, shyly asks his new friend Alex over to visit. Alex looks around the Jurgenson living room and sees a grand piano, covered with framed pictures, all depicting a typical family. He sees Will growing up, at birthday parties, on vacations with his parents. Alex also notices something different. Instead of pictures showing Will with Mom and Dad, Will is shown with two women: Will has two moms.

How the teen-age son of lesbian parents deals with the prejudiced views of classmates, teachers and friends is the focus of “Other Mothers,” a “CBS Schoolbreak Special” starring Joanna Cassidy and Meredith Baxter (as the mothers), and Justin Whalen as Will.

If lesbian parents doesn’t sound like an appropriate subject for an after-school subject, Baxter suggests the opposite.

“It’s a very gentle story and not on any level offensive,” she explains on her lunch break, sitting on a bench just inside a white picket-fenced yard. “I think my 8-year-olds could look at it.”

“I thought for an after-school show this is an incredible topic and cast,” says Whalen, 19, who also plays a son in the CBS sitcom “It Had to Be You.” “This situation is about discrimination and a kid who has to deal with it, even though it’s toward his parents and not him.”

Like many other TV movies, “Other Mothers” is based on fact. Producer Joe Stern got the idea from a “20/20” segment on lesbian mothers and their families. After that, he was determined to present the story on TV. In addition to Baxter and Cassidy, it features Joe Regalbuto (“Murphy Brown”) and Judith Ivey (“Designing Women”).

While director Lee Shallat says she had some reservations initially, “It was very clear to us that this is a wonderful story that needed to be told.”

Writer Amy Dunkleberger says the subject is “pretty provocative.”

“ ‘Schoolbreaks’ are always told from the kid’s point of view, so I tried to de-emphasize the lesbian aspect of it and think of the kid as being different and the emotions he would go through,” she says. “I wanted to back off the political aspects and go for the emotional.”

Both Baxter and Cassidy say the subject matter was compelling enough for them to participate, even though it’s a daytime project.

From her makeup trailer, Cassidy says, “Everyone is doing this for very altruistic purposes. This is not a fabulously salaried job. It’s something we are doing for the sheer love of it. We like the project and we respect what it stands for. It certainly makes for a happier set. There’s no studio pressure from spending millions of dollars.”

“Even with a limited budget, we wanted to make it as subtle and sophisticated as possible,” says Shallat. “We also wanted to appeal to as many age groups as possible. I don’t think we simplified anything for kids, but on the other hand I wanted to relate to the child in the atypical family, his point of view.”

Dunkleberger adds, “We all want to get across that lesbian parents are loving and in some ways more so, because they know that society is looking at them.”

This film shoes how an alternative family can and does work and people shouldn’t be afraid of that, says Dunkleberger.

Fear and ignorance are what perpetuate prejudice, says Baxter, munching on a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich. “When I told a friend I was working on this project they said, ‘I don’t want to hear about lesbians anymore. I’m saturated with them!’ And I thought to myself, ‘Good.’ If not for any other reason than to make it second nature, to just hear it. Acceptance comes slowly.”

But prejudice begins early, she says. “That’s where it starts. We’re not saying, ‘Hey, be gay,’ anymore than we’re saying, ‘Hey, be black, or Jewish or whatever.’ What we’re saying is accept, “ says Baxter.

“There’s a lot of cliquishness and groups and wanting to be accepted” in high school, Whalen points out. “I’m hoping that people will just start accepting everyone for what they are.”

“Other Mothers” airs Tuesday at 4 p.m. on CBS.