Just Like Family

You may not think these people “look” gay. That’s the point.

Nancy Andrews, a Washington Post photographer, spent two years on “Family: A Portrait of Gay and Lesbian America” (HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), hoping to show the diversity of the gay community and, yet, its ordinariness.

“Everybody, straight and gay, has an image of gay people,” Andrews says. “Maybe we think of someone in their 20s or 30s. But why not someone who’s 95?”

And why not frat boys or an Alabama farming couple or the Digging Dykes of Decatur, Ill.? Or Gean Harwood and Bruhs Mero, right, whose 63-year devotion hasn’t ended by Mero having Alzheimer’s disease? And what about Rainey Cheeks, an HIV-positive ordained minister? Their stories and Andrews’ photographs reveal people acting the way families act. And looking the way families look.