Gay Festival Turns Focus to Families : Lifestyles: Increasing numbers of gays and lesbians are rearing or considering having children.

Sandy-haired Josh Skeber helped his mother Jeannette Arce sell T-shirts at a booth at the 7th Annual Orange County Lesbian & Gay Festival, flashing a dimpled smile at shoppers and chatting breezily.

When business slowed, the 12-year-old hovered near his other mother, Jann Skeber, while she fed his infant sister and summed up life in a two-mother family.

“All my other friends who have dads, well, the dads basically do all the punishing,” Josh Skeber said. “I don’t know what it’d be like to have a dad around, but a mom is really caring and nice and having two is better than one.”

His friends are a little envious of his double dose of moms. “My friends just compliment me, basically,” he said. “They wish they had it too.”

The festival has evolved over the years from an emphasis on “coming out” to civil rights demands and recognition of gay unions. This year, the first day of the two-day festival at UC Irvine’s Aldrich Park was devoted mostly to recognizing gay and lesbian families.

At the tent providing free child care, Scott Zucker said he started the Orange County chapter of Maybe Baby, an offshoot of the Los Angeles club, because he couldn’t find resources in Orange County for gays and lesbians who are considering having babies.

“The whole idea of having a ‘traditional family’ is one thing that often gets shoved under the rug,” said Zucker, the local organization’s president who describes himself as “passionate” about families.

“I went through what many of us do,” he said. “We buy into the idea that gays and lesbians aren’t even supposed to be around kids, let alone have some themselves--that’s the stereotype. But for gays and lesbians there is a whole new wave.”

Tammy, 32, said her biological clock was ticking, so she decided to ask a friend to father her child. She asked that her last name not be used because, while family and friends know she’s a lesbian, her colleagues at work still don’t.

Her baby is due in November. But one unexpected result of her pregnancy, she said, is that she has to reaffirm to her heterosexual friends and family that she is truly a lesbian.

“People just assume that I’m straight now,” Tammy said. “My family has always been in denial.

“When I got pregnant, my mother wrote me a letter telling me she hoped I’d find a man to take care of me and the baby. I just screamed,” she said, pounding the table with mock frustration. “But I’ve got a good job and a good support system, and I’ve always wanted a baby.”

The festival drew several hundred people to Aldrich Park. It continues today with a parade around campus at noon.

On Saturday, the festival had the usual booths of arts and crafts, food, body piercing and jewelry for sale, but festival goers and organizers also reveled in the chance to relax in an accepting, open atmosphere.

“The first gay pride day you go to, it’s indescribable,” said Covington (Cov) Davis, 65, who attended the festival with her partner of 17 years, Lucy Belle King, 67. “As an experience, it’s indescribable to be able to just be yourself and feel like you belong. We keep coming back, and we always will, because this is our family.”

Davis and King both are members of the Episcopal Church of the Messiah in Santa Ana, and said they went to the festival, in part, to be Christian role models to younger gays.

“But we also feel we are role models for younger people who don’t know any older couples who have come out and who have been happy in their relationships,” King said.

The high level of rejection of homosexuals by their families was one reason Chris Sandoval of Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services had a booth among the religious organizations, jewelry vendors and gay pride logos.

Sandoval, a social worker, was recruiting gays and lesbians to become foster parents.

GLASS opened an office in Garden Grove recently and now is beginning work in Orange. In Los Angeles County, the organization operates six group homes for homosexual and bisexual adolescents who either have run away or have been pushed out of their homes.

“We also get kids from the Los Angeles Department of Social Services, and sometimes it’s a baby that was born addicted to cocaine or HIV positive,” Sandoval said. “A lot of gays and lesbians don’t realize that they can become foster parents this way, so we participate in all the pride fairs and recruit there.”

Jamie Bridgers, 27, married and straight, went to the festival also seeking an expanded definition of family. With her 1-year-old daughter, Phoebe, strapped to her back, Bridgers said she hoped her daughter would be influenced by the happy homosexual couples all around them.

“I think it’s good to expose her to different lifestyles as early as possible,” Bridgers said. “My first contact with alternative lifestyles was late in life, and I felt like I’d been missing something, like I’d been deprived.

“I’m hoping she’ll see there are all kinds of families,” Bridgers said.

Jeannette Arce, one of Josh Skeber’s moms, hopes so too.

“We’ve never had a problem with the community--not with their teachers or principals or coaches,” said Arce, who conceived Josh’s 7-week-old sister through artificial insemination. “We’re just a regular family that has two moms.”