Just Your Normal Life With 2 Fathers

They met nine years ago in a support group for unmarried fathers--fathers who happen to be gay and, therefore, can’t be married . . . at least not to each other, at least not in the eyes of the law.

In the obscure realm of gay parenting, Don Harrelson had been a pioneer of sorts. Back in the late ‘70s, still in the closet and living in Kern County, he adopted two boys. By the time he met John Rios, one son was old enough to be out on his own, the other was a teenager soon to leave home.

Rios had become a father the old-fashioned way. He was a divorced man who had been granted custody of his young daughter and son. A year later, the two men would be forming a new family.

“I won’t live with you in sin,” Rios told Harrelson. He wasn’t entirely joking. Before about 100 friends and relatives, the two men exchanged vows in a ceremony at a Silver Lake restaurant. They became husband and husband because, as Rios told Harrelson, “I don’t want my kids to think this is a fly-by-night situation.”

By now many readers are thinking, “Sick, sick, sick.” Even social liberals who are sympathetic to the gay civil rights movement often pause at the notion of gays raising kids.

Get over it, Harrelson says. Next week, although their union may not be recognized by the state of California, this San Fernando Valley couple will celebrate their eighth anniversary of being married with children.

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As America’s lawmakers ponder the question of same-sex marriages, it’s worth remembering an old saw: You can’t legislate morality. This is true for a couple of reasons. For one, laws of nature are descriptive, but the laws of man are merely prescriptive.

Assemblyman William J. “Pete” Knight (R-Palmdale), author of the bill that would prohibit California from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states, may consider such unions to be sins against nature. Harrelson, a churchgoing Catholic, would argue that what is a one man’s sin is another’s family values.

The story of the Harrelson-Rios household may help explain why gay activists are exhibiting such a confident attitude as politicians, ranging from conservatives like Knight to a reelection-minded President Clinton, scramble to the moral barricades. No, gay activists concede, America may not be ready to sanction same-sex marriage this year or next year. But, they say, it will happen.

Consider the Walt Disney Co.’s decision to extend family benefits to the partners of gay employees--and the Southern Baptists’ subsequent call for a boycott of Disney. Boycott? “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and Disney’s theme parks are doing just fine.

Consider another milestone: the appointment of Jeff Horton as the first openly gay person to serve as president of the Los Angeles school board. Not too long ago, teachers who were discovered to be homosexual were subject to dismissal.

The gay rights movement is making progress because, perhaps by accident, gays discovered a far more effective tactic than angrily taking to the streets. It’s happening because so many have quietly settled in the mainstream.

“We’re everywhere,” says Dean Larkin, a member of Maybe Baby, a 4-year-old support group for parents and prospective parents at the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center. Larkin, who is the divorced father of a 13-year-old girl and is now considering adopting a second child, estimates that “tens of thousands” of gays and lesbians nationwide have achieved parenthood by various means--adoption, sperm banks, surrogates, heterosexual relationships.

Harrelson, now 48, says he was the first single male to become an adoptive father in Kern County history. He says he later learned that adoption officials suspected he was gay but didn’t ask.

Harrelson wasn’t picky about gender or age. Ironically, county policy forbade single men from adopting girls, and so Harrelson became father to 12-year-old Doug and later to 8-year-old John Thomas.

Both were troubled boys who had been especially hard to place with families, and by no means did Harrelson’s guidance erase all their difficulties. But to answer the question Harrelson often hears, both Doug and John Thomas are heterosexual.

For Harrelson, helping raise Rios’ 15-year-old daughter Jennifer and 12-year-old Jacob has had more ups than downs. He had no idea Jennifer’s recent quinceanera would be so expensive. On the other hand, he says, the family feels accepted in their Sun Valley neighborhood and at Our Lady of Holy Rosary Church.

The parents of Jennifer’s and Jacob’s friends know that he and Rios are gay and “no one has said, ‘Nope, my kid can’t go over there,’ ” Harrelson says. As for growing up in such a home, Jennifer says, “It’s no big deal.”

Her friends are over often--so much, in fact, that Harrelson reacts like a typical parent. “I say, ‘Why don’t you get the hell out of here and go over to their house?’ ”