Sunday Album / A weekly profile of a family--its history, joys and trials : Doubly Devoted : The Barnes-Wallaces have young children, the Alford--Keatings’ children are young adults. Both families are typical in most ways. Except they are headed by lesbians.

Although he is only 6 years old, living gleefully among the flicks and flitters of boundless childhood possibilities, Mitchell Barnes-Wallace understands hard truths.

He knows there are some in this world who don’t like gay people, which is why the men sitting behind him at a San Diego Padres baseball game last summer were slinging that word, “faggot,” so fiercely, so profusely at the opposing team. And why, after the men left the ballpark early, he turned to his mother and asked in a steady tone. “My dad’s gay, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” she said, “and so are your moms.”

“Oh.”

And that was that. A line drive to the heart.

Lynn Barnes-Wallace offered further explanation, as it was the first time her son had approached the issue of sexual orientation, but Mitchell declined further discussion. There was, after all, a baseball game bidding for his attention.

Typical Family in

Almost Every Way

Mitchell and his sister, Evan Barnes-Wallace, 3, of San Diego are members of a family typical in almost all ways. One parent is an elementary schoolteacher, the other a hairdresser. This summer, Mitchell is learning to ride a bicycle. Evan opts for dolls and pancakes.

“If you look at this family and a family that has a mom and a dad at the house with the same age kids, I bet you wouldn’t find a lot of differences,” Lynn says, “except we’re two women, and they’re a woman and a man.”

Lynn, 39, and her partner, Lori Barnes-Wallace, 47, have been together almost 13 years. Although state law does not allow for same-sex marriage, they exchanged vows almost 10 years ago.

When they decided to start a family, they knew that the process would be extensive, complex, expensive and, at times, daunting. There were formidable obstacles, capable of breaking hearts, all along the way. A couple less determined, less sure might have given up.

“These children are not accidents,” says Lynn, who gave birth to both of them. “They were so planned and so wanted.”

She and Lori believe, and research confirms, that children of households headed by lesbians or gays are just as likely, or unlikely, to be as well-adjusted as the children of heterosexual parents.

Tara Rose, a doctoral candidate in psychology at USC, is researching teenage and adult children of families headed by gays and lesbians. She goes one step further, maintaining that families that go through extensive or costly processes to become parents may be “more children-centered than the rest of the population.”

Charlotte J. Patterson, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, in a summary of research published by the American Psychological Assn., concluded: “. . . there is no evidence to suggest that . . . psychosocial development among children of gay men or lesbians is compromised in any respect relative to that among offspring of heterosexual parents.”

Being Honest With

Children Important

Pat Alford-Keating, a staff therapist for Student Psychological Services at UCLA and an adjunct professor at USC and Mount St. Mary’s College, has insights of her own, learned from life.

She and her partner, Shannon Keating, have been together for 15 years. Their children are now grown. “I have learned the importance of good, honest communication,” she says. “We have really worked at communicating with each other. I think we dared talk about those things that are really tough to talk about as a family, and I think that has been crucial.”

The Alford-Keatings became a family when the children already were 5 and 6 years old.

Lynn and Lori Barnes-Wallace, by contrast, began the process by seeking a sperm donor. They wanted the children to be able to see their father, if they so chose, to fill a void Lori had witnessed in the lives of friends who were adopted.

Of a donor, they required that he agree to release custody, so Lori could seek second-parent adoption. They also demanded that the donor agree not to father other children. Lastly, they required testing for HIV.

Lori expected she could find such a person among her friends and clients at the hair salon, but their first step proved also to be their first obstacle.

“I asked one of my better friends, a gay man, and he stopped talking to me for about five years after that,” she says. “What I didn’t know was that he was HIV-positive. He couldn’t tell me, so he instead just disappeared from my life.”

Then about a year later, Lori was seated in her dentist’s chair getting her teeth cleaned. It occurred to her that behind this dentist’s mask were a set of exceptional green eyes. He was professional, stable, athletic, intelligent. Then there were those eyes. Hmm.

The man agreed to meet with them for lunch. And then he agreed to a lot more. He chose not to be interviewed for this story, but he maintains a close relationship with the children, who call him Daddy.

Recently, 6-year-old Mitchell, comparing his family with a friend’s, asked Lynn if she loved his father. She explained that she did because he helped make the family possible.

“But I told him, ‘Your mom is the person I married.’ We have made that very clear to both of them. People ask me what I tell the kids,” Lynn says. “I tell them the truth. You tell your children the truth from the very beginning. Not telling them the truth is your own homophobia. You’re buying into what other people say about your family. You can’t lie. You know what that does to kids? It ruins them.”

Once a week through the summer, Mitchell and Evan go to their father’s parents’ house to swim. Lynn’s parents visited recently from Colorado to celebrate Mitchell’s birthday and will return in time for Christmas. Lori’s father lives in a guest house in back. Along with neighbors and friends, they have built a strong extended family, straight and gay, devoted to the children.

And they have found a church where their family is accepted. Their will is stronger and their direction is clearer because of faith.

And the children have given Lori a chance, finally, to be part of what a family should be, she says. Her parents were divorced when she was 8, and her mother ordered her to go with her father. She has five older brothers, but what relationships survived the divorce were further severed when she came out at age 18.

A family isn’t always defined by the blood that runs through your veins, Lori says.

“The people who love you most--that’s what makes a family.”

And at the center of the family are Mitchell and Evan. Last month, Lynn and Lori took them to the San Diego Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade, where laughter became screams when a tear gas canister was set off.

Three people were hospitalized. Lynn, Lori, Mitchell, Evan and Lynn’s mother were among those who were gassed but suffered no serious physical injuries. Emotionally, there remains a scar. That night when they returned home, Mitchell asked if they could install surveillance cameras around their house.

Just as his heart is being filled with the love of family, he is learning about hatred--and fear.

Family Always Makes

Fried Pie Together

For the Alford-Keatings, the tradition dates back to their years in Oklahoma, when, as Pat Alford-Keating, 45, would say, the children were “knee-high to a cricket.” On no particular day, just whenever the urge presents itself, the family assembles in the kitchen to make “fried pie.”

Daughter Natasha Alford, now 21, cuts the dough. Son Chris Alford, 22, and in the Navy, adds fruit filling, typically dried apricots. Pat does the frying, and Shannon adds a shower of powdered sugar.

Even now, the process never varies. A fried pie has never been made in their home without all four of them contributing. So it is with family. Love is sometimes corny, but it also is the steel to withstand what people, alone, often cannot.

Chris and Natasha were born during Pat’s nine-year marriage, which ended in divorce in 1984, the same year Shannon, now 42, took on a parental role in their lives. Pat and Shannon had been friends for about a year, and no one was more surprised than the two of them when they realized they were in love.

They were certain of their feelings for each other, but less so about how their relationship might affect the children.

“Pat was well on her way to being a psychologist, so she pulled a lot of the studies that were available at the time, and everything showed that there was no harm, and if there’s anything different, you end up with kids who are more open-minded,” says Shannon, now an executive director of domestic distribution for 20th Television, a division of Fox Inc.

“That relieved some of our anxiety, but we knew it wouldn’t be an easy life for our kids, that they would be a target of people’s anger toward us for loving one another,” Shannon says.

That same love, threading its way through all four, proved to be a source of strength for Natasha and Chris as they moved into adolescence. When Natasha was in seventh grade and Chris was in eighth, the family moved to Chico, where Shannon and Pat started a group called Kids Club, specifically for children of gay- and lesbian-headed households.

It was an attempt to bring families together through camping trips, picnics, roller-skating and other activities centered on children.

“Our philosophy,” says Pat, “was that instead of having the kids sit down and talk about things, we would put them together doing fun things, and they would naturally talk amongst themselves.”

About 50 families found each other through the club, which came to play an important role in Chris and Natasha’s lives. It was like an extended family, they say, and it helped lessen their feelings of isolation as, more and more, they felt like outsiders.

There was a sense of security in Chico, Natasha says, not present when the family moved to Redondo Beach two years later. With each move, the process of coming out about her family began anew.

“That was very hard,” Natasha says. “I went through a period where I was quite depressed, not because of my moms, but it was like being put in a cold shower after being in this warm, loving environment. . . .

“The fact that I have lesbian moms makes it harder to move. Every time I moved and had to make a new set of friends, I had to deal with the fact that I had to come out again, find friends who are accepting, because I’m not comfortable having friends who can’t accept my parents.”

Students at their Manhattan Beach high school seemed less accepting than their friends in Chico, they thought. It was more difficult to fit in. Chris’ proving grounds were on the football field, a place where derogatory words were commonplace. In his efforts to be accepted, he told few people about his parents.

“There were times when I asked them [Shannon and Pat] not to act like they were involved if I brought friends over,” he says. “They didn’t like having to do that, but for the most part they would cover for me.”

Felicia Park-Rogers, director of Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere, or COLAGE, based in San Francisco, says that such behavior is typical but that it doesn’t necessarily displace the love children have for their parents.

“It’s important that parents not take that as personal rejection,” she says. “They need to understand that it’s inside the context of a child trying to grapple with societal, institutional homophobia and give children space to work that out.”

The search for self-identity is filled with tricky underbrush, no matter who one is, no matter who one’s parents are, Park-Rogers says. And to find one’s place in the world is to stumble forward, hoping for paradise, but settling for soft ground.

Natasha and Chris are still searching, but even during moments when the future seems cloudy and distant, the past is coming into clearer focus.

“I feel that I grew up in a good family,” Chris says. “I accept people for who they are, no matter what their differences are. I don’t think I would be so accepting had it not been for my moms.”

If he has regrets, it is that he is not closer to his father. It’s something he is working on, he says, but it has more to do with the divorce than with his mothers.

“I don’t think my moms being lesbians was harmful to us, but there’s the potential for harm from people in society. My parents have never done anything bad to me. Anything bad has come from other people.”

Natasha is moving to Florida soon, to be near her boyfriend and, eventually, to finish college. It’s a big move starting a new life at the other end of the country, but she says she takes with her the love of two mothers.

“They have been such a foundation in my life,” she says. “They have always listened to me, and that is one of the greatest gifts of love.”

Pat and Shannon will hold down the fort. With their children grown and moving in directions of their own, they too embark on a new life, one that allows them more time for each other.

But fewer fried pies.

Duane Noriyuki can be reached at socalliving@latimes.com.

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Sources for Nontraditional Families

Here are some resources for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender parents and their families:

* Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere--International organization providing support, education and advocacy on behalf of daughters and sons of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender parents.

Address: 3543 18th St., No. 17, San Francisco, CA 94110

Telephone: (415) 861-5437

E-mail: colage@colage.org

Web site: https://www.colage.org

* Family Pride Coalition--International organization that provides support, education and advocacy run for and by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender parents.

Address: P.O. Box 34337, San Diego, CA 92163

Telephone: (619) 296-0199

E-mail: pride@familypride.org

Web site: https://www.familypride.org

* Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays--Organization that provides support, education and advocacy for parents and supporters of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Address: 1101 14th St, N.W., Suite 1030, Washington D.C. 20005

Telephone: (202) 638-4200

Web site: https://www.pflag.org

* Straight Spouse Network--International organization that provides support and education run for and by current and former spouses and partners of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Address: 8215 Terrace Drive, El Cerrito, CA 94530

Telephone: (510) 525-0200

Web site: https://www.ssnetwk.org

* Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network--National organization dedicated to ending homophobic bias in K-12 public, private and parochial schools.

Address: 121 W. 27th St., Suite 804, New York, NY, 10001

Telephone: (212) 727-0135

E-mail: glsen@glsen.org

Web site: https://www.glsen.org