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The idea of parenthood, particularly adopting special-needs children, spread within the couple's church congregation and social group. Gay couples who had been considering adopting through the regular channels or becoming pregnant with donor sperm began instead to consider fostering a medically fragile child. At last count, four couples that are friends with Beverly and Sonja have adopted special-needs children.

These children face a future of greater acceptance than gay-parented kids of the previous generation.

"Within the past year I have felt much more acceptance," Beverly says. "People see us as the Brady Bunch. Two lesbian moms going out to eat with three black children and a white child. We were at Golden Corral the other day, and the cashier asked, "Are these all yours?' And I said, "Yes, but these three are adopted.' And she said, "No, really?'" Beverly laughs. "I felt really stupid! But the interest people have about us now is a healthy interest. I'm much more confident now referring to Sonja as my partner, and saying these are our children. You know, a family in today's society is very different. It's not necessarily male/female with 2.5 kids. There are caregivers. Grandparents with grandchildren. Foster children. We are not the only kind of "alternative' family. We never were."

When asked how motherhood makes her feel, Beverly thinks for a moment.

"Complete," she replies.

Son

When Gabe Hinceman was five years old, a group of women "came to the house to move me and my sister out of my dad's house." His mother, Concetta, sat him down and explained that they were leaving in part because "given the choice between men and women, she liked women more.

"I didn't really have any questions about it," he says. "I was like, well, all right, that's cool. I was always told that if I had any questions, to just ask."

Concetta was an out lesbian from Gabe's kindergarten days on. Later, when the family moved to Charlotte, Concetta would run a women's center, edit a lesbian newsletter, and play on an all-female, mostly-lesbian traveling rugby team called the Charlotte Harlots.

As he grew up, Gabe's mother's lesbian friends "really just became a big support group." At little league baseball games, he always had a cheering crowd of lesbians. Concetta and a group of lesbian friends, including more than a few Harlots, attended "every athletic event I ever participated in."

Despite Concetta's openness about her sexuality, Gabe was never teased or ridiculed -- until the social stakes were raised by the move to junior high. Close friends never made fun of him because "they all really liked my mom. To them, it was nothing really shocking." But those less close to Gabe and Concetta weren't so accepting.

The worst insult "of my life" directed at his mother's homosexuality was from a seventh-grade girlfriend whom Gabe had given his yearbook to sign at the end of the school year. "When I got it back, [she had written] stuff like, "you're gonna be a fag, your mom is gay'. It hurt me."

There was only one other negative incident, occurring at a local pizza parlor during Gabe's high school years. A group of older boys from a neighboring school started taunting him about his lesbian mother. Gabe's friends immediately leapt to his defense. "They were like, "What do you think you're doing, saying that! We'll beat your ass! He's a great guy, and if you met his mom you'd fuckin' love her!'"

Gabe says he has been profoundly affected by the love and support he received from Concetta's lesbian friends. He feels that his many older, mother-figure lesbian mentors, all friends or lovers of his mom, have given him insight into the female character, insight that most men lack.

"I've had quite a few surrogate moms in my life," says Gabe. "And if you were to ask anyone who knows me what was the greatest thing about me, they would say, "He understands women.'"

Gabe says this unique understanding has helped his ex-girlfriends to become "my best friends," even after the end of the relationship. "They hold me up there on the shelf with some of their best girlfriends. Here's a guy, someone from the opposite sex, who understands them the way a woman does."

As a child, Gabe spent time around the women's center his mother ran. There he saw "women who were being exposed to feminism, women who got beat up by their husbands, women who had nowhere to go but this place." He feels he received "more than a double dose" of feminist ideas from this exposure to a hidden side of women's lives. "The greatest thing I ever learned in my whole life, from being around so many women, is that women are looked down on as inferior. I never once bought that. If anything, I think the opposite. I think that if women ran things, we'd all be a lot more joyful."