FEATURES: Extraordinary family album
Photo exhibit aims to shatter myths about gay and lesbian life

By DONNA FREEDMAN
Daily News reporter

At first glance, they are pictures of families. A new mother cradles her infant. A police-sergeant dad poses with his young daughter. A couple of dozen people mug happily at a family reunion.

Yet the photo captions are revealing. The extra guy in a photo is Daddy's lover. The two women aren't sisters, but life partners. The man gently cuddling a baby is actually a "transgendered" woman.

These are not ordinary families. And yet they are ordinary, say the organizers of "Love Makes a Family: Living in Lesbian and Gay Families," an exhibit of photographs on display in Anchorage.

"The living day-to-day with their families is identical. How do you get (the kids) to soccer and get your work done and get the lunch made and buy the clothes and pay the bills? It's all exactly the same," says Peggy Gillespie of Family Diversity Projects Inc., the Massachusetts-based nonprofit group that created the exhibit.

The pictures have been crisscrossing the country since 1994, appearing everywhere from tiny rural towns to metropolitan areas. Locally, they're on view through June 25 at Side Street Espresso downtown.

So far, there have been no complaints about the show, according to coffeehouse co-owner George Gee. Side Street features monthly exhibits, usually by local artists who aren't well-represented in galleries. But the coffeehouse also has played host to shows on controversial topics such as the death penalty, immigration and wolf management.

An exhibit on gay families was an easy call, Gee says: "It sort of fit with other shows we've done. It's a social concern; it's community information."

The exhibit was on view in Juneau in February. When Anchorage resident Fred Hillman heard about it, he became "the point man" to bring it here. The reason, he says, was educating the public.

"There's a lot of mythology. People have strange ideas about what a gay family is," says Hillman, a retired physician who belongs to all four of the groups that sponsored the show in Anchorage: Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, the Gay/Lesbian/Straight Education Network, the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship and Identity Inc.

Hillman also was responsible for organizing a special event for Friday evening at Loussac Library. Beginning at 7 p.m., Gillespie will present a slide show about "Love Makes a Family." Afterward, former Sen. Arliss Sturgulewski will lead a panel discussion on the topic of gay marriage, with panelists representing both sides of the issue.

Sen. Loren Leman, who proposed a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriages, says the two topics are entirely separate. Gay families, he says, are "really not the issue I was taking on."

He has not seen the show and does not plan to view it. However, Leman ventured a guess as to its content: "It's probably pictures trying to show (the families) in the most favorable light."

In fact, the photos do show gay parents in relaxed, happy moments with their children and significant others. They are black, white, Asian and Hispanic, and hold jobs ranging from best-selling author to physician's assistant to policeman. Whether sitting around a dinner table or walking in the country, their affection for one another is obvious.

"I think what the show is trying to do is portray these people as normal, loving people who can come into full acceptance with all of society's rules. ... That's the motivation behind this," Leman says.

"It's all part of the campaign to change society's values when it looks at homosexuality. That's why it's here."

Liz Forrer, director of the Anchorage Center for Families, believes society's definition of "family" is changing all by itself. Grandparents pursue custody of grandchildren whose parents can't or won't raise them properly. Neighbors step in as surrogate parents for families with problems.

Grown children come back to the nest. Interracial marriages are increasingly common. People without blood relatives create their own families of close friends.

"All of us define (family) differently," Forrer says. "The values of caring and compassion and acceptance and understanding - all the good things it takes for children to learn how to be caring, loving, contributing citizens - are what count. These values can exist in families of all sorts of varieties."

Her own reaction to the show? "It's just pure pleasure for me to see children who have adults in their lives who love and cherish them. How lucky those kids are."

The Rev. Rick Benjamin, who was asked to be in the panel discussion but declined due to a scheduling conflict, thinks the title "Love Makes a Family" is a little simplistic.

"That's a nice sentiment, but it's way too general. We would go by a traditional - we would think of it as a Biblical - view of family, and marriage, too," says Benjamin of Abbott Loop Community Church.

That doesn't make him a gay-basher, he hastens to add. "It's easy for our position to come across as mean-spirited. But I don't think (we are). We just have this conviction about this issue. We also try to act with love toward everybody."

The show has engendered religion-based protest in some areas, according to Peggy Gillespie. The worst case was the minister who picketed in St. Louis, with a sign that read "Fags Must Die." In Gillespie's own city of Amherst, Mass., several families tried to sue to keep the show from being displayed in elementary schools.

"In that year, I was at numerous school meetings and parent meetings, with people and their Bibles and their sodomy laws, everything," Gillespie recalls. (The judge threw out the case.)

"When people have prejudice, facts don't usually get to them. What changes people more than anything, I think, is individual contact. ... You get to know somebody and you realize that prejudice that you learned at your mother's knee is just ignorance, just not knowing any better.

"I think that's where change can happen: When you see that these are human beings. An exhibit like this can show us what it's like to be human."

"LOVE MAKES A FAMILY: LIVING IN LESBIAN AND GAY FAMILIES," a photo exhibit, will be on display through June 25 at Side Street Espresso, 412 G St. Hours are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. A free slide show and panel discussion about the exhibit and same-sex marriages takes place at 7 p.m. Friday at Loussac Library. The public is invited.

Note from Michael Haase (michaelh@servcom.com): Fred Hillman, the show's organizer, can be reached at fhillman@alaska.net for more information on the exhibit.
(and Peggie Gillespie is online at famphoto@aol.com)

Return to P.E.R.S.O.N. Project Home Page