December 4, 2002. -- It was March 31, 1989, the day after my daughter was born. I was officially on paternity leave at Princeton Seminary and excited and relieved that the weeks-long vigil of waiting was over. Finally, I was a dad! I spent the morning on campus passing out pink bubble gum cigars to my friends and colleagues and telling them the good news; it was a girl! I returned home exhausted and knowing that it would be another four days until baby would be released from the hospital and we would meet. I left my condo to go to the grocery store and then it caught my eye. There in the clouds, as the cold wind blew the clouds away following a brief rainstorm was a double rainbow! I had never seen one before. I paused and watched it, trying to trace the colors to the ground, but they both disappeared in the air. I did not know in that moment that I would be a single dad only briefly, that I would raise my daughter with another. Twin rainbows. And indeed it has been a double blessing. My partner Bob and I are blessed. God has granted us the gift of parenthood. We have the enormous privilege and joy of being parents to a wonderful, bright, socially exuberant, and caring young woman. Thirteen years after Elizabeth's birth, we still thank God daily for her coming into the world and changing our lives forever. We are two proud dads, who happen to be gay.

I believe that gay and lesbian parents who are raising children and living as families in congregations throughout the PCUSA are in a unique position to witness to the good news of Jesus Christ in their communities. We are raising our children in the church, a church that has, for many of us, provided us with the community of faith to nurture children as disciples of the One who welcomes all. The sad news is that it is often difficult for gay families to find a local church that is willing and able to provide such a loving and supportive faith community. I must admit that, at times, it has been difficult trying to protect my daughter from some of the hatred and ignorance towards gay and lesbian people that is evident in too many sectors of the Presbyterian Church. We have done our best to avoid such people and attitudes and have used the instances when this occurs to talk with our daughter about the central message of the Gospel: loving God and loving neighbor. This is all the more reason to find a faith-filled congregation in which to raise your child.

We, as a family, are invited regularly to speak to college students at Rider University and have been doing so since Elizabeth was in third grade. The professor recently wrote an article for an educational journal on our visits titled, "Putting a Face on Difference: A Gay Family Visits the College Classroom."[1] The students' reactions in their papers have been amazing to read. They have demonstrated to us that telling our story is helpful to people -- to students and future school teachers. Maybe we in the church could learn a lesson from this college class.

Thomas Groome, the well known Christian educator, encourages Christians to engage in shared praxis, "a group of Christians sharing in dialogue their critical reflection on present action in light of the Christian Story, and its vision toward the end of lived Christian faith." He asserts that at the heart of Christian education is the act of the people of God sharing our present personal stories within the community of faith. I wish to share a bit of the story of our "gay family," that is, a family that is headed by a same-sex couple, and how we are living out that story within the context of a community of faith.

Our daughter has found herself to be in the first generation of the new and growing "gayby boom," children being raised from birth by gay parents. When we gathered with other families in New Jersey only a decade ago, there would be about a dozen families with babies and a few toddlers. Now, when Lambda Families gathers there are hundreds of families with children of all ages: new families and families with a few teenagers, lesbian moms and gay dads, expectant couples, adopted children, dads with twins -- twins related to each other biologically and a biological son of each dad, lesbian moms who each have given birth to a child and the children who are biologically related to each other through the sperm donor.

I adopted Elizabeth at birth. During her first four years of life, Bob was known as "Uncle Bob." In conversation with various lawyers, it became clear that there was nothing that we could do to protect the bond between Elizabeth and Uncle Bob. If something were to happen to me, my biological family would have legal right to Elizabeth and Bob would have no legal standing at all. This is sad, but true for all gay families everywhere. We were deeply concerned and we asked the national and state ACLU to help us. The ACLU took our case and petitioned the court, asking that Bob be allowed to adopt Elizabeth as a second parent. Eventually, the ACLU won the case, although the case did little to change the laws in New Jersey. When Elizabeth was five, Bob adopted her and became her second dad. We soon discovered that the more challenging change was the birth certificate. Adopted children are issued new birth certificates and the adoptive parents are listed as the parents of the child. The problem for us was that the New Jersey birth certificate listed "father" and "mother" and the state wanted to list one of us as the mother. The struggle between our lawyer, Marsha Wenk, and the State Registrar lasted over six months with the state finally agreeing to offer an alternative birth certificate form which reads, "parent" and "parent."

Elizabeth's birth certificate issued in June 1995, the first of its kind in New Jersey, lists her two dads as her parents. This has proved to be the most important document that we possess. It is the only legal form -- at both the state and federal level -- that recognizes the three of us as a family unit. We cannot marry. When we travel throughout the U.S. and aboard, it is necessary that we carry a copy of the birth certificate.

Our family is surrounded by a loving and supportive community which provides guidance and love for the day to day issues and challenges of life and parenting in today's increasing diverse, complex, and at times hostile world. Many students in the college courses reflect following our visit, that we are not being honest when we tell them that it is rare for us to experience discrimination and hate in our schools or neighborhood. But this is true, it has been rare for us to experience this personally.

Parents and children in gay families should feel very comfortable when the church tells the stories of the people of the Bible. These stories are filled with alternative families. In fact, most are stories of people from alternative families as defined by today's traditional family.

Our home church has done an admirable job of including our family in all its activities. We are truly fortunate to be members of Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton, New Jersey. At every turn, the church has worked to make its doors open to all people. Two examples of working towards inclusion: many years ago, Nassau computerized its member data and purchased a software program to keep track of the members. Not long after the installation it was discovered that the software program would not accept same-sex couples at the same address, it would only accept heterosexual couples as input. The pastor was very apologetic to us. Fortunately, for us, that program no longer exists and same sex couples may now be listed.

When Elizabeth was a young girl, the church produced a pictorial directory of its members. We were delighted that the church included our family photo and displayed our family along with the other families. Later that year, the Layman did a front-page article on the church, and denounced it for all kinds of reasons, including the fact that it had a "family" in its church directory: a photo of two men and a little girl who one of the men had adopted. Typical of that publication's lack of journalistic integrity, reporting on hearsay and never going to the source, its story was not accurate. Yes, we were a family, but both of us had adopted the little girl!

"Which one?" six-year-old Elizabeth innocently asked. She had just been invited to dinner by a new found friend's mother while we were on vacation aboard a cruise ship. The mom had told her to ask her dad for permission to do so. I watched from a flight below as my daughter began to fly down the ship staircase anxious to settle the matter, when all at once she stopped dead in her tracks, turned back around to the mother, and asked, "Which one?" The woman smiled and chuckled and said, "It doesn't matter, you can ask either dad."

Double blessings -- two dads, and one daughter and one terrific local church, double blessings indeed.

Here is a list of our suggestions for gay and lesbian parents and churches based upon our own experience as a gay family, with help from a few other sources. Most would apply to any type of family, as indeed parenting is parenting, whether parents are straight or gay.

*1. Find a supportive and caring local church.*

2. Live in a state and or community that provide legal protections for you and your family, your employment, your housing, and other means of support.

3. Be as honest as developmentally appropriate with your children regarding their family and their beginnings. It's their family and they need to know the family stories. Children should never be knowingly deceived by what is said or unsaid.

*4. Find a supportive and caring local church.*

5. Choose a safe and welcoming preschool and school for your children. Do not assume that the school knows about your family. Tell them directly! Talk to the schools: to the principals and the teachers. Actively work for policies and curriculum that include your family. Children of all ages need to hear stories about families like theirs. You cannot be at school with your children, so you need to enlist the school's support in providing as safe and welcoming environment as possible.

6. Gather regularly with other gay families and share ideas among one another. Your children need to know they are not the only family with gay or lesbian parents.

7. Attend Family Week in Provincetown, MA, during the first week of August every summer. This is an opportunity to be with hundreds of other gay families from all around the country.

8. Enroll your child in COLAGE -- Children of Gays and Lesbian Everywhere, so she or he can network with other children.

9. The more "out" you are, the safer and healthier your children will be. Be as "out" as you can be, at work, in the neighborhood, and at church. Children need to grow up confident that it's O.K. to talk openly about their parents and their families.

10. As your child grows older, it is important that he or she have the opportunity to freely gather and network with other children who have gay parents. As your child moves into middle school and high school, give space to your child as to whether or not to "out" themselves as a child with gay parents in various arenas. As they grow older, this decision becomes more their own.

*11. And lastly, join a warm and inviting local church!*

What can churches do to support our families?

1. Welcome us! Invite us to have our children baptized and ask the community to support us as we raise our children in the community of faith.

2. Recognize us as a family and support our families. As we register our children for Sunday School, list both dads or moms as the parents. Invite us as a family to be greeters or to light the Advent candle. List our family in the church directory.

3. Pastors and directors of Christian education (DCEs) need to inform the Sunday School teachers about our families, so teachers aren't kept guessing who the parents are.

4. Make it known that all families are welcome in the church. Don't be afraid to use the words, "gay" and "lesbian." Our children use the words, and it is O.K. to name our families.

5. Give all children and youth permission to talk about their families.

6. Help gay families network with one another -- so we and our children can find means of supporting one another.

For further parenting support, local groups, and resources, contact: The Family Pride Coalition, www.familypride.org; COLAGE, www.colage.org; Children's books, www.twolives.com.

David H. Wall is an administrator at Princeton Theological Seminary, a certified Christian educator in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and serves on the board of directors of the Family Pride Coalition, the national gay and lesbian parenting organization based in Washington, D.C. He lives in Lawrenceville, NJ, with his partner Bob Houck and their 13 year old daughter, Elizabeth.

[1] Rice Jordan, Mildred L. "Putting a Face on Difference: A Gay Family Visits the College Classroom." *Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy.* Vol. XIII, No. 2, Fall 2002, pages 59-77.