MOTHERS AND DAUGHTER: Erika, Lili, and Rhonda Bourne 'are not different,' says Rhonda Bourne. 'We're as boring as any other American family.' Fight for the rights THESE DAYS, time is on the side of equal-marriage advocates. The more time that elapses between now and the Constitutional Convention (ConCon) — where legislators will vote on a state constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage and establish civil unions — the more opportunities there are for real families to share how marriage affects them. "The thing we have really going for our side," says Marc Solomon, political director of MassEquality, an equal-marriage coalition comprising more than 50 organizations, "is that when people know our stories, they move toward our side." If the vote were held in the state legislature today, marriage rights for same-sex couples would likely go to the ballot in 2006. Despite electoral gains last November, and three more in this month’s special election, equal-marriage advocates constantly remind both reporters and supporters that they haven’t gathered quite enough votes to defeat the amendment, which they say creates a separate, and unequal, class of citizens. Luckily, the ConCon won’t happen until the summer or early fall, according to most estimates. Until then, the strategy is simple: let gay and lesbian couples (5000 of them have gotten married since May 17, 2004) — along with their straight counterparts — talk to neighbors and legislators about the benefits and protections marriage provides. Meanwhile, throughout the state and on Beacon Hill, organizers are continuing to identify and win over supporters. Pro-marriage teams gathered names at Monday’s marathon; they’ll also be present at Friday’s Earth Day festivities. Already, it seems the strategy is working. "There’s no clamor to take away people’s rights," Solomon says. In fact, according to a recent Merrimack College Center for Public Opinion Research poll, only 1.2 percent of those surveyed consider gay marriage the most important problem in the state. Of course, anti-marriage extremists keep crafting new ways to undermine the newly acquired equal rights. At a Joint Judiciary Committee hearing last Tuesday, we got a preview of what’s to come. Conservatives testified in favor of removing the Supreme Judicial Court justices responsible for the Goodridge decision that made marriage legal in the state. In addition, three of the state’s top right-wing groups — the Massachusetts Family Institute, the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, and the Article 8 Alliance — also spoke in support of a measure that would not only outlaw gay marriage, but would also ban civil unions and domestic partnerships. Another extreme bill would nullify the marriages that have taken place since last May. On the other side, the committee heard testimony on two bills that would codify the Goodridge decision, and on yet another that would strike down a 1913 law that prohibits out-of-state couples from marrying in Massachusetts. When a rambunctious crew of five mothers — gay and straight — and five of their children got up to testify, the muggy, packed room got quiet. Their message was straightforward: "We are not different," Rhonda Bourne said, as much to the ideologically divided crowd as to the committee. "We are not a special-interest group. We are a family." Amidst the smorgasbord of legislation, Representative Byron Rushing, a staunch marriage supporter, quietly gave voice to what many were already thinking. "We shouldn’t be adding another layer to this," he said. "Let’s have this discussion at the ConCon." — DF

Even for Meg Soens and Celia d’Oliveira, who had been together for 16 years before their wedding, and were clearly in it for the long haul, marriage evened the playing field. "The marriage was a piece of common language that we never had," Soens says.

When Allen White and Dale Belcher finally tied the knot last July, after 27 years of coupledom, they found a justice of the peace who performed a special ceremony that united them not only to each other, but also to each of their three children. "It meant so much to them, because we jelled as a family," Dale explains, as their youngest daughter, Soka, falls asleep in his lap.

"The fears that people have," Allen says later, a bit bemused, "I guess I wish they knew more gay families. Because if they saw us with our kids —" "We don’t have ball gowns in the closet," Dale interrupts, laughing. "We live such a suburban little life here," Allen finishes, smiling and motioning to their back yard, which is showing its first signs of life after a long winter.

Same-sex families aren’t the only ones who can vouch for the co-existence of family values and equal marriage. Dorchester residents Beth Nagy and Carl Nagy-Koechlin have a 15-month-old boy, Joshua. Gay or straight, Nagy simply wants her son "to grow up in a world where all relationships are valued. It’ll be part of our daily life, thinking about social justice," she says. "We’ll show him by example."

AS THE gay-marriage debate continues to unfold here and across the nation, we can count on extreme conservatives to continue lambasting same-sex marriage as bad for children. Consider these "debate-tested" talking points from Focus on the Family, James Dobson’s ultra-conservative, Washington, DC–based outfit: "Same-sex ‘marriage’ will subject generations of children to the status of lab rats in [a] vast, untested social experiment," or "The same-sex family is not driven by the needs of children, but rather by the radical wishes of a small group of adults."

Or this, from our own Governor Mitt Romney, at a US Senate hearing last June: "Marriage is also for children. In fact, marriage is principally for the nurturing and development of children. The children of America have a right to have a father and a mother."

In fact, if anti-marriage zealots would take a closer look, they’d discover nothing particularly "radical" or even remarkable about gay- or lesbian-headed families — unless you count their ability to remain utterly unremarkable as their place in society is debated in legislative halls, on the religious pulpit, and at neighborhood gatherings. Gay and lesbian parents are quick to point out how very nurturing and normal their lives are — they go to school meetings, do laundry, cook dinner, and scrimp and save the same way most heterosexual couples do. Their children run the gamut of personality types, from shy to extroverted, and their homes cross the spectrum from neat to messy.

"We’re a settled-down, boring, middle-class, green-picket-fence couple," Rhonda explains. "We’re as boring as any other American family."

Indeed, their fence is green, and on the first floor of their house, each room is painted a cheery shade of blue, yellow, or peach. On a Saturday morning, Lili watches cartoons while her moms sit at the dining-room table. Against one wall leans a collage that Erika made for Rhonda, a social worker in the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health; pasted within the frame are newspaper clippings, photos, and their marriage certificate. Because they already wore wedding bands from their religious marriage seven years ago, Rhonda opted to make simple paper rings the second time around, for a back-yard ceremony with friends and family last fall. She crafted a ring for Lili, too; the "jewel" is a state seal, made from the state’s official letterhead.

FAMILIES LIKE these exist everywhere, of course, not just in Massachusetts, providing a great opportunity to advance the goals of the equality movement, to gain straight allies, and to promote tolerance among young children. Such strides are especially important in places such as Arkansas, Florida, Oregon, and Kansas, where conservatives are making legislative attempts to block same-sex adoption and foster-parenting, and ballot initiatives to ban gay marriage are passing in state after state.

"LGBT families who are raising children, generally speaking, have an incredible amount of inter-connectivity with the straight community," says Jennifer Chrisler, the new executive director of the Family Pride Coalition, the largest gay-and-lesbian-parenting network in the country. "I think really, at this point in our equal-rights battle, that’s where the work needs to be done. The majority of America — if we can get them to buy into why it’s right and good and makes good social sense to protect our families, then the tide is really going to start to change. They start to see that our families are just like their families."

In Milton, on the street where Kordell, Ishi, Jianna, and their moms live, more than 20 kids play within a block’s radius. One warm spring afternoon, they scatter around 5:30 p.m., scrambling on foot or pedaling on bikes toward their respective homes for dinner.

On this street, Deb Kennedy tells me later, moms and dads are gay and straight, black and white; children are biological, adopted, and biracial. "Our family is not different than any other family on the street," she says. "We all have minivans."

Deirdre Fulton can be reached at dfulton[a]phx.com