- Your home is supposed to be a sanctuary.

A place where you can truly be yourself.

When you're taught that your family is alternative and sometimes even illegitimate, the role of community support becomes vital.

Meet Rob and Rahsaan, gay parents who truly know that it takes a village.

- We have four children, 7, 7, 4, and 4.

No pets or anything like that.

- We don't need any more responsibility.

- [Rahsaan] No, no, no, no.

No, no, no.

One of the things that we agreed on right off the bat was really finding a support system.

Knowing that we couldn't do it all on our own and that we needed a community of folks to really help us through the process.

We decided to start a Facebook group.

You know, something very informal for gay dads.

- LGBTQ+ families face an array of obstacles, from restrictive social biases to legal challenges.

So, how can we help one another overcome these challenges?

And in today's day and age, what does it really mean to be a part of a family?

I'm Devin-Norelle and this is Brave Spaces.

- I want to try to get as many people as possible, so I have to make sure I tag everyone in the post.

We started the group, really as a space to affirm gay dads and gay families.

- There's no chapter book telling you how to go ahead as gay dads and figure out the adoption process and to navigate that.

And then I think to see other families that look like our family, other families that have gone through similar struggles, but then just what any parent deals with.

- [Child] Daddy, come catch me!

- And to watch it grow over time has been very inspirational and support network for all of these families has really, really been tremendous.

Child in here?

Who wants to stir?

We just knew that we wanted to, to have children and we wanted to kind of build this life together.

- So here's what you're going to do.

Look, okay?

Take this.

- Family is love and its action.

Love is the foundation.

And then enacting that love in different ways that's unique to our family and our kids and our support system really is where I think we're strong.

You know, we're strong, we're very strong in the love part, but we're equally as strong in action.

- You know, although you think of your home as a space that you don't need to be brave in, we have to be different so that they're better prepared and that they know how to take on the world that may not always be so kind to them.

- To understand why LGBTQ+ families face certain challenges, I can give you an entire history lesson.

But I'll spare you most of the deets.

The term nuclear family took off in the 1950s and refers to a family group consisting of a husband, wife, and their biological children.

The term expanded to include adopted children, but emphasis stayed on the family unit containing opposite sex married adults who maintained a socially approved sexual relationship.

The nuclear family defined post-World War II United States and has influenced our culture for decades.

But many straight families don't even fit this mold anymore.

Hello.

Parents, divorce and remarry, aren't ever married in the first place, or have polyamorous relationships.

And this mold is being challenged yet again with the expansion of gay rights.

- You know, one of the things that, one of the requirements from Alabama was to be married in order to adopt.

So I think that sort of backfired on Alabama.

- Okay.

( Rob laughing) It definitely did.

- You know, we knew from the beginning that adopting as two men, two gay men, it was going to be challenges that we were going to face.

- We were in the hospital and we had Keenan in our room, and I remember it like it was yesterday.

The middle of the night we got a text and the birth mom had said, "I changed my mind."

And we ended up talking that morning and she kind of went through why she changed her mind and she said, "Well the chaplain talked to me," and we were in a Baptist hospital, and she said, "He told me two men can't raise a baby."

And so after talking it through a little bit with her she changed her mind back and said, "This is the right thing to do."

And we walked and held hands on our way out.

- There's a ton of misinformation about gay adoption's negative impact on children.

The kids are more likely to be gay, have behavioral, or developmental issues, or that Queer people can't provide stable homes.

These ideas fuel the discrimination Queer families face.

But research shows that kids of LGBTQ+ parents are just as well adjusted.

One study even found that they outperformed their peers from traditional families when it came to psychological adjustment and child-parent relationships, possibly because they were raised to be more tolerant of diversity.

Hmm.

You don't say.

- And we started with the people that we knew and then it kind of just grew and grew and grew.

I mean, we had maybe a handful of families I think when we started, and then now we're, we're probably up to almost 40 families that are part of this group.

- Wow.

- Well, it's actually been really reaffirming to hear the number of people who are new to the group saying like, thank you so much for creating that space.

- So for us, it was really important that we connected people in spaces together to see each other, to touch each other, to, to have the kids play and laugh and be together.

- You know, I truly feel that the term itself, gay dad, which we are gay dads, but I don't think of myself as a gay dad.

I just, I think of myself as a dad.

- You want families to know that they're just families.

Whether they're straight families, gay families, one mom, one dad.

It's important to tell your kids that family's family no matter what.

- Of course there are the legal challenges.

LGBTQ+ people can jointly adopt in all 50 states, but it comes with a catch.

Some adoption professionals are more queer friendly than others.

18 states don't even offer protections against discrimination in adoptions based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

And in 13 states, child welfare agencies can actually refuse to provide services to Queer families if it conflicts with their religious beliefs.

- Oh, oh.

Whether it's being brave or strong or resilient, or there's also a tax that comes with that.

We shouldn't always have to be brave.

We should just be able to walk through life just being ourselves.

And I think that's bravery too in some ways is just being able to, you know, to know that when we walk out of this safe space inside, you know, these four walls, that life is different for us.

There you go.

- [Rob] It's hard to find other gay families who happen to have kids too.

Right?

Social media has helped us to find each other.

- A family to me is much more than just, who do you go home to every day.

It's who supports you in good times and in rough.

A few more steps down.

- Stuck the landing.

- We know that when they're in the community people are going to say something, like, "You have two dads?"

So we, like, being prepared for that and knowing that that's coming, that they don't feel like we're the only ones.

Very important to like, their mental health and how they see things.

- They have all this richness to who they are but they also need to see that they're not the only ones.

- [Rahsaan] It just gives, I guess, more mirrors for them to see.

- LGBTQ+ people become parents in a variety of ways.

Adoption, fostering, donor insemination, surrogacy, and from prior relationships.

Efforts to end the stigma around Queer families continue and groups like Rob and Rahsaan's are giving parents the support, resources, and village that every family needs to thrive.

- Hold them together.

Okay, we ready?

- [Devin-Norelle] What are your parenting highs?

What are your parenting lows?

- So, I think parenting highs are just seeing those milestones reached.

From, you know, crawling to walking to the first word said.

You know, now watching the kids become readers has been, you know, mind boggling just to see, you know, one day it was like they were your little baby and the next day they're reading a book back to us.

So I think that's big for us.

- Those are the joyful moments that I think really allow for us to say, you know what, we've created a space inside this house where our kids can be whoever and however they want to be.

(child squealing) (light music) - Dad, you're probably going to eat all the cookies today.

- I am the cookie monster.

That's for sure.

I will eat all the cookies.

What happens every time you wake up?

- Gone.

- They're all gone, right?

- There's only like two left.

- Hm-hm.

I know.

(light music)