Jul 01, 2005  |  By: BRIAN MOYLAN  | COMMENTS     

Bethesda resident Bob Bernstein, a retired lawyer, writer and outspoken advocate for families with gay children, is passionate whether he’s discussing equal marriage rights or households headed by gay and lesbian parents.

“I think it should be perfectly obvious to anyone who thinks about it that gay parents are going to be more committed on average than heterosexual couples,” Bernstein, 79, says of raising children. “They don’t get into it by accident or because of pressure from society or their parents. These people get into it because they have nurturing instincts that are so pressing they feel they must. As a result, they make marvelous parents.”

Bernstein knows something about marriage and family — he’s been married for years and raised two daughters. Though this longtime gay rights advocate is married to a woman, that hasn’t kept him from publishing his second gay-related book on the subject. The book, released in May, is titled: “Families of Value: Personal Profiles of Pioneering Lesbian and Gay Parents.”

A former journalist who became a lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, Bernstein was always a civil rights crusader, writing op-eds for disability rights that appeared in newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.

He took up a new cause in 1987when his younger daughter, Bobbi, came out to him and her stepmother, Myra, Bernstein’s second wife. He started attending meetings of Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians & Gays with Bobbi’s mother, Carol, his ex-wife, who had a harder time accepting their daughter’s orientation.

In 1988, Bernstein wrote an op-ed with the headline “My Daughter Is a Lesbian” that appeared in the Times and also ran in other newspapers nationwide.

When he retired from the DOJ in 1989, Bernstein became a full-time PFLAG dad. From 1988 to 1995, he was vice president for the national PFLAG organization, based in D.C. He founded and edited the group’s newsletter, the PFLAGpole, until 1994, and wrote a monthly column for the Blade called “Waving the PFLAG,” and is still active with the organization.

Armed with his old reporter’s skills and a passion for a cause, Bernstein published “Straight Parents/Gay Children,” in 1985, about families that have come to celebrate what it means to have a gay child.

The idea for “Families of Value,” his second book, began to germinate in 2003, when Bernstein was writing a chapter about gay parents for a new edition of his first book.

“In doing that chapter for the new edition, it became quite apparent to me that gay and lesbian parents had something a little special,” he says. “That was one of the things that moved me to carry it a bit further.”

The result is stories about gay families from across the country, including several from the D.C. area. In the book, gay parents talk plainly and honestly about their children, the obstacles they have faced as gay parents and they share lessons about heading a successful, healthy household.

Bernstein, who spent about a year researching and writing the book, says he used the stories of families he had met through his activist work and located several families after he saw reports about them in the media.

Last summer, he and his wife also attended the inaugural R Family Vacation cruise, a trip for gay families organized by Rosie O’Donnell’s partner, Kelli Carpenter. There, Bernstein had access to hundreds of gay families.

“As the ship was docking at the end of the week the captain made an announcement that he had never been on a cruise with better behaved children or more attentive parents,” Bernstein says, beaming as if he were the grandfather of every child on board.

Susan Silber, an attorney who lives with her partner and their two children (one of whom just graduated from college) in Takoma Park, Md., has known Bernstein for years and agreed to be part of the book. More than 20 years ago, when she and her partner, Dana Napersteck, started discussing having children, she says there were few resources for them.

“It’s not just the books, but the movement,” Silber says about the availability of information for gay families. “There are so many more people who are having children and learning from one another. When we started it out, it was quite rare.”

That’s not the case ...