Gay Parents: Under Fire and on the Rise

The day after they lost the right to have two-year-old Tyler ever set foot in their home again, Sharon Bottoms and her lover April Wade sat on a couch beneath a framed handwritten copy of the vows of love and commitment that brought on all their grief. Decorated with a rose drawn by April and signed Oct. 27, 1992, the pledge reads, "With this ring, I give you my love forever. I promise to be faithful, honest and totally yours, for as long as I shall live . . . I ask that you take me as I will take you, to love and cherish forever in life, till death do us part."

The words are traditional; their relationship is not. Sharon was declared "an unfit parent" last week by Henrico County Circuit Court Judge Buford Parsons Jr. His one reason: she is a lesbian.

That judgment, based on Virginia legal precedent and accompanied by the judge's personal reproof, turned Sharon and April into national symbols. Conservatives hailed the judge's ruling as a vindication of crusades against legitimizing homosexuality. Liberals denounced it as prejudice masquerading as jurisprudence. The case intensified heated questions resulting from the public emergence of homosexuals in American society: Are they just another oppressed minority, making the same arduous climb that faced so many other groups? Or are they morally and socially different? Is there -- and should there be -- a way to give homosexuals legal equality without compelling heterosexuals to endorse the equality of their life-style?

But inside the women's two-bedroom garden apartment, there was no talk of activism, of politics, of advancing a gay agenda -- only of somehow putting a family back together. Sharon was a divorced mother when she met April. From the beginning, they thought of Tyler as theirs together. The matching tattoos on their left arms combine their initials and Tyler's. The walls are covered with photos -- some of the boy alone, some with Sharon, some with both women. Upstairs is the room they still think of as his, the floor comfortingly littered with plastic trucks, musical instruments, toys and stuffed animals.

The women saw their relationship as a chance to turn around misdirected lives. Sharon, a high school dropout, works part time as a cashier at a Winn- Dixie supermarket. April, a recovering alcoholic who served in the military, manages a deli. They dreamed of buying a house, settling into middle-class stability. They hoped, one day, to give Tyler a younger sister or brother born to April by artificial insemination. Now they feel that all their dreams, and much of their sense of family, are "on hold." The loss is all the more painful because the "parent" who challenged them was Sharon's mother Kay.