Stories Covering The DC Metro Area
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June - July 2001

Lesbians Find Haven in Suburbs
Female Couples Prefer Living, Raising Children Outside Cities

By Carol Morello
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 3, 2001; Page B01

In another era, Amelie and Licia Zurn-Galinsky would have been described in soft euphemisms: sisters, friends, spinsters. But they live openly, even unremarkably, as a lesbian couple in suburbia, building a life around kids and family in their Silver Spring neighborhood.

They're active in the PTA of their daughter's school. They drive a minivan and help at block parties. Neighborhood children flock to the huge trampoline in their back yard.

And on Friday nights, they hold an otherwise traditional Shabbat dinner with some of the 14 other lesbian couples living within two blocks of their four-bedroom house.

"Five years ago, I couldn't have imagined my life would look like this," said Amelie, 36, a psychotherapist who still speaks wistfully of her life in the District within walking distance of good restaurants and theaters. "But it's good. It's what I want. The community lesbians have created around themselves in the suburbs is huge."

The 2000 Census is revealing striking differences between the places where lesbian couples and gay male couples choose to settle. In metropolitan areas across the country, the men tend to pick the city and the women opt for the suburbs.

In the District, for example, gay male couples outnumber lesbian couples almost 3 to 1. In each of the eight suburban counties of Maryland, for which the Census Bureau released data yesterday, there are more lesbian couples than male couples.

The census underscores just how openly homosexuals are living across a wide swath of the United States outside the hip urban centers more commonly considered appealing to gay people. Suburbia has a particular draw for couples, straight or gay, who are raising children.

It is not the increased number but the geographic breadth that has been surprising. Households consisting of two partners of the same sex have shown up in more than 90 percent of the counties reported so far, compared with just 25 percent in the 1990 Census. They appear in all 105 counties of Kansas, and in all but 10 of Nebraska's 93 counties.

Demographers and gay activists say the numbers primarily reflect a more accurate tally of same-sex partners, rather than a dramatic growth in number.

"We're on the farm, in the suburbs and the cities," said David Elliott, of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "It shows we are indeed everywhere. And it debunks the stereotype we're only in Dupont Circle."

A comparison of census statistics for the District and Maryland illustrates a pattern borne out across the country.

In the District, the census counted 2,693 households of gay male partners, compared with 985 households of lesbian partners. But in each of the eight Maryland suburbs, lesbian couples outnumber their male counterparts, with a total of 3,217 households of female partners to 2,717 households of male partners. Virginia statistics have not been released yet.

The major reasons why lesbian couples say they have chosen to build a life in the suburbs are familiar to most heterosexual couples.

They are more likely than gay men to have children, and they perceive the suburbs as offering better schools. Like women in general, lesbians tend to earn less than gay men and so venture to the suburbs to find cheaper, roomier housing. And for themselves and their children, they find more safety living outside the city.

Susan Lucas's two sons from a previous relationship are grown. She and her partner, Mary Cogan, decided to moveto Silver Spring six years ago for purely economic reasons. They couldn't find a house they liked in the District at a price they could afford. So although they periodically talk about moving back to the city, no move is imminent.

"I love this house," said Cogan, 43, a sales representative for a Web hosting company. "We have a sun porch and a big yard. Most of the gay guys we know live in the city. Even in their forties and fifties, they're still going out to clubs. I don't know many guys who want to spend a lot of time in the yard like I do."

For Kayo Gamber and her partner, a move from Rosslyn to Takoma Park was prompted by their decision to have a baby by artificial insemination.

"We went to five lawyers in Virginia, who all told us there wasn't even a bubble of opportunity for second parent adoption," Gamber said. "They all told us [that] to have choices, we had to go out of state."

In Takoma Park with their daughter, now 8, the lesbian couple have plunged into suburban life, becoming co-chairs of the PTA and joining the neighborhood safety patrol.

No statistics have been released yet showing how many same-sex partners have children younger than 18 in the home. In the 1990 Census, 20 percent of lesbian couples had children living with them, compared with just 5 percent of gay men with partners. As all parents know, children change everything.

"As soon as we knew that kids were going to be a part of our lives, we moved to the 'burbs for the schools and the quality of life," said Licia Zurn-Galinsky, who is 37 and remodels homes for a living. "Every gay male couple I know who lives in the suburbs has kids."

The household of four has found the move to be almost seamless.

Jessica Barnes, a teenager for whom Amelie and Licia Zurn-Galinsky are legal guardians, has friends who know what it's like to come from a nontraditional family; they're being raised by grandparents or single parents or biracial parents. Other lesbian couples in the neighborhood come to cheer Jessica's performances on the school's pompom squad. Amelie and Licia's 22-month-old daughter, Tova, plays with the children of other neighbors, both gay and straight. School authorities seem grateful to find parents who are deeply involved with their children's activities.

"For most people, it's no big deal," Amelie said.

The women suspect they are more accepted in part because they are lesbians, not gay men.

"For male couples, it's easier to be invisible in the city," Licia said. "In the suburbs, you really interact with your neighbors. And I think the acceptance of lesbians with children is broader. There are just different stereotypes."

But as more gay and lesbian couples move to the suburbs, old stereotypes are giving way. Many homosexual couples say they have found a degree of acceptance in the suburbs they would have found unimaginable a decade ago.

Cogan and Lucas, who have decorated their Silver Spring house with crafts and handmade mission furniture, have an elderly neighbor who drops by to lend them his tools. The minister who lives across the street has also been very friendly.

"Gay couples used to live in the cities because that's where they were accepted, tolerated," said Lucas, 45, who works in public relations for a health firm. "Now it's much more like that in the suburbs. We're totally accepted and welcomed here."

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

Printed without permission from the Washington Post website. Read the story along with additional history on this story at the Washington Post website.

By Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 30, 2001; Page B01

Anti-gay activists say they have collected about 53,000 signatures in their drive to repeal Maryland's new gay rights law, enough to force state officials to put the question before voters next fall if the signatures are verified by the state Board of Elections.

Maryland wouldbecome the second state, following Maine, to consider repeal through ballot initiative of a law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, according to the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The drive was initiated by TakeBackMaryland.org, a coalition of religious and self-described "family rights" activists led by Tres Kerns, a business-systems salesman and father of five from Severna Park.

Kerns said that with help from the Maryland Catholic Conference, which is prominently displaying copies of the petition and other information about the repeal effort on its Web site, the group hoped to submit more than 60,000 signatures to the Maryland secretary of state's office before midnight tonight, the deadline for forcing the issue onto the 2002 ballot.

Under state law, the group needs 46,128 signatures of registered voters, or 3 percent of ballots cast in the 1998 governor's race. If the signatures are verified, attorneys in the secretary of state's office will draft ballot language asking voters whether the Anti-Discrimination Act of 2001 should be repealed.

The law, which is to take effect Oct. 1, extends state protections against discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations to gay men and lesbians. This spring, the measure easily passed in the House of Delegates and overcame a filibuster by conservatives in the Senate. It was signed into law by Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D), who has made gay rights a legislative priority.

Eleven other states and the District of Columbia have similar laws; Virginia does not.

Kerns said his organization opposes such measures because they legitimize the "homosexual lifestyle," forcing schools and private organizations such as the Boy Scouts to tolerate gays and condone their behavior.

"We think it's a bad law because it elevates sexual behavior to minority class status" and makes "homosexuality and bisexuality equal to or the same as heterosexuality, which most people don't believe," Kerns said.

Kerns became involved in the issue in part because he was molested as a child by a camp counselor, he said. More recently, he said he noticed that his children were being taught about homosexuality in Maryland public schools. "As a parent, I don't want the schools going down this pathway."

After the law was enacted, Kerns gained support from religious figures and groups, including the Catholic Church, which claims more than one in five Marylanders as adherents.

The church teaches that discrimination against homosexuals is wrong but that so is homosexual behavior. Because the Maryland law "legitimates homosexual conduct or practice," said Richard J. Dowling, director of the Maryland Catholic Conference, the church felt a heightened "obligation to be clear about what our church teaches."

The referendum drive appears to be the first successful effort to put a question on the state ballot since 1992, when voters were asked to strengthen abortion rights in Maryland. Polls show, however, that more than 60 percent of Marylanders support protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination.

"The people of Maryland have been extremely supportive of efforts to promote justice, fairness and inclusion," said Glendening spokesman Michael Morrill.

Printed without permission from the Washington Post website. Read the story along with additional history on this story at the Washington Post website.

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