"Daddy and Papa": A Lovely Film

I gave a reading/signing of the book ON BEING A GAY PARENT at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's Bull's Head Bookstore today (thank you, Erica Eisdorfer!), and then Dean and I dashed to another room in the Carolina Union to see the film/DVD, "Daddy and Papa" by Johnny Simon. What a truly heart-warming documentary. The documentary follows the lives of various couples and single gay dads who have adopted children and become dads. As cited in ON BEING A GAY PARENT, lesbian moms were ahead of us gay dads in adopting children, because of the art and science of invitro-fertilization. As one of the gay dad's states in the film, it has only been in the last few years that gay men--couples and singles alike--have given thought to raising children. They were all handsome men with cute children of all ages.

While the film is, overall, beautiful! The only weakness in the film was the absence of faith communities. The only aside made to religion, e.g., Christianity, was a foster mother of one child who happened to be Pentecostal Christian. That was it! And the mother was won over by the two men in the film. End of case! We learn about the politics of gay adoptions; we know the legal, psychological, and family-system issues of raising children. And we learned about the dynamics of adopting children from different races, e.g., white gay couples adopting young black children. I also appreciated the situation in which one gay couple divorced and yet were still active in the life of their daughter. But we don't know if any of the couples were part of a faith community or not.

Nevertheless, this is one of those "thumbs up" and "rent this film" recommendations. Go to www.daddyandpappa.com!

Peace, Brett