When marriage became legal for us and other same-sex couples in the United States in 2015, I woke up from a dream. I was angry! If marriage was a human right all along (and in the best interests of the children), why had our families suffered so much for so long? We experienced constant microaggressions, families being broken up, partners dying alone. And now I was supposed to be grateful and make nice? I was flooded with memories of our communities, our creativity, and our determination to do it our way. Sometimes we barely survived, sometimes we thrived, and sometimes we did both. I thought of the kids I had loved and felt pride in our tough families. I woke up knowing that our stories need to be told.

              Children have always been central to my life. I was born in 1950 in Schenectady, New York. I became disillusioned with academia at my Ivy League university during the liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s. While my friends went to graduate school I moved to Texas to drive a school bus and help build the vibrant women’s community there. As a lesbian feminist rabble rouser in Austin, I started a lesbian mother’s support group. In 1979 I moved to Taos, New Mexico, and married Roberta. We spent a year in Hyden, Kentucky, then began our family with Brian, born in 1985, and Robin, born in 1988. In each place I knew lesbian moms with powerful stories. For this oral history project I wanted to focus on the period before the mid-1990s, when custody cases were rampant and we were barred from adoption or fertility support. I also wanted to address underrepresented regions. Queer history tends to focus on cities on the coasts. My experience was in the South and Southwest, where change comes slower.

              After retiring from teaching I talked to people, made lists, and finally began trying to locate and contact folks in 2023. When I discovered that not everyone loves to write, I decided to do oral histories. Oral histories are also inspiring and valuable because they’re conversational, informal, and spontaneous. That required learning new technology, first Otter for the first two in-person interviews and then Zoom for virtual oral histories. I did my first interview in 2023 and I was hooked. Reconnecting with my past and celebrating our culture was deeply moving and healing for both me and my narrators.

              This exhibit consists of audio and audio-visual recordings of the oral history interviews, edited transcripts or links to transcripts, written submissions, letters, documents, and photographs. The materials are archived at the University of North Texas (UNT) and presented on OutHistory. The recordings of interviews from the southeast are also archived at Georgia State University (GSU). UNT and GSU use transcription programs, which do not yield fully accurate transcripts. The narrators are people I know or people I heard about through contacts. Everyone signed donor agreements that covered future uses of the recordings and future archiving of the materials. They choose how to name themselves and other people.

              I have no formal training in oral history, just a love of storytelling and my people. And I have learned a great deal along the way. Lots of folks have been supportive and enthusiastic about the project. It’s important to note that memories reflect emotions, and people can remember the same event differently. I believe that the interviews stand on their own as a record of lived experience, and they are more powerful because I also lived that experience.

              The project is ongoing, as I continue to find mothers and the time to record their stories. My own family oral histories were conducted by a different interviewer. Currently I have fourteen interviews of families from Austin, Texas; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Hyden, Kentucky. The eleven parents were born from the 1930s to the 1950s and became parents from the 1960s to the 1980s. The three children I interviewed were born in the 1970s and 1980s. Because my contacts are from my communities, which have not been very racially diverse, they are most often white or transracially adopted, meaning white parents with BIPOC children. Other people are writing about their own communities. For example, Mignon R. Moore discusses black lesbians with children in Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood among Black Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). For a comprehensive history and analysis of our families I recommend Radical Relations: Lesbian Mothers, Gay Fathers, & Their Children in the United States since World War II by Daniel Winunwe Rivers (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2013).

              I’m honored to participate in a people’s history, where we all share as co-conspirators! I’d like to hear what this collection has meant to you, if you’re willing. You can contact me at lgbtqmoms@gmail.com.