A very open house.

Children of gay and lesbian parents talk about their lives--and their moms and dads--in a new documentary

When Meema Spadola was 10 years old and living in a small town in Maine, her mother came out as a lesbian after 13 years of marriage. When Spadola told her best friend, she recalls, "He said, `You're going to hell!', and I went right back into the closet [about my mother]." Spadola stayed silent about her lesbian mom until she went away to college. "I thought I was the only kid with a gay parent," she says.

Now, 20 years later, she has made the film she wishes she'd been able to see during those years in Maine. Our House: A Very Real Documentary About Kids of Gay and Lesbian Parents, is Spadola's exploration of what it means to grow up with gay and lesbian parents, through the eyes of kids from five diverse families in various parts of America. The film airs on PBS stations nationwide this month.

In fact, Our House is one of two films debuting this month in which the children of gay and lesbian families tell their stories. Helen Cohen and Oscar winner Debra Chasnoff, the filmmakers responsible for the controversial It's Elementary, about teaching gay issues in elementary school, premiere their new work, That's a Family! on June 10 in San Francisco.

There are estimated to be millions of gay and lesbian parents in the United States raising between 6 million and 10 million children, according to Family Pride Coalition, a queer-oriented family advocacy group. Our House tells the stories of some of those sons and daughters, ages 5 to 23; they are African-American, Latino, and white; rich and working-class; urban, suburban, and rural. Some have a mother or father who came out and left a heterosexual marriage; others are adopted or the products of donor insemination.

Spadola, who also produced and directed the acclaimed HBO documentaries Private Dicks: Men Exposed and Breasts, about men's and women's private parts, worked with grassroots organizations such as COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere) to find the families for Our House.

"What I said to people was, `I am the daughter of a lesbian mom, but when I was growing up we were invisible, and it is incredibly painful to be invisible. I really want to tell a story like yours.'"

The film documents both the sheer ordinariness of these families--we see parents and children doing homework, eating dinner, playing basketball in the driveway, bickering over little things--and the unique challenges they face as families who are perceived as different by friends, neighbors, and classmates.

In Arkansas, 15-year-old Ryan suffered so much physical and verbal abuse for having two mothers that she is now home-schooled. In suburban Long Island, N.Y., 13-year-old Daniel, more interested in sports than anything else, wishes he could put everybody who asks in one big room and tell them he has two dads to answer their questions once and for all. In Arizona, 16-year-old Ember was too ashamed to tell anybody when her father first came out, but now they "rate guys" together, much to the chagrin of her 14-year-old sister Danna, who loves her father but continues to attend the Mormon church despite its condemnation of homosexuality. In New Jersey, the father of Saveon, 9, and Sandor, 13, goes on camera to say that he worries that having the boys live with and be raised by their two mothers, Rochelle and Pat, may turn them into gay men or "cross-dressers." And in New York's Greenwich Village, 19-year-old Cade is exasperated that "people just don't get it--that I have two moms, and I don't have a dad."

"There is a part of me that is absolutely furious that our families are not recognized," Spadola says. She succeeds in portraying the isolation of children who stay silent about their families and the agony of those who suffer abuse--"a form of gay bashing" --when they do come out about their parents.

In interviews with The Advocate, several of the parents and children in the film explained that they made their lives public so that others will realize they exist and will understand what children often endure just because of who their parents are. As Sandy Russo, one of the lesbian moms in Greenwich Village, put it: "We're happy, we're healthy, we have the same problems everybody else has. It's just life. We're not going away, and neither are our kids."

For links to sites related to COLAGE, Our House, and That's a Family, go to www.advocate.com

Raab is a television writer and producer in New York City.