A Song for Lost Angels: How Daddy and Papa Fought to Save Their Family by Kevin Fisher-Paulson; Fearless Books. $16.95
I dare anyone to read the candid book A Song for Lost Angels and not be convinced that LGBTQ people can be suitable parents. The devotion, attention, and unconditional love the Fisher-Paulsons showed to their foster children were staggering, and rival any that heterosexual parents show their sons and daughters. What sets their story apart is the devastating ending to their paternal journey.
Experiencing an epiphany after reading a fortune cookie in 1999, Kevin Fisher-Paulson, a Captain of the Honor Guard for the San Francisco Sheriff's Department, and his partner Brian, a dancer and dance teacher, decide they want to have children. After a two-year period of paperwork and moving to a more kid-friendly house in a new SF neighborhood, the couple become foster parents of triplets born to a schizophrenic drug addict. All three babies weigh less than five pounds, and one of them suffers a punctured intestine, and requires surgery to repair a heart valve. They name the children Vivienne, Joshua, and Kyle, whom they hope eventually to adopt, assured by social workers that it is very unlikely that the birth mother, who has little maternal concern for the babies and had abused a previous child who had been removed from her care, would ever regain custody. They learn parenting by trial and fire, enlisting relatives, neighbors, and friends to help them. They learn how to feed the babies and change their diapers. There are milestones such as teething and a first Christmas with Kyle in an Oakland hospital in critical condition. Brian and Kevin, who now call each other Papa and Daddy, take turns visiting Kyle, singing Broadway show tunes (Gypsy) and TV theme songs (Gilligan's Island) to him after intestinal surgery, learning how to change his ileostomy bag. Eventually Kyle's intestine will be rejoined and his digestive system restored. Kevin writes, "The witty gay couple with lots of time for canapes and cocktails had quickly turned into two sleep-deprived middle-aged men." Colleagues and friends comment how more nurturing, gentler, and patient Kevin has become during his year of parenting.
A few months later, a new social worker tells them she is urging reunification of the babies with their birth mother, believing the love of a woman, even a mentally ill, incompetent one, is better for the babies than the love of two men. The couple spend all their money on a lawyer to keep their babies, while the state pays three lawyers for the mother. In March 2004, they go to court with open acknowledgment that the birth mother is barely equipped to parent. But an unsympathetic judge decrees the babies be reunited with their mother and less-than-honest grandmother. A new social worker argues the triplets will now have a "real mother" watching over them, "who will provide some morals, something two gay men could never do." The scene where Fisher and Paulson surrender the children to authorities is both heartbreaking and outrageous, the social worker's car running outside while they race inside to retrieve the babies. The couple has been betrayed by a system meant to protect them and their children. They learn almost three years later that the triplets, having been abused, were removed from the birth mother and sent to live with a relative in Fresno.
After two months, deciding not to give in to loss, malice, or bitterness, Brian and Kevin opt to try foster care again. In June 2004, they foster Zane, born to a crack-addicted mother, and two years later another boy, Aidan, is taken in, with both boys eventually adopted.
By describing in personal, spiritually attuned (the couple are members of Most Holy Redeemer Roman Catholic Church in the Castro), often humorous detail their joys, struggles, and emotional highs and lows as parents, the couple makes the case that families come in many different forms, but the basic pattern of loving concern and sacrifice remains the same for all caring parents.
California is one of six states that have protective anti-discrimination statutes in place for same-sex foster parents. Yet, as the Fisher-Paulson case reveals, these laws can't protect from bigoted lawyers and social workers. Needed are not only a legal revolution, but a social one in how LGBT people are viewed as equivalent to heterosexuals, as proficient in all kinds of love as anyone.