Three Kids, Two Moms, One Fire Truck: Amy Zimmerman and Tanya Wexler with Ella, Ruby, and Jerry.   (Photo: Erin Patrice O'Brien)

Besides a potential invasion of double strollers on Eighth Avenue, the kiddification of the gay community has other implications. It even promises—given time—to erode the lingering stereotype of Manhattan gay men as promiscuous hedonists. But it may also mean that as the gay world becomes less isolated—and more bourgeois—it may be less politicized. “What do you have to be bitterly ironic about if you are living in your co-op raising two children?” Mendelsohn asks.

For those on the front line of the gay-rights fight, this is, of course, a mixed blessing. They respond by arguing that gay parenting and the right to marry are inseparable issues. “Having kids and marriage are hardly unconnected,” argues Andrew Sullivan, the conservative commentator and gay-rights activist. “In fact, one of the driving forces behind the push for marriage has been the fact that so many of us are having kids, and without marriage, you have no secure relationship. Marriage is at the core of this problem. And it is the central answer.”

Michelangelo Signorile, a gay writer who is adamant he does not want children with his partner, also refutes the notion that gays’ having children dilutes the political discourse. “I believe it broadens the array of issues to include such things as gay marriage and child custody,” he suggests. “If you have been discriminated against—say thrown out of the military— then that’s your issue. If you have kids, child custody and marriage are probably going to be your issues.”

To some extent, the gay baby boom is the result of recent changes in state law that allow for so-called second-parent adoption. In several states, including New York and New Jersey, when a gay person successfully adopts a child, his or her same-sex partner is also allowed to adopt that child. In New York, the process has been compressed to the point that both parents can simply adopt simultaneously. Among the first people to take advantage of simultaneous adoption were David Schutte and Rob Levy, who adopted Ethan, now 5. The family live in Chelsea when they are not spending summer weekends at their house on Fire Island. “We were pioneers,” says Levy, 42, a senior executive at the Public Relations Society of America.

“Besides a potential invasion of double strollers on Eighth Avenue, the kiddification of the gay community has other implications. It even promises— given time—to erode the lingering stereotype of Manhattan gay men as promiscuous hedonists. ”

Among those interviewed, most couples who have started a family report that once they have their children, they encounter little obvious discrimination from the wider community—something that they attribute to living in New York. “You cannot overestimate the savviness of New Yorkers,” says Schutte, 39, a vice-president at Herman Miller, the furniture-design company. “Gay or straight, they get it immediately. Women come up to us and say, ‘Oh, did you guys adopt?’ ” Tony Traxler, an Upper East Side hairstylist with a long roster of wealthy private clients, reports having the same experience. “People are just cool in Manhattan, no matter how old they are.” His most recent triumph was getting his adopted Chinese daughter, Louisa, into the Brick Church School on East 92nd Street—not to mention the pages of Vogue. Louisa, almost 3 and currently a star of the Gap Kids campaign, is one of the most sought-after child models in the city. Traxler also pays tribute to his gay friends, insisting that they make the best baby-sitters in the world. “I’ve never read Hillary Clinton’s book It Takes a Village,” he says, “but I want to write a book called It Takes the Village People!”

None of this is to say the journey is easy. There are multiple obstacles that straight couples don’t face, often having nothing to do with discrimination. First, there is the cost. Neither adoption nor surrogacy comes cheap. “There is a class issue here,” Signorile points out. “It’s a luxury, not a mandate. Rich or poor, straight men are supposed to breed. The gay people that I know with children—well, it’s a laborious process. They need money to do it. It doesn’t just happen.”

When Traxler made the decision to adopt, he realized he could no longer rely on his acting career. It was time to return to his former, more lucrative job of hairdressing. Having tackled the financial obstacle, he faced another one—selling the idea of parenthood to the man he had been living with for twelve years. “He couldn’t even talk about it. It just wasn’t anything that entered his consciousness as a possibility,” he says. “He didn’t think he was deserving of becoming a parent. It was pretty sad.” Their sex life had dwindled to zero years before, a detail that helped Traxler when he was asked by his adoption agency to sign an affidavit—to appease the Chinese authorities, who refuse to release children to gay parents—declaring he was not homosexual. “I was in a state of celibacy for twelve years, so I could sign the affidavit in good faith,” he says wryly.

Traxler’s final hurdle was the skepticism of friends and family. The initial response from one of his older sisters—who eventually accompanied him to China to help him collect Louisa—was a “gasp for air.” But it was not only straight people who cautioned him. He recalls the warning of a gay Brazilian friend to news that he was adopting. “He said that part and parcel of being gay was not having children. He said it was what set us above heterosexuals. I thought he was nuts.” Ten months after he returned from China with Louisa, Traxler and his boyfriend split up, and he is now wrestling with what sort of relationship, if any, he thinks Louisa should have with his ex. He has since embarked on a new relationship with another man, who, after a few awkward weeks, he reports, has managed to win Louisa’s affection.

Amy Zimmerman and Tanya Wexler met at Yale. Once their relationship blossomed, Zimmerman assumed they would remain childless: “I went through this painful internal process of accepting that I was not going to have children.” It wasn’t until four years later that Wexler, a film director, suggested they think about having kids. Amy just started crying.

“For me, it was, ‘Of course we will have children,’ ” says Amy Cappellazzo, the international co-head of postwar contemporary art at Christie’s. “You have old people and you have children, that’s the way it is.” She admits that her partner, Joanne (who preferred not to give her last name), a real-estate professional who is 47, was anxious at first. “But now she is twice the mother that I am.” They adopted Marina, 3, from China and Benjamin, 2, from Las Vegas. She suggests that having children nowadays has almost become a “rite of passage” for younger lesbian couples.

It may also be less complicated for children of lesbians to explain having same-sex parents, adds Wexler. “In nursery school, moms are the greatest thing, and the idea of two is quite appealing.” And with an extra mom to attend the PTA, the school probably doesn’t mind, either.