3 gay couples settle in as parents

Inside the contemporary wood-paneled house at 44 Ebenezer Lane in Pound Ridge, Travis Chaikin is finishing a pasta dinner and settling into Book One of the Bartimaeus Trilogy, an adventure book he is reading in his fifth-grade English class. Over the next hour or so, he bounces between the book and a Nintendo Wii video game on an oversized TV in the living room, where he squeezes between his parents on the couch as he works the controls.

"Reading he's good at," says Reed Chaikin, Travis' father. "Writing and spelling are the tough ones."

The competition between homework and video games isn't yet an issue inside another home in Montebello, where 4-year-old Eliana Assouline-Sampson and her 2-year-old twin brothers, Jonathan and David, are passing the evening working through their collection of rocking horses, stuffed animals, keyboards, scooters, tents, various balls and other toys, which sometimes go airborne across the living room.

A few minutes before 7 p.m., Eliana steps away from the din to remind her parents that a deadline is approaching.

"We're going to miss PBS if we don't turn the TV on," she says, referring to "Maya & Miguel," an animated series about twin children and their friends.

In the kitchen of a center-hall Colonial on Forestview Road in Valley Cottage, Dawn Sugrue lifts 4-year-old Jack onto the counter, strokes his spiky blond hair and pours him a glass of cranberry juice to wash down a dose of Motrin. Jack, who is running a slight fever, responds to his mother's tenderness by sneezing in her face.

"Three boys," says Joan Neuendorf, Sugrue's partner, looking on with half a grin as another son tries to fit in her lap. "Everybody asks if we want to have a girl. No. We don't."

Outside the three households, an American culture war rages over the rights of gay men and women to raise children.

Inside, these three have been raising theirs for as long as a decade - monitoring their homework, burying them in toys, treating whatever troubles them and living lives they say are not much different from the lives led by the families next door.

This month, a state appeals court in Rochester began erasing the last legal differences between families headed by gay and straight couples with a unanimous ruling that New York must recognize same-sex marriages that are legally performed elsewhere, including Massachusetts, the only state to recognize such marriages, and Canada, South Africa and Spain.

The scope of the ruling was both limited and far-reaching: Gay couples still may not marry in New York, and the ruling will have no impact on federal policies that don't recognize same-sex marriages. But in New York, the ruling, if it stands, will provide families headed by gay couples who married elsewhere with rights they've so far been denied. Many of the rights will make it easier for gay couples to raise children, mostly by providing them with the financial security that comes from sharing resources such as a house or a health plan without paying state inheritance or income taxes on them.

Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, a New York City group that lobbies for the recognition of same-sex marriage, said the ruling will mean more to the children of gay couples than how the bills get paid.

"Beyond the tangible legal consequences, there's the intangible security that matters a lot to kids," Wolfson said. "Children whose parents are married have a legal relationship to both parents and are given a strong, clear confirmation from society that they and their parents form a family and that family is worthy of respect."

The Feb.4 ruling caused little of the stir that similar rulings have caused in other states, where gay marriage and adoption remain political and social fireballs. Florida and several other states already prohibit gay couples from adopting children. Many others, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, allow it.

"It's tragic for children when people purposely deprive them of either a mother or father," said Greg Scott, a spokesman for Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona organization that advocates for conservative causes in the courts. "Not only does social science show, but common sense dictates that the best environment for kids is with a mother and father."

The American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents 60,000 pediatricians, and the American Psychological Association, which represents 148,000 psychologists, reject the notion that gay parents are wrong for kids. After examining 25 years of research in 2006, the pediatrics group concluded "there is no relationship between parents' sexual orientation and any measure of a child's emotional, psychosocial, and behavioral adjustment."

Sugrue put it another way.

"He'd say, 'How come I don't have a daddy?' " Sugrue said about talks she and Neuendorf have had with Aedan, their eldest, a 5-year-old kindergartner at Valley Cottage Elementary School. "We'd explain to him: 'There are a lot of different types of families in this world. As long as there's love in the family, that's all that matters.' "

Aedan reduced the sentiment even further.

"They take me to Chuck E. Cheese," he said when asked if he likes having two moms. "They let me watch TV. They take care of me when I'm sick."

The events of Sept. 11 pushed Craig Sampson, above, with 4-year-old daughter Eliana, and partner Maurice Assouline to start a family. They also have twin sons, 2. Details, 11A

Much thought and planning went into a decision by Joan Neuendorf, above, to have a family with Dawn Sugrue. They have three sons, Aedan, 5, and twins Jack and Hunter, 4. Details, 10A