Love Makes a Family

Love Makes a Family A Photo-Text Exhibit and Book

Gigi Kaeser

from "Loves Makes a Family", a photo-text exhibit and book

"A family is a bunch of people, or not so many, who love each other," explains seven-year-old Liza, who lives with her two moms. Liza's family is one among 20 families represented in an exhibit of diverse families with gay or lesbian dads or moms, grandparents, and/or young adults. In this exhibit, sponsored by Family Diversity Projects, photographs by Gigi Kaeser are accompanied by text edited from interviews with each family member. Together, the words and the images in Love Makes a Family show in a visible and positive way the existence, the love, and the power of these families.

Love Makes a Family seeks to combat homophobia at its most basic level by breaking silence and making the invisible visible. By educating people of all ages -- beginning in early childhood -- to celebrate and appreciate diversity, this exhibit contributes to the process of dismantling the destructive power of prejudice and intolerance.

"Our children, it turns out, have no trouble understanding that biology and parental care giving are not necessarily related. They have no problem understanding that there are people who make children, and the parents who raise children -- and there may or may not be some overlap. They experience nonbiological parents as indistinguishable from biological parents in their willingness to play catch, help with homework, teach right from wrong, make them a sandwich, or sing them to sleep." -- April Martin, from the Afterword.

Love Makes a Family has been a travelling exhibit since 1995. There is a version for adults and a version for children. If you are interested in bringing it to a school, community center, or workplace in your community, contact Family Diversity Projects at 413-256-0502, or visit their Web site: www.familydiv.org.