MAGAZINE FOR GAY PARENTS: From the New York Times

WHEN Michelle Darne and her partner set out to start a family, they found few answers to their many, many questions.

"We had so many questions about how a lesbian couple can become parents," Ms. Darne said in an interview in her Brooklyn office. "Should we adopt? Should one of us carry the baby? What are our legal rights? Where is the best sperm bank?"

Ms. Darne said she could find no publication to address those questions, apart from an eight-page newsletter with an irregular publishing schedule.

So they started their own. ...

The gamble may pay off. Three years later, Ms. Darne and her partner, Kathleen T. Weiss, now run And Baby, published every two months dealing with issues unique to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender parents.

Recent articles include: "Doll Shopping With Gay Dads" (let your child choose), "Will My Kids Be Gay?" (offer support if they are) and "Transgender Transition: Talking to Your Kids" (younger children accept transgender parents more readily).

The women, who first met five years ago through a mutual friend, now also have 1-year old twin daughters, London and Morisot. ...

Prepared by Witeck-Combs Communications, a Washington marketing and public relations firm, the study estimated that 2.6 million gay or lesbian couples live in households with children under age 18.

The research company said the market for gay parents remains unrecognized and untapped.

The magazine prints nearly 100,000 copies, and now has 11,000 paying subscribers, they say. They also say they sell about 3,000 copies on the newsstand. Its growth has come largely through a strategy that has the magazine given away at all the country's major gay parades, carnivals and same-sex parent clubs. "We knew that 90 percent of the people at gay pride events are target readers," Ms. Darne said. "We did not realize how hungry they would be for our magazine."

At the first event she attended, the 2001 gay pride festival in Long Beach, Calif., nearly 20,000 copies were gone in a matter of hours. ...

"One potential investor was not comfortable with us including bisexuals and transgender so we did not take their money," Ms. Darne said. "We must look out for our whole community."

Perhaps the greatest single political issue facing her and her readership, however, is that of marriage, Ms. Darne said.

She said she and Ms. Weiss had spent nearly $30,000 on setting up a legal framework to protect their family. Nonetheless, she said, the rights of her family fall well short of those of a heterosexual couple that has adopted a child.

"We look at the same-sex marriage issue from the point of view of families and children's rights," she said. "We cannot deny children of two same-sex partners the right to have parents."

Reflecting her concerns and the current political climate, And Baby produced a special issue: "My Big Fab Gay Wedding! 3,000 Years of Same-Sex Unions."

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