Mom's Apple Pie: Early Activism by Lesbian Mothers

With Mother’s Day (or as we say at my house, Mothers’ Day) nearly upon us, it seems appropriate to remind ourselves of the impact that lesbian moms have had on the larger LGBT rights movement.

The documentary Mom's Apple Pie, released in 2006 but just recently out on home video, takes a look at the lesbian custody movement that began in the early 1970s, shortly after the Stonewall Riots.

Although most lesbian custody cases that make headlines now have to do with two ex-partners who formed their family together, most cases forty years ago involved a lesbian mom fighting a former husband for custody or mere visitation. Filmmakers Jody Laine, Shan Ottey and Shad Reinstein begin with interviews of several mothers and their now-adult children who were involved in these early custody cases.

These are deeply personal stories, but the film also shows us how these women banded together to fight for their families at a time before multi-million-dollar LGBT organizations and a president who specifically invited LGBT families to the White House Easter Egg Roll.

In 1974, several lesbian mothers and friends in Seattle founded the Lesbian Mothers' National Defense Fund (LMNDF) with $2 and the slogan, "Raising our children is a right, not a heterosexual privilege." They helped other lesbian mothers find and pay for sympathetic lawyers and arrange their cases.

The organization’s newsletter, “Mom’s Apple Pie,” helped spread the word, and soon, women began to contact them from around the country. LMNDF members plumbed their personal connections to find local resources — even before Facebook and Twitter. LMNDF eventually encouraged women to start local defense funds and created guidelines to assist.

In 1977, lawyers Donna Hitchens and Roberta Achtenberg, who were working with custody cases in San Francisco, formed the Lesbian Rights Project (LRP), which in 1989 evolved into the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR). NCLR remains one of the leading LGBT legal organizations, and is involved in everything from custody cases to transgender rights, LGBT elder rights, and the fight for marriage equality. (NCLR Legal Director Shannon Price Minter was lead counsel in the case that won marriage equality in California — before Proposition 8 was voted into law.)

Mom’s Apple Pie shows us an important piece of LGBT history, but also shows how the work of LMNDF and other similar organizations fit into the broader movement for women’s independence. The groundwork they laid had an impact on rights for lesbian moms by choice, single moms, and women as a whole.

They also were among the first to argue in court that sexual orientation is no reason to deny someone the right to parent. Defense witnesses in the current Proposition 8 case (as well as custody cases around the country) are still claiming that one mother-one father families create the best environments for children. It is the legal precedents — and the personal examples — set by these pioneers that tell us otherwise.

Mom's Apple Pie is available at Frameline.org.

Photo credit: Frameline.org