Taped to Gavin McNeely Odabashian's bedroom wall is her "Hall of Hotties," where a red paper heart marked "husband" accords special status to heartthrob Jake Gyllenhaal.
"Dark hair, blue eyes, kind of scruffy," said Gavin, 15, listing her top hottie qualities recently as she settled in with her Spanish homework.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday October 24, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 47 words Type of Material: Correction
Lesbian couple: An information box accompanying an article in the California section Oct. 16 about the children of a lesbian couple identified Dr. Ellen Perrin as a professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University. She is at Tufts-New England Medical Center's Floating Hospital for Children in Boston.
Downstairs, 12-year-old Baylor McNeely Odabashian hunkered in front of his "Gettysburg" computer game, remaking Confederate history in slippers he pilfered from his sister. A Darth Vader poster hangs on his bedroom wall next to one showing a dove of peace.
The siblings have a life many might envy: A 3-year-old golden retriever named Eli and a couple of parakeets named Fleebus and Zeus II. Private schools that challenge them academically and socially. And two loving parents who will soon celebrate their 20th anniversary.
But Gavin and Baylor's parents cannot marry. They are lesbians, known around this 1911 California Craftsman south of San Francisco as "Mommy" and "Mama." (A simple hollered "mom" will do if the request is generic.)
That makes these children supporting actors in one of the modern era's most contentious legal and social dramas.
In California, an appeals court this month upheld the prohibition on same-sex marriage in a case that will head to the state Supreme Court.
The justices steered clear of the "procreation argument" endorsed by recent high court rulings in New York and Washington. Those courts ruled in part that the state has an interest in steering couples who can have unplanned pregnancies into marriage to promote an upbringing by a biological mother and father.
But in the California ruling, children nevertheless played a role: The justices acknowledged the state's interest in promoting family stability in gay and lesbian households but said domestic partnership laws adequately do that.
Those pressing the case for same-sex marriage say children should not be central to the debate, because heterosexuals who can't or don't wish to have children are not barred from marrying. And, they say, children of same-sex unions are harmed by the exclusion.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has backed same-sex marriage rights, noting that studies show children of gay and lesbian unions fare just as well as those of heterosexual ones and that marriage enhances family stability. The American Psychiatric Assn., American Psychoanalytical Assn. and other such groups have issued similar statements.
