ABSTRACT
This essay argues that, contrary to popular understanding of LGBT families as a novel phenomenon, lesbian, gay, and bisexual parents have been raising children since World War II. Before the rise of lesbian and gay liberation movements in the early 1970s, they did so covertly out of fear that if their sexual orientation was discovered they would lose their parental rights. These fears were prescient, as shown by the custody cases involving sexual orientation that emerged in the 1970s. Reacting to these attacks on lesbian and gay parental rights, lesbian mother and gay father groups emerged across the country. These groups were an important part of legal and cultural shifts in favor of lesbian and gay parents, and helped move domestic and parental rights to the center of the modern LGBT freedom struggle.
