As the national controversy continues to heat up over the right of homosexuals to enter civil and sanctified unions, HarperCollins releases a book about a group often ignored and deeply implicated in the debate over gay marriages: the children.

Families Like Mine offers the unique perspective of its author, Abigail Garner, as the grown daughter of a gay father.

Much is made in political and religious spheres about a gay couple's right to raise a child. Anti-gay-parent rhetoric claims that homosexuals will somehow recruit their own children into "their cause." By contrast, people who support homosexual rights suggest sons and daughters of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) couples will grow up to be no different than children of straight parents.

Garner believes neither perspective is healthy - nor true.

"The fear of raising children in an environment that is different from their peers' is that they will grow up to be confused," Garner writes. "But what might be considered confusing to some feels liberating to others."

Garner notes that she often is asked to reveal her own sexual orientation, as though, because of her father's sexual orientation, that were fair game for public discussion. Garner, a straight woman, resents the question.

While telling others that she is heterosexual might assuage some who believe homosexual parents raise homosexual children, she is concerned by the subtext of the question: People seem to equate "straight," she notes, with "well adjusted."

To make matters worse, she adds, the press tends to focus only on high-achieving children of LGBT parents in stories about gay parenting. Though such articles may be well-intentioned and quell public fear that homosexual couples will raise children with a slew of emotional problems, Garner says such coverage can be harmful. It gives children of LGBT parents the impression that if their family is not entirely happy and well-to-do, it is some kind of aberration.

"It is unfair to expect children to prove how smart, cute, ambitious, precocious, or 'normal' they are in order for their family to be deemed worthy of social acceptance," Garner writes. "LGBT families should be allowed to be just as wacky, troubled or complex as any other American family."

Garner asserts that children of LGBT parents are often different from children raised by straight parents - a fact she says causes people on both sides of the issue to flinch.

They sometimes have trouble finding healthy relationships, but are often more open-minded than children of straight parents, according to Garner.

Whether those differences produce negative or positive results, Garner makes it clear it is important to recognize them.

Often analytical, Garner's book can also be didactic. Garner advises LGBT parents about how to come out to their children, prepare their children for the homophobia they are certain to encounter and speak to their sons and daughters about the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

In tackling sexual behavior still considered taboo and even deviant by some, it is succinct and avoids the impulse to remain politically correct.

Ultimately, Families Like Mine is an important and timely book.

Its contents may not be what people on either side of the gay parenting debate wish to hear - but that's its great strength. As legislators and voters wage war over the validity of LGBT partnerships, Garner stands up for the truth as she sees it - a truth that is sorely needed in the current political climate.

Jill Boyd is a journalist living in Longmont.