The two daddies who adopted three small boys from a family unable to care for them may be excoriated by anti-gay organizations such as Focus on the Family, but to their sons, who they saved from being separated and lost in the foster care system, they are simply Daddy and Papa-and to their Seattle community, they are heroes who have "stepped up."

It’s a Father’s Day tale with a twist, a homey story of family values at work protecting the integrity of a family instead of trying to pry families apart. The story was reported online at MSNBC.com on June 13, but its meaning is timeless: love, and dedication, makes a family.

The boys are 4-year-old twins Zach and Zayn, and their year-younger brother, Zeth. Their parents were in jail, substance abusers who were unable to care for the boys. The match between the boys and their fathers, Geoffrey and Devin, was like a match made in heaven for overworked social services with too many kids in critical need, and too few loving homes into which to place them.

The very existence of this family of five is a sharp repudiation to claims that it’s somehow "harmful" to children to be taken in by a loving family of two men or two women; for Geoffrey and Devin, however, it’s less a political statement and more an ongoing, day-to-day series of challenges great and small, and of equally great and small rewards.

Still, the men are conscious that their role of fathers to their adoptive brood places them in the crosshairs of culture warriors. They take pains to navigate carefully through the world of parenting, checking in advance to ensure that their boys’ pediatricians and other professionals with whom they must interact don’t harbor animus against families like theirs.

But for all the pitfalls and potential enmity the fathers guard their family against, there are moments of validation,even gratitude. As the MSNBC article quoted a judge, Mary Yu, the men "are heroes in our community."

Added judge Yu, "Who’s going to assume the burden of taking care of children like this, children who possibly have been neglected or set aside in some way?"

Judge Yu answered her own question: "People like you, who step up. Thank you."

Such moments of congratulations to themselves, and moments of condemnation aimed at gay families in general, take a back seat to the perpetual immediacy of taking care of the boys, however.

Said Geoffrey, "We are just like you, other than that it’s two men instead of a man and a woman."

Added Geoffrey, one half of a de facto marriage that had lasted for ten years thus far, "We live life the same way you do. We put our pants on one leg at a time just like you do. We have the same routines and the same requirements to keep our household going."

Indeed, the Seattle, WA couple were married, albeit briefly, in 2004, when an Oregon county moved ahead with the legalization of marriage equality. A voter initiative wrote marriage discrimination into the Oregon constitution, but the couple, who had traveled to the neighboring state for a ceremony, found their marriage "was kind of empowering for us, to feel that we really were a family," the article quoted Devin as saying.

In 2007, WA established a domestic partners registry, which the men signed up on. This gives them some of the same rights of marriage, at least on the state level.

The couple had been together for about five years when they began thinking seriously about adopting children. After their marriage ceremony, the article said, Devin logged on to check out the possibilities online, and came across a photo of a boy in need of a home. The child, said Devin, "looked just like Geoffery."

That child did not turn out the be the one the men adopted, but seeing him made the concept of fatherhood that much more real. Over the next half year, the men went through the process, including applications, study, and background checks; they decided that they were interested in adopting twins, because Devin reasoned, "they would form attachment between the two of them that would allow them to attach to us."

Their request seemed unlikely, but in February of 2005 the men had a chance to foster 13-month-old twin brothers; on top of that, the boys’ mother was expecting another boy, and they were offered fosterage of the infant when he, too, was born. A few months later, the house was full with three small children.

Up until virtually the last moment, there was some question about whether the infant’s care would be entrusted to the men, or whether the mother would change her mind or, perhaps, a relative would step in. But then, said Devin, "they called us and said, ’The baby’s going to come home with you. Come to the hospital and get him.’"

Added Geoffrey, "They gave us a disposable bottle with two bottles of formula and two diapers. And that was it."

Their sons face various physical and emotional health issues, including fetal alcohol health concerns and post traumatic stress issues. But to their fathers, they are children first and foremost, like any other children.

And they vie their family as being much the same as any other family, with school and work leaving them precious hours together to tend the garden, tend to bees, and go to church.

Indeed, the family’s congregation, a Presbyterian church, is supportive. Said an associate pastor identified as Janet, "It’s wonderful" to count such a loving family among the congregants.

Said Janet, "We cherish our diversity. Our church is glad to have them in the choir, we’re glad to have their children with us."

Added the associate pastor, "It makes us better, more of who we are, by having them with us."

It all adds up to one conclusion: as Devin puts it, "gay people can do this."

Chimes in Geoffrey, "Where do the children 9inneed of foster care) come from?"

Geoffrey answers his own question: "They come from dysfunctional, broken, heterosexual families."

Geoffrey poses another, harder to answer, query: "If you took all of the children away from gay and lesbian parents in the United States today, what would the foster system look like?"

In purely financial terms, the article reported, it would look kind of broke. The article cited a study done by the Urban Institute together with the Williams Institute at UCLA, which found that, "A national ban on gay, lesbian and bisexual foster care could cost from $87 million to $130 million."

More locally, "Costs to individual states could ranges from $100,000 to $27 million."

The article also cited the Family Equality Council, which has claimed that four percent of America’s adopted children-roughly 65,500-are being cared for by GLBT adoptive parents.

The numbers for foster kids are similar, with GLBT foster parents tending to three percent of the children in the system, with means about 14,100 children.

The study offers no qualms that gay and lesbian parents can offer highly competent, safe, loving and nurturing care; indeed, compared to heterosexuals, adoptive gay parents show a tendency toward greater maturity, more affluence, and higher education.

And while some religious and conservative groups demonize gay parenting under the rubric of "protecting" children, the ranks of children in need of homes are only growing larger: more than 100,000 kids are in the system, waiting for a loving home with two parents of whatever genders, the MSNBC.com article said, citing the Urban-Williams study once more: "Given the constant need for more adults to care for children who are in the overburdened child welfare system, gay, lesbian and bisexual people are an important new source for child welfare officials to tap."

But conservatives, who have traditionally favored a cost-benefits approach to questions of social policy, don’t necessarily follow that sort of formula when it comes to gays and lesbians taking children into their homes. The MSNBC article quoted the Family Equality council’s spokesperson, Cathy Renna, as saying, "Anti-parenting legislation (intended to deprive gays and lesbians of family rights) spiked in 2006 following all the anti-marriage ballot measures."

Overall, the news for same-gender families has been good. "We’ve defeated all (twenty-three) measures except one between then and now, and we’ve passed more pro-parenting measures since 2006 than our opponents have passed anti-parenting measures," said Renna.

But progress on the issue is not universal: six states sill impose bans or limits on gays and lesbians fostering children or adopting them, including Fla., Mich,, Miss., Neb., ND, and Utah.

But it’s not necessarily progress that such states are thinking about when they pass such laws: as the MSNBC article noted, the Fla. law came with an illuminating comment from sponsor Curtis Peterson the state senator who said of the gays the 1977 law was aimed at, "we’re really tired of you"; moreover, Peterson also said, "we wish you’d go back into the closet."

Religious leaders such as Pope John Paul II have said that gayparentage is "harmful" to children, and, the MSNBC article noted, the anti-gay Family Research Council has claimed that, "homosexual conduct is harmful to the persons who engage in it and to society at large, and can never be affirmed. It is by definition unnatural."

For Geoffry and Devin, love and protection is the most natural thing in the world when it comes to their family.

The article quoted Geoffrey as saying, "When you want children, it really is a fairytale."

Continued Geoffery, "But we’re both believers that everything happens for a reason and these boys are in our lives for a reason and we just walk through it on a daily basis."

Added Devin, "The payoff is that we made a difference."

Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.