This effervescent 13-year-old is on the vanguard of a social movement: She's among the first wave of kids to be raised by openly gay parents. And while that may be no big deal to her and her friends, it remains a controversial notion to much of America.

During a marathon public hearing last week on a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in Connecticut, there was a great deal of talk about what is in the best interests of children like Becca.

"Children do best with both a mother and a father," Brian Brown, the married father of five who heads the Family Institute of Connecticut, told the legislature's judiciary committee.

In written testimony submitted prior to the hearing, Brown elaborated: "Same-sex marriage severs the tie between marriage and parenthood; it gives the state stamp of approval on an institution that creates permanent motherless-ness and fatherless-ness."

The American Academy of Pediatrics believes otherwise. The group cites studies showing that the sons and daughters of gays and lesbians are as well-adjusted as the children of heterosexual couples, though they are harmed by laws prohibiting their same-sex parents from marrying.

This is a debate that couldn't have happened even a decade ago. For most of history, parenthood was off-limits to gays and lesbians who chose to live together as a couple. Some had children through previous heterosexual relationships, but for most, raising a family wasn't an option.

That's not the case anymore, thanks to adoption, surrogacy and artificial insemination. According to U.S. Census data cited by the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy, more than a quarter of all same-gender couples in Connecticut are raising children, a number that has surely risen since the count was completed in 2000.

When 20-year-old Andrew Devine was growing up in Stamford, he didn't know any other families like his. "My parents were the first," said Devine, who was born to a surrogate hired by his two fathers. "I feel very lucky. My dads always tell me, `You should know that we really, really wanted you 100 percent.'"

He came of age in an era of Ellen, "Will and Grace" and "Heather Has Two Mommies"; his parents' sexual identity was never a problem. If anything, it has been a plus, said Devine, now a college student in Boston. "All my girlfriends loved my dads," he said. "My guy friends like them too. ... The media makes being gay to be this huge deal, like they're different and have limp wrists and everything, but that's not the way it is."

Dawn Stefanowicz had a very different experience. Her father took her to a gay nude beach when she was 8 and to meeting places where he hooked up with other men, encounters that left her deeply scarred.

"From the time I was an infant, my father was involved with various men," said Stefanowicz, a married mother of two in her mid-40s. She lives in Ontario but was in Hartford last week to speak out against the marriage bill.

"I felt pressure to protect him and protect his reputation, but at the same time I was deeply burdened carrying around a number of secrets about the kind of household I was growing up in," Stefanowicz said in a phone interview a few days after the legislative hearing. "I was exposed to diverse sexuality and an emphasis on gender neutrality, which eventually created confusion around my own sexuality."

Being a good parent has nothing to do with sexual orientation, said Anna Heller, a psychotherapist from Cambridge, Mass., whose mother is a lesbian. "Parenting is a very complicated relationship," she said. "People don't always do it well, but that's not because they're gay." Heller, who grew up in Willimantic, is a co-founder of COLAGE, a national organization for the children of lesbian and gay parents.

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