Their stories are blueprints for endurance. Amid the AIDS crisis and anti-LGBTQ+ backlash, 2 couples dared to imagine families. Decades later, their enduring love stories still light the way forward.
By Brian Rosenberg
In the early 1990s, when the AIDS crisis was raging and the very concept of marriage equality seemed like a fantasy, two gay couples — Rick and Robb, Dan and David — quietly began something radical: building families.
At a time when queer love itself was seen as defiant, they imagined something even more audacious — that they could raise children, live openly, and thrive as parents.
Their journeys, distinct but deeply intertwined, reveal how courage and community carried many LGBTQ+ people through the darkest years of the last century — and how those same values continue to matter now, as our country once again grapples with a growing backlash against LGBTQ+ people.
Rick & Robb: building family, one brave conversation at a time
Rick and Robb met in Boston in 1990 at a safer-sex workshop during the height of the AIDS crisis. The workshop was co-hosted by Robb, who worked in health education at what used to be called the Fenway Community Health Center (and is now called “Fenway Health”).
What began as a moment of community education became something more — a spark of connection in a world shadowed by fear and loss. They started seeing each other soon after, cautiously at first, and then with the quiet certainty that they’d found something worth holding onto.
Reflecting on that period, Rick said, “The AIDS crisis changed everything for me — how I lived, what I valued, even the work I wanted to do. It made me realize that if we were going to lose people we loved, then love itself had to matter more. It made me fall in love with Robb, and eventually, it made me want to be a dad.”
By the early 1990s, the two had built a stable, joyful life surrounded by friends and allies who modeled what chosen family could look like. Though Rick had not seriously considered parenting as a gay man, they began discussing the possibility in earnest when Jenifer, a lesbian and one of Robb’s colleagues from Fenway, approached him about co-parenting a child.
