'Out in India': Film about 2 dad family

In a country like India, where men often walk around holding hands, gay men can get away with a lot without explicitly coming out. But that was never an option for David Gere and Peter Carley. They went with their two young children.

"It was a mixed-race gay family," Tom Keegan, whose film "Out in India: A Family's Journey" documents their passage to India, says by phone. "In a country where families are so stratified in terms of gender roles, this was breaking every pattern."

Gere fell in love with India in the '80s, when he studied classical Indian dance there. Then he received a Fulbright scholarship to return in 2004, to work with artists working on HIV/AIDS. "Until he actually got the Fulbright, it was all abstract. I was like, 'Sure, sure,' " remembers Carley on the phone from their home in Los Angeles. "But then I was like 'Oh my God, what have I gotten myself into.' "

He remembers landing in Bangalore. The airlines had lost their double stroller. "It was really hot and humid," says Carley. It was only January. "I was shocked at the loudness of India," he says. It was 2 a.m.

Booming Bangalore, India's information technology capital, is one of India's most cosmopolitan cities. But no one knew what to make of this unusual family. "There's simply no context for two men raising children together," says Gere by e-mail. "In that sense we were like Martians."

Even supportive people were uncomfortable. Was it fair to the kids? Should they let their son, Christopher, wear bangles? Were they pushing him into gayness? "We honestly didn't know how people felt about our family until Tom started interviewing people," says Gere. "When we saw the footage we were really shocked."

Keegan, who is also a gay dad, was less so. "I think I'm pissing people off just walking around as a gay family in America every day," he says.

In India, people just seemed more honest about it. That is when they got it. At least once a day, Carley says, he'd get asked "Where's their mother?"

"I would say we were a two-dad family," he says. "And they would smile and nod and say, 'Where's the mother?' "

For Carley, the fish-out-of water experience was compounded by the fact that he suddenly became the 24/7 dad. Gere got increasingly busy organizing a convening of artists in Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta. Gere also spoke Tamil so people would interact with him more.

"His head would start wobbling just like an Indian," says Carley. "I'd become invisible." Gere, who was in Mexico City at the time of this interview, says, "As a non-Spanish speaker, I'm finally getting a taste of what Peter must have been feeling. It's terrifying."

As Gere got more excited about his project, meeting more than 60 artists in six months, Carley who'd put his career as a psychotherapist in Los Angeles on hold, felt increasingly alone in a country of a billion people. "I never had a phone in India," he remembers. "I didn't need a phone because I had no one to call and no one to call me.

'Out in India': Film about 2 dad family
San Francisco Chronicle,  USA -