IMHO "Oprah": A show on great dads includes "Wicked" author Gregory Maguire and family

Yesterday's Oprah Winfrey Show focused on "Unconventional, Unforgettable Dads" with an episode that took a look at two single dads and a single mom as well as Wicked author Gregory Maguire and his husband, painter Andy Newman. It was a powerful inclusion from the Queen of Daytime, who treated Maguire and Newman's family not as a political subject, but just another family with a powerful story to tell.

You can check out the film that introduces the Maguire-Newman family to Oprah's audience at the show's website

Maguire and Newman's story was preceded by two single dads who had to deal with tragedy. The first, Larry Shine, lost his wife to cancer when their son was two and a half years old and went on to adopt eight more children over the next several years (it's been at least 16 years since his wife's death, judging from the age of his oldest son). Then came Matt Logelin, who started a blog with his wife to include family and friends in their life as parents. However, when his wife died soon after giving birth, the blog became an outlet for his grief and stress, eventually gathering a wide audience.

Newman and Maguire's wedding day

When the show turns to Maguire and Newman, it's quite a relief to see a family whose overall story is relatively mundane compared to the tragedies faced by Shine and Logelin. They married five years ago, after gay marriage became the law in Massachusetts, with the kids giving them away. Their three children call Newman "Dada" while the call Maguire "Ba" (the Khemer word for father). The couple makes time after the kids go to bed to have dinner together, ensuring some romantic time for the couple.

That brings up my one small complaint about how the show depicted Maguire and Newman's family. Considering the drama of Shine and Logelin's stories (as well as the story of Charles King, who died in Iraq but left behind a journal for his son), the calmness of Maguire and Newman's story felt like a continuity break. The episode would have been stronger had it looked at Maguire and Newman's careers as a way to emphasize what makes them as unforgettable as the other fathers in the episode.

I wondered if some viewers might have seen the episode as stacking the deck to prop up the gay couple by surrounding their story with such tearjerkers. Hopefully, I'm just being cynical from following the news too closely.

Newman and Maguire make a point of having candlelit dinner every night

Oprah then had Maguire and Newman call in for an interview, (Newman from their home in Massachusetts and Maguire from New York, where he was spending Spring Break with their oldest son). Oprah quickly asked if being same-sex parents drew negative reactions in their community and  how they discussed having two fathers with their kids.

The community reaction was pretty supportive and, while normalcy can make for a boring answer, it was a refreshing change from the stories about confused school registrars and other wacky mixups I used to see when daytime talk shows would talk to radical rule-breakers like mothers who kept their names after marrying. Meanwhile, since they were very young when they were adopted, their children have never looked at their family as anything unusual.

Maguire added that he talks with them about having two fathers every few months, a moment that nicely echoed how Shine said earlier that he talks with his children about being adopted differently as they mature.

A sweet moment came when Newman and Maguire discussed how they met at an arts colony. Maguire was working on Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and he was taken in by a painting by Newman that expressed the spirit of charity to Maguire. He fell in love with Newman's painting and, two weeks later, he fell in love with Newman. The couple wrapped things up on a cute note at the end of the interview when both husbands snuck quick family updates into their goodbyes to each other, prompting Oprah to tease their domesticity with an "Okay, dears!"

Considering that this episode wasn't about a gay issue but simply fathers who are doing a remarkable job, it was a pretty powerful and groundbreaking way to present a family with same-sex parents. The story of the Maguire-Newman household wasn't told as a "gay story" but as a story about fatherhood; Maguire and Newman weren't defined by their sexual orientation but by their accomplishments, which includes their artistic successes as well as their family.