On the first season of The L Word, we watched the many trials that Bette and Tina went through as they struggled to make a baby. While many lesbian couples could relate to their storyline, there's no way such a complicated issue could have been adequately explored in that, or any, fictional television program.

Thankfully, award-winning videomaker Catherine Gund has given us a much more realistic view of the gay parenting process in her documentary Making Grace, which has played in various festivals and just recently had its theatrical premiere at New York City's Pioneer Theater.

Making Grace is one of a recent group of documentaries (Same Sex America, Little Man, We Are Dad) that tackle gay parenthood. These films are important for a number of reasons, mostly because they demystify the process of gay parenthood for gays and lesbians who are, or might eventually be, considering having their own children, and because they show the world that we can be good parents, too. Considering the current debate over gay marriage and parenting, these films couldn't have come out at a better time.

This particular one follows two women, Ann Krsul and Leslie Sullivan, as they go through the pregnancy of their first child, daughter Grace. (Ann is the partner who will actually be giving birth, while Leslie will stay at home to care for the baby.)

The women are at a point in their lives where they feel ready to have a child. Their relationship has proved itself in the long-term, and they're both financially secure.

Still, the road to pregnancy is difficult. They have decided to use a sperm donor, and want it to be their good, straight male friend. While he very much wants to do it, after much deliberating, decides it just isn't the right choice for him.

So the women begin looking for an anonymous sperm donor, and we soon see that the process really isn't that much different from going through personal ads, trying to find the right partner. Basically, the women have to analyze people based on random bits of information, so the choosing process becomes somewhat random itself. They look at everything from handwriting to SAT scores (Ann remarks that she wouldn't choose someone with her own low grades) to what kind of food the donors eat.

Gund's artistic choice of having actors (off-camera) recite portions of donor profiles, while shots of men are shown walking down the street, is cute and funny at first, but quickly becomes a little old and hacky.

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