At Mountain Meadow summer camp, kids' parents come in pairs.

Pairs of moms and pairs of dads.

Isabel Rieser, 16, a junior at Penn Charter school in Philadelphia into soccer and instant messaging, has two dads. So does Jon Nelson, 11, a wrestler and video-gamer from East Stroudsburg, Pa.

Mount Airy, Pa., twins Emmett and Leo Neyman, 11-1/2, who share a love of Harry Potter and milk chocolate (without nuts), are being raised by two moms.

At this unusual overnight camp, in southern New Jersey, no one asks youngsters who their "real" parents are or why their family's not "normal." And that makes all the difference.

"So many kids grow up in communities that are not accepting of their families at all," says Rieser, in her sixth season at Mountain Meadow. "Coming here makes you feel good about yourself."

One of the country's few camps for children in lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) families, Mountain Meadow was established in 1981 by Philadelphia Rabbi Julie Greenberg. There were seven campers.

A total of 64, most from the Philadelphia area but also from Maryland and New York, attended this summer's two-week session, ending a week ago.

Children of LGBT families face unique challenges, says executive director Steve Duffy, 47, a gay man raised in a traditional Northeast Philadelphia Catholic family.

Those challenges range from the maelstrom of emotions around the discovery of a parent's homosexuality to the social awkwardness, if not stigma, of having gay parents.

"Some kids are harassed at school," Duffy says. "Some lead secret lives. It's not something casually shared between children."

Troy Johnson, author of "Family Outing: What Happened When I Found Out My Mother Was Gay," says he cried all day when his mother's ex-lover told him his mom was a lesbian. He was 10.

"I didn't know how to deal with it," says Johnson, 34, of San Diego. "Everybody told me my mother was a pervert. Who wanted to bring friends home to a freak? I didn't have the power to think for myself."

Johnson, now close with his mom, labels children of gay parents "a silent minority."

In the Philadelphia area, one third of the 4,300-plus female and male same-sex couples were raising at least one child, according to the 2000 census.

Demographic trends show the numbers increasing as more lesbians bear children and more LGBT couples adopt, says Heather Batson, research associate for the Philadelphia Health Management Corp.

Says Johnson, "We need a sense of community with others who have gone through it. Kids shouldn't be judged for their parents' situation."

Such issues are discussed at Mountain Meadow in daily hour-long "kids' meetings" directed by counselors.

Campers who have never talked about their lives before "open up and find bits and pieces of themselves that help them grow into a bigger person," Rieser says.

This was one of Greenberg's goals when she started Mountain Meadow on central Pennsylvania farmland owned by her mother.

"I was looking for a project that combined my passion for feminism, children and nature," she says. "I was very much a part of the queer community and wanted to get out of the model of the cookie-cutter family."

In its early years, Mountain Meadow was an all-girl camp, run by a feminist collective. "It was a more separatist time in the women's movement," says Greenberg, now a single mother of five.

The camp went coed in 1992, and five years later moved to its present location.

Rieser, adopted at 10 months, knows that in many ways she's had it easy. When you live in a liberal enclave and attend a progressive school, you're practically born into a bubble of acceptance.

She and her lawyer dads, Len Rieser and Fernando Chang-Muy -- a new member of the city's Commission on Human Relations -- reside in Philadelphia's Germantown. She heads the Gay/Straight Alliance at her school, Penn Charter.

"One of the first things I tell people is I have two dads," she says. "If they don't want to be friends because of that, I won't waste my time trying. They're not worth being friends with."

Friends are what keep Rieser, a staffer-in-training, going back to Mountain Meadow, on 186 acres owned by the Girl Scouts. Campers, ages 9 to 17, sleep in platform tents.

"Being with kids like me turned out to be more important than I thought it would. They're like my own little family."

Rieser's actual family is a diversity greeting card. She is African American. Chang-Muy, 52, was born in Cuba to a Chinese father and Cuban mother. Len Rieser, 59, is a white Vermont native. The couple have been together 27 years.

Like most teenagers, Rieser argues with her parents about homework, computer time, going out with friends. It was a tad awkward, though, when it was time for the standard "sex talk," she says. Instead, she sought out her friends' moms.

It's been a tougher road for Jon Nelson, a first-year camper with two dads: Michael Nelson, 47, and Angelo Lucco, 56. They own a Poconos resort.

Jon, entering middle school, says classmates tease him.

"They say I'm one of the worst kids in school because I have two dads. I really hate it. I don't do anything, because they'll just tease me even more. They're my friends. I don't want to be a snitch."

Nelson, who adopted Jon at birth, blames the Poconos' conservative climate. In Baltimore, his former home, "this wouldn't be a big deal."

In March, the dads took Jon on a Rosie O'Donnell family cruise to meet other kids with gay parents, Lucco says.

The Neyman twins are at the other end of the rainbow. In Mount Airy, they're surrounded by children with gay parents.

"If you're straight and white and have a mother and a father, you're a pariah here," says their biological mother, pediatrician Freyda Neyman, 46, with a laugh.

Her partner of five years, physician Sarah Swift, 53, has a grown son from a previous relationship. Neyman and her former partner used a California sperm bank to conceive the twins.

Camp director Randi Sherman, 25, and her partner of seven years, editor Kate Mueller, 26, haven't started a family yet, but Sherman saw how hard it was for her cousins to grow up with a gay father.

Through her campers, she sees how hard it still is.

"I hear a lot of people with the attitude of, 'Come on, it's 2008. Everything's accepted now.' That's not true. For many campers, this is the only place in the world they feel supported."