Tagged: #gay

Unequal Equality: We Have A Long Way To Go

I wonder if 6.26.13 will become one of those dates, where people 50 years from now will ask, ‘Do you remember?’ and ‘Where were you when you heard the news?’

In case it isn’t, I guess I will answer those questions now.

I was sitting in the passenger seat of my 2004 Honda Element (of the burnt orange variety, in case you were wondering) at a gas station in some random back-hills town about 2 hours inside the border of Pennsylvania. My fiancé and I had just spent one hell of a harrowing extended-weekend “vacation” in the Boston area apartment hunting. We were tired, grouchy and beyond ready to be done with the driving and just in our own home already. Given the rate of rent, the cost of realtor fees and the general stress of fearing every decent, affordable and safe-looking apartment in the city was already rented, we hadn’t exactly been keeping up-to-date with the goings-on in Washington.

So, back to the passenger seat, at a gas station. A quick glance through Facebook on my super-duper smart phone, and I saw that Proposition 8 had been overturned! It cannot be stressed enough how wonderful this moment was for so many people, couples and families. But, it felt like mere seconds before there was a whirr of social media activity and suddenly a text from my mother, “Marriage!!! Yay!!!”
Continue reading →

Sure You Can Call Me God.

I’m not religious.  My parents aren’t religious.  I grew up believing in evolution and that babies came from vaginas.  My parents were really into honesty and frank conversations with us.  They told us about religions and that it was a thing that would affect our lives if we chose to participate or not.  I had a very vague idea of who this god fella was supposed to be.

I went to church a lot as a kid, I had friends who’s families were religious and I was really into sleepovers on Saturday nights.  I was totally into going to church with them.  I found it to be really amusing and kind of like gym class, lots of standing up and sitting down and sometimes singing and then hugging strangers who were really concerned that I looked like a boy.  It was an experience like no other to me.  My family didn’t do that, ever, at all.  We spent our Sunday morning eating sausage gravy and climbing trees. Continue reading →

Jumping Hoops

It’s endless, it seems, the hoops that we continually have to jump through as a gay couple.  Adding children to that mix it gets even more treacherous.

In some places it’s relatively simple for same sex couples to have kids together.  I’d have a baby, Virginia would adopt the baby.  We’d both share parental rights.

In some places, like the one where we live, this is illegal for same sex couples.  In order for Virginia to go through the second parent adoption process I would have to legally give up my rights to our kids.  Instead we get to draw up a series of documents, that are all at the liberty of some Baptist judge to honor.

A Co-Parenting Agreement.

A Domestic Partnership Agreement.

Hospital Visitation Authorization. Continue reading →