Thursday, June 01, 2006
Blogging for LGBT Families Day
Well, today is as good a day as any to come out of my miniblog hiatus.
Why am I Blogging for LGBT Families today?
I am for traditional family values. Love, fidelity, honesty, faith. I am for traditions. I'd love to have a wife, kids, a house, a vegetable garden, big family holidays, and a dog. I'll pay my taxes, volunteer, serve on juries, spend summer weekends on the beach. I may consider taking time off of work to be a stay at home mom. At least for a little while. I'll gripe about my inlaws, get stressed out because of money (or the lack there of), scrimp and save so my kids can go to whatever college they want to. I'll belong to a synogogue and cry when my kids go off to kindergarden, become bar and bat mitzvahs, go to college and get married. We'll light candles most shabbats and I'll cut up oranges for the kids soccer games. My wife and I will enjoy each other, make each other laugh, hold eachother when we cry, grow old together. We'll spoil the grandkids. We'll have lots of hard times. There will be sadness and loss. There will be fear. But there will also be fireflies and moments of clarity and peace.
Thinking about these things and desiring these things are easy. But I know it'll be different for me than for my parents and my straight friends. My someday family can not take lightly what others take for granted. Like relationships, wife and wife and mothers (particularly non-biological or non-1st parent adoptive), like knowing that we need to have specific legal bits of paper to allow us equal access to each other in the hospital. About paying more taxes on everything from health care to homes. What should we do as advocats? What can we do in this environment? Will democrats be our salvation? (I tend to think not).
In the movies, love overcomes. But in this case love just makes things harder and makes it more obvious what inequity we're dealing with in this country. N has made me more aware in many ways- she gives me glipses of our future together and with that comes the typical unknown of new love but also the unknown that can be changed by the winds of congress for the better or for worse. I'm not sure that's what the wedding vows speak about but that's what I think of when I hear of gay folk legally getting married in Massachusetts, and when they briefly we able to in California, Oregon and upstate NY.
This turned into a bit of a downer blog. Sorry all. Let's try a little harder.
I'm in love with this beautiful, smart, funny, silly, caring woman known to this blog as N. We've started looking at houses for our family. Pretty easy for now. Just me, my girl, her two cats and my guinea pig. And my houseplants. Here I am blogging for us. And our future together. And fairness. And for real marriage laws. Because we can't only fight bread, we must fight for the roses too. And N and our dreams certainly are my favorite blossoms.
Why am I Blogging for LGBT Families today?
I am for traditional family values. Love, fidelity, honesty, faith. I am for traditions. I'd love to have a wife, kids, a house, a vegetable garden, big family holidays, and a dog. I'll pay my taxes, volunteer, serve on juries, spend summer weekends on the beach. I may consider taking time off of work to be a stay at home mom. At least for a little while. I'll gripe about my inlaws, get stressed out because of money (or the lack there of), scrimp and save so my kids can go to whatever college they want to. I'll belong to a synogogue and cry when my kids go off to kindergarden, become bar and bat mitzvahs, go to college and get married. We'll light candles most shabbats and I'll cut up oranges for the kids soccer games. My wife and I will enjoy each other, make each other laugh, hold eachother when we cry, grow old together. We'll spoil the grandkids. We'll have lots of hard times. There will be sadness and loss. There will be fear. But there will also be fireflies and moments of clarity and peace.
Thinking about these things and desiring these things are easy. But I know it'll be different for me than for my parents and my straight friends. My someday family can not take lightly what others take for granted. Like relationships, wife and wife and mothers (particularly non-biological or non-1st parent adoptive), like knowing that we need to have specific legal bits of paper to allow us equal access to each other in the hospital. About paying more taxes on everything from health care to homes. What should we do as advocats? What can we do in this environment? Will democrats be our salvation? (I tend to think not).
In the movies, love overcomes. But in this case love just makes things harder and makes it more obvious what inequity we're dealing with in this country. N has made me more aware in many ways- she gives me glipses of our future together and with that comes the typical unknown of new love but also the unknown that can be changed by the winds of congress for the better or for worse. I'm not sure that's what the wedding vows speak about but that's what I think of when I hear of gay folk legally getting married in Massachusetts, and when they briefly we able to in California, Oregon and upstate NY.
This turned into a bit of a downer blog. Sorry all. Let's try a little harder.
I'm in love with this beautiful, smart, funny, silly, caring woman known to this blog as N. We've started looking at houses for our family. Pretty easy for now. Just me, my girl, her two cats and my guinea pig. And my houseplants. Here I am blogging for us. And our future together. And fairness. And for real marriage laws. Because we can't only fight bread, we must fight for the roses too. And N and our dreams certainly are my favorite blossoms.
