Yesterday was June 1st, 2011. It is the 6th (?) Annual Blogging for LGBT Families Day and also the day that the state of Illinois finally recognizes civil unions including same sex partners. FINALLY!
Monday June 6th is my Wedding Anniversary. Five years ago, The Husband and I decided that we might as well get married. We'd already been together three years and had a child who was almost a year old. We were committed to one another in every way that mattered to us, just not in a way that was legally recognized by the State. Now that we had a child, we began to think about "what ifs" like:
What if one of us was unable to make serious medical decisions?
What if the bread-winning member of our party died?
What if (god forbid) we had a bitter break-up and the child-bearing member of our party decided to withhold the child from the non-child-bearing member of our party?
What if we wanted to buy a condo or house together?
What if one of us freaked out and decided to run off to California and join a hippie commune, taking the child with us?
What if one of us won the lottery and then died leaving a considerable inheritance?
Also, since I was laid off from my job a few weeks before Aislin was born (yeah, remind me to tell you that story sometime) we were paying Cobra for my health coverage. We couldn't get family health coverage through the Husbands work unless we were legally married.
So we just went and got a
marriage license. About an hour later we were in front of the Justice of
the Peace with idiotic grins on our faces. We signed the form, the judge signed the form
and then we took some photos. In that simple stroke of the pen, Husband and I
were legally and financially joined.
THIS is why I care about civil unions for same-sex couples.
There are three lesbian couples with children on my block. There was a gay couple with two adopted children at Aislin's preschool. In another couple I know, one of the partners recently had emergency surgery.
All of them have been together a lot longer than Husband and I have. They are committed to each other in every way that matters. But up until now, to have the same legal, financial, and parental rights that Husband and I were able to arrange through a simple marriage license, they would have to spend thousands of dollars for lawyers, if they were allowed to have those rights at all.
That's just wrong. It makes no sense that someone's sexual orientation, sexual identity or gender identity precludes them from their civil rights. And also, it's just wrong to treat other human beings this way.
Can you imagine not being allowed at your husband's hospital bed when you know you're going to lose him in a matter of hours?
Can you imagine having to abide by the wishes of your husband's family regarding his remains when you were the one by his side all those years when they wanted nothing to do with him?
Can you imagine having no legal recourse if your co-parent decided to run off and join a Canadian hippie commune, taking your children along?
Can you imagine being desperate to adopt and not being allowed to because the State doesn't approve of your marriage?
The first gay family I ever met was probably Francesca and her two dads, that character on the Tracey Ullman Show in the late 80's. How sad is that? That I was in college and had never even met an actual same-sex parent family?
My children are lucky. They already know families of so many different varieties that it's really a non-issue for them. They don't have narrow notions of what it takes to make a family and they don't think of the kids they know with same-sex parents as being different or special somehow. Aislin groups the people in her life as either "kids" or "adults."
I think this is how it should be. Parents are parents. People in same-sex couples are not different or special. They are just people. Sometimes they're great with their kids, sometimes they're not. Sometimes they lose their patience and have to lock themselves in the bathroom for a couple of minutes of alone-time before they snap somebody's head off, just like I do.
Right? Please tell me I'm not the only one who does that...
They love each other and they love their children. Lord knows our planet could use more people loving each other and less people judging them for it.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Tags: Blogging for LGBT Families Day, civil unions, gay marriage, marriage, Parenting
