How California’s controversial “protect the children” marriage law is damaging kids.
This article originally appeared at the Huffington Post.
Our son was three years old when Prop 8 passed, too young to understand what was going on but just the right age to articulate his thoughts about those yellow “Yes on 8″ signs he saw everywhere. They were, he announced, “the color of pee-pee.”
On some level, he got what was happening to his family.
Six months earlier, on May 14, 2008, my children and I had helped their Papa celebrate his 40th birthday. Since Kelly was born here in Los Angeles, we took him on a sort of “This Is Your Life” driving tour. We visited the hospital where he was born, his childhood home in Sylmar, his kindergarten and elementary schools. After that we drove to Pasadena so we could show the kids the spot where Kel and I had met, in the courtyard of All Saints Episcopal Church. Growing up, Kelly’s mom had told him that if he was lucky, he’d meet the person he was going to marry at church. As usual, she was right, though I doubt she pictured a bride with my testosterone levels.
The next morning, May 15, a late, unexpected birthday gift arrived. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could wrap or slip into a card. It was too big. Huge, in fact. The California Supreme Court had just handed down a landmark verdict: Kelly and I were no longer banned from getting married. That night, after nine years and two children, I was finally able to propose to the love of my life. There were tears, so it was fitting that our daughter captured the moment on the video camera we’ve used to record every moist event in our family’s life together, from her sticky birth to the time she threw up on her grandfather.
Kelly insisted that we marry the first day such unions would become legal, June 17, before — as he so presciently put it — “they try to take it away from us.” Bastards. That’s what I was thinking. Our children will no longer be bastards! Our plan to correct this problem was to take the kids to the county courthouse, pay for our license, and get hitched then and there. But our next-door neighbor had other ideas.
“You finally get the right to marry, and you’re not having a wedding?” cried Judy. “You have to have a wedding!” I told her we were on a tight timetable — three weeks — and besides, a wedding wasn’t in our budget. Judy was hearing none of it. “We’ll help you,” she said. “We’ll make it happen.”
“Who’ll make it happen?” I asked.
“Your neighbors. The Ladies of La Punta Drive!” I wondered why it was so important for her to see us get married, so I asked, and she answered: “Because we love your family, and we want you to have what we have.” A moment I’ll never forget.
So the Ladies of La Punta kicked into high gear. Mary, an attorney, forever reversed my low opinion of lawyers by baking us a spectacular, three-tier wedding cake. Alexa augmented a $100 flower budget by grabbing a machete and taking to the street like some feral florist, whacking down enough greenery to turn our living room into a lovely, low-cost garden. As for Judy, she took pictures with a broken wrist, while Lisa handled the nuptial food, demonstrating what every parent of a pregnant bride has known for years: there’s nothing like Costco for a quickie wedding reception. Neil, our daughter’s godfather and an Episcopal priest, officiated. Our attendants were our children: Elizabeth, then 7, and James, 2-and-a-half. Elizabeth called herself our groomsmaid and never looked more radiant. Or proud. James froze on the aisle, as 2-year-olds have done throughout time. Still, he managed to strew a path of leaves for his parents as they strode toward a day they thought would never arrive.
Nothing can compete with the birth of your kids for sheer depth of joy, but our wedding day was a close second. Kelly and I repeated the vows we’d made to each other at a religious blessing of our union at All Saints Church in 2001. Only this time we were able to use the words “lawfully wedded.” We were married, in the eyes of our god, our state, our friends and family, but, most importantly, our children.
The reception rocked. Way back in 1995, I had written the gay wedding episode of Roseanne, the first time a national television audience had witnessed such a(n illegal) thing. At his sitcom reception, Martin Mull, who played one of the grooms, looked aghast at the wedding cake topper Roseanne had concocted for him. She explained herself in her trademark nasal whine: “I couldn’t find anything with two grooms, so I ripped off the bride and stuck on one of D.J.’s action heroes from Pocahontas.”
I loved that cake topper and had kept it as a souvenir. When Mary told me about the three-level, 18-million-calorie confection she planned to bake, I dug the topper out of storage. And once again, these two little men, plastic but clearly meant for each other, took their place on the frosting, this time as a legally married couple: Mr. and Mr. Captain John Smith. Our children thought it was funny.
But as Elizabeth and James watched our wedding day unfold, what neither of them realized was this: though it may have seemed to be about us, this day was very much about the two of them. Marriage has a way of providing kids with a sense of stability most children take for granted. Now our kids no longer had to stand on a playground wondering why everybody else’s parents could be married but theirs could not.
Five months after our happy day, the “Yes on 8″ campaign convinced over half of California’s electorate that my family’s having equal access to marriage is a Very Bad Thing. I heard them say, a lot, “Why do you need to be married? You guys get the same rights and protections as marriage. It’s just called ‘domestic partnership’; really, it’s exactly the same,” as if pointing in the far distance and saying, “See, there it is, way over there. Squint.” I grew up in the segregated South, and those arguments sounded awfully familiar. I was in a domestic partnership for eight years; I’ve now been married for five. The water does not taste the same.
In the final weeks leading up to the election, as I was driving Elizabeth home from school, we passed a newspaper stand on which someone had plastered a “Yes on 8″ bumper sticker. She became visibly agitated, as she did whenever she saw a “Yes on 8″ yard sign. She asked if I would stop the car so that we could scrape off the bumper sticker. I explained to her that we live in America and there’s a thing called freedom of speech, which means everyone has the right to express their opinion, as long as they’re not hurting anyone. She started to cry, saying, “But they are. They’re hurting our family. Why do all those people want to hurt our family?” It was one of my lowest moments as a father.
Prop 8 passed that November. Elizabeth’s second-grade class had been following the presidential election, so she knew about percentages and majorities. What she was unable to wrap her mind around was the fact that over half the voters in California thought we had no legal right to be a family.
It was months before she told me about the nightmares she’d been having, dreams of people with yellow signs coming to our house with torches, trying set fire to our home. I wish I were making this up. Sadly, no. Thanks, National Organization for Marriage. To you I would say this: if, as your misleading campaign ads bleated for months, your main goal is to protect children, how could you possibly do this to mine?
We got married that very warm, first possible evening in June, not to be part of history or to make some political statement, but because we’re a family and want what’s best for our kids. Luckily, California’s Supreme Court subsequently held that our marriage, and the other 18,000 marriages performed during those five months, had been entered into in good faith and could not be evaporated by a vote. But what about the other families, the ones who weren’t lucky enough to marry when they had the chance?
With the recent decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholding Judge Vaughn Walker’s finding that Prop 8 is unconstitutional, you’d think things were looking up. Not for kids with gay parents. With the inevitable stays and delays as ProtectMarriage.com exploits every opportunity to keep their families from being legally recognized, it can only mean one thing for these children: a lot more time standing on playgrounds wondering why they can’t have married parents like their friends.
About William Lucas Walker
I can’t tell you how much I loved this piece and how angry I am that your children had nightmares due to the irrational fears others have had. Love and human connection bring joy. I’m so happy you and your husband have that joy and are teaching that valuable lesson to your lucky kids.
Peace.
Well, sir, those idiots at the National Organization for Marriage think you shouldn’t have your children and that they should be protected from you and your husband. I find their attitude deplorable.
This article is a big moral problem for me. I am tempted to say nothing. However, “people who say nothing” are the majority of names on my 2012 “Santa’s naughty list”, and I don’t want to be one of them. So, here goes. For king and country.
I have been swiming in the conservative fish bowl for three years now. Naturally I have run accross a significant number of people who do not agree with marriage equality. I estimate that 30% of all conservatives believe that marriage equality is wrong.
I do not have a problem with these 30%. I’ll explain why later.
The remaining 70% of conservatives — I have a problem with them. They agree that orientation is an identity issue (who you “are”, not what you “do”). When pressed, most agree that marriage equality is an “equal protection onder the law” issue. But they don’t want to weaken their “side”, so they say nothing.
This, I have a problem with.
The conservative camp suffers from a very strong feeling of marginalization and isolation. This has created a powerful “us versus them” undercurrent that is, occasionally, stronger than the “right and wrong” morality. This is saying something, because conservatives (on average) have very strong feelings about right and wrong.
When it comes to one issue (only one), I think all persons must set partisanship asside and realize that there is one kind of harm that outweighs all tactical advantage and all strategic posturing:
>>> Dehumanization is the greatest harm that there is <<<
I understand the tears of your daughter. Dehumanization is the deepest of all linjuries. The greatest harm that bad government inflicts on its citizens is denial of equal protection to a group of people because of who they are (their identity).
This brings us back to the 30% of conservatives, who liberals think of as "the enemy". They are not. They don't understand. They think that orientation is a choice, an activity, a thing that people do. A friend of mine replied to my "equal protection" argument by saying "someone who vacations in Scandinavia does not have a right to equal protection of sunshine." See? This guy can be reached.
The other person, the shoulder shrugger who says "forget it, we are held together by kleenex and spit as it is" — this is the problem.
Very well said. I see this alot in the birth control and abortion debates: theres this inherant unwillingness to address the opposition on their own terms. Groups on both sides of the debate are only willing to argue in terms of how they see the issue, so there’s never any common ground to build a consensus.
For instance:
Pro-gay marriage: See the issue as a basic civil rights and equality issue which poses no threat to traditional structures.
Anti-gay marriage: See the issue as something which harms adults and negatively influences children.
The second idea (homosexuality is a harmful choice) cannot be addressed by reiterating or emphasising the former (homosexual couples and their kids should be able to live the way everyone else does), they’re literally incompatible. In order to bring the protect-marriage people around their concerns have to be directly addressed within their own theoretical framework.
This does happen, but the “you are wrong” approach seems alot more common.
“In order to bring the protect-marriage people around their concerns have to be directly addressed within their own theoretical framework.”
Except that their theoretical framework is wrong…and ultimately quite harmful. I’d argue that it’s more like: before getting to the “lgbt rights are civil rights” stage we gotta point out the flaws within the “sexuality is a choice” and “it can hurt your kids” mindset. Obviously answering those to anti-lgbt assertions with “it’s a civil right” isn’t going to get us anywhere. But instead of working within the opposition’s theoretical framework, I think it’s more important that he point out the holes in it.
Are you willing to have the holes in YOUR theoretical frame work pointed out to you by someone who disagrees with you? That’s what real give-and-take discussion involves.
I have had more than a few discussions about same-sex marriage in which I have tried to explain my opposition to the courts legislating same-sex marriage into existence to people who evidently have no interest in engaging the legal principles involved and whose only response to me was “you’re just a bigot”. Evidently being opposed to same-sex marriage on ANY basis justified my being so labeled.
PS Why is only one groom wearing armor? Is this a reflection that:
(perceived role) ==> (discriminatory intensity)
I already know that:
For male LGBT, the perceived passive/submissive partner bears the brunt of discrimination.
For female LGBT, the perceived active/dominant partner bears the brunt of discrimination.
I don’t get it. It seems backwards to me (within the twisted logic of people who would discriminate to begin with). The partner who most obviously identifies with the other gender (identity not as much in question) is more heavily discriminated against? It makes no sense. Something is missing, something I don’t see. Why not be mad at the partner who seems like he/she is “choosing”? Passive/submissive L is cool, accepted, cute, even hot. Active/dominant L is a brutal life with lots of violence (I know someone …)
[sorry for single letter short hand, trying to avoid filter]
Maybe it is pointless to try to understand the incomprehensible (why people discriminate), but I can’t help but think thet there is some insight that I am missing.
I think he explained why one groom was a groom and one was saved from a show he produced.
I’ll give a possible explanation here about your question of discrimination (at least the discrimination set by conservative traditionalists) but I think you’ll yell at me ;(
For a man to be “receptive” is to act as the female. He’s giving up his dominant place, rejecting his “natural” role. If a male takes on submissive qualities, receives, is passive, that is akin to being as a female which is considered not good.
For a woman to take on the role of a man means she’s pushing past her place. Rejecting her “natural role” and acting aggressive dominant etc. Rejecting men and acting like one which is not considered good.
Why do you think so many feminist writers wind up getting called “ugly dykes” etc etc… because apparently we are uppity and not staying in our passive place. Or feminist men called Manginas. Because they are listening to women who aren’t staying in their passive place. This is the role thing that is so insidious.
I think it’s also a fear of straight men’s who actually want to try anal sex (receiving)…that it means they are gay, even if they are with a woman. THE ROLES ARE CONFUSED!!!! OH NO!!!!!
To be female means THIS! Don’t divert from it. To be male means THAT! Don’t divert from it. Or we will call you dykes and manginas and hate on you, especially if you act on it in a sexual way that is non-normative.
I’m not certain this is THE reason, but its a reason I’ve seen at various other places on the internet, in classes and in the world.
No matter the reason, what it means is discrimination.
Thanks for your insight. This is what I think also.
I am sorry that I have been unkind to you (and now you are afriad to answer me). I am angry most of the time. I would attempt to explain how I feel when I hear the word “feminist”, but that is my problem to deal with, not yours. I actually trust you, in the sence that I know you will speak honestly, as you see the world.
As to your answer, it confuses me because it does not match the stated reasons for discrimination that I hear from the people who oppose marriage equality. Of course, one person can be dishonest (with me or themselves), but I find it hard to believe that many people would be dishonest, all saying the same thing. I am not doubting you, because instinctively, I think the same thing as you.
Thank you, Anthony. Trust takes time. We each have to earn
Trust but we each also have to risk trusting. Vulnerability to each other is a gift
Anthony, thanks for your thoughtful comment on conservative and their actual perceptions of marriage equality. I’m glad you ventured past silence to make it.
As for the cake topper, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. The reason one groom is wearing armor is explained in the piece: because the cake topper was a prop in a TV sitcom. Roseanne couldn’t f find anything with two grooms and glued this one together run a pinch. No symbolism intended. Just a laugh.
The outmoded notion that one half of a gay couple is the “perceived passive/submissive” and the other “active dominant” is one that seems to persist for many. It doesn’t bear much relation to the reality of any gay couples I know. male or female. Just as in any straight couple, each partner brings a unique set of qualities to the relationship. In my own, the main difference between my husband and me is that he has a mathematical/analytical brain and approach to live and mine would probably be described as more creative. Most of the time, it makes for a good blend and balance. As in any couple the most important ingredient, I believe, is similar, shared moral/ethical values. It’s hard to sustain any relationship without that.
Sorry I missed the origin of the picture (right in front of me, duh!)
Certainly, pidgeon holing people into “roles” is exactly what I think we need to NOT do.
I have no idea how difficult the life of any given covention-defying person has been, including your life. I know that I was shocked to hear (and see with my own eyes) the damage that can be inflicted on a person because of their orientation. The person in question told me that the perception of roles was a part of why she was targetted more often than her GFs.
My own experience has been different. Few people like Hispanics, but it is more of a slow-simmer, than a hot boil-over. I have never been afraid of violence. I once had a clueless but kind gentleman ask me if Hispanics were the result of miscegenation between “red mongoloids and black Africans”, but this sort of thing only makes me laugh (actually, I STILL laugh when I think of this person). I have allways been more entertained, than threatened, by the kind of low-level Hispanic discrimination that I have found. Recently, I have come to appreciate that discrimination can be a very different and more brutal thing.
Except for this very limited experience, I have nothing to offer other than my support, and my promise that I never have, and never will, remain silent when I hear or see identity based discrimination.
I wouldn’t read too much into it.
Impeccably written.
Heart-achingly lived.
Sadly (yet hopefully), it’s not what is written that is likely to change the future. It’s the children who have lived your truth, because they will be the proof that a strong, loving family (and not the gender of orientation of the parents) is what creates confidence and character and caring within a person.