"NC Bad, Obama Good"

May 9, 2012, a day that will live in gay-rights infamy, when North Carolina lost its position as the last Southern state to pass even more restrictive anti same-sex marriage laws. Yes, they already forbid it, but this was a safeguard! Rather reminds me of “The Daily Show” the other night and the Texan lawmaker who passed an amendment prohibiting workplace discrimination against gun owners… not that there have been any gun owners in Texas who have claimed discrimination. But hey! Better to be safe than sorry, right? She’s anti-discrimination for even non-marginalized classes! Preventative measures and all that.

Of course, Jon Stewart et al. reminded her that she had voted against protecting employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation. She tried to justify this by saying she didn’t know of anyone who had been fired due to sexual orientation, so why did they need a law? I’m sure you’re seeing where Stewart went with that… oh, hypocrisy.

Anyway, so North Carolina left the list of places we would be willing to move. But then Obama actually took a stand and openly admitted he supported same-sex marriage. To me, the best part is that his daughters changed his mind. Apparently (shocking!) they have friends who have same-sex parents, and they don’t see anything wrong with that, and they don’t want their friends to be teased or feel bad for having a different family. Just like that, Obama was reminded of The Golden Rule.

You go, girls.  

I posted a lot of images and links on my Facebook page today that, to me, captured the issues of the day (and I mean that specifically, as in, this day). Some are inflammatory, some less so. 

http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/president-obama-affirms-his-support-for-same-sex-marriage.html

"My Personal Pinterest Board"

http://www.mommamadeitlookeasy.com/2012/04/are-we-doing-our-children-a-disservice.html

Valuable parenting advice. Consider this my personal “Pinterest” board. 

“Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin”

Something else worth reading: 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/waymon-hudson/dominic-sheahan-stahl_b_1456663.html

For once, I was heartened by the comments rather than the opposite. I’m starting to feel more and more optimistic that people are starting to recognize that WWJD is not aligned with the decisions they “justify” with belief and religion. For another example:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/24/paul-ryan-challenged-by-georgetown-faculty_n_1449437.html?ref=fb&ir=Politics&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=820654,b=facebook

Are people, both conservatives and liberals and non-labels, finally “getting it?” And by “it” I mean the rampant misuse of Jesus’s name to defend all sorts of horrors, such as shaming Dominic Sheahan-Stahl and crafting budgets that harm the poor in our communities. 

I sighed in particular at one familiar comment: “we don’t hate you. We dislike and shun the lifestyle you lead. You are always welcome but your way of life is not.” (grammar cleaned up to protect the ignorant J) How can those mutually exclusive propositions ever be true? How can you "dislike and shun" everything that makes me *me* and yet still say you "love" me? I'm not buying it. How would you express that dislike, anyway? By asking me not to come to your home/school/church? By insulting my family, my children? How can you welcome me and love me with all that Christian goodness if you're so busy judging me?

Others defend the “love the sinner, hate the sin” ideology in the guise of “I care about you, so I want you to stop doing what you’re doing so you can go to heaven.” It seems so well-meaning. But what are those people really saying? I hate that excuse: “I have no problem with YOU, just with what you’re DOING.” I’d love to meet a person who really didn’t have a problem with ME and yet would still say that.   

"A NY Times Op-Ed"

A NY Times Op-Ed worth reading while you wait for a new post J:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/29/opinion/the-challenge-to-marriage-equality.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha211

Comments to follow.

"First piece of advice"

First piece of advice broken already: write every day. Part of this was a terse pile-up at home over what could/should/would be blogged about. Blogger friends defended my side, but Danoah hit home with his revelations about all the comment meanies out there. Now, I like to think I have thick skin, but I don’t. And since I’m writing about a sensitive issue, I know I can expect some random person to randomly find my site (or perhaps not-so-randomly, if they’re really mean and seek out people to hurt) and type-throw insults about how I’m going to hell, yada yada. So I will keep this more or less anonymous, potentially to my own readership detriment, but in the overarching goodwill goal of protecting my current and future family. After all, future baby-to-someday-be has privacy rights, or will anyway (once he or she is born, I am quick to say, as I don’t believe privacy rights begin in the womb), and may not appreciate the world knowing how he or she was conceived, born, and loved passionately. Well, at least, that might not be appreciated come the “ugh, mom” years of middle school. So moving on – but that’s my first disclaimer. Hopefully not many more to come!

"Conception"

First step – create a folder in your inbox labeled “Conception.”

Well, no. There are many, earlier, first steps, though this was the moment when the journey to have our first child began to materialize in a concrete way, changing from a future wish to a tantalizingly close prospect. 

Thus, the title of this blog is a bit disingenuous. We are at least two years away from our first child, though it makes me anxious when I think of how much closer I’ll be then to that suddenly less-fertile age of 35, and how if I want to have a second child, I’ll likely be in that nebulous, dangerous zone of 35-40. But this chronicle is still about being a parent. In some ways, I’m already one. I’m waiting for our first child to arrive. She has a name. He has parents who love him, who have planned, literally for years, for his arrival. She has grandparents already debating who gets first visitation rights and what they want to be called. He has cousins stashing aside hand-me-down clothes and promising not to "steal" "our" name.  

Over the next few weeks, months, and years leading up to our first child, I’ll chronicle our lives and how we came to this point, two women who fell in love, got married, and anxiously awaited the birth of their own child. Well – and here’s the gay disclaimer – as much our own as is biologically possible when the child can, necessarily, really have only one of our sets of genes. This is a point about which I’m amorphously bitter, at the cruel nature that makes it possible to create babies in petri dishes, but not blend genes willy-nilly. Not that I would necessarily wish that this type of biological tampering was possible, but there are times when I think, well, it would be nice. I am not bitter at God for denying us the ability to have a child who is truly, biologically, ours. And though I am grateful that we live in times when this is possible, sometimes I wish I was just far enough in the future that scientists would be able to gratify my demanding desires. Sigh. Such is life.

This may also be a forum, at times, on gay apologetics. It makes me so angry when people don’t get it, who see us only as the stereotype. Who have not met anyone like me, like my wife (whom I'll call K), middle-class white women with graduate degrees and pretty, "straight" faces. I keep thinking, hoping, that if they just met us, maybe they would think differently. I have so many arguments, both good ones and circular ones, as to why we should be allowed the same rights and roles as anyone else in society (note: not just us women who might not look the stereotype, but people of all beautiful differences. I'll explain what I mean in a later post). I plan to address some here, to help make the waiting pass a bit faster, to leave a legacy to my child that I did something, at least, to help the cause. I can use my words if I can’t do anything else.