In Which Amal Gets Political
According to my flist, it was recently International Post About Gay Stuff (Specifically How Prop 8 Sucks) Day. Far be it from me to buck the trend, or to get to it on time.
This is my wife, Leigh. You've met before.
This was taken about twenty minutes before our wedding started. I proposed, on one knee, at the beach over spring break her senior year of college, because she wanted to be engaged before she graduated. The wedding took over four years to plan, between having to save up to pay for it, a few shifts in job for each of us, and an aborted move abroad. It was a huge affair--necessary, given the giantness of both of our extended families--complete with white silk dresses (do you know how much having to pay for two wedding dresses drives up the cost of a wedding?), bridesmaids, a catered luncheon, not one but two photographers, a first dance to Ben Folds, a father-daughter dance to Tori Amos, and a mother-daughter dance to the Scissor Sisters. And it was a religious wedding, held according to the traditional practices of the Religious Society of Friends. We stood in front of our Meeting and recited vows substantially unchanged since the eighteenth century: "promising with Divine assistance to be unto you a loving and faithful wife so long as we both shall live," we said, and I cried. A lot.
She's not my wife.
Two years before our wedding, we went down to city hall on Leigh's lunch hour and got ourselves a domestic partnership; it was the only way I could get health insurance through her work. That's the only legal bond between us, and it's not really recognized outside of other cities and states that believe in such things. One of the first people we talked to, once we started planning the wedding, was our lawyer; she drew up wills for us, and health care proxies, and durable powers of attorney, so we'd have the basic rights afforded to most married couples: the right to inherit each other's property, to make medical decisions, to deposit each other's checks at the bank. This paperwork was so important to us because, for our honeymoon, we were leaving the queer-friendly northeast and heading to one of our favorite places to visit, Florida, which has some of the most aggressive anti-gay legislation in the country. We both carry copies of the health care proxies in our purses, in case of emergency. Because otherwise, any hospital in the country would be within their rights to shut me out of her room, to refuse to let me make medical decisions for her. We're not married. We're not related. What rights do I have?
This is my son, Isk. I believe you've met him also.
We picked when to start trying to conceive so it would time best with both of our careers; the date got moved a few times, mostly for me. He was conceived in the bed I inherited from my homophobic grandmother, in which, basic math tells me, at least one of my mom's siblings was probably conceived. Leigh's pregnancy was fairly easy and uncomplex, but that didn't mean I didn't spend all nine months making ice cream runs, giving foot massages, and assuring her that she looked lovely in that dress. (She did. I don't lie.) I cried the first time I saw him on ultrasound. We've known his name since he was at eleven weeks gestation. I held her hand through thirty-six hours of labor. When he was born, I followed him to the nursery, where he had to stay to get checked out for a few hours, and refused to leave him. Most days, I sleep on his side of the bed, since I'm the one who changes his diapers (and wakes up Leigh to nurse him). He's asleep right now, six feet away, while I've got a casserole in the oven for the church potluck we're going to in a few hours.
He's not my son.
We haven't had a chance to see the lawyer since he was born, which means that I have no legal rights to Isk. At all. In any circumstance. Once we see her, I'll have something called a Care and Custody document. It's not legally binding, but the courts do tend to see it as expressing the will of the parent--that would be Leigh, the only parent he has. Then I've got to go through the whole process of legally adopting him--which isn't even an option in many states, so I'm lucky I've got it. I have to get fingerprinted. A social worker has to come make sure that our house is safe for him to live in. I need references from people who've seen me with him. A judge gets to decide if my son is my son, sometime about six to twelve months from now. Then, probably, I'll have a son.
This is what the refusal to legally acknowledge queer relationships does. My wife is not my wife. My son is not my son. Objective facts about the world become twisted and reshaped by other people's imaginings of what an ideal world would be. That is, in their ideal world, I would have no wife. I would have no son. So they will take them away from me, in name only, because they can. They'd rather they could write me out of existence too, but that's trickier, so they'll settle for what they can get.
What does Prop 8 mean for me, living on the other side of the country? It means there is one fewer place in the world where the reality I live every day can be expressed through the law. It means I feel a little less safe about moving to California, a dream I harbor every so often merely because I want fruit trees in my backyard. It means that it will take more time until the world looks the way I think it should.
In the meantime, though, there's a casserole in the oven. There's my son making noises in his bassinet. There's my wife who'll be waking up soon. There's my life. It's real. And the law can't take that away from me.
This is my wife, Leigh. You've met before.
This was taken about twenty minutes before our wedding started. I proposed, on one knee, at the beach over spring break her senior year of college, because she wanted to be engaged before she graduated. The wedding took over four years to plan, between having to save up to pay for it, a few shifts in job for each of us, and an aborted move abroad. It was a huge affair--necessary, given the giantness of both of our extended families--complete with white silk dresses (do you know how much having to pay for two wedding dresses drives up the cost of a wedding?), bridesmaids, a catered luncheon, not one but two photographers, a first dance to Ben Folds, a father-daughter dance to Tori Amos, and a mother-daughter dance to the Scissor Sisters. And it was a religious wedding, held according to the traditional practices of the Religious Society of Friends. We stood in front of our Meeting and recited vows substantially unchanged since the eighteenth century: "promising with Divine assistance to be unto you a loving and faithful wife so long as we both shall live," we said, and I cried. A lot.
She's not my wife.
Two years before our wedding, we went down to city hall on Leigh's lunch hour and got ourselves a domestic partnership; it was the only way I could get health insurance through her work. That's the only legal bond between us, and it's not really recognized outside of other cities and states that believe in such things. One of the first people we talked to, once we started planning the wedding, was our lawyer; she drew up wills for us, and health care proxies, and durable powers of attorney, so we'd have the basic rights afforded to most married couples: the right to inherit each other's property, to make medical decisions, to deposit each other's checks at the bank. This paperwork was so important to us because, for our honeymoon, we were leaving the queer-friendly northeast and heading to one of our favorite places to visit, Florida, which has some of the most aggressive anti-gay legislation in the country. We both carry copies of the health care proxies in our purses, in case of emergency. Because otherwise, any hospital in the country would be within their rights to shut me out of her room, to refuse to let me make medical decisions for her. We're not married. We're not related. What rights do I have?
This is my son, Isk. I believe you've met him also.
We picked when to start trying to conceive so it would time best with both of our careers; the date got moved a few times, mostly for me. He was conceived in the bed I inherited from my homophobic grandmother, in which, basic math tells me, at least one of my mom's siblings was probably conceived. Leigh's pregnancy was fairly easy and uncomplex, but that didn't mean I didn't spend all nine months making ice cream runs, giving foot massages, and assuring her that she looked lovely in that dress. (She did. I don't lie.) I cried the first time I saw him on ultrasound. We've known his name since he was at eleven weeks gestation. I held her hand through thirty-six hours of labor. When he was born, I followed him to the nursery, where he had to stay to get checked out for a few hours, and refused to leave him. Most days, I sleep on his side of the bed, since I'm the one who changes his diapers (and wakes up Leigh to nurse him). He's asleep right now, six feet away, while I've got a casserole in the oven for the church potluck we're going to in a few hours.
He's not my son.
We haven't had a chance to see the lawyer since he was born, which means that I have no legal rights to Isk. At all. In any circumstance. Once we see her, I'll have something called a Care and Custody document. It's not legally binding, but the courts do tend to see it as expressing the will of the parent--that would be Leigh, the only parent he has. Then I've got to go through the whole process of legally adopting him--which isn't even an option in many states, so I'm lucky I've got it. I have to get fingerprinted. A social worker has to come make sure that our house is safe for him to live in. I need references from people who've seen me with him. A judge gets to decide if my son is my son, sometime about six to twelve months from now. Then, probably, I'll have a son.
This is what the refusal to legally acknowledge queer relationships does. My wife is not my wife. My son is not my son. Objective facts about the world become twisted and reshaped by other people's imaginings of what an ideal world would be. That is, in their ideal world, I would have no wife. I would have no son. So they will take them away from me, in name only, because they can. They'd rather they could write me out of existence too, but that's trickier, so they'll settle for what they can get.
What does Prop 8 mean for me, living on the other side of the country? It means there is one fewer place in the world where the reality I live every day can be expressed through the law. It means I feel a little less safe about moving to California, a dream I harbor every so often merely because I want fruit trees in my backyard. It means that it will take more time until the world looks the way I think it should.
In the meantime, though, there's a casserole in the oven. There's my son making noises in his bassinet. There's my wife who'll be waking up soon. There's my life. It's real. And the law can't take that away from me.