The liturgy of an early morning school day in my home is not different from similar celebrations of life in families across the state, at least those who are raising a son who has just crossed the wavering threshold into sixth grade. There is the familiar ritual of call and response:
Sasha, don't dawdle in the bathroom please, you're going to be late for school!
Pop, where are my sneakers?
Look under the sofa by the Nintendo!
Then there is the parallel ritual of recollection and repentance between parents:
Hon, don't forget to pick up a quart of milk on your way home from work!
I just remembered, I have a meeting over at church after supper, can you do homework duty tonight?
Okay, but you need to take Sasha to the orthodontist tomorrow morning I have an early meeting. Sorry.
After a flurry of pet hugging and finding a mislaid math book, my son and I are in the car en route to the Quaker elementary school he attends. It is then that I am painfully reminded that my family is not a "typical" family, and that if many of my fellow citizens of the state have their will, we shall never have the security of taking our status as a couple or a family for granted. My need to listen to the news today trumps top 30 and so this morning it is WBUR and not KISS108. Bad mistake. We listen in silence to stories of hundreds of civic and religious leaders mobilizing to turn back the decision of the Supreme Judicial Court that the Commonwealth needs to extend the protections, benefits, obligations, and responsibilities of civil marriage to its gay and lesbian citizens. In a tone of hurt puzzlement my son says, "I just don't understand, Papa. You and Dad are married as far as I am concerned. What is going on?" Is that a quaver of fear or of anger I hear in his voice? I switch the channel back to KISS108.
I breathe a silent prayer that today I do not have to define the words "bestiality," "polygamy," and "pedophilia" or any of the hurtful terms that some religious and civic leaders have used in warning against the terrible things might happen if gays were allowed civic marriage. It would be harder still to explain that for over the 25 years of my life with my partner, or the seven years since my son was adopted from an orphanage in Russia we have lived with a legal, social, and financial vulnerability that none of the heterosexual parents of his classmates face. I am glad that he does not know for the moment that if his dad should be taken to the hospital in an emergency I do not have the unquestioned legal right to be there with him; that if I should die my partner has no right to my pension or social security benefits to help support the family. I have never told him the horrifying stories of long-term couples we have known who were devastated when one party passed away and the only legally recognized "family" - a resentful parent or sibling - descended on the remaining partner and threw them out of their own home.
Spring Break
