One side of our family, mine, is almost entirely Catholic. The other side, Ami’s, is mostly Mormon. I’m not going to identify the relative who sent the note because much as this card hurt us both, it came from someone whom we both want to continue to have in our lives. And while it was one person who expressed the thought, it could have come from a number of our family members from both sides. We will call the writer Chris.

The front of the card said, “Thinking of You,” and the envelope was addressed to both of us. It was from one of the relatives we had visited on our trip. Inside there was an affirmation that we were always welcome in Chris’s house. Then it said, “I don’t think of your relationship as a marriage! nor do I like how you’re living it!” That first exclamation point was obviously inserted as an afterthought. It was signed “Love, Chris.”

To say that the card hurt us is an extraordinary understatement. Even days later, this card makes me cry.

When we visited, Chris had made no indication that our family was anything but a family, and seemed to very much welcome Frances. There were gifts for her, and at Chris’s request, we agreed to send a portrait of Frances to go with the other family photos Chris had on display. Everyone got hugs on the way out the door.

So what happened between the visit and our return home that made Chris write that card? I suspect guilt at having defied his or her church in some small way for having welcomed us. I suspect shame–maybe Sunday came around, and at church Chris worried that some other congregant might know and think poorly of Chris.

If I were to write a response, it would say something like this:

Dear Chris,

Thank you for welcoming us to your home. We very much enjoyed our visit and do plan to return.

However, we do have to say that we do not believe in the Catholic (Mormon) faith, nor do we like how the church is behaving. It has hurt us in both personal and practical ways, and has hurt many other people in our community as well.

Love,
Ruby

How have the queers hurt you, Chris? I can ennumerate the ways that the Catholic and Mormon churches have hurt us. 1. Proposition 8. 2. Question 1. We’re just trying to have our own private lives while your churches are pouring money into state ballot measures–money collected from congregations all over the world–in order to keep us in our closets, keep us ashamed.

That Chris wrote the note to both of us–her biological family member, with whom she might feel an entitlement to express her opinion, as well as to the in-law she doesn’t believe in–implies that s/he feels a moral latitude to correct gayness in the world at large.

The subtext of that note is this: you should feel ashamed of your relationship. God and I think so. You can come to my house, and we’ll all pretend to be a family, but you need to feel shame while you are in my home.

I will not be ashamed.

Chris, you are a member of my family. I will visit your home, and I will participate in your life to the extent you allow, as long as you never express or even imply your opinion on the subject to our daughter. I will keep quiet about your private correspondence to us, and I will not send my response, out of deference to your esteemed place in the family.

But I will never be ashamed or act ashamed of my family or whom I love. This is where the charade ends.

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Welcome to Vermont!

If you’re thinking about taking your RV to New York City, don’t. There’s only one RV park anywhere nearby, and it’s a parking lot on the Jersey side of New York Harbor. When I say parking lot, this is not a poetic interpretation of a relatively plain RV park. This place had half the charm of your average rest stop. It was next to a marina and an empty, overgrown lot, and the RVs were so close to each other that you and your neighbor could reach out and shake each other’s hands. Public transportation was very close, and it was damned close to the city. The City. But still.

The experience also illustrated how crippled we are without an Internet connection. Liberty Harbor RV Park did not have wireless. Hence our long absence from the blog.

We did have Internet last night at the Quality Inn in Albany–hard won Internet. We were pretty road-weary after a stop at the outlet mall to get Frances some warmer clothes, and were having trouble locating an RV park that wasn’t closed for the winter. So we decided to use Hotels.com to get a room for the night. Luxurious two-star hotel style.

The Hotels.com app was working poorly with my Edge connection (really, AT&T?), so I called. After touting the Internet connection and the price, the operator talked me into a night at the Red Roof Inn. So when I got there and found that the Internet required an additional fee–times two, for two computers, I was pretty upset. I called and got my money back; we checked out, and the helpful phone operators of Priceline.com found us the Quality Inn. I don’t have much to complain about there, except that the pool gave Frances a rash. But I guess that could have happened anywhere. I guess. And the nurse line says it doesn’t require treatment.

Art by Bethann Shannon, South Street Cafe, Bennington

Currently I’m writing this from the South Street Cafe in Bennington, Vermont, surrounded by Mexican-inspired pop art canvases of multiple sizes and shapes. It’s pleasant, and the homemade bread is amazing. We ran into a couple from San Francisco and their five-month-old son, Henry. We talked babies, breastfeeding, and marriage equality. Nobody here has looked twice at us except to admire Frances in her outlet mall finery.

Something I’ve been thinking about: what legal marriage means as far as how we’re seen. At the Quality Inn there was a group of junior high school cheerleaders in town for a competition. Maybe because of their age, the parents of the girls seemed standoffish and stiff around us. I don’t know where they were from–maybe there aren’t many queer families there. We certainly didn’t go out of our way to come out, but it’s hard to miss that we’re a family. I kept thinking, but we’re married here. And we were–New York recognizes marriages legal in other states. But it doesn’t have marriage equality for its own state’s residents. Yet. More on that later.

Maybe a group of pre-teens decked out in short skirts and their overly-protective parents would have been just as standoffish here in Bennington, Vermont where Bob can marry Bill and Ruby can marry Ami. But I think I doubt it. My theory is that once something is the law of the land, people can more naturally accept it. I don’t have any evidence, but it’s my mission to collect at least some anecdotes while we’re here in Vermont.

But it’s cold here, and most of the RV parks are closed. The ones that aren’t are shutting off their water. So I’m not sure how long we’ll be here.

So far, Vermont, so good. And hey, nice leaves.

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Love!!

I’ve never really liked D.C. Sure, the first time I went was a little marred by adolescent angst, and the next time was for work. The highlights of my two previous trips were Archie Bunker’s chair at the Smithsonian and the Holocaust Museum–if you can call that a highlight.

Mostly D.C. seemed fraudulent. I can’t help but wonder how much of our money is spent keeping it as clean and manicured as it is. I can’t help but think about the rest of D.C. and the contrast to the National Mall.

But today I love D.C.

We got off to another late start, this time not because of our usual morning, West-Coast-time inertia, but because we boarded the dogs. We knew we would spend long days in the city while we were participating in National Equality March events. We didn’t want to leave them in the car, and couldn’t leave them alone in the trailer some thirty miles out of the city. So we found a kennel online who would take them last minute, called our vet for shot records, and deposited the dogs in Woodbridge for the next couple of days.

What was supposed to be a second or third stop for the day became our first stop: the Milk and Cookies welcome for LGBT parents and kids. Frances is not exactly of cookie-eating age, but it was a good way to meet other parents at the march. I was a little worried that it would be ill attended–after all, we’d heard that nobody would be able to make the march because it was so hastily planned.

As soon as we entered the hotel where the event was held, I knew I had worried for nothing. We followed the sound of children laughing, playing, screaming until it led us to the second floor ballroom. The place was packed. Every table seemed to be full. Set out were art supplies, and kids were making signs, hats, banners, bracelets, you name it.

Before we found a seat, we were approached by a couple of women with a video camera. We told them about our trip. The woman holding the camera put it down. “Let’s go outside,” she said to the other woman. We were asked if we’d like to do a longer interview, out in the hall where it was quieter. They were making a documentary called March On. We followed them out and sat in a couple of chairs wedged together in front of a tripod. We threaded mics under our shirts and told them all about ourselves, our trip, our hopes for what the march might accomplish.

Later I told Ami I hope they edit us to make us sound smart. I regretted not having our elevator speeches memorized. And I worried that my bra was showing. But all in all, the documentarians were sweet and warm, and the experience was a positive one.

After we live tweeted some pictures of the kids at the event in all their face-painted glory, ate some cookies, and talked to a number of parents, the party ended. We decided to go to a happy hour sign-making event next, and pushed a napping Frances in her stroller through the streets of D.C.

At the restuarant, people were everywhere with their markers, their posterboard, their happy gay gayness (sorry folks, but LGBTness just doesn’t have the same ring). I circled the room–rooms–and found a table that was emptying just as another group approached. Amy, a college student at Indiana, and her hometown friends, a couple from Atlanta, became our table mates. They shared their markers. We spent hours there, staying long past when the event was scheduled to end, through the President’s address at the HRC dinner.

I know that Obama was only trying to make peace with the queers–and some of the most mainstream queers, at that. Don’t confuse my emotion watching the speech, which could be judged by the tears that ran down my face, with approval of the incremental approach to equality. Don’t think just because I detoured from a diaper change to wave at the motorcade as it made its way back to the White House I endorse separate-but-equal civil unions.

But while Obama spoke, everyone in that room was gripped with a simultaneous emotion, one we were urged to believe in again through the presidential campaign last year. Together we held hands with our partners and looked up at the screens overhead. Some of us clapped. Some of us cried (me). Some of us crossed our arms and waited for something new to be said.

All of us. All of us. All of us, together, hoped.

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And this final one, though not for the faint of heart, is probably our favorite. The slogan was courtesy of our friend, Patch:

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Frances Found My Wedding Ring

Every day Frances finds new things. A week ago it was that she could put her feet in her mouth. Yesterday it was keys: tasty, tasty metal keys. Today it was my wedding ring.

I told her the first thing that came to mind: “That’s mama’s wedding ring. That means that your mamas are stickin’ together with you, and that there’s a ton of love where you came from.”

Not that our parents were married when we came into the world. And not that any of our life before her will mean anything to her. I think about what I know about my parents before me, and there’s just a great big sea of  “Well, that doesn’t really matter, anyhow.”

But I do want her to feel like there’s a huge landmass of love in this world for her, no matter what. And I feel like us being married would somehow, in some small representational way, demonstrate that in terms that are traded in reality, in familiar words and actions. 

It’s more than “We really wanted you,” or “We loved each other a lot and wanted to share more love.” It’s that we felt we could handle bringing up a little one with each other’s support (Amazing!), and that we believed that the world could refrain from holding it against you (Come on, world, you can do it!). It’s that we thought the world was a great enough place to bother coming into it, and the minute we met you we knew we were right.  

Your mamas believe in the power of love, little Frances. Enough to host an open bar for over a hundred people and ask them not to wear jeans. That’s how much.

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