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Thursday, Nov 5, 2009
My 7-year-old son's best friend is a lesbian and he says he wants to be gay. I hope he is.
Mar 28, 2005 | My 7-year-old son's best friend is a 59-year-old lesbian from Brooklyn, N.Y. Zeke and Laura share a passion for the San Francisco Giants, dark chocolate truffles and New York frankfurters, and have spent every Wednesday afternoon together since he was 6 weeks old. Other than his dad, Zeke would rather be with Laura than pretty much anybody else, including me, and who can blame him. He and Laura go to ballgames, take classes at the science museum, do his homework over brownie sundaes at Fenton's ice-cream parlor, and have a circuit of toy stores they visit on a regular basis.
Laura is the perfect companion for a kid, and had she and her partner been a decade younger, they probably would have had a few of their own. In their generation, it wasn't as common for lesbian couples to have children together. Instead, Zeke and his older sister have been the lucky recipients of these women's devoted attentions. We met because Laura was our investment advisor, but while it may be trite, it is no exaggeration to say that Laura and Hedy are now part of our family.
When Zeke was about 2 and half years old, and was starting to make gender distinctions with the broad strokes of a small child -- boys have short hair, girls have long; boys like trucks, girls like dolls -- he categorically refused to let Laura use the ladies' room while out on one of their excursions. Before that day he hadn't much cared where she landed on the gender-identity scale. At that moment, however, with the absolute certainty of a Ptolemaic astronomer asserting that the sun revolves around the Earth, he directed her to a restaurant men's room. What's most amazing about this story is that Laura obliged. She knocked on the door, checked for unsuspecting men at the urinal and peed in a stall.
A couple of months ago Zeke was telling me about how all the boys in his class had a crush on a particular girl, how it was distracting them from more important activities like reenacting scenes from "The Incredibles," playing 4-Square and assembling Z-cards. I asked him if he also had a crush on this little girl. He wrinkled his brow, thinking about it for a moment. "Nah," he said, finally. "I think I might be gay." Easily, confidently, with no trace of self-consciousness or embarrassment.
I wonder how long it will last? This blissful tolerance of his feels so fragile, even in a city like Berkeley, Calif., where anti-discrimination language is codified, where there are many gay and lesbian families, where his best friend is a middle-aged lesbian. The pressures on boys in particular are manifold. Will it be long before I hear him say, "That's so gay," or call one of his friends "queer"? Will society's demand that people have a specific and recognizable gender identity, which already caused Zeke to push Laura into the wrong bathroom, one day make him uncomfortable with their friendship? I hope not, but I worry. I worry that the world will change him, that it will impose its ugliness on him. I imagine that the people who are busy teaching their kids that God is a man who wants gay people to suffer probably feel the same way as I do, like they're fighting off barbarians.
When Zeke and his older sister were smaller we referred to Hedy, Laura's partner of 19 years, as her "wife." There seemed no other way to describe that relationship in terms the kids could understand, in a way that would align this romance with the other long-term commitments the children knew -- our marriage, those of their grandparents -- and distinguish it from more transient ones. Laura and Hedy were certainly more than "girlfriends," and even the word "partner" wasn't strong enough. We wanted the children to understand that this couple was a constant, dependable part of our lives, and the language of marriage was the easiest way to express that. After all, if Laura and Hedy could have married, they would have.
On Feb. 12, 2004, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, and by then the children were old enough to understand both homophobia and the pride of standing up to it. We explained that until now no one had ever allowed gay people to be legally married in the United States, and that this was a revolutionary moment, one that we could be excited about and proud of. But the California Supreme Court put a stop to Mayor Newsom's revolution, and confused the hell out of my kids. They didn't understand how anyone could object to what seemed so natural -- people who loved each other getting married. What could possibly be wrong with that?
The court didn't issue a decision on the issue of gay marriage; it merely stopped the weddings while the lawsuits progressed. Now, finally, we have the first court ruling on the issue here in California, and it's once again grounds for cautious celebration. Last week, California Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer ruled that banning gay marriage violates the state constitution. There is of course no guarantee that the California appellate courts will uphold this decision, even in this bluest of blue states. But the California courts may well follow Massachusetts' lead and legalize gay marriage. There are similar lawsuits seeking marriage for same-sex couples pending in Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Washington. Just as in Massachusetts, all of these cases are based on individual state constitutions, and all of them have at least a fair chance of success.
