Apropos of nothing, but...

...I am now legally married.

How awesome is that?







(Now for the rest of my LGBT family who aren't allowed to. Need to get you in on this shit, because this fun should be shared. Your inevitable marriages will lift something of a shadow from everybody else's, so we've got some politicians to harass until they explode. Let's do this shit.)

now witness the POWER of this FULLY ARMED and OPERATIONAL feminist

Had to get up really early to be at the state house this morning, but it was worth it. I was testifying against a bill in a committee hearing to defund Planned Parenthood in Indiana, and I got to be the first of the opposition to speak (right after the lady from Right to Life, sitting there with her mouth all pinched up tightly as a cat's asshole).

I'm pretty proud of how I did, and I think I helped. One of the Planned Parenthood lobbyists asked me to email her my testimony so that they could use it as an example of How It Is Done (eeeeee!) and so I thought I'd relay it to y'all as well.

My name is [my name], here on behalf of Planned Parenthood, mostly because of how much I owe of my own health and success to Planned Parenthood. I'm the first woman in my family to get a college degree. My parents were supportive, but we're a military family and as you're all aware, people don't enlist for the money.

My parents were proud, but when it came to the financial end of a $120,000 education, that was entirely up to me. I had no money left over for doctors. I literally endorsed my paychecks and physically handed them over to Butler University.

It would have been easy to sacrifice my health for the sake of being the first woman to finish, but thanks to Planned Parenthood it wasn't necessary. They clearly don't believe young women should have to choose between an education and basic preventative care, and Planned Parenthood are the people doing something about it.

I'll be 25 in a month and I've only had one routine pelvic that wasn't provided at reduced cost by Planned Parenthood. For years, that made Planned Parenthood the only place I could afford to get checkups. I had one shot to get a degree, and I was willing to put everything else second.

I still did do it. My late great-grandmother, who was a young woman during the Depression, got to see our family, after almost eighty years, produce a woman with a college degree. We're talking about a woman for whom birth control pills might as well have been magic. I wasn't stopped by poverty. I wasn't stopped by the looming threat of pregnancy derailing this dream for yet another generation.

If not for Planned Parenthood, I might have been. I see in this legislation a clear statement that women in my position should have to choose between our health and our education, that I should have had to choose: either I can have doctors or knowledge but not both.

It's 2011... and we can give women better options than that. Planned Parenthood are the people offering better options.

Reliable access to preventative care and birth control were the difference between the women in my family for the past eighty years and this woman now. When you're asking yourself whether you approve of Planned Parenthood's impact on this state, you are asking yourself about me.

Do you approve of Planned Parenthood's impact on my life? Or don't you?

Because Planned Parenthood gives women access to a legal procedure that some people may wish you could keep them from having, are you really going to let my success story be one of the last?

This bill has to go, and by saying so here today I hope to repay in small part the debt I owe to this organization. I'm proud to give this act of testifying and my tax dollars for Planned Parenthood and the patients who need them. Thank you for your time.

There's a chance the bill will indeed fail, because the Democrats on this committee are people I pretty much trust not to be horrible shits. I also don't think it'll pass because they try this every damn year. However, both the House and Senate in Indiana are controlled by Republicans, so there's no saying for certain what fuckery they'll get up to.

I'm going back tomorrow, and this time the mister is coming with me. I mentioned offhand to the Planned Parenthood people that he's a pharmacist, and they told me the House added a bill regulating a RU-486 in a particular very stupid way to the committee schedule at the last minute. I got an emphatic Facebook message from the Planned Parenthood lobbyist ("CALL ME" and her phone number. "Right now?" "YES."). She wants him to be available to read a statement on the bill written by one of his former professors and answer questions if the representatives have them.

The Planned Parenthood lobbyist who alerted me to all this told him that we're her new favorite couple. We're my favorite couple, too. The couple that cockpunches the patriarchy together stays together, yeah?

Public Service Announcement

If any of you are like me, you have people that you're deliberately keeping your precise location from. Someone posted this to a community I follow, and I confirmed. My most current information isn't posted, but yours might be.

"There's a site called Spokeo.com that's a new online USA phone book w/personal information: everything from pics you've posted on FB or web, your approx credit. Search your name, find your page, copy the URL and then go to the very bottom of the page and click on the Privacy link to remove yourself. Copy & re-post so your FB friends are aware."

Dads.

You just broke your child. Congratulations.

It's a letter to dads about being a dad, about children. I'm not usually responsive to the usual, "relink this for the children" pleas, but this was actually a goddamned good essay.

I apologize for the heatedness of my post. I believe a part of me feels like a coward for not saying something to the man in front of me at Costco. Consider this post to be my penance. Perhaps a part of me feels that if even one person reads this and decides to be a better dad, it was worth every second that I spent typing it. If one child has a better life because something in my words stirred their father to step up their game, then it was worth every ounce of begging and pleading with you to share this with others, of which I am inevitably going to be guilty.

Dads. Children are gifts. They are not ours for the breaking. They are ours for the making. So stand up with me and show the world that there are a lot of good dads around.

To the men and women who read this post... married or not... parent or not... share this post on Facebook and Twitter, even if it doesn't apply to you because you're already all these things. If you've ever seen a father break his child, share it. You never know what child might get his superhero dad back. You never know what tiny spirit might feel just a little more loved because Dad took the time to tuck her in tonight.

All because you were willing to paste one link and ask others to read it.

He asked for stories about good dads in the comments, and I'm betting that readers here will want one as well. If you've got a story about awesome dadness, I'd love you to post it here, but I'd love it even more if you went and posted it there. Here's mine.

My mother's third husband is an awesome dad. If I liked something that girls traditionally didn't, he got enthused and geeked out over his stepdaughter wanting to build a fort in the woods, or go squirrel hunting, or wanting to hit the military surplus store, or wanting to watch The History Channel all day, mall be damned. He was the one who finally convinced my mother that I needed an eye exam, and probably glasses. He was the only one who believed me when I said I couldn't see through one of my eyes, and I never forgot how jarring it was to speak to an adult and be believed.

I was once being bullied in junior high, and it almost turned into a fight. I think, looking back, that I would have been willing to do far worse to her than she would have to me, just because I was scared and she was merely pissed and insecure. It didn't come to blows, but the school was going to suspend both of us as part of their zero tolerance policy toward fighting.

He went to that administrator's office--in uniform--and asked her how in the hell she, as a woman, could tell another young woman that she deserves to be punished because she was victimized. That it wasn't just her fault, but that she was to be equally punished. I took great comfort in knowing that he made her cry.

My biological father? Eh. I could go on about him, but he's not as large a part of my life anymore. The guy I refer to when I say "my dad" is the third man my mother married, and I'm glad she had the freedom to shop around. I ended up with a guy who didn't want to silence his mouthy sharp-tongued little girl; he just made sure I could defend myself if someone brought me trouble because of it.

He taught me that it's good to stand up for people who need it, but even better to make sure it's safe for them to do it themselves. That's a hell of a good dad move right there.

Of shelters and purebreds

Most people get the whole notion of going to the local animal shelter to get a pet. They see it as the more compassionate option, because 60% of animals who enter shelters don't come out again, and not because they're sick or dangerous. There is just a serious lack of resources to offer them, either in a shelter or someone's home. So the idea is to go get one from a shelter because you're saving a life in addition to acquiring a great new addition to the family.

So why do these same people treat adoption of human children like it's some last resort that only failures as women and men ever resort to? Why are they compassionate enough to want to save an animal's life, but when it comes to a human, it's gotta be their genes or no dice. "My way or the highway," except by "the highway" we mean "life in the foster care system potentially being abused and neglected until they become criminals and have only prison to look forward to in their retirement years."

Oopsie babies are one thing. That happens, and if you wanna have it, do it. I just don't for the life of me understand what's going on in people's heads where they'll spend hundreds of thousands of dollars desperately fighting to conceive a child, like they're in fucking short supply or something.

CAN YOUR SCIENCE EXPLAIN HOW IT RAINS?

"Not everything has to be proven, the best things aren't. Can you prove that you love your parents or your children? Can you prove that your romantic partner really loves you?"

CAN YOUR SCIENCE EXPLAIN HOW IT RAINS?

(TO which Sokka insists yes, yes it can.)

Anyway, seriously. I've been getting this from a couple of people, and I thought that I'd just put my thoughts on it here. Saying, "It doesn't matter whether there's any proof of X Supernatural Event/Entity, because not everything that matters is about proof. Sometimes you just have to have faith."

When, um. Lots of things that matter are about proof.

This is the kind of thing that people say who haven't been shown evidence of the kinds of things people ordinarily take on faith. I know my partner loves me because I have evidence from the way he treats me. I know my parents love their children because I have seen the sacrifices they made for them.

I wouldn't believe my partner loved me if he didn't treat me in ways that gave me a reason to believe it. I wouldn't believe my parents love their kids if they didn't act in ways that lead me to this conclusion.

Very few of the things people say must be taken on faith are actually taken on faith by anybody.

Why should I treat the love of God any differently than the love of my partner? More to the point, shouldn't I have some evidence that I have a partner, and then proof that he loves me, and then belief?

Ancestry

This came up because someone asked me what I thought of PETA the other day.

My paternal grandfather moved to Massachusetts from Sicily. I seem to recall that he was a firefighter or something, but because he and my paternal grandmother were both married to other people, there isn't a lot of information about him to be had. My biological father reconnected with his half-siblings after his father's death, and I heard that this was kind of done in a... sort of crass manner. Knowing him, he probably walked in with a big sense of entitlement to the family he never had so everybody start loving him, damn it.

My mother's side is more complicated, and it's more interesting because we have more detail about it.

She did some geneology tracing, for which I am grateful. Means we have records of a lot of cool stuff now. Her great-grandfather (whom I remember, though he died when I was very young) was half-Kennebec (a tribe which was absorbed into the Penobscot, which was part of the Eastern Abenaki confederacy, for those of you who are curious in the whatnots and whyfores). He was a "half-breed" at a time when you DID NOT WANT to be of mixed-race. I guess he didn't like to talk about it, but I think my mother managed to make some connections anyway. I have a small sweetgrass basket and a silver and turquoise (and porcupine quill?) necklace that she was given to keep for me until I was old enough, and I do indeed still have them.

That was actually the source of my first little "a-ha" moment, the beginning of whatever racial consciousness I can claim. We were there for some kind of circle dance, and I remember being aware that it was important not to break the circle, not to leave, but I REALLY REALLY REALLY HAD TO PEE AND OMG I HAD TO PEE and I was a little girl so they laughed and said it was okay and I went back to their trailer to use the bathroom.

They had towels drying on a rack in the tub. There was a Barney towel. This blew my mind. INDIANS HAD BARNEY, TOO. It was then that it hit me. This world of beautiful jewelry and skilled crafting and dancing and reunions was actually the same world I lived in. Their kids watched the same television shows, whined in the store for their parents to buy them the same sorts of TV-inspired towels I owned (Power Rangers bath towels REPRESENT).

My mother traced her grandparents' ancestors back, and found that we've basically always been New Englanders. A ship came to our Eastern shore in the sixteen-hundreds (though I don't recall the year), and on that ship was an ancestor of my great-grandmother, and of my great-grandfather. New England is a small small world. When my great-grandparents met, did they realize that their ancestors might have known each other? Stuck on a boat for weeks or months at a time, how could they not?

Then things get fuzzier, and there may have been a union between a French royal and his favorite whore in there somewhere, but who knows. Makes a funny story, but I don't think there's good evidence to be had on that one either way.

As a nod to my Italian heritage, I took four semesters of Italian in college. It was the language that my grandfather's family spoke, and I wanted to know some of the rhythm of the words that would have seemed so familiar and automatic to them. I wanted to know how my grandfather's parents told each other that they loved each other. I wanted to know what they called their son when he was a boy.

My Native American heritage requires something a little more complicated. It requires that I at least learn SOMETHING from what European colonists did to Native American nations living in North America, doesn't it?

My lesson is this: Oppression matters because it's always closer to you than you think. You think you're a white New Englander whose ancestors didn't even own slaves like those bastard savage southerners? You think being from New England, where we fought in the Revolution and refused to own slaves, means that oppression is something that other people did to other people? It's closer than you think.

When movies like Dances with Wolves and AVATAR tell us that everything would have been different if Native Americans had just had a white guy to lead them in every battle and every negotiation, their lives wouldn't have been taken over and run by white people, I boggle and think, "How the hell dare you?" Because you're not talking about people who don't exist anymore, whose fates are mere hypotheticals. You're arguing about people who are still struggling to own themselves and their own lives, who are still fending off white people who want to come in and gobble them up until there's nothing left but whitewhitewhite. You're not telling people who are totally unlike me that they don't think right, and need somebody who can think a little "whiter" before they can succeed; you're telling people like me that they don't think right.

When a bunch of rich white celebrities from PETA come in to tell Native sealhunters that their culture marks them as animal-abusing savages, and that if they want to be good people they should chuck their culture and use the land like white people do (and yes, there are people who miss the monstrous irony in white people telling Natives how to live sustainably), I can't say, "those sealhunters aren't like me." Because they are. They may not be related to me, we may never meet, and they'd probably not see me as kin if we did. But damn it, those are my people you're shitting on, PETA, and you knock it the hell off.

When museums talk about Native Americans like they stepped out of history in the eighteen-hundreds and into museum dioramas where they would be enshrined next to mammoths and mastodons for the rest of time, part of me shouts, "Damn you, we're not extinct, I'M STANDING RIGHT HERE." Why is some little millionth-of-a-percent white girl the only one in the place who gets angry? Isn't there somebody more qualified who notices?

I'm not "Native enough" to claim membership in a tribe, and I wouldn't try. But just being connected to the people in Maine who are related to the people who are related to the people who are related to the people that my great-grandfather was so ashamed of has impacted who I am, and taught me a great deal. Those people are mine, y'know? And there's only so much I can do for them without taking their lives away from them and being part of the problem.

There are efforts right now to preserve the languages spoken by the people my great-grandfather was related to. I'm so glad they're doing that, and I hope that when I finally get back to New England, they'll still be offering lessons. Maybe it's not my tribe, not really. Maybe it's not my language, not really. But if I can help keep their language from dying by being one more person interested in learning it and passing it on... maybe I can be some use to them, after all. I owe them that much for all that they taught me.

Just another field canvasser.

Well, that's that.

Went out on review at CAC. What this means is that I had to make my weekly quota three weeks in a row, or else... y'know. that's that. For all that our job description covers motivating each other and the contacts at the door and generating letters and phone calls and all sorts of important things, because the fundraising is the only thing we can quantify... really, the fundraising is the only goal that can make or break you as a canvasser. It's hard to escape the impression that it's the only thing which matters, but we always try.

Hard to see it just now. But you know. That's now. For the past two days, all anybody has been looking at are the numbers, if only in the desperate hope that the numbers would be good enough to give them an excuse to retain me. Canvassers have many jobs, many responsibilities, and they all matter to the organization, to our campaigns, and to the people of Indiana. Really, though, the only one of those that affects us personally is our fundraising. So it's hard to see those other things, sometimes. Like now. But y'know. That's now.

Honestly, I think other people will mind more than I mind, at least right this second. I'm not used to thinking of myself as the popular girl, but I guess at CAC I was. I just tried to make people laugh. Old survival strategy: make them laugh and they won't hate you for being smart or pretty or... or whatever it is you are. So I tried to make them laugh. I guess it worked.

It'll hit the new people hardest. They haven't seen people come and go like I have, and like the people have who've been there even longer than any of the field canvassers. The newer people will miss me. I give everybody else a week, maybe.

The office is the same, no matter who's in it. I didn't change it when I came, and it won't become something else because I'm not there. That's how it is when you have a lot of people moving in and out. Nobody gets a foothold, makes a change, fills a space that will leave a gap when they're gone.

I feel bad for my canvass director who had to do it, though we both knew I'm just sick to death of doing what I've been doing. I needed a change, and whether that was finding a way to get promoted or shifted elsewhere or simply leaving... it was going to happen, or I was going to make it happen. So I'm not jarred or shocked or anything.

But then, maybe it just hasn't hit me yet. Up until yesterday, there was actually a damn good chance I'd still be going back on Monday. But that was up until yesterday. I went to staff night for the first time in months yesterday, and I think it was largely to say goodbye (even if they won't realize this until sometime next week). I came, I sang, I rocked out, I reminded them that we're awesome together, and now I'm out.

The people who notice I'm gone will feel it at first, but it's like every time a move happens, or people graduate, or switch jobs. It hurts at first, because you're pre-emptively missing that person or that group of friends. When the time comes for the actual "missing them" bit, it never quite lives up to expectations.

When you graduate, you promise your friends you'll stay in touch. I made those promises too, because to do otherwise was to hurt the feelings of the people who just didn't understand yet that the parting ritual is hollow. We don't really mean we'll stay in touch. We don't really mean we'll always be friends. What we mean is that we're friends now, and we're sorry that that is ending (if not forever, then at least for now).

It's like every time I moved as a kid. I'm the one who's leaving, I'm the one who's losing, and yet I'm the one who has to comfort everybody else. I'm the one who has to repeat over and over again how all right I'm going to be and yes of course let's stay in touch and definitely we'll hang out. I say it, because if I don't go through the parting ritual they'll think I never liked them and never valued them. They say it because if they're afraid if they don't go through the ritualistic assurances, I'll think that our friendship never mattered.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one who sees it, or if we're both just going through the motions so that each of us knows that the other--at the end--at least cared enough to lie.

I feel like I have to rehash this constantly

I'd just like to say super-quickly that being pro-choice or anti-choice has nothing to do with being pro-abortion or anti-abortion.

Most of the people I know who are pro-choice are personally anti-abortion. However, that's their personal decision, and they respect the right of women to make a different one, even if they disagree.

"Pro-choice" doesn't mean you don't have an opinion on abortion, or that you actually like it. It means that you believe you can only choose for yourself, and other people all have to choose for themselves. If you respect the right of other individuals to make decisions for themselves that you wouldn't make in their place, you're pro-choice. Period dot. You don't have to like abortion.

Personally? I am pro-abortion, and this is totally distinct from my identification as pro-choice. I think that there are so many children out there who need good homes that, if I were to bear my own child instead of taking in one of them, I would effectively be taking food out of the mouths of starving kids. If I can afford to care for a child, I want to take care of the ones we've already got before birthing a new one.

Yes, that means if I get pregnant I'm getting an abortion. Hell fucking yes I am. This may seem shocking to you, so if you want to look at me as a baby-hating monster, you go right ahead. I'm not the one who's increasing the human population knowing full well that we aren't feeding all the brothers and sisters and sons and daughters who are already here.

Look at me as a child-hater if you want, but keep in mind that when I see you playing with your own biological child instead of one that you adopted to give them a better chance at life, you keep in mind that if I were that kind of asshole, I could point the finger and be saying the same damn thing about you.

Most people reading probably already understand this, though. I'm pro-abortion because my first duty is to the people who need me who are already living, and this is how I express that. I'm pro-choice because you can decide differently, and that doesn't make either of us a bad person.

Get it?

Anger

What can I say? rake_blackguard is right.

Obama defends DOMA in court, says banning gay marriage is good for the federal budget, invokes incest and pedophilia.

First he, a black man just one goddamned generation removed from Brown v. The Board of Education daring to use the phrase "separate but equal" in reference to gay marriage, then his pussying out on clapping Bush in irons and pillorying him in front of the White House, and now this.

And I have to turn to DICK FUCKING CHENEY for some governmental recognition, as unofficial and possibly coerced as it was, that the love I practice isn't a great sin against The United States of Jesus. Dick Cheney makes Richard Nixon look like Rob Blagojevich in comparison and I hear more affirming things out of him, the goddamned devil himself, perpetually snarling like the Beast that Revelation's Whore rides, war profiteer and waster of men's lives, than a goddamned black president.

Is the warranty on this black president still good? At this point I think I'd suffer that paranoid little gnome Ron Paul better than this one.

Hey, Obama, how about a compromise? How about we just say that gay marriage is worth 3/5s of what a straight marriage is worth!

When this happened, I actually ended up in a conversation with my mother about it. My mother is one of those people who's had so many bad marriages that she doesn't think marriage is important. It didn't mean anything but more mess in her relationship, so not only are gay people wrong for fighting for full contractual rights... they should be.... protected from their own desire for equality? Or something?

I can't help but think that if I'd been in a relationship with a woman for nearly five years she would agree with me. Note that I am careful not to say "she would understand." My mother isn't big on understanding things. She hates and mistrusts anyone who uses bigger words than she does, assuming that because they could talk circles around her that they are and that therefore anybody with an IQ over 85 is not to be trusted (because apparently it's far easier to exercise restraint and responsibly use a firearm than one's own intellect).

She still wouldn't get it. But she's one of those monstrous people who is quite comfortable declaring as irrelevant anything that does not impact them in some obvious and immediate way. "If it doesn't affect me, I don't worry about it." I'm sure she loved that logic from other people when her husband was beating the shit out of her.

But she lacks the self-awareness and critical thinking ability to even check for hypocrisy like that. It doesn't occur to her. She believes whatever her husband and his Fox-News-inundated military buddies say she should, and has told me explicitly that she always votes but hates thinking about politics. That's right. My mother is one of those people who thinks it's important to vote, but not to think before doing so.

If I were with a woman and I explained all of the things that were important to me that'd be denied me, she'd begin to care because it would affect her. No, not because it would affect me. That only matters incidentally. It would impact her vision of herself as a woman who protects her kids. In order to protect that flattering view of herself, she'd believe whatever she thought she should. It just goes to show that it's possible to change people's unfounded and unexamined opinions without actually changing the terrible and stupid means by which they are arrived at.

I'm still considering telling her I'm bi. It's as true as it is not (though since I prefer men, I still consider my sexual preference to be hetersexual), and maybe then she'd understand what I mean when I say that I'm not marrying a man in a state where I couldn't marry a woman. She'll understand that I mean, "I'm not signing a contract in a state where my right to do so is contingent on the genital arrangement of the other signatory to the thing."

She actually said to me, "Well, you have to respect the people who hold something as very important, and don't want something they think is wrong held up as an equal to what they believe is right."

"...Actually, I don't have to respect anybody who thinks their rights lose meaning if other people have them, too. I don't need to respect that at all."

She and my stepfather are the kinds of people who have "lots of gay friends." I was actually under some pressure growing up to be with women, hilariously enough. She seemed certain I was moving that direction and she wanted me to know that it was not only okay but that she'd understand. She's also a huge proponent of gay adoption, because "a loving home is a loving home."

So she clearly doesn't mind the idea that gay people are people like everyone else. And she has "lots of gay friends." Thing is... if it hurts me to hear her talk this way, I can only imagine how they feel. No wonder all her friendships halt at the most superficial possible level. Any deeper than that and she starts telling people they're subhuman because she doesn't care enough to think of a way not to.

This memo from the DoJ? This is a case of them not caring enough to think about how badly it damages American citizens to compare those who are fighting for equal contractual rights to child rapists. I mean, it doesn't really take a lot of thought. But they didn't do it.

Families: Legitimate and Illegitimate

Vermont passes gay-marriage bill

BOSTON (Reuters) - Vermont lawmakers on Tuesday overrode a veto from the governor in passing a bill that would allow same-sex marriage, clearing the way for the state to become the fourth in the nation where gay marriage is legal.

The Vermont House of Representatives passed the bill by a 100-49 vote after it cleared the state Senate 23-5 earlier in the day. In Vermont, a bill needs two-thirds support in each chamber to override a veto.

Those of you who know me know that I don't cry often. I really don't. I find the act a distasteful lapse in self-control comparable to urinating on oneself. But I've been on the edge of it for over an hour now, since I heard about this.

Part of it is sadness at how far we've yet to go, but most of it is relief. State by state we're overriding people who think that same-sex marriage threatens their own, even if they can't explain why or how. State by state, victory and setback after victory and setback, we're making progress.

But why cry over it? Why get so emotional about something that doesn't really affect me?

That's what you think.

You see, I know a beautiful family. I've mentioned them before. Two brilliant, insightful, creative, stable, and loving women who are raising a son together. He's an amazing kid, creative and free to a degree that I was never allowed to be. They may not be perfect--no family is--but they're still the kind of family that I always wished I was secretly part of, that would realize someday that I didn't belong in that fearful and angry place, that I didn't belong where intelligence was something to be resentful of, that I didn't belong in a family where people intimidated each other and did violence to each other. I thought--like many kids in my position--that someday my real family would find me.

I didn't care whether that family had one mom or two, one dad or two. I just wanted somebody around who could look at me and know me for who I was, and still somehow love me. I just wanted somebody I could trust to be proud of me when I succeeded, and be there for me when I didn't. I wanted somebody I didn't have to be afraid of, or threatened by. I wanted what every lonely, angry little girl in my position wants. I wanted safety and love, and I didn't care who from, as long as it was real.

Four more states. Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, and Iowa. Four states are finally done telling my friends and their son that kids should grow up like I did and not like their son will, because their son won't have a "real" family (not a good, wholesome American one like mine, at least). Four states are done defining a real, government-sanctioned family as one with the right composition of sexes and not one with the right kind of love and unity.

Shows what the rest know. I may have had a "real" family, but I spent my whole childhood wishing I had anything else, anywhere else, with a group of people like my friends and their son. If they're not a family, what is? If their son isn't part of a family, then what the hell am I?

What's a family to you? Has anyone ever told you that you don't have one? That you shouldn't have one? Can you even imagine what that feels like? I don't know if I can, but the closer I get the more deeply it hurts. I don't want anyone to feel that.

So here's a hat tip to these four states. We're far from done, but a little hope goes a long way.