Growing up with gay dads

It never occured to me that having a gay father was unusual.  I never questioned it, and I always took it for what it was. I love my dad, so I have always loved who he is-gay or not. 

I have a couple memories of wishing my parents were still together, like any kid whose parents are divorced, but I never mourned what my dad was. Being gay is not something to mourn. I’m glad he finally accepted himself and that he had the courage to ask those who knew him to do the same.  I’m also glad that he found Giancarlo. I remember the first time Giancarlo came to our house and met Hilary and me. We were watching Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom, and I was chewing one of those 6-foot-long rolls of bubble gum. He walked in the door and stood in the dining room and we were introduced. Within those next few months, Giancarlo taught me how to ride a big bike, and spent lots of time with us.  He let us right into his life.

Although my dad and I had already fully accepted everything, not all of the people around us had. In elementary, my dad taught at the school I went to. For a long time, I never said anything to anyone. Nobody else had gay dads, and in class people would always use the word “gay” as a put-down.  I started to open up to friends and kids started finding out. People started making fun of me for it. In sixth grade, when I switched schools, nobody knew anything. I told one friend, and then she told another. It was like a rumor, people didn’t think it could possibly be true. Eventually, people got over it and it was a nonissue.

In junior high, I was a lot more open. I met more friends though, and instead of the people my own age having problems with it, it was their parents. A couple of them weren’t allowed to spend the night at my house because of my parents. It really felt like a personal attack on me…it felt like their parents ignored my own personal qualities and were blinded by how my house was different. Did they think that if their kids spent the night at my house they’d catch the gay bug or something? Did they think that my dads were child molesters or brainwashers? They were just being blinded by rumors, stereotypes, and ignorance.  I remained friends with those girls though, and their parents got to know me. They saw that I was a good influence, intelligent, and normal. I wasn’t psychotic or gender confused or whatever they thought I’d be. One day, one of my friends who hadn’t previously been allowed to spend the night asked her mom again, after months of “No’s” and talks with her mom about how she wasn’t comfortable with gay men being in the same house as her sleeping daughter, and her mom said “Yes.” I was so happy- I had spent a lot of nights crying and frustrated.

I started to realize that the more people got to know me and my dads as a normal family, the more people realized that their previous judgements about gays were wrong.

In high school, almost every person I know is accepting and openminded about homosexuality. There are very few people who hate gays. Gay students at my school can be open and not get beat up because of it. They can be flamboyant and stylish all they want, because they know that 98% of our school’s population dislikes homophobia and will stick up for them if anybody discriminates against them. They can be who they are. Even girls who are gay can be open with themselves and others. 

The issue of homosexuality is no longer in the closet among my generation, at least in California. That is why gay marriage is now allowed in this state. Kids like me with gay parents don’t have to feel the way I did (sad, frustrated, discriminated against, confused about why my parents who are as good and as normal as anybody else’s parents couldn’t be married, etc.)  It’s not so much the rights and technical things that come with marriage, because gay couples can get almost all the same financial rights. It’s about being able to say “We’re married.” It’s about your own country (or state in this case) accepting who you are and accepting that your relationship is just as legit as any heterosexual couples’.