National Coming Out Day

Today was National Coming Out Day. A day when Americans should feel comfortable enough in their own skin to “come out,” as in, out of the closet. I myself, as well as my spouse are already very comfortable in our skin and it is not a secret of any kind that we are gay. By choice we live in a very conservative state and an even more conservative county, but that does not and has not ever kept us from living our lives genuinely and we’ve never had any regrets about doing that. In fact, I oftentimes forget that our family is in a situation where we have to “come out” at all. We live like our neighbors, we work, we have a well-adjusted child, we belong to an amazing church and we have incredible friends – most of whom are not gay at all.

We have never felt personally discriminated against and while this is truly a wonderful thing it makes you forget the really important ways that the gay community IS discriminated against. This is not a political post per se, and most of you know, I don’t use the rainbow card often – but sitting in my attorney’s office two days before National Coming Out Day reminded me of why it’s important. Not only for us as gays and lesbians to live our lives genuinely, but for our straight friends and family to live that way too.

To date we’ve spent the better part of $10,000 to become pregnant with Max. TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. To some people that is a new car, a down payment on a house or college tuition. We discussed the possibilities, pros and cons of having a baby long before we ever made an appointment with the fertility clinic. We had many conversations about how we would raise this child, the issues we might face being a two mom household with an infant and how our family and friends would react. After the decision was finally made – we began our journey. A decision made with such care and thought, we made the step and ten thousand very well spent dollars later, we are pregnant with our son.

Most people, even some of the most educated people I know are baffled by the amount of money it took and believe me when I tell you I know we were lucky to have gotten pregnant for that amount of money. We have friends who have spent double or even triple that to become parents. The even more unfathomable piece to that is that we are not done spending money to be parents.

We sat in our attorney’s office on Friday afternoon to determine the steps we have to go through to make Lisa Max’s LEGAL parent. After all the time, thought and money we’ve put into the decision to become parents, in the eyes of the law, Lisa is still not considered to be Max’s parent. If she were a man and we had met in a bar, had a one night stand and I had gotten pregnant – THEN she’d be his legal parent but the law doesn’t see our diligence, care and determination to be parents as a good enough reason to allow Lisa to parent. Instead, we have to go through an adoption process. Yes, Lisa will have to adopt our baby.

That may seem like an easy answer, but in the state of Georgia – of 159 counties there are only FOUR counties where a same-gender second parent adoption has been granted and the county we live in is not one of those counties. This means our family has to establish a “residence” in one of the other counties so that we may file our adoption papers there. It can be a temporary residence, but one has to be established. So the house that I have owned for six years, the taxes I have paid for six years, the community that I have supported for six years…. None of that matters, because I am a pregnant lesbian.

The laws set up to protect the sanctity of marriage against the gays are discriminating against our children. If for any reason we were unable to follow through with a second parent adoption, Max would be born with only one legal parent – and if anything were to happen to me, Lisa could be living without her son and Max would be living without his other mom. So we paid our $500.00 consult / start up fee and when Max is born we’ll pay another $1500.00 to give Lisa the legal rights to the son she so desperately wanted. We’ll also be paying to give Max the rights to his Mom.

Next time a vote for gay marriage comes up in your state, think about the other ways these laws discriminate against gay and lesbian families and most importantly, their (presumably) straight children.