Happy Blogging for LGBT Families Day



Today is June 1st, also known as Blogging for LGBT Families Day In honor of said day, I'd like to share a short story.  As you might know, I am working on becoming a sexuality educator and I teach sexuality education as well as safe relationships classes to students with disabilities.  Because of this, I was very excited when Coen asked me, "Did I come from an egg?"
I explained that, in a way, he did.  That Mommy has eggs and Daddy has sperm and when they come together they make a zygote which grows into a fetus, which becomes a baby.  He was satisfied with that answer. That was when he was four years old. 
Then when he was seven, paging through a book about the human body, he asked me. "Mommy? How did Daddy get the sperm inside you?"
My moment had come.  To tell him the truth.
So I did.

And after I did, he thought a moment and then he said, "But my friend Grayson has two mommies and a donor.  How does that work?"

I was so proud of his reasoning mind.
I told him, "Well, sometimes if two women want to have a baby together, then a man can share his sperm with them to make a baby. And if two men want to have a baby together, then a women can share her egg and her body to help them make a baby."

He thought for a moment.  "Does it hurt...getting the sperm out?"

I laughed. "No honey. It does not hurt at all."

Fast forward to a bit of time later.  Coen's four year old sister Lucy was telling us that she was going to marry our neighbor, Zef.  But then one day, in the parking lot at school, she saw her friend Josie. 
"I'm going to marry Josie!" Lucy proclaimed.
"I thought you were going to marry Zef." Coen said.
"Well, now I'm going to marry Josie." Lucy said.
"That's okay!" Coen said brightly.  "If you marry Josie, Zef can be your donor!"

I love my kids so much.

And I want them to grow up and fall in love with whomever they fall in love with.  And legally marry whoever that person is, if that's what they want.  And as they get older, I will tell them stories about my coming of age and answer honestly the questions they have. I will tell them that I have had feelings for both men and women in my life. I will tell them that who I ended up falling in love with was their daddy. 

Because their daddy happened to be a man, we legally married.  But if it was a woman I fell in love with, we would not have been able to have that legal document, the tax breaks and the other perks that come with marriage.  That doesn't make any sense.  I want my kids to be able marry the person they want to marry. Whether that person is of the same or opposite sex.  And I hope that someday the picture below looks archaic as the picture above.

And whether Lucy and Coen marry someone who is a Josie or a Zef, or whether they choose not to marry at all, I wish them all the happiness imaginable.  And I wish that for you too, and any children you might happen to have.