I yam what I yam (Or, Who am I?, part II)

My life over the last month has been very hectic.  Spring semester started, Kelse had her gallbladder out, and I've been filling in the time between with meetings to advance some ideas and my in-discernment process.  Plus there the fun stuff: instituting a weekly game night on Fridays, seeing the World Series trophy, a trip down Highway One south of the City, a Linkin Park concert, and a visit with a friend from college.

But that hasn't kept me from using my time to think, though I haven't been able to write a lot of it down.  Today, though, as I put an experiment in cinnamon rolls in the oven, I have a little time.

I've been reading a book for my Apocalyptic: Then and Now class about the AIDS epidemic, and I was struck with a thought as I reading some of the rhetoric of the 80s and early 90s.

I am different.

I know, that's not a shocker of a revelation.  Anyone who had known me for more than five minutes has probably already figured this out in some semblance.  It's not something that had troubled me for some time.  I accept that I am different, and sometimes truly embrace it.

How am I different?  Well I suppose that depends on who is asking and what the circumstances are.  I suppose it boils down to contradictions in a number of situations.  I am a nerd at heart.  In seventh grade, I read the entire Star Trek Encyclopedia cover to cover at least twice.  I stayed home one day in high school to watch Buzz Aldrin return to space.  (I also got to meet him once at the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and ask him a question in his lecture on Mars about how long it might take for the US to make it there.)  I played live action role-playing games in high school.

But then I'm not different as well.  After all, I had friends that would play the Star Trek customizable card game with me in seventh grade.  I was accompanied by one of my friends on that trip to meet Buzz, and we both got autographed copies of his book (I still have mine.).  It's hard to do a live action role-playing games without someone else doing it with you: we had a pretty nice group of folks that played together in various game incarnations.

So how can I be different when there others doing as I?

In contrast, I love sports.  That's certainly something my dad instilled in me, but my mom and grandfather had a pretty hefty hand in that, too.  I'll watch baseball any day, all day, and it doesn't matter who's playing.  I'd be happy watching a little league game in the local park sometime.  I love to throw around a football, and watch my Niners and Huskers tear it up on the gridiron.  I'm more recently into hockey, but I think I like watching the Sharks even more than watching football.  Despite my total lack of skill, I play a game of soccer every Friday, sometimes for over three hours.  Hiking is always fun, especially  when fantastic vistas are involved. But, really, my favorite past time that is too often not indulged is simply taking a baseball and throwing it back and forth.

But liking sports isn't different.  I have plenty of friends that like sports, too.  Carl and I exchange text messages every time we're watching a sporting event, though he's in Colorado and I'm in California.  I didn't fall in love with sports without watching them with friends and family, or playing them with friends and family.  How can I be different if, at each soccer Friday, I gather with folks from around the globe to have fun for a few hours?

Maybe it's my life background?  Addressed before, I'm sure, but I'm the son of a lesbian.  And I grew up sometimes in the liberal bastion of Marin County, California, and sometimes in the conservative stronghold of Nebraska.  I went to college, spent some time working at Walmart, and then came to seminary.  I moved a lot growing up, so I'm comfortable with change.

But I'm not the first offspring of a lesbian to attend this seminary.  Of however many came before me, I've known one since she was my camp counselor at Caz.  I'm not the first from my college to attend this seminary, either.  I'm not the first to move a lot when growing up.  And, I'm not the first to travel between parents houses while growing up.  For one, my sister is older than me and did all the same of that as well.  She's also been in more than a few countries around the world, and live in Egypt for a while.  So I'm not even the only one in my generation of my family that knows of change.  I can't be that different.

Yet, I struggled with being different growing up.  I placed myself on the outside so many times, and my cohort easily obliged with that assessment.  I saw the kids that were popular and wondered how they got there.  I saw the kids that were good at sports, and wondered what they did to make it look so easy.  I saw the kids that were smarter than me and wondered if they just studied harder than I did, or if it was natural for them.  I wondered, never asked, never got involved, and just remained different, as I saw it, by myself.

But then I met someone in my last year of high school that changed my perspective on life, and I haven't looked back.  Olivia is still one of my best friends, and I wonder if she really realizes how much she has affected my life. When I first met her, I thought, "Wow, now there is someone who is different."  She just strange things, but she never seemed embarrassed by them.  How I saw it, she did what she wanted and didn't care what everyone else thought.  She spent her time just being herself.

What a concept!  Why hadn't I thought of that?

Hanging out with her was like someone giving me permission to relish my differences.  It was my chance to be who I really wanted to be.  So I tried it, and found my skin to be pretty comfortable when I left for college.  I embraced the being of myself, and found friends in college that liked me for me.  Enough with the rest of the crap, I was ready to be myself, and so I was.

But then there's that sticking point: different.  Yes, I was different than other people.  But then, aren't we all different?  Don't we all have unique backgrounds?  Don't we all bring something new and fresh to the table with every new person we meet?  Don't we all have our own perceptions on our experiences?  Don't we all have our own thoughts?

So I think about being different.  And I think about what that means growing up.  And I think about what that means in school, when the bullies are on the prowl.  It can be downright scary being different.  So I don't want to tell someone it's OK to be different.

I want to tell someone it's OK to be yourself.  That's all you ever need to be with me, no matter who that yourself is.  I will celebrate and love whoever you are and wherever you are on life's journey.  And that's all that should ever matter.

I'm not different.  I am me.

Fighting for family and love: an appreciation.

Once again, I am reminded of the progress made in this country, and how love is always a winner in the end.  Bear with me if you've heard this before, but there are no issues closer to my heart than this:



My favorite quote comes at the end of his amazing three minutes: "Not once have I ever been confronted by an individual who realized independently that I was raised by a gay couple."

That sentiment is quite true for me as well.  Only recently I realized that, while GLBT folk eventually go through a coming out process, so do children of GLBT folk, as I did, though I didn't think of it as such at the time.

When I was growing up, I didn't think it strange that I was raised by a lesbian.  By the time I was in high school, however, I had noticed that it was OK to invite some friends over to hang out, and others it was better to go to their house.  But through it all, I never denied my family.  When my bedroom was egged through my open window, or when people I thought might be my friends made fun of me, I never wished that my family was different, or more normal.  I just wished we could move to a place where I didn't have to deal with it anymore.

From high school in California, I went to college in Nebraska, and I played the first few months as I had in high school: don't speak up about family until in the right company.  That worked for a few months until Nebraska passed a law banning gay marriage (even though it was already against the law...), and I couldn't be silent anymore.  The day after the election, I went into the office of the director of the leadership program and said I wanted to speak up.  She helped me craft a letter to the editor for a school paper, and I was off and running.

From that moment, I chose to celebrate my family in public.  If I lost friends, then I lost friends.  If I lost out of job opportunities or scholarships, so be it.  My logic went something like this: if someone disapproved of me because of my mother, then I probably didn't want to be associated with them anyway.  And I'm appreciative of all the friends I have from college, ones that still make me smile on a daily basis.

I don't know Mr. Zach Wahls, but I sure can understand how he feels.  I could talk on this for hours.  Point me to a microphone, and I'll stand up, too.  I'm proud of the job my mother did raising me.  I graduated from high school in 2000, and from college in 2004 with BA and a double major in History and English.  I worked for Walmart for 5 1/2 year with consistent promotions and raises.  I am now starting my second semester of seminary after a very successful first semester.  I have been married to a wonderful wife for almost three years now.  Hopefully, we'll have kids someday, but that time hasn't come yet.

If I haven't been raised right by my mother, what the hell are we defining as "right"?

So I celebrate Zach and his courage.  It is no easy thing to stand for what you think is right when so many around you see otherwise.  I appreciate his words, and I agree with them.  I can only hope his story, and mine, and countless others put a face on the families affected by gay marriage battles, and bring about an end to the pain we endured growing up by those that think less of us just because our parents fell in love.