Monday, August 28, 2006

Are we an LGBT family?

I did some exploring at Blogging Baby and ended up at Mombian who has a delightful long list of blogs of GLBT families.

I'm not on it. Now I'm not on a lot of blog rolls. Though I love attention, and love finding myself on a blog roll, I don't take my absence personally. And I am not this time either.

I just looked at this list and thought, "If Mombian knew about my blog, and thought it was fantastic, and wanted to put a link on her site to it, would it belong here?"

I've been thinking about this for a while.

If two people of different races get romantically involved, they are an interracial couple. If two people who share the same racial/ethnic heritage adopt children from a different heritage, they are an interracial family.

See...I have no name for the type of family we are.

We are a PFLAG family of course. I'm a PFLAG Mom, married to a PFLAG Dad, mother of two PFLAG Brothers. We all have the buttons to prove it.

Would we be a PFLAG family if we hadn't joined PFLAG?

Why, you may ask, do I want a label? I want a label for the the same reason we want any word: there is a distinct sort of thing that exists that seems to deserve a name.

We are a fostering family (aka foster family). Becoming a foster family changed us. It did not just change us as an individuals, it changed who we are as a family. Because we are a fostering family, my bioboys pause before answering questions like, "How many brothers do you have?" The boundary between who is part of the family and who is not is fluid. Being a foster family means that we have members of our family who are members of other families that we are not related to.

And that we have become parents to gay boys has changed us too.

I would have the same political beliefs that I had before, but now they are not just political beliefs. I am passionate about them. When I talk about gay marriage I do not just say that I am in favor of it, I hear myself saying, "My family is just as much a family as any other. We deserve the same protections." I say this without pause because it is my family that is affected. Someday it may be my son who is told that the hospital cannot confirm or deny that man he loves and shares his life with has been admitted. Someday it may be one of my grandchildren who does not get speedy care because her father does not have the legal right to authorize it.

Whenever the GLBT community is threatened, my family is threatened.

So are we a GLBT family?

That really might not be the right label. But I know we are a different sort of family than we would have been otherwise. I just don't know what to call us.

Suggestions are welcome.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous5:33 PM

    Interesting question and a great post.
    It makes me think about my partner's parents, living in the heartland and good churchgoing folks. They often choose to "out" themselves as 'parents of a lesbian' so they are not subject to casual homophobia. Children of gay friends of mine do the same thing. In this way, they (you) are GLBT families.

    I also agree with you that there are differences among GLBT families, and we should be mindful (and celebratory) of those differences.

    Why not drop the blog's writer a line and see what she says?

    Thanks for the post!

    ReplyDelete

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