June is Gay Pride Month and this Sunday is Gay Pride Day. I think it's as important for that to be recognized by heterosexuals as it is by gays and lesbians. In my own small way, I wanted to do something to honor the month and address the rights that many homosexuals still lack, whether it be the right to adopt, the right to marry, or various civil rights that straight people often take for granted.
It's imperative that straight people stand alongside gays and lesbians, just as men once stood alongside women to help ensure voting rights, and just as whites once stood alongside people of color to help ensure civil rights.
So as a show of solidarity with gays everywhere, I wanted to do the gayest thing a straight man could possibly do. I wrote a poem. Just kidding, poets. Please, save your beautifully metered hate mail.
This poem is dedicated to gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders, avid sunbathers who take a wrong turn through Arizona -- basically anyone in America who is subject to inequality, and everyone who fights alongside them. Specifically though, this is dedicated to my brother Charlie and his partner John (my brother from another mother).
You Know Who Else Had More Than One Father? America!
Here in America, we have built quite a myth
It's one Americans should all be concerned with
It's the myth of family, and what that entails
As if kids couldn't be raised by two loving females.
Opponents say children need a mom and a dad
"Two mothers? Two fathers? It would just end up bad.
There's a model fam'ly you should strive to achieve."
Ward and June Cleaver? Jerry Mathers as the Beav?
With a divorce rate of nearly half and rising
It is difficult not to find it surprising
That we do not yet allow same-sexes to wed
And enjoy the same right to a marriage they dread.
"It just isn't right to have multiple fathers."
No matter the stats or how little it bothers?
"Nothing is conceived by multiple fathers -- duh!"
Oh? Not even a li'l place called... AMERICA?
America is a child with fathers galore!
More than two or three, and ev'ry one of them fore
They broke from mother England to raise us this way
And that's back in a time when happiness was gay.
But then the debate turns to a biblical sell
"It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!" they yell
And yet the forefathers include, would you believe,
Multiple Adams and at least one guy named Steve.*
There wasn't an Eve in the whole congregation
Except for the night before founding this nation
That prides on equality, colors that don't fade
It has all the makings of a gay pride parade!
The Declaration and Constitution in mind
Let's thank our forefathers and their eye for design
Think on their queerness; America, for the win,
The same-sexiest fam'ly that has ever been.
*John Adams, Samuel Adams, Stephen Hopkins
Drawing by Margaret Dosemagen