Entry tags:

blogging for lgbt families day, family, queer, trans

my LGBT family
Monday was Blogging for LGBT Families Day. I'd meant to do a post for that day, but ended up with no time to do so. Belatedly, here goes.

Truthfully, I've needed the extra time to mull over what I have to say. Having been at least 3 of those letters in my time, one would think there'd be no shortage of topics, but nothing's really leaping out at me. With all the hoopla about gay marriage lately, that's been on my mind. While of course I'm thrilled about the CA court ruling, gay marriage is really not on my short list. I believe that government shouldn't be in the business of defining family or preferencing some types of relationships over others - not heterosexual marriage over gay marriage, but also not any marriage over other types of chosen or biological or adoptive family. I'd rather live in a world where marriage was a religious institution & didn't automatically grant legal rights, regardless of which two people are involved (I am a big fan of the separation of church and state). Instead, I believe that people should be able to declare their relationship legally binding (and hence conveying legal benefits as well as responsibilities), whether it's 2 people in a more traditional marriage-type relationship, 2+ longtime roommates with no sexual relationship & other types of chosen family, a group of lovers, an extended multi-generational family, etc. I recognize this is pretty far from reality in the US today, and that gay marriage gives significant rights to many families currently denied access, and I celebrate those successes & this as a short/medium term strategy. I just wish that the US LGBT movement weren't quite so laser-focused on this one issue and hadn't lost the idea of the importance of non-marriage-like relationships as a long term strategy along the way.

bearfairie mentioned that Tasmania has some very progressive legislation in this realm. The Tasmanian Relationships Act covers both intimate relationships (marriage-like relationships regardless of the sex of the participants) and "caring" relationships.

Tasmanian relationship laws eliminate the traditional hierarchy that puts marriage and then de facto heterosexual unions above same-sex and other relationships by eliminating these old-fashioned divisions altogether and treating all relationships equally as significant and caring relationships.

I don't know a lot about it, but it sounds awesome, and I'm thrilled that somewhere, expanded definitions of family are being explored.

I also got to thinking about family in general. When I went to college, I distanced myself a lot from my family of origin, partly because I came out (at that time, as lesbian & then bisexual). I focused on chosen family, because those were the people I could be my full self with. I talked a lot about chosen family as equal to blood family/family of origin, but more there were the people I wanted to be family with and those I was stuck with. Post-college, this started to equalize, at least with my parents' generation, who knew I was queer. They didn't all celebrate it, but they also weren't overtly homophobic, and the upside of their discomfort was that the questions of when I was getting married came to a complete stop. And I have to give them credit - by the time I started dating bearfairie, I had to point out to my mom that I expected her to treat that relationship the same as she'd treated the one I had with my college boyfriend, but after that conversation, she did. Except for the part about telling her mother, which she'd asked me not to do when I first came out to her.

When I came out as trans, I did tell my grandmother, and we didn't speak for a number of years (I feel blessed that while the rest of my family of origin needed to adjust, they all supported me in taking care of myself). All she would say was that if I read the King James Bible, I'd understand. It took my brother's death six years later to bring us back together, and I feel like it's really only this year that I've truly healed my relationship with my ancestors/my blood family and embraced it on equal footing with my chosen family. (I should caveat that this wasn't just healing LGBT-related issues, though they played a significant role.)

I also got to thinking about LGBT family, and how I usually think of my chosen family when I hear that (at least the LGBT folks in my chosen family). But the term is broader than that - my parents are part of an LGBT family, though I don't know if they think of it that way. My grandmother is, and she definitely doesn't think of herself that way. There are a lot of people who are part of LGBT families who don't think of themselves that way - Dick Cheney to name an obvious one - and wouldn't the world be a better place if all those folks acknowledged that, internalized that what affects us also affects them.

For me, I celebrate being part of an LGBT family - I wouldn't have it any other way. For my blood family though, it's not so clear. And I think to myself, that's family - we don't love everything about each other all the time, but ideally we love and support each other anyway. But that doesn't sit quite right - I don't want to be loved and supported despite my LGBTness, just like I loved and supported my brother despite his struggles with addiction. I want something beyond tolerance or avoidance in my own family. And typing that, I feel greedy - I'm so lucky that my blood family didn't disown me, that they acknowledge my relationship, that they love bearfairie, that they use my preferred name and pronoun (or at least try). I know I'm incredibly privileged to have all that, and I really am happy with my relationship with my blood family today. But the idealist in me says this shouldn't be privilege - everyone should have this. And the idealist in me imagines a world where all members of LGBT families (which truthfully I believe is most of us) celebrate that just as much as we celebrate heterosexuality and gender normativity.