| "Family" is a complicated word for those of us who are gay and
lesbian, bisexual and two-spirited and transgendered. The concept of "family
values" is used to attack us—and meanwhile we are often kicked out and excluded
from our families of origin simply because of who we are. But in the South when I was
coming out, in North Carolina in the 1970s, we would identify another gay person by saying
"S/he’s family." In Crime Against Nature, I wrote about my
struggle as a lesbian mother to stay connected to my two sons, who I lost custody of.
Through our struggle to love each other, we never lost each other. The "boys"
are now grown men. I am so proud of them and happy that they are very much part of my
life. And that they’ve had a chance to live a life in which "family" has
been expanded to mean a group of loved ones that is consciously chosen and created.
Keep your eye on this page in the future, as I develop a photo album that will show the
beauty and complication and fierceness of my extended family. |
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