The Agenda:

Testing the Premise: Are Gays a Threat to Our Children?

What the "Dutch Study" Really Says About Gay Couples

Federal Hate Crime Statistics: Why The Numbers Don't Add Up

Refuting Christianity Today

  Favorites:

Still Life At Sunset

Anderson Cooper and Scooter

Wandering, Wondering

The Aperture of Memory

Easter's Birthday

The First Time I Cussed

  Photo Essays:

The Anasazi Ruins of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

Monsoons of 2004

Miracle Mile

Now Showing / Reflection on Hayden, Arizona

When I Knew
Wednesday, October 19, 2005

A meme went around the web a few months ago: “When did you know?” I didn’t get into it then, and now it has been so long that I don’t know where the links are anymore. But for some reason, I found myself thinking about it lately.

I’m not sure exactly when I knew.

It was definitely long, long before that time a few years out of college (even though I wasn’t out yet), when my best straight friend told me his favorite song and video was Aha’s Take On Me, which made me laugh because I knew what that should have meant if it had come from anybody else.

It was long before I was in high school, when that new freshman trumpet player joined the band, the one with a full chest of hair (he was a freshman, for crying out loud!) and perfect skin. And there I was still trying to keep my zits at bay.

It was even before that time when I turned nine years old and I had asked for a Bobby Sherman record for my birthday. As I unwrapped my present, my grandmother looked over my shoulder and saw the album cover, and she started going on and on about how cute he was and how blue his eyes were. "Oh my," she said, "will you look at those eyes!" My mother agreed and added a few more observations about his hair, but I somehow knew that this was a conversation that I wasn’t meant to join. “I just like his music,” I muttered, embarrassed that they noticed the same things that I noticed.

No, it was long before that.

It may have been that time when, I don’t know, I was maybe five years old. Maybe younger. My brother and I were playing with a girl who lived across the street. She had to go home, but we kept playing. We had been playing house, but when Rhonda left I made my brother switch from being the son to being my wife. I said that guys can’t really get married, but I needed a wife and it was just pretend anyway so it didn’t matter. He didn’t like the idea, so we went on to play something else.

I don’t remember what we played next but I remember thinking, why can’t guys get married? Something about it felt so right. And so unfair.

I think maybe that’s when I first knew. I just didn’t know the word for it.

But years later, that night after my birthday when I was alone in my bedroom and I held that record album in my hands, I knew the word for it. I really did like his music – I was nine after all. But I knew I liked more than just his music.

I knew the word for it, and it made my cheeks burn. But yeah, I knew.

◄ September 2005
► November 2005

You Are Not Authorized To Reproduce
Wednesday, October 5, 2004

Orwell's imagination was far too limited when he wrote Animal Farm and 1984. If he had taken his scenario of an overly burdensome and intrusive Big Brother to its logical conclusion, he might have envisioned something like this:

In order to protect the proper order of society, the Party declares the following regulations to be put into effect immediately.

All persons desiring to undergo any form of reproduction by means other than sexual intercourse (i.e. intrauterine insemination, donation of egg or embryo, in vitro fertilization and transfer of embryo, entracytoplasmic sperm injection, etc.) shall file a petition for parentage in order to obtain a gestational certificate. The petition shall include:

1. Place and date of marriage of the petitioners.
2. The name of the physician.
3. The type of assisted reproduction to be used.
4. Any criminal convictions of the petitioners.

The authorities shall investigate the petitioners to discover:

1. The fertility history of the intended parents.
2. Family of origin of each intended parent.
3. Values.
4. Relationships
5. Education
6. Employment and income.
7. Hobbies and Talents
8. Physical description, including the general health of the individual.
9. Birth verification.
10. Personality description, including the strengths and weakness of the intended parent.
11. The shared values and interests between the parents.
12. The manner in which conflict between the individuals is resolved.
13. A history of the intended parent's relationship.
14. Documentation of the dissolution of any prior marriage and an assessment of the impact of the prior marriage on the intended parents' relationship.
15. Description of the family lifestyle of the parents, including a description of individual participation in faith-based or church activities.
16. The intended parents' child rearing expectations and values.
17. A description of the home and community, including verification of the safety and security of the home.
18. Child care plans.
19. Assets, liabilities, investments, and ability of intended parents to handle finances.
20. Review of the local police records.
21. Letters of references by a friend or family member.

The intended parents must be married to each other, and both spouses must be parties to the action to establish parentage. An unmarried person may not be an intended parent.

If everything is deemed to be in order by the responsible Committee, the gestational certificate may be granted.

Any mother who proceeds with non-sexual reproduction without first obtaining a gestational certificate shall incur the penalties of a class B misdemeanor. Any physician who proceeds with the non-sexual reproduction procedures shall incur the penalties of a class B misdemeanor.

But then, it would take a pretty twisted imagination to think of something like this. Maybe that's why George Orwell never included this scenario in his books. And fortunately, the oppressive communist dictatorship that he alluded to in his work never came to dominate the world as so many feared.

□■□■□

In related news, Republican Indiana State Senator Patricia Miller has sponsored a bill which would require mothers seeking assistive reproduction to obtain a gestational certificate from the local judge. This certificate would only be available to married couples.

You can read the proposed legislation here (PDF/214KB).  In case the document disappears from the Indiana state legislature's website by the time you read this, I downloaded a copy here.

Via Feministe and Republic of T.