Daddy, Papa and Me

First, there is an amendment to the state constitution proposed that comes up for a vote in November (likely). It would nullify our equality. It must be stopped.

There is hope, a recent gallop poll suggests that the split is even in support for full marriage equality in California and the west (and east), so some help would kill that insidious amendment.

Please consider donating to Equality California. They have been HUGE in helping make marriage equality happen. They will be HUGE in stopping this amendment. They need financial help though. Lots of it.

Also, for nation-wide help for making our family's equal, the Family Equality Council is a VERY worthy organization to help. They've helped us tremendously and our families. They have a matching-fund drive (your donation is matched by an anonymous donor) right now. Consider some there please. (disclosure... I blog for them occcasionally.. but that should be a reason to donate right!!??)

We'll need some work done and money donated to make sure this sticks!

and for your viewing pleasure, Ellen is getting married too :D

You'll see it when you think about trying to explain to a 6-year-old that you are "Domestic Partnerized" and what that means and how that is different from being married. Try explaining to a 6-year old that people outside of your circle of friends and family won't let you be married because her family is 'less than' and they are scared it will hurt their marriage. Try looking into a 6-year-old's face and tell her that yes, the government discriminates against her family (Emma insightfully asked a couple months ago if it was like people not letting black people drink from the same water fountain in "Martin Luther King's time" in response to a discussion about why some people won't let us get married).

It's not easy and till recently we've just said "we are married" and put an asterisk in our head "We are married (*but well, it's a "Domestic Partnership" dear and that's not really married and hopefully someday we'll be allowed to be married. We are working on it)"

It wears on you. That asterisk. It gnaws away at your mind, reminding you constantly you are 'less than' in the eyes of so many, especially the law. It's insidious.

And it's especially insidious when you have to explain it to your 6-year-old daughter.

No more.

In about 30 days we'll be able to say "We are married."

There will be no asterisk. We'll be drinking from the same fountain. We will not need to explain to our children anything. We will be married.

And it flows from there. When we go to Europe this summer, a long-delayed trip to visit friends in Germany, we won't have to equivocate to custom officers. We won't have to say "Well, we have a domestic partnership" and then start explaining what that means. No, we'll just say: "We are married". What that means will be quite clear. No explanation, no asterisk needed. When we come home, and they start processing us back, we will not separate ourselves (as we've had to do before) at customs because we aren't "a family," no we'll go up as a family, intact. If the customs officer asks why. We'll say "WE ARE MARRIED." We won't have to hem and haw trying to explain to him or her that well, we are partners and what that means. No, we'll say "We are married." And if THEY hem and haw we'll show them the license from the most populous state in the union and we'll again reiterate that "WE ARE MARRIED." THEY will have to hem and haw and explain to us and to our 6-year-old daughter their own asterisks and equivocations.

Suddenly, in this and many other instances, we stand on equal ground.

No longer are we looking up trying to explain that we should be equal and asking "Please sir, treat us equally." No, we are equal and stand thusly. We won't have to beg for equal treatment or explain that we'd like to be treated that way because, well, we have a domestic partnership and this it what it means and "Please maam, treat us equally."

We stand equal now.

Now I know what the word "empowered" means.

The legal implications will start to flow later. There is more work to do, changes in DOMA, details in state law, etc. But on the day we get married there will be one huge change.

(and no, I will not claim that this week's record-breaking heat has anything to do with global warming, single instances such as this can happen with or without climate change...)

Huge study just came out confirming that climate change is happening on a world-wide, continental scale.

And a new study out in Nature of Antarctic ice cores confirms and extends that yes, indeed, the CO2 levels and temperature levels are the highest seen.. not in 400,000 years, not in 650,000 years, but 800,000 years. Even when taking into account a hypothesized 400,000 year cycle in those levels, we are beyond the highs previously.

Yes, indeed, it is getting hot in here.

Time, process, experience, life have created a few differences.

The last adoption was a private adoption through an agency, this is a 'fost-adopt' process through the county. There are some huge differences, and striking similarities between the two and over the next few months I'll highlight them.

As a gay couple six years ago it seemed finding an adoption agency that would work with us was a bit more of a search. They weren't difficult to find, but they weren't 'a dime a dozen' (is anything anymore?) either. It feels this time that finding an agency for a domestic adoption isn't quite as much a search. Of course then we were living in Germany, so we had to narrow our subset of agencies that would work with gay men further by those that would be able to do homestudies and work with Americans living overseas. We found the one (and maybe at the time the only one) that did, in Pennsylvania. That subset might be larger now, three?

Since we live in the US now, we could have enlarged our search space. Yet this time we decided to go with a fost-adopt process with the county instead of a private adoption. In this process, instead of working with an private agency privately to find mothers who have decided to put their children up for adoption, we are working with the county to find children who had to be taken from their home for various reasons (there are a lot of pros and cons and praises and criticisms we'd have of both systems... but those will have to wait for another post). The child is a foster child in your home for several months and then adopted, that's the basics.

There are some huge differences right out the starting gate between the private adoption and the county fost-adopt.

Cost is the big one. The private adoption ended up costing us up towards 40,000 dollars (there was a failed one, there are no refunds). The fost-adopt costs... nothing. In fact there is a small stipend while the child is a foster child in your home and a smaller stipend after adoption and health insurance is provided till they are 18. The stipend isn't near enough to cover the cost of raising a child, but it is a bit of help. I hate the fact that money and adoption are so, so very, intertwined (don't get me started on lower costs for some children than others) . Sadly, it's a fact of life. And in the facts of our life, financial considerations do matter.

There are other considerations of course, more important ones. The are children that desperately need a home and we would love to have an older (2-5 year range, but we are open to older) child (most children in the fost-adopt program are older than two, most private domestic adoptions are children younger than two). So our needs and wants match. We have many friends who have adopted through the county in the fost-adopt program, Emma has many friends adopted this way. We know these adoptions work to make amazingly wonderful families (with some work).

There are some similarities. Fears. And though there are minor twists to the fears, they basically add up to the same.

Can we afford adding a child to our family? Living in San Francisco isn't cheap, housing, schooling, feeding. We feel stretched as it is. We were stretched then, we are really stretched now.

Will be disrupt our wonderfully blissful life? Then? It was blissful then, 6 years ago. We found our soulmates, I had a perfect job, we were living in a fairytale town (Heidelberg) in Germany and were traveling everywhere, we had a close community of friends life was blissful. We were about to disrupt that, would it all fall apart? Now? We live a blissful life now, we still have our soulmates, we have a wonderful daughter and a close friend (who started out as an au pair :), I have my own company, we live in a beautiful house in an amazingly stunning city, we have so many good and close friends and family. Will it disrupt that? Will it all fall apart?

Could we even come close to loving this child as much Emma? I never thought, we never thought, it possible to love another individual so completely, so instantaneously and without any condition as it was this child in our home. I guess those are similar fears then and now. I worried then about 'bonding' and worry now. Before I had no experience of that deep bonding you have with your child, and now that I do, I worry if it's possible again.

Will our children love each other? There is so much more to this. Emma is thriving, will this make it worse or better? I have to say, she has wanted a new sibling so badly for so long, this will be either a disappointment or the fulfillment of her dreams (or both :)).

Oh the fears go on. But even in what I wrote above the answer to those worries seem to be there. We've successfully navigated the worries and have built a wonderful life, we will do it again. We've planned and wanted a second child since the beginning, and now the journey begins.

We've completed our orientation, our intake interview and our training (20 hours over three weeks).

Now the paperwork. Now, there's a similarity. Mounds of paperwork involving every intimate detail of your life from your financial assets and debts to your relationships with your parents when you were a kid. Paperwork delving into every aspect of your life from your birth to your future plans. Nothing changed there. Had to do it 6 years ago, have to do it now.

The paperwork will be done soon, we are then on to the homestudy (4 months or so) and the matching (immediate to months and months).

And it begins...

I know that my family is subjected to this kind of humiliation and frustration pretty regularly. This years tax season is no exception, as we have to fill out two tax forms, one 'dummy' one filing jointly for the state taxes and one real one for Bush's government, at an additional cost of a few hundred. But it doesn't end there. We have so many more stories, big and little.

So, let me tell you of one:

The first was in 2002. We were living in Germany but had come home to California. I was at home and suddenly had a major headache, pains in my side and they took me to the hospital. I had blood pressure of 220/200 and the doctor admitted me immediately to care.

My mother called my partner. He called the hospital. The would not tell him what was wrong with me nor let him speak to me. This went on through several people and for two hours.

Finally, he told the story to a orderly, who happened to be gay, when he was carrying the phone from one person to another... he snuck the phone into my room and let me talk to my partner.

This even though we had a DP in California and all the necessary documents for health decisions.

1 cup mashed banana (about two med. ripe bananas)
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
3/4 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup amaranth flour
1/4 cup chopped macadamia nuts (optional)
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup salt
1/4 cup vegetable oil (preferably macadamia nut oil, but canola or safflower will do)

Add bananas, sugar and vanilla to bowl and mix well.
Add eggs and blend in well.
In separate bowl, mix flours, nuts, baking power and soda and salt and mix.
Add banana mix and oil to flour and mix till well blended.
Lightly grease (spray oil) a loaf pan and cook at 350' for 35 minutes.

NOTES:
This is only version 1.1, but everyone LOVED IT. It was gone in less than 12 hours. I thought there was a slight alkaline aftertaste (from baking soda), but the other two adults and two kids who tried it didn't notice it.

It's also very healthy. Easily digested grains that together make a whole protein. Of course banana and nuts! It's gluten-free and with changes below it'd be vegan.

Future changes for versions 2.0 and above:
*substitute an extra banana, or a combination of extra banana and some arrowroot powder, for eggs. This isn't to make it more 'Hawaiian', but rather just to give it a bonus "vegan" rating .

*change baking soda ratio (to get rid of the aftertaste I have). Perhaps add a bit of lemon juice or crushed pineapple to counteract.

*consider crushed pineapple in recipe for extra taste, vitamin C

*substitute honey for sugar possibly (need to lower liquid/oil?)

Ingredients not able to locally make or grow in Hawaii:

1. baking powder/baking soda (but I don't know a substitute)
2. amaranth: able to grow, but don't know of a local source
3. rice: culturally important in Hawaii, used to be grown commercially there, but no longer. I have a sneaking suspicion though that with the rise in fuel costs and rice costs, this might change :D