Voices in Time
spouses
and siblings
2005: Washington
dan savage listens to a dissenting opinion
For a couple of guys who aren’t sure they even
want to get married, Terry and i have poured
an awful lot of time into convincing an extra
ordinarily stubborn member of our family that,
yes, men can marry men, and women can marry
women. even my mother has spoken to him.
but he refuses to budge. boys don’t marry boys,
he insists, and girls don’t marry girls. He’s also
made it clear that if Terry and i ever married, he
would refuse to attend the ceremony.
one of the ironies of being gay parents is
that your children, raised in your nongender
conforming home, go out into the world where
gender roles are rigidly enforced by other chil
dren during “play.” our earliest taste of the soft
bigotry of gender expectations came when dJ
announced from the backseat of the car that
Terry and i didn’t really love each other. Why
not, we asked. “because you’re not married,” dJ
explained calmly. “people who don’t love each
other don’t get married, and since you’re not
married and can’t get married, that means you
can’t love each other. not really.”
This childish circular logic came tumbling
out of his mouth when dJ was four. We traced it
