The Same But Different

Some gay families attended the Easter Egg Roll on the White House Lawn (very soggy according to press reports). I have mixed feelings about all of this. I think it's great that gay people have families, but these families all carry the tag line, "We're just the same as straight families, except...."

Don't get me wrong. I think families, ANY family should have the opportunity to roll Easter eggs on the White House lawn. I think every person that loves another person should have the opportunity to get married. Well, you get the drift where this is going, except that it stops here pretty quickly. Because the "except" is exceedingly important to me. I'm not straight. My family is different. And that difference is very important to me, and probably makes straight mommies and daddies very queasy.

When are gay people going to learn the simple lesson that we don't fit in? We never have, we never will. Now this doesn't mean we throw up our hands and move to West Hollywood, but it does mean that we shouldn't be surprised about how straight people view our families, and how they think about us. We'll always be a queer construct to straight people no matter how normal we feel to ourselves.

Here's the truth about difference: it's rooted in a deep-seated misunderstanding of the other. It rests in our emotion, our guts, our loins, but rarely in our reasoning.

Just do this thought exercise: do you know how Jewish men davin? To them it's an everyday, normal practice, but to the rest of us, it's an odd way to pray. Do you know how Islamic people ritually clean themselves? To them it's real, important, necessary and a part of every day life. To the rest of us, it's an odd way to wash or bathe.

The people who perform these acts live in houses across America, just like you and me. These people have families, just like you and me. In fact, some of these people are you and me, except they, too, are different, just like you and I are different.

I hope the day is coming when different doesn't mean bad. The problem that some straight people have with "gay" is that they see only the difference and can't imagine how gay people live, how gay people work, how gay people eat, how gay people talk, how gay people watch television, how gay people drive automobiles. The only thing they can imagine is how gay people have sex. (And they usually get it wrong, too.)

I think that's the big difference between straight people and gay people. And it's about as wide as the Grand Canyon. We're never going to be the same, and that's a good thing to be thankful for.