13
It’s a good thing Drew and I were only trying to have a baby, not do something as radical as get married. In that case, we really would have been screwed. A few months earlier, the California Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage should be legal, which naturally meant that the gay marriage grinches were going to ensure it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Their plot to steal Christmas came in the form of Proposition 8, a ballot measure that, if passed, would end any bride-on-bride/groom-on-groom happily ever afters, effective immediately following Election Day.
I firmly believe in the American ideal of respecting other people’s political views, even when they differ greatly from my own. Still, as a gay man seeking happiness, it was hard not to see Proposition 8 supporters as a bunch of puppy-kicking doodyheads. They were pouring millions of dollars into their efforts and airing commercials claiming that, if Proposition 8 failed to pass, schoolteachers would be required to teach kids about gay sex in kindergarten and churches would be forced to perform gay marriages or risk losing their tax-exempt status. They were lies, but they won votes, and to the bullies who were trying to take our rights away, that was all that mattered.
The most shocking thing of all was that polls showed the measure in a dead heat. My home state was exactly one-half homophobe. Funding for the measure was coming largely from out of state. The Mormon Church was orchestrating a huge push to pass Proposition 8, urging their followers to donate whatever they could. The Sacramento Bee ran an article about a middle-class Utah family who drained their bank account and gave everything they had, a full $50,000, to the Yes-on-8 campaign. Stopping me and Drew—and millions like us—from marrying was more important to them than their own financial security, their kids’ college funds, or any other charitable effort they might have directed that cash toward. Puppy-kicking doodyheads.
It seemed like only a matter of time before the haters came for gay parents. We were thumbing our noses at their last remaining argument against gay unions—that gays can’t have kids of their own and that therefore what we have is not equal to a marriage. And talk about going against nature. We were making heterosexuality completely irrelevant to creating life. Drew and I were gay breeders—two dudes making a baby with our own DNA. The state of California would even let us put both our names on the birth certificate. Think of all the signatures the angry mobs could get against that. Think of the commercials they’d air.
“Do you know what goes on in [voice lowered for dramatic effect] California? The gays can’t have babies the normal way, so they genetically engineer them in labs. At this very moment, they’re creating monster gay super-babies—and marrying them! Do you want your child sitting next to this in a classroom? [Insert picture of a limp-wristed five-year-old in a tank top, earrings, and knee-high kinky boots.] It’s time to tell them enough is enough! Do it for our children!”
Between Proposition 8 and the discouraging results of our in vitro attempt, it was a pretty bleak autumn. I needed something to take my mind off all the awfulness.
“Susie got laid!”
Drew shouted across our condo from the bedroom, where he was on the phone with his sister. Finally, some good news.
Now that Susie was off the meds, she was no longer bound by all the restrictions that came with them. She could drink again, lift more than ten pounds again. She could be young again. And yes, she could get laid.
It was as though a clarion call went out to the universe that Susie’s lady parts were now accepting guests, and the universe responded, as it often does, with a friend’s wedding. Susie was a bridesmaid, and as the night wore on and the dance floor cleared, she found herself cozying up to a super-hot guy she knew next to nothing about. Her friends had warned her that he was trouble, which was perfect. After all she’d been through, she’d earned herself a little trouble. She got bombed, and the next thing she knew, Trouble was in her hotel room taking a number count of his own.
I sat next to Drew as he got the details from his kid sister, and I listened in as best I could, like a dog licking up crumbs that fell from the dinner table. For too long, I’d been starving for some good junk food like this.
Mostly, I was just enjoying the sound of Susie laughing.
Once again, gays were the topic of conversation at work. “Who gives a shit if two dudes get married?” The hetero horn dogs were fuming.
“What bullshit!”
“It’ll never pass! It’s so fucking stupid!”
They’d all been convinced Proposition 8 would be shot down by somewhere around 90 percent of the electorate. They were stunned when I told them about the poll numbers and the family from Utah who forked over fifty grand. It made me feel really good knowing that a bunch of straight guys could have my back like this.
At least, most of them did. Bernie started at his computer, pretending to be engrossed in whatever construction crane accident script he was writing. His silence on the current hot topic was quite noticeable for a guy whose two cents usually ran about a dollar and a half.
“That fucking prick! He’s totally voting for it!”
Our second most popular topic of conversation in the writer’s room was Bernie himself—but only when he was somewhere else.
“Haven’t you guys been friends for like ten years?”
“More like fifteen.”
“Does he really think God gives a shit if gay people get married?”
“Weren’t you in his wedding?”
“Yeah, I was.”
“Well at least he believes gays can attend weddings. That’s very open-minded of him.”
Then Bernie would walk back in, and the conversation would continue via instant message. Bing! I’d look down at my screen, and one of the other guys would have written, “When do we get to vote on his marriage?”
No one ever addressed Bernie directly, but occasionally, we’d try to bait him with our comments.
“Why would anyone vote for Prop 8?”
“Simple,” I’d say. “They’re motivated by hatred. Solely by hatred.”
I admit, I felt just a smidge guilty. Here I was, angry about something I found unnecessarily divisive, and yet I was actively turning the staff against somebody I considered a friend. Then again, he was doing it to himself. If he was voting for Prop 8, fuck him.
Drew didn’t have time to worry about the election. He was more concerned with Susie. They talked on the phone every night, often for so long that I couldn’t imagine they still had things left to talk about. Sometimes they’d be laughing, sometimes crying. One day, after he hung up the phone, he walked into the living room and asked me to shut off the TV. In our home, that was a red alert.
“She’s late,” he said.
“What’s late?”
“Her period. She’s three days late.”
“How late is that? That doesn’t sound too late.”
“I guess it’s pretty late.”
“Is she pregnant?”
Drew sighed. “She’s concerned.”
“The guy at the wedding?”
“Yup.”
“But Dr. S said . . .”
“I know.”
I felt like I should laugh, but nothing came out. It seemed so absurd. One minute, Susie was infertile; the next, she was too fertile. Then guilt took hold. Maybe this was our fault.
“Was she so convinced she couldn’t get pregnant that she didn’t use birth control?”
Drew shook his head. “She says he wore a condom. But it turns out that guy has a nickname. Mr. Fertile.”
“Shut up.”
“He has a kid from some other one-night stand.”
“Stop it!”
“He claims he used a condom then, too. His friends have a joke that he has some kind of super-sperm which can’t be stopped by latex.”
I let it sink in for a moment. I still couldn’t bring myself to laugh. “That’s it,” I said finally. “If she ends up having a baby, she’s giving it to us!”
Election Night brought the promise of relief just because, one way or another, my political anxiety would finally be over. As the results came in, most of my Facebook friends were euphoric. They had their eyes on the big race, and at the moment Obama swept to victory, they began pouring their tears of joy into their status updates. It’s history! It’s magic! It’s the end of bigotry! The handful of Republicans I knew were crankily posting that everyone else should shut the hell up, which made it even better. I wanted to celebrate, but polls showed Prop 8 was too close to call.
I had at least ten windows open in my browser. The L.A. Times, the New York Times, MSNBC, Talking Points Memo. I clicked refresh over and over. I scoured for any details I could find. Which counties were still uncounted? How did they lean? Had they tallied San Francisco yet or Palm Springs? Hours after the election had been called for Obama, Drew stumbled out of the bedroom, rubbing his eyes.
“C’mon,” he said. “Why are you still up?”
“Prop 8’s going to pass.”
“Shit.”
I finally decided it was better to go to bed while there was still a shred of ambiguity. The race hadn’t been called yet, not officially. At least for one more day, I could wake up a tiny bit hopeful.
By morning, there was no more doubt. My fellow Californians hated me. They spat on my happiness. Gay marriage was illegal—again. I checked the map for the county-by-county results. Even in Los Angeles, Proposition 8 had received more “yes” votes than “no.”
That quickly, the mood on my Facebook timeline shifted. Even my friends who’d never shown much interest in politics were outraged. They went to marches in support of marriage equality, posted angry rants against bigotry. One guy I know kindly invited everyone in his network to unfriend him if they voted for Prop 8 and to avoid him in real life, meanwhile fucking themselves as thoroughly as possible. I strongly considered posting a similar message.
Instead, I decided to get on with life and move on to an old pastime, bashing George W. Bush. Now that he was a lame duck, there was a video going around of him appearing to get snubbed by other world leaders at a gathering. I shared it on my Facebook wall, and most of my friends wrote to say it made them laugh.
There was one dissenter, who made himself known via email.
“Could it be argued that your Facebook post about Bush is motivated solely by hatred?” It was Bernie.
“I hate Bush,” I wrote back. “Does that answer your question?”
Later that afternoon, Bernie sent me a response that was roughly the length and earnestness of the Gettysburg Address. He attacked me mercilessly, accused me of revealing my true colors as a vicious, spiteful person. It was not only the angriest I’d ever known him to be, but it was also his best writing, full of big words and complicated reasoning. It was like a PhD thesis on why I sucked. Clearly, I’d touched a nerve, but how? It wasn’t the politics. For someone so religious, he was surprisingly apolitical and certainly no Bush apologist. Then I realized there was something familiar about the language he’d used. “Motivated solely by hatred.” Wasn’t that exactly how I’d described Prop 8 supporters?
It was time Bernie and I had a talk.
“You voted for it, didn’t you?”
Bernie sighed. He knew this had been coming. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s a private vote.”
“You do realize I’m going to take that as a yes?”
“I don’t want to say anything that’s going to damage our friendship.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have sent that email.”
“Okay. Just promise you’ll hear me out and have an open mind.”
“I’ll hear you out,” I said. “But if you think you’re going to convince me I don’t deserve equal rights, I highly doubt it.”
We met for lunch near the office. I imagine Bernie spent all morning rehearsing his speech in his head, like a lawyer preparing for trial. I’d barely sat down when he hit me with his opening statement.
“Do you think a man should be able to marry his sister?” he asked.
I groaned. Is that where this was headed?
“I don’t want to marry my sister.”
“What if somebody wants to marry two women or two men?”
“I don’t want to marry two women or two men.”
“Just answer me. Hypothetically.”
“I really don’t care if someone marries twelve women or two hundred men. If they’re all consenting adults and it works for them, great.”
“But what about the brother and sister? What if they want to have kids together?”
“Well, that’s not healthy for the kids.”
“Aha!” he shouted. I realized it was too late. I had taken his bait.
“So you do think there should be restrictions placed on marriage? You admit it!”
“That’s not what I said.”
“But if you think marriage should include you then how do you tell the brother and sister it can’t include them?”
I shrugged. “That’s their problem. Let them get their own lawyers.”
Bernie refused to state his position on gay marriage specifically, but he was boldly going on record as being anti-incest. And he feared that redefining marriage would inevitably give some horny siblings somewhere the legal grounds to get the government blessing for their union. It was clear he’d put a lot of thought into the matter, but it also felt like he was rationalizing a viewpoint he had against gay marriage to begin with. He already told me I was going to hell. Why the sudden evasiveness?
By the end of lunch, I was willing to concede that Bernie wasn’t motivated by hate. Self-delusion maybe, but not hate. Still, I wasn’t sure where this left us. As we walked back to the office, he tried to wrap things up on a positive note.
“I know the way the tide is turning,” he admitted. “I have no doubt that sooner or later gay marriage will be legal, and I’m fine with that. I’m ready for it. And when you and Drew get married, I’ll be the first one to dance at your wedding.”
I didn’t say it out loud, but the only thing going through my mind at that moment was, “Why would I invite you to my wedding?”
I arrived home that night exhausted, physically and intellectually. Drew was already there, talking to Susie on the phone. He was laughing and joking, a complete change from the last time they’d spoken.
“Hold on, Jerry’s home,” he said, cupping his hand over the receiver. “You ready for some big news?”
“What’s up?”
“Susie had her period today.”
“Yahoo,” I said. “I’m going to bed.”