Today the Supreme court will hear four cases on marriage equality, and there are already thousands of people in front of the SCOTUS building. I will join them shortly, because I need caffeine first. Let’s not get stupid. But at the same time, I am going to inhale it because I can’t miss one more minute. Today, if the arguments only take a few more hours, it might be the last time in which I ever feel like a second-class citizen.
When I was a kid, gay people were sick. Gay people had something wrong with them. In some parts of the country, this is still considered true. However, the year I came out (1990), it was much more widespread a notion and much more believed. Never mind that I was only 13. Never mind that I’d never had sex in my entire life, so therefore the promiscuous argument was out. Never mind that all I wanted was to hold a girl’s hand without feeling like I was going to get beat up in a parking lot somewhere and left for dead.
Yes- my fear was that real. Why wouldn’t it be? At the time, there were beatings in the Montrose regularly. I had to watch my back, and I did. I walked around town with no small amount of fear, and the idea that children cannot come out as gay, as we know now, is ridiculous. By the time puberty hits, people may not have kissed who they love, but they know who they WANT to. The problem is that when it is realized that kids are straight, there is very little incentive to try and change it. Not so with gay kids. Most of the time, their parents think it’s a phase.
I’m 38 now. Still love women. Longest. Phase. Ever.
Today, I am hoping to grow in the fullness of the law, because where the law goes, so does the rest of the country. Maybe in time, I will not have to worry about going through a small town and getting my ass kicked just because I look a certain way. Yes, I dress like a boy. No, I do not wish to be one. I wish to look preppy, sharp, clean… and I smell good, too. 🙂 To think that anyone would want to physically injure me over it is ridiculous, and yet, those pockets of (in)humanity exist, even in liberal places like Maryland, DC, and NoVA. Even when I was married to Dana, I looked around when I gave her affection in public because I could not turn off the internal homophobia running through my brain that says I do not deserve to be able to give Dana affection in public, because it’s just not “normal.”
I’ve always felt normal. What’s their problem? Hopefully by the end of the day, they won’t have the right to have one.
Stories That Are All True 
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