Politics is Personal

A good parent does what is best for the kids, right?

That's certainly what we thought, when M. was in labor with Elias at the hospital down the street from our house - the one we chose because it was inside the bubble, besides being a perfectly good hospital.  That's what we thought when the neonatology team suggested that we be moved to the larger teaching hospital 15 minutes away - the one we chose not to use last time - because of the chance that our baby would need a NICU.  We knew it meant moving outside the bubble, outside of the known laws, outside of the sphere in which we are respected as a family.  We moved because it seemed like the best thing for the baby, who was coming a month early, from a diabetic pregnancy.

And I think we did the right thing.  Don't get me wrong - given what we went through with Asa, I think we did the right thing.

But still.

Elias is six weeks old, now.  Almost seven.  And we don't have a birth certificate.

We don't have a birth certificate because we are married, not civil-unioned.  (The political rhetoric that holds that the only difference is semantic?  Yep, it's now officially B. S.)  The hospital employees were told, by their legal department, not to let us fill out the birth certificate paperwork as legal co-parents because we weren't joined by the right semantics.  Bless them for actually treating us like any other couple, and not hovering over our shoulders as we filled out the forms.

We don't have a birth certificate because the state didn't actually think through the ramifications of their civil-unions bill, so recently implemented.  If we had been civil-unioned (civilly-unified?  Don't get me started.), we would have had the right to be co-parents on the birth certificate without question.  But the problem that is holding us up, according to the authorities?  Federal funding for state assistance programs requires "verification of paternity".  Nevermind that every state that has same-sex marriage has managed to issue birth certificates to two-mom families without losing that funding; nevermind that the District of Columbia actually pushed the envelope and asked the question, only to hear that by "verification of paternity", the government really means "verification that a child has two parents, both of whom have to qualify before we give you state assistance".  Nevermind that the question that is holding up our birth certificate is a legal non-issue.

What is interesting is that the odds are very good that we'll get a birth certificate sooner or later.  We have the brilliance of GLAAD's legal team working with and for us.  More than that, however, we'll get a birth certificate because the state doesn't want a test of a law that isn't really workable.  And that is some comfort.

I'm sure it should also be some comfort that I can even complain about this.  It should be (and, at some level, it is) a comfort that we didn't have to argue with anyone over Asa's birth certificate; that our worst-case scenario is a fairly routine second-parent adoption process that is more offensive than nerve-wracking.  It should be a comfort that we live in a safe place - a wider bubble than the legal one - where we can be out as a couple and a family, without experiencing bigotry on a frequent basis.  It should be a comfort, how much our culture has changed, even in my adult life.

It should be a comfort, but that isn't the right word for it.  Because although we are in a far better and safer place than we would have been even a decade ago, I can't say it's really a "comfortable" place.  We're still in a place where we have to keep our antennae up, and where we're going to have to teach our boys how to be safe, how to have antennae of their own.  We're still in a place where we have to choose between the health of our baby and the acceptance of our family as equal and valid.  We're in a place that's as comfortable as a down duvet on a bed of thorns.

We've come a long way, I don't - and never will - deny that.  But that only proves that we can go further, perhaps to the point where Elias will read these words one day, and be genuinely confused as to why it took so long to get his birth certificate.  And then maybe he'll create the sequel to the following clip - just for historical interest.