New York--My Home State--inches closer to marriage
Hello Blogger,
I am here to tell you of some wonderful news and how I am very--excited with the news of marriage equality in New York. I am on pins and needles understanding that this last push HAS to happen and we have to do it now. However, let me take you through some things that happened in my life and lead you to why it's so important to me
Growing Up
I was always a tubby kid, didn't like myself very much so I ate and medicated myself that way. I was and am a smart guy always skipping ahead in the book at school, talking with other kids about what I read--which backfired as a way of making friends in my class--and loved to teach people what they didn't know which lead me to want to become a teacher. However, knowing my old school ways of discipline and correcting kids who cross a line, I knew for a fact I couldn't be a teacher, they'd know me as Mr. Madea Simmons. I later on figured out that I wanted to be a journalist. However, I was very socially inept because of the simple fact that I was always in my own little world. I hated myself, my body, etc. However, I always thought that someday I would be a Husband and Father. I always thought I'd settle down with a nice girl, and we'd get married and have kids. I wasn't like other guys who wanted to play football and things, I was sitting down wondering about Macbeth and Hamlet while everyone thought Hamlet was the pig from Winnie The Pooh.
Identity Crisis
Before I hit high school, I knew I was gay. In 2nd grade, I remember my first boy crush on a guy I'll call Jordan. When we played duck duck goose, I caught him--I didn't think I could run fast and catching him was a boost to my ego--and he said: If I woulda picked up my speed you wouldn't have caught me--BULL! So, throughout Grammar and Junior High I had crushes on girls but i realize they weren't really crushes I think they were my attempt to be 'normal' and have crushes that were. I hung around the eccentric kids in school and never really thought about dating--I even had crushes on oddball girls too. So fast forward to 8th grade and here I am at least 13 yo now noticing the lean bodies in the locker room. I'm on the swim team and I see my eyes drifting toward the lean, sculpted frames. In high school, I deny it and in college it hits me like a ton of bricks and I go back and forth between what I like and thinking that there's something wrong with me if I like guy. So I become celibate and then it still remains. I try and figure out myself and who I am. As I'm getting more comfortable with myself, I meet Darryl the love of my life.I was still wading through the person that was me. Prior Ijust liked everyone and anyone I thought was attractive, but as I began to learn myself I realized that certain people I wouldn't be long term with and started to feel comfortable with myself--after a lot of internal struggles especially with a lot of Christian beliefs, I just said: I have to embrace myself, warts, bumps, farts and all. If I didn't love me, how the hell was someone else going to?
Marriage Makes An Entrance
In 2004, I met 2 women that would change my life for the better, Kitty and her lovely wife Cheryle. I was about 19 and I recently came out to my family and started looking around for things that were gay related so I can discover 'gay culture' and at the Pride Center they were showing a movie Kissing Jessica Stein and we ate afterward at Spot Coffee. That year Pride 04, I decided that I would go straight, and I spent 6 long years trying. I felt that I wasn't good enough and that I couldn't be happy and gay--I am so glad I was wrong
Marriage Returns to My Agenda
In those 6 years I did so much and in that time I did get in touch with a friend who is gay and we started talking again after a year long absence. I started to come to grips with being happy as well as being happy with myself. I reconnected with Kitty and Cheryle who had told me some of the crazy things they suffered through and thought I was a mole for them. Darryl and I passed the test and I threw myself into marriage, I have met some of the best people I've known while working on this and I am ready for marriage to pass. There has been too many people doing too many things for this last push to fail. I can't think about it failing because I just can't think anymore about the couples who have had their husbands deported because the government doesn't recognize their marriage--I know, that's DOMA but it's a reality, I think if it fails, I will become more militant, more angry and ready to thrash all those Senators that vote no on the bill.
So Close
After researching Prop 8 and finding out it was struck down by Judge Vaughn Walker, I was waiting for the Ninth Circuit to strike it down too, and now this summer, NY can become number 6! I am excited that all couples in NYS will be able to protect the life they have together. I am very positive about this coming up and just am throwing myself into this fight so that I can devote myself to my education, activism in another arena and can tell my children that I was a part of the reason why myself and their Father are married, not civil unioned or domestically partnershipped with, but married. Being married does something to you that nothing else does. Paula Kott said: There is nothing like marriage, but marriage. Civil unions are not sufficient in any case. I just can't talk enough about how much I want this to pass, but you can bet that when the vote's handed down, I will be there to write about it!
Until The Pen Strikes Again
I am here to tell you of some wonderful news and how I am very--excited with the news of marriage equality in New York. I am on pins and needles understanding that this last push HAS to happen and we have to do it now. However, let me take you through some things that happened in my life and lead you to why it's so important to me
Growing Up
I was always a tubby kid, didn't like myself very much so I ate and medicated myself that way. I was and am a smart guy always skipping ahead in the book at school, talking with other kids about what I read--which backfired as a way of making friends in my class--and loved to teach people what they didn't know which lead me to want to become a teacher. However, knowing my old school ways of discipline and correcting kids who cross a line, I knew for a fact I couldn't be a teacher, they'd know me as Mr. Madea Simmons. I later on figured out that I wanted to be a journalist. However, I was very socially inept because of the simple fact that I was always in my own little world. I hated myself, my body, etc. However, I always thought that someday I would be a Husband and Father. I always thought I'd settle down with a nice girl, and we'd get married and have kids. I wasn't like other guys who wanted to play football and things, I was sitting down wondering about Macbeth and Hamlet while everyone thought Hamlet was the pig from Winnie The Pooh.
Identity Crisis
Before I hit high school, I knew I was gay. In 2nd grade, I remember my first boy crush on a guy I'll call Jordan. When we played duck duck goose, I caught him--I didn't think I could run fast and catching him was a boost to my ego--and he said: If I woulda picked up my speed you wouldn't have caught me--BULL! So, throughout Grammar and Junior High I had crushes on girls but i realize they weren't really crushes I think they were my attempt to be 'normal' and have crushes that were. I hung around the eccentric kids in school and never really thought about dating--I even had crushes on oddball girls too. So fast forward to 8th grade and here I am at least 13 yo now noticing the lean bodies in the locker room. I'm on the swim team and I see my eyes drifting toward the lean, sculpted frames. In high school, I deny it and in college it hits me like a ton of bricks and I go back and forth between what I like and thinking that there's something wrong with me if I like guy. So I become celibate and then it still remains. I try and figure out myself and who I am. As I'm getting more comfortable with myself, I meet Darryl the love of my life.I was still wading through the person that was me. Prior Ijust liked everyone and anyone I thought was attractive, but as I began to learn myself I realized that certain people I wouldn't be long term with and started to feel comfortable with myself--after a lot of internal struggles especially with a lot of Christian beliefs, I just said: I have to embrace myself, warts, bumps, farts and all. If I didn't love me, how the hell was someone else going to?
Marriage Makes An Entrance
In 2004, I met 2 women that would change my life for the better, Kitty and her lovely wife Cheryle. I was about 19 and I recently came out to my family and started looking around for things that were gay related so I can discover 'gay culture' and at the Pride Center they were showing a movie Kissing Jessica Stein and we ate afterward at Spot Coffee. That year Pride 04, I decided that I would go straight, and I spent 6 long years trying. I felt that I wasn't good enough and that I couldn't be happy and gay--I am so glad I was wrong
Marriage Returns to My Agenda
In those 6 years I did so much and in that time I did get in touch with a friend who is gay and we started talking again after a year long absence. I started to come to grips with being happy as well as being happy with myself. I reconnected with Kitty and Cheryle who had told me some of the crazy things they suffered through and thought I was a mole for them. Darryl and I passed the test and I threw myself into marriage, I have met some of the best people I've known while working on this and I am ready for marriage to pass. There has been too many people doing too many things for this last push to fail. I can't think about it failing because I just can't think anymore about the couples who have had their husbands deported because the government doesn't recognize their marriage--I know, that's DOMA but it's a reality, I think if it fails, I will become more militant, more angry and ready to thrash all those Senators that vote no on the bill.
So Close
After researching Prop 8 and finding out it was struck down by Judge Vaughn Walker, I was waiting for the Ninth Circuit to strike it down too, and now this summer, NY can become number 6! I am excited that all couples in NYS will be able to protect the life they have together. I am very positive about this coming up and just am throwing myself into this fight so that I can devote myself to my education, activism in another arena and can tell my children that I was a part of the reason why myself and their Father are married, not civil unioned or domestically partnershipped with, but married. Being married does something to you that nothing else does. Paula Kott said: There is nothing like marriage, but marriage. Civil unions are not sufficient in any case. I just can't talk enough about how much I want this to pass, but you can bet that when the vote's handed down, I will be there to write about it!
Until The Pen Strikes Again
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