Look, Ma! I'm blending in

I love Easter. In fact, I love all theme parties. I’m not Christian; hell, I’m an atheist. But I do love pomp and circumstance. This Easter I made five Easter baskets: one for me; one for Jake and Heather, my niece and nephew who live with me; one for Devon, a long story; and one for my quasi-boyfriend, Amspaugh. Then I roasted lamb stuffed with garlic in my Ronco Set It and Forget It, boiled finger potatoes, steamed vegetables, made Egyptian mint sauce, homemade gravy, rolls, salad with fresh pineapple, pears, macadamia nuts, and a homemade berry–olive oil vinegarette. Could I be more gay?

We even colored eggs and used sponges to stipple them and then put hats and faces on them. It made for a fun and very gay day.

That night I was on air at KGO-AM 810 San Francisco. It’s where I work. The show was going fine until a caller asked my opinion on the gay and lesbian families that showed up en masse at the White House for the annual Easter Egg roll. The caller, of course, thought I’d be gushing with positive emotions about this show of solidarity.

Say it with me: poppycock.

I thought it was the most ridiculous, unnecessary, and counterproductive show of unity that I had heard of in the past few years. It’s not that I didn’t want the families there. On the contrary, I thought gay and lesbian families were always there. I’ve read as much as I can on the Web and I could not find any “ban” on gay families from the egg roll in the past. Given that I thought we were incorporated into the masses like everyone else. I guess I was wrong; or if we were, I guess it wasn’t good enough.

Working in mainstream talk radio, I listen to other hosts during the days I work to get a barometer on what’s going on. And I can tell you, nongay hosts found this as absurd as I did. They didn’t understand the big deal.

Well, first a note to them. Gays and lesbians form families, have children, and raise them like everybody else. And that fact is often overlooked. Hell, that fact is often legislated against. And I imagine it gets frustrating for those families to feel they are on the outside of the traditional family unit. They want the same things for their children that all parents want: equality, acceptance, love, and joy. So of course they want them to be involved in this national tradition.

But here’s my problem: Why announce it to every media outlet? Why not just show up and roll the damned eggs? Is Easter a time to be making statements about sexual orientation? Is this the time to single out your children and show the world that they are from a nontraditional—and it is—family unit?

You see, I know how we win the war. I’ve always known. We win it by standing side by side with our nongay counterparts and showing them and the world how alike we are. But we don’t do that—can’t do that—if every time we try and do it there are press releases, news cameras, picketers, bullhorns, and such.

You see, if we want to be perceived as the same, as normal just like everybody else, then we have to behave that way. No other group that I could find issued a press release about their participation that day.

I know we need to make our presence known. I know we need the country to see that we are, in fact, family units. But is this the way? Easter was a slow news day, so the major networks glommed on to this story and made it much bigger than it needed to be. And that prompted the “I don’t care if they’re gay or lesbian, just roll the eggs.”