Homo for the Holidays: The Gift of the Diva Gay

By Todd Craig

My husband likes to believe that he’s easy to shop for. After all, there is nothing he doesn’t want. After this Christmas, I beg to differ.

You see, I’m from the school of thought that believes that a present is a gesture that represents how you feel towards someone while at the same time giving them something to remember you, the giver, as well. I listen intently as the months approach for clues as to wants and desires of friends and family. I labor at nights thinking of ways to personalize gifts and give them in a heartfelt way. The challenge of Christmas to me is finding each and every person on my list something that they’ll treasure and love for years.
 
My husband, on the other hand, is a Diva Gay. What is a Diva Gay, you ask? Diva Gays are known for their love of fashion and style. They worship their goddess, Mariah Carey. They love labels. They sing bling. There’s no such thing as too flashy or too gaudy when a diva is involved. When it comes to buying a diva gay a present, you merely go to any designer store - whether it be fashion, jewelry, or whatnot - and purchase something outrageously expensive. Never mind the fact that the said item that you’re purchasing has little or no perceived value to the other 99.9% of the humanity. Never mind that the Visa bank who backs your card is burning up your cell phone with disapproving voice messages that say, “Are you REALLY sure you want to do that?”  

True Story #1: After dating and talking about marriage, the future, and the possibility of having kids, my husband once proclaimed that he’d be more OK with having kids if he didn’t have to put any macaroni and glitter homemade crap on his refrigerator door. For our first Valentine’s Day, I made him a four-foot heart out of red construction paper trimmed in – you guessed it – macaroni and glitter. Of course, I was no fool. I coupled that shit with some 1000 thread count sheets, too. (Heh, heh… see what I did there? Pitched to the diva’s expectations and worked in a little heartfelt, cornball romance. Smooth, huh?) The sheets are long gone now, but that first Valentine remains. Even a Diva Gay’s heart can be touched, as it turns out.

True Story #2: For Christmas this year, our kindergarten son made us at school a hand-painted snowman magnet out of popsicle sticks, cut-out pieces of felt, and googly eyes. It hangs proudly on our fridge. Even a Diva’s Gay heart is vulnerable, it turns out, to the handiwork constructions of a six year old boy.

Anyway, getting back to my Christmas shopping woes, back in October we were walking through the mall, running a few errands, when what should catch my husband’s eye? A shiny new red Coach bag complete with yellow metal hardware and a heart-attack inducing price tag. His gasp was audible from its beauty as was mine upon seeing the cost of that thing. You see, I’ve been to this rodeo before. Those f**kers at Coach don’t play around. So you get your man the purse of his dreams, right? But you’re not done there. Then you have to get the coordinating wallet, the mini-skinny, the key-chain, the scarf, the LoJack security system, and the rustproofing before realizing that you just spent enough money to purchase a small island or a year’s tuition at DU.

So, yeah … a new purse again, huh? I winced in pain as the thought took hold of me. But as Christmas grew closer, well, we had some fortune come our way. My husband started a new full-time job after Thanksgiving as the lead administrator for a high-end jewelry store. Then my teaching job unexpectedly gave me a December bonus. Those two facts, when mixed with a moment of holiday weakness, convinced me that maybe my diva did indeed deserve some indulgence this year. I figured that I’d wait until the weekend before Christmas, make my mall journey, and buy the perfect gift for the holiday.

But divas are nothing if not a bit demanding when it comes to their presents. And indeed my husband’s idea of gift giving and receiving goes a bit like this: I’ll give you a list, and you go buy it for me. 

To that end, a few weeks before Christmas I received a list of add-ons for his china pattern. Yes, the boy loves him some fancy dishes, and to that end, when we married, he of course picked out a wildly popular and expensive pattern that has roughly 5,000 different overpriced pieces that you only get to use on Christmas and Easter. Over the years, I have bought him enough gravy boats here and soup tureens there to the point where we really need a second china hutch to display it all.

And that’s what he wanted now? More dishes? Obviously the whole purse idea had been forgotten as the weeks had passed. As I perused his list, it did occur to me that the overall cost for his dishes was well under the cost of the purse, its accessories, and the obligatory Coach undercoating and extended warranty plan.

Yet the temptation to go big for my diva was too much. I ignored the list, despite my Mariah’s expressed interest in the china and its lower price tag, and stuck with my original plan, the purse.
Lying in bed two nights before I planned on purchasing the purse, my husband began his annual game of Twenty Questions with me about my Christmas plans for his present. This is an annual event which means two things: 1. He knows I hate shopping off of gift lists and was nervous that I was getting him something not-listed, and 2. The whole house had been turned upside-down in a quest to find his Christmas present only to find nothing.

True Story #3: For his birthday one year, I put notes throughout the house in all of the various and assorted possible present hiding places. He wasn’t nearly as amused as I thought he would be when he opened up our cooler on a present quest and found a note informing him of my superior present-hiding skills. (His present was in my closet at work that year. Divas are thorough, after all…)
Anyway, my husband and I were in bed when the questions started. "What are you getting me? What kind of store are you buying it at? How much are you planning on spending?"

I artfully dodged question after question, only giving him enough information to conclude that I was going to buy him a vacuum cleaner – because, well, you do have to tease a diva a little bit.

“Don’t you dare!” he exclaimed.

“But a Dyson is like the designer label of vacuums,” I argued in return, giggling to myself.

“Do NOT get me a f**king vacuum! That’s NOT funny! I don’t want anything practical! Don’t get me a vacuum. Don’t get me new pots and pans. Don’t get me a new purse either.”

No purse? Did I hear that correctly? Oh, shit! There went Plan A.

The next day, two days before Christmas, I pulled up his list on my computer. There was no way any of the china would ship on time and arrive before Christmas now. Two of the items on the list had even been sold out.

I felt defeated.

I went ahead and ordered what I could. I purchased a couple of movies so that he’d have something to unwrap. During Christmas I told him of the china, and he seemed very excited for what was on its way.

Lying in bed that night, I told him the whole story of my trials with his present this year. I told him that I was sorry that he didn’t have his present here to open on Christmas.

“You always take good care of me,” he told me before rolling over and kissing me. “I totally forgot about that purse until now, and it would have been a good gift. But I’ll like my china when it gets here, and it was a very good Christmas either way.

“Besides,” he added with a grin, “the purse will still be there for Valentine’s Day, right?”

Christmas In Colorado: Making the Yuletide Gay

By Todd Craig

My husband loves Christmas. No, seriously, you don’t understand. He. Loves. Christmas. If our six year old son’s birthday wasn’t on Halloween, he’d probably start putting up the tree before Walmart and Target even clearanced out their back-to-school stuff.

Christmas to him represents the ultimate gay holiday. First and foremost: Christmas offers unabashed amounts of decorating. His decorating itch gets underway when I’m asked to drag out our nearly ten foot tree and three six-foot long plastic totes filled with ornaments. Over the course of the next week or two, the ornaments are sorted and hung, with the memories of each causing him to get all misty and emotional. Mariah Carey sings, “All I Want For Christmas,” and our house transforms into the holiday-version of Thunderdome.

Before we had our son, he would always do two trees: a “formal” tree and a “fun” tree. The formal tree looked like something from Martha Stewart’s wet dream. (I don’t know if women even have wet dreams, but I’m guessing that Marty probably has a penis anyway.) In any case, the “formal” tree glowed in beautiful gold and glittered ornaments. Ribbons draped the tree, and ornaments by Waterford, Lenox, and Wedgewood added the perfect classy touch as quickly as their purchase added the perfect empty touch to my wallet.

The “fun” tree was where a lot of the ornaments I liked ended up. There were my Broncos ornaments commemorating their back-to-back Super Bowl victories. My Captain Kirk and Spock collectible ornaments from Hallmark also ended up there, usually placed somewhere on the back, oddly enough. It turns out that gay geek chic takes a backseat to good taste when Christmas rolls around.

But when we adopted our son, our trees merged. Next to the Waterford crystal ornaments hangs Broncos Santa. A bell made out of tin foil crinkled by our son’s pre-school hands over a Styrofoam coffee cup resides next to the Millenium edition Wedgewood ornament. And even though my husband’s inner Martha might not admit it, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have it any other way.

After the tree, comes the china and display cabinets. There he displays his Avon nativity scene, one of a few artifacts passed down from his side of the family. The Christmas pattern plates of his Noritake china are culled from storage and make their way to the front. Candlesticks take on red and green hues.

The dining room table gets covered in a red plaid tablecloth. In the center, you’ll find a handcrafted centerpiece made of pine, holly, and ribbon while gold chargers at each seat display both the season’s and my husband’s more “festive” qualities.

And we haven’t even gotten to the outside of the house yet.

My husband is a gay man whose flame burns brightly all year, but when Christmas rolls around, his flame is bright enough to attract wise men to our doorstep – too bad his tastes run more towards the thick-builds and think-skulls.

After all, when you stop and think about it, if I told you I was writing an article about decorating, sweaters, shopping, formal dinners, drinks made with healthy doses of peppermint schnapps, and reunions with even healthier doses of familial dysfunction, would you be able to tell if I was writing about gay life or the holiday season?

Imagine living both at the same time.

Now that our yuletide is sufficiently gay, it occurs to me that our ultra-gay Christmas isn’t all that different from everyone else’s. Both the lights and my husband are high-strung for the entire month. Our son dotes over toy ads in the newspaper and is rapt with all that is wrapped. We’re planning for in-laws, readying our guest bedroom, and preparing vast quantities of nog, a phrase that sounds dirty, but really isn’t.

So what is the most wonderfully gay time of the year? Go ahead with your Pride rallies in the summer, your Aspen Gay Ski Week, and the White Party. While they all have a number of packages on display, none of them quite brings out the gay like Christmas. At least at our house.

Should Colorado's Gays Settle For Civil Unions - Or Fight For Gay Marriage

By Todd Craig

Last summer, I wrote a piece that criticized some of Colorado's gay-friendly political groups for targeting state legislature races in the election. Not that, as Jerry Seinfeld might have said, there was anything wrong with that, but it appeared to me that the presidential election and the significant role Colorado might have played in the election's outcome seemed to be a lesser priority for them.

Turns out, I was wrong.

Those state legislative seats that were targeted after last fall's civil unions debacle flipped to the Democrats. Obama won, handily, in Colorado and pretty much everywhere else, too.

That's the type of wrong I always hope to be.

As an added bonus, the four state measures from around the nation regarding marriage equality all fell to our side, too, as Washington, Maine, and Maryland will now allow same-sex marriage, while Minnesota politely declined a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heteros only.

Rep. Mark Ferrandino

The election lessons seem pretty simple: the tide hath turned – big time - in our favor.

To make matters even better, Colorado Democrats named openly-gay Rep. Mark Ferrandino to the Speaker of the House position. Most of us who followed the 2011 civil unions fight remember him for his valiant efforts as he pulled out all the stops to try to gain equal rights for Colorado's LGBT population.

With election results like this, Colorado's gays have learned that we can have our cock and eat it, too.

The Denver Post has reported that the civil unions bill will likely be reintroduced and passed into law quickly once the session begins next year.

But should it?

As recently as early November, a Denver Post poll indicated that the majority of Colorado's voters support same-sex marriage over civil unions.

So the question we need to ask is pretty simple, in light of all of the political victories this past election, should Colorado's LGBT population settle for civil unions?

New York created the template for using the state legislature to pass gay marriage. Considering that we have statewide support for marriage equality, and gay-friendly Democrats now in control of the house, senate, and governor's mansion, not to mention all of the momentum from the last election, why shouldn't Colorado be asking for gay marriage too?

Sure, civil unions were a good compromise last year when we needed every vote possible in the Republican-controlled house, but that's no longer the case. Civil unions are like getting socks for a Christmas present. Sure you're grateful, and yeah, you'll wear them, but there's no denying that you want something better.

I, for one, want to marry my husband of almost ten years. The word "marry" is important to us. I'm not the first one to feel this way, but I don't want to look my husband in the eye and ask him to enter into a civil union with me. I want to marry him.

So I hope, before our state legislature convenes for the first time, that Colorado's political groups sit down with those of us in the LGBT community who helped to elect them and discuss whether or not civil unions are what we really want.

In my mind, now is the time for us to cash in some of our political clout and ask for full marriage rights. Purple state Colorado won't stay all blue for long. My fear is that passing civil unions now might saddle Colorado's LGBT population with a separate-but-equal status for untold years to come.

Of course, then again, I could be wrong.

Face to Facebook

By Todd Craig

You gotta love Facebook.

Sure, it’s the bane of existence to employers, and it’s a distraction for those of us who are trying to get something done.

But recently, Facebook did for me what Facebook does best:  It connected me with the people and organizations that I know and love, and they in turn, have me smiling from ear to ear.

So what’s brought that smile to my face?  A cute-captioned kitten picture?  An obscene e-card forward?

Nope.  Wayyyyy better.  Read on.

The day started with a beautiful letter posted in the Matthew Shepard Foundation’s Facebook page.  It was a letter written by a young man, a junior at the University of Wyoming who attended a Matthew Shepard Foundation sponsored concert and was so inspired by what he heard from San Francisco’s and Denver’s Gay Men's Choruses that he phoned his parents and came out on the spot.

It was a thank you letter from this young man.  An honest and beautiful thank you letter for the inspiration he received, felt, and responded to.

How awesome is that?

Later that day, I discovered myself at the gym.  (Author’s note: Yes, I’m one of those annoying people who will check my email and Facebook on my smartphone between sets.  What?  You’d rather I stare vacantly into space while I catch my breath?)

Anyway, my cellphone's screen contained a post from one of my former students on his Facebook page.   I had taught him in an advanced reading class during his fifth grade year nearly a decade ago.  He’s a hockey player now and a student at the University of South Carolina.  His post today was a multi-paragraph letter that reached this conclusion:

“…my generation is faced with another civil rights challenge... So I have decided to take a stand, to reach out a hand and to vocalize my opinion. I may not be gay, but that does not mean the people around me who are are any less of "people". They deserve the same rights, the same opportunities and above all the same respect.”

Pretty good, eh?

I won’t be arrogant enough nor naive enough to say that I was the teacher here who made the difference here.  He’s had dozens of other teachers, mentors, coaches, and professors since I taught him in fifth grade.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not damned proud of the young man he’s grown to become.  His statements put a smile on my face like no other.

And smiling is especially critical during weeks like these.  Recent weeks have been especially brutal for us gays.  Both Chick-Fil-A and the Boy Scouts of America took their backwards beliefs to new heights and proudly stood on the side of gay hate and flat-out stupidity.

We’re all familiar by now with the pathetic nature of these organizations' statements and actions.  But these words are still gut punches to each and every member our gay family.  Their words are still hateful.  Their words represent discrimination based on out-of-date fears and hypocritical moral righteousness. 

And yet …

As depressing and hurtful as these gutshots are from corporate America, I’ll put my faith in these two young men who crossed my Facebook path today.   Two college guys, one in Wyoming and one in South Carolina, found the strength, inspiration, and passion to step up today.

The gays of this world have a new member to our family and a new supporter to our cause, and I like our odds with them on our side - chicken sandwiches and merit badges be damned! 

That’s why I’m smiling.

Chick-fil-A: Picking teams when it's "us" versus "them"

By Todd Craig

This whole Chick-Fil-A controversy has induced a rallying cry by the religious right.  Recently, news reports have former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee urging like-minded Christians to support the company on August 1 in an effort to counter the recent bad-publicity the chain has received since its leader made statements that they are “guilty as charged” for supporting anti-gay organizations with their profits.

From Huckabee’s point of view, this is an us-versus-them moment.

But then I got to thinking about it?  Who really is on the anti-gay side any more?  And conversely, who’s on ours?

Let’s take a look, shall we?

For anti-gay team, their starting line up includes The Westboro Baptist Church and their leader Fred Phelps who has blamed the 9/11 attacks on gays, which is amongst their more timid of other stomach-churning statements.   And let’s not forget the other proud defenders of the faith they can proudly stand next to like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who both stated that gays caused natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina.  Yes, they’ll have to be feeling proud to stand next to the intellectual forces of Fred, Jerry, and Pat.

But let’s not just pick on the religious crazies that make up their team.  Let’s talk about the world leaders gay-haters get to stand next to.  This list is pretty impressive, and their starting line up is pretty tough to beat.  First, there’s Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who insisted that Iran doesn’t torture homosexuals because there are none in Iran. Huh. Who knew?  I wonder where they all went, don’t you? 

Next, are the Ugandan warlords/politicians who, spurred on by U.S. religious wing-nuts like Rick Warren, have vowed to persecute, jail, and sentence the death penalty on same-sex loving people. Oh!  This is an impressive group, isn’t it??

And who’s that over there coming down the anti-gay red carpet?  Oh yes, gay-haters can rally along with Russian president Vladmir Putin whose government has recently cracked down on homosexual activity and messages in public. 

Russia, Iran, Uganda, oh my! 

They gotta be feeling pretty proud right about now.

Oh, and before we go, they also get to stand with Al Qaeda.  Yep.  Earlier this spring Al Qaeda threatened to turn the streets red with gays’ blood if a gay pride parade took place in Azerbaijan.

Feelin’ good about the company you keep yet, gay haters?

On the flip side of the coin, let’s look at who supports us gays.

Well, for starters we have the leaders of the free world on our side.  Yep.  We have the current president, vice-president, and secretary of state who are all for gay rights and gay marriage.  (I know, I know.  They’re all Democrats, you say.  But we also have the previous Republican vice-president, Dick Cheney, too.  Surprise!) 

I know you have the Boy Scouts and Chick-Fil-A and Wal-Mart's conservative leanings are well-documented.  That’s pretty sweet, I guess.  A quick glance at Wikipedia’s list of supporters of same-sex marriage page tells me our side is gonna have to be stuck with Apple, Microsoft, Pepsi, Coke, General Mills, Levi’s, Walt Disney, Amazon, Costco, J.C. Penny, Kraft, GM, Ford, Hilton, Home Depot, American, Delta, Southwest, and United Airlines, McDonalds, Applebees, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Starbucks, UPS, Google, Walgreens, and Rite-Aid. 

Pretty much every major company on the Fortune 500 this side of Wal-Mart.  And that's just for starters.

Oh, and the Girl Scouts.  So take that, haters.

According to the Huffington Post, our side will also have to suffer a few radicals as well.  We’ll get Clint Eastwood, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Charles Barkley, Steven Spielberg, Russell Simmons, Daniel Radcliff, and George Clooney for starters.

We’ll also have music from Eminem, Pink, Elton John, Queen, and the B-52s. 

We'll laugh heartily with Margaret Cho, Sarah Silverman, and Jon Stewart.  Yep, this is gonna be a killer party once it gets going, isn't it?

But how will we complete with countries like Russia, Iran, and Uganda in the gay-hate corner?

We’ll have to settle for entire countries that already have marriage equality like The Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland, and Argentina, and we’ll throw in Israel, France, Great Britain, Germany, New Zealand, Mexico, and Brazil that are all looking currently to expand the rights of their gay and lesbian citizenry.

We also get New England, Massachusetts, New York, the nation's capital, the cornfields of Iowa, and the west coast of the United States.  

So what’s the lesson to be had here?  If a person is supposedly defined by the company that he or she keeps, well, I’m guessing gays and their supporters will sleep pretty well knowing who their friends are and the direction that they're helping us all to go.

And for those who don’t support gay rights, they may want to look at that list of those who agree with them.  Fred Phelps, Ugandan warlords, and Al Qaeda may be extremists of anti-gay rhetoric and actions, but it's a microscopically thin line between supporting your religious beliefs and flat-out working to promote discrimination, hatred, and persecution.

To paraphrase the Italian proverb, when you keep company with good men, you’ll increase their number.

That’s why we gays and our supporters will always stand up against the likes of Chick-Fil-A, and it’s why we will win in the long run no matter how many people share a sandwich with Huckabee on August 1.

Because the good people are on our side, and they’re increasing in number.

Chick-Fil-A: On the frontlines of the culture wars

By Todd Craig

 

Yesterday, Facebook made me smile.

Today, it made me sad.  Sad because I noticed that my marriage rights were reduced to culture war-status as the religious right fired back against the Chick-Fil-A boycott movement.

Two people from my Facebook friends list posted a graphic saying, "I support Chick-Fil-A."

Normally, I let that sort of thing go.  I don't expect everybody to agree with me on every political issue.

But not today.  This time, it's personal.

So I wrote.  It's what I do.  Feel free to copy and paste this anywhere you see a "I support Chick-Fil-A" graphic on the internet:

The problem when you post a graphic saying that you support Chick-Fil-A is that you're supporting a company who uses their profits to support discriminatory laws against a specific segment of the American population.  These actions SEGREGATE.  These actions DISCRIMINATE - specifically against me, my husband, our son and families like mine.  Chick-Fil-A may have the right to do that, but that doesn't make it right.

It might feel good to choose a side in the culture wars, but in supporting Chick-Fil-A, you ally yourself with such blessed luminaries as the Westboro Baptist Church.  They're on your side, you know!  Aren't you proud?  Sure, your graphic doesn't say God Hates Fags, but it's now implied that you do. 

But on an even more serious note, there are over 1,000 rights and benefits that come with marriage at the federal level.  Chick-Fil-A uses their freedom to limit others' freedom in regard to those rights. That is unabashedly un-American.  If I don't follow your religious beliefs, the beautiful thing is that I don't have to go to your church.  That's freedom of religion! But I don't try to pass laws to limit your religion, nor do I support any businesses who would. Conversely, I hope that if you don't believe in gay marriage, then don't get one.  I wish you wouldn't try to pass laws limiting my family's freedom or support businesses who would. 

Apparently not, however.  I'm not going to lie, seeing this graphic hurts. It hurts terribly.

This whole thing isn't about Christians versus gays.  It's about the law.  It's about those 1000+ rights denied to hundreds of thousands (over 600,000 according to the last census) of gay and lesbian couples and our children.  We are hard-working, tax-paying, law-abiding citizens who deserve nothing less than same treatment under the law. We are Americans after all, too.  We may not be equals in your belief system, but your belief system isn't the law.  We should all be equal in the eyes of the law regardless of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddist, or Atheist beliefs. That's American. 

That's why the outcry against Chick-Fil-A is so strong.  Freedom and equality in the eyes of the law are very much worth the outcry; it's supposed to be self-evident that we are all created equal, after all. 

And that's the ultimate definition of what it means to be an American.

2012 Presidential Election: Time for gay Colorado to ante up

By Todd Craig

I love card games, especially poker.  I also love poker because it makes for a good metaphor, especially when it comes to politics.

Since the gay rights movement began, we’ve been fighting an uphill battle for acceptance, understanding, and compassion.  We’ve also been fighting a mostly losing battle when it comes to politics.  Until recently, we haven’t been able to command a clear majority when it comes to gay-themed political issues.

In other words, we’ve been dealt relatively weak political poker hands to play, lacking power, face cards, and opportunities to bet big and win big.

Here in Colorado, we’ve done the smart thing.  Gay rights groups have aligned our political efforts strongly with state Democrats to target smaller races at the state and local levels to give a strong fundraising edge to gay-friendly politicians who have in turn been able to advocate and expand our rights from the ground up.

Considering that the poker hands they’ve been dealt haven’t been slam-dunks by any stretch of the imagination, they’ve had extraordinary results.  They’ve known that in politics, much like poker, if you don’t have a winning hand, your best option is to whittle away here and there and make enough progress to keep your momentum alive.

But this election coming up in November is something far different.

In case you missed the last five million Romney or Obama ads on every channel of your television, let me take a minute to tell you that there’s an election coming up in a few months, and Colorado’s purple mountains are a key battle ground that could swing the election one way or the other.

This is a big election, especially for us gays.  It represents our first big hand.

For the first time in the history of our nation we have an incumbent president and vice president who are ready, willing, and able to do something for marriage equality and expanding equal rights for gay Americans at the federal level.  The Obama, Biden, and Clinton triumvirate has done more for us than any other administration in history.  And more importantly, for the first time in history we have a president, vice-president, and secretary of state who all advocate for marriage equality.

There is no overestimating how big that reality is.

On the other hand, there’s Mitt Romney, who’s own website says that “… he will also champion a Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman.”

That’s right.  The guy wants to rewrite the Constitution to legalize discrimination against us.

Romney’s campaign is currently going all in, outraising Obama and purchasing a blitzkrieg of ads with the support of a Republican fundraising machine that’s all but declared war on the current President and his gay-friendly positions for the last four years.

So what are we doing here in Colorado?

Well the news of the month features a group called Fight Back Colorado, a group dedicated to opposing state legislators who blocked the civil unions bill last spring.

Kinda seems like small potatoes, doesn’t it?

I’ll be honest, I’m on record as being pretty lukewarm about the whole civil unions thing.  I appreciate progress, but I appreciate total equality a heckuva lot more, and civil unions are just too separate-but-equal for my liking.

And it seems to me that in the poker game of politics, we gays here in Colorado finally have a chance to make a difference, a huge difference in the biggest poker game of all, the presidential election.

We’ve finally got the face cards and the poker hand we need to win big on a national scale.

So let’s ante up.  Let’s quit playing these little games and go for the big win.  Let’s tell our political groups to aim higher and to think bigger.

Let’s think about what we can do to turn this state in Obama’s favor.

Let’s dedicate all of our money, our talent, our social networking, our media savvy, and our political muscle to try to win this swing state for Obama.  Let’s get him a second term.  Let’s allow him to nominate Supreme Court justices who are more than conservative puppets.  Let’s make the most powerful American and the leader of the free world our most powerful ally for another four years.  Let's give our first president to support marriage equality the chance to make it happen.

We don’t have to think small anymore.  This is our moon shot.  We have three queens who deserve a pair of fours.

So I’m calling on our state political groups to think big for the next four months.  I want to see One Colorado’s facebook page with its 5000-plus likes filled with reasons to vote Obama.  I want Fight Back Colorado to fight back against the Republican machine that’s playing for keeps at the national level.   This election is about going big or going home, so let’s do just that.

These groups will do a helluva lot more for Colorado’s gay community if they go all in on the national election as opposed to harboring grudges towards state legislators who beat them in last spring’s civil union debacle.  Even if they win their current focus on snagging those precious two or three seats to get civil unions passed, the whole kit and kaboodle could be lost if Romney wins and has the opportunity to write his homo hate into our nation’s Constitution.

Politics, like poker, is all about recognizing the moment.  Here’s hoping our LGBT political players make the most of our best hand ever.

Turning 40? F**k That!

By Todd Craig

A little over a year ago, I turned 40. 40 is a nasty age on paper because as I’ve discovered, every cliché about 40 happens to be mercilessly true. 40 is the age of your parents. 40 means turning the radio down instead of up, watching CBS instead of MTV, going to bed because you’re tired, and taking pride in working the crossword puzzle. 40 means losing hair in places where you want it - like on top of your head for example - and growing it places where it shouldn’t grow. Last night I plucked hairs out of the edges of my ears for Christ’s sake.

Fuck that shit.

Ten years ago, my body was nice and lean. I had a full head of hair and knew the singers of the music that everyone danced to. I made killer cd mixes, went out until mornings on the weekends, ate and drank with abandon, and never had to work out.

But then my thirties happened. I met a cute boy who was 20 and married him. We bought a house, owned a little wiener dog, adopted a baby boy, and began life together.

In fact, many of the dreams I had as a single gay man in my teens and twenties came true in my thirties. By the end of my 39th year, I was a successful gay man with a gorgeous young husband, a beautiful son, a nice suburban home, and a successful career as a middle school English teacher.

So when 40 arrived, I had a lot going for me.

Yet I dreaded 40. My impending birthday seemed like a day of reckoning that I wasn’t sure I was ready for. I kept thinking about things that I needed to do, things that I wanted to do, and trying to make sure that my last 40 years on this planet accomplished more than my first 40 years.

Why was I dreading my 40s, and what was I gonna do about it?

For me, 40 was a midlife crisis that couldn’t be solved with a new sports car, which was probably good because I didn’t have the money for one anyway.

Let the personal reflection begin.

I started off my forties with a gym membership. That tall, lean body I mentioned that I had at the start of my thirties? Yeah, somewhere between then and the end of my 39th year had seen me pack on more than fifty pounds. Part of that weight gain was due to parenthood’s endless stream of macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets; part of it was due to laziness and exhaustion that changing diapers at two in the morning necessitates. Part of that weight gain was also due to the natural slowing of my metabolism, too. But the reasons why I’d put on weight didn’t really matter as much as the so-what-the-hell-are-you-going-to-do-about-it part. All I knew was that my 32-inch waistline that I had when I was 32 had seemed to increase incrementally as my age increased. Was a 40-inch waistline at age 40 something that I wanted to have? It never occurred to me that being overweight would be a part of my being. What had occurred to me was that I wouldn't be taking my shirt off at the club anytime soon.

Again, fuck that shit.

So I made myself a promise that I would make the gym a part of my daily routine like brushing my teeth or wearing pants. I dug into the internet and found some workouts that I was pretty sure I could do. I visited my doctor and received a physical. My hubby and I pre-paid for a full year’s gym membership, and I hit the treadmill and weights with equal amounts of trepidation, embarrassment, and fervor.

I started out easy, lifting the My Little Pony weights, working my way up through Strawberry Shortcake barbells, and on past Rainbow Brite ones. I would sweat through one t-shirt doing cardio, run down and change in the locker room and sweat through another lifting weights. I became careful about the foods I ate. I quit snacking after 8 p.m. I started taking vitamins and drinking protein drinks.

After three months of work, a lot of the weight had disappeared. After a year, even I felt good about the amount of muscle that was beginning to form.

At the risk of sounding like George W. Bush, I could announce that part one of my midlife makeover, incorporating fitness into my life, was a mission accomplished.

Part two was going to be trickier. You see, I love my teaching career, and after almost two decades in the profession, I’m pretty good at what I do. My successes outnumber my failures, I’m still finding ways to keep my teaching fresh and different every year, and most importantly, I’m still finding ways to have fun teaching.

But like every English teacher ever, I was also a frustrated wannabe writer. I had gone back and forth when I enrolled in college whether or not I wanted to be a journalism major and be a writer or get an English major and be a teacher before I eventually chose to teach.

It never occurred to me that I could be both.

Sure, I’d kept journals along the way. I wrote a few poems, submitted an article or two here and there for publishing. But really, my career as a writer never existed.

So at age 40, I began to write again. Maybe it was grading all of those student essays and giving all that advice over the years, but maybe, finally, the teacher was listening to his own lessons. Whatever the reason, writing came back to me with an ease that took me by surprise. The words flowed naturally. I submitted articles, essays, and even some poetry for publishing, and I had enough success that I earned enough to buy me a nice writer’s desk and some bookcases and even claimed the title of “freelance writer” on my tax forms.

I love that I’m writing again. It’s given me a new voice and a new challenge that I had been missing out on for most of my young adult life.

Missing out on things that I want to do?

Yep, fuck that shit, too.

And it occurs to me now, at age 41, that turning 40 meant quite a few things to me. Sure, it has brought its fair share of baggage. (Author’s note: I’d REALLY like my old hairline back again.) But with that baggage also came a good bit of self-reflection and the opportunity for me to consider who I am and where I want to be going in this world.

Turning 40 also gave me the swift kick in the ass I needed to start living life on my terms.
Maybe I don’t know much about the Kardashians, and maybe I do find The Mentalist more appealing than Jersey Shore.

I’m 41 now, and it turns out that other stuff isn’t made for me.

The stuff that I’m really interested in like my family, my health, and my passions are things I have to invest myself in. And I’ve discovered that the more I invest, the more I get in return.

So if you don’t mind, I’m going to turn the music down, hit my two-drink minimum, and turn in early for the night.

Turns out I’ve got lots to do tomorrow – just as soon as I finish this crossword puzzle.

Fatherhood, Part Two

By Todd Craig

 

As I said before, the word fatherhood carries some powerful connotations with it.

 

I know this because five and a half years ago, my husband and I became parents when we adopted an infant boy, and ever since, I’ve taken on the title of father to my son.

 

Let me first say that fatherhood shapes you unlike anything else.  Things that used to be important, like which club you’d meet up at on Friday night, fade quickly into the past.  Routines and structure become more and more important.  You start doing things that only responsible adults do like shopping for life insurance, reading the nutrition labels on your grocery store items, and talking about the importance of things like keeping yesterday’s pair of Lightning McQueen underwear from hanging off the bookshelf.

 

In short, you become a dad.

 

When I was single, I would always get to that point in the relationship where you start looking long term.  I was greedy, I would tell my prospective boyfriends.  I wanted the house, the fenced yard, and kids.  I wanted a family.

 

Most of the boys I dated would echo the same thoughts, but from their mouths it always sounded more like an echo than an honest statement of desire.  How many of them felt as seriously as I did about having a family?  I don’t know. 

 

So when the man who would become my husband and I began getting serious, we talked at length of the future and of having kids; it was something we both wanted.  As our relationship evolved, so did our plans.  We soon found ourselves engaged.  We held a commitment ceremony, and we bought a house in the suburbs of Colorado Springs within two years of our first date.   The house had three bedrooms.

 

We hired an adoption agency up in Denver about six months later.

 

The agency had never worked with two dads before. They told us they only worked with fifty couples at a time and profiled couples that had been on the list the longest to prospective birth mothers first.  They told us that the average wait for a couple was approximately a year, but because we were a gay male couple, the wait time might double for us.   Undeterred, we filled out the forms that summer knowing that we could use the years of waiting to get ourselves emotionally and financially as prepared as possible.

 

Four months later in October, a birth mother picked us.

 

She gave birth on Halloween. That weekend, she asked to meet us before going through with the adoption. We met at a local restaurant. There we held this beautiful little three-day old baby boy in our arms.

 

We left without hearing a decision. We arrived home and sat on the sofa in a silent ball of emotions for a couple of hours.  We put in a DVD to kill time and fill the dead air.  It didn’t help.

 

 

Then the phone rang.  

 

We were dads.

 

We picked up our son that Sunday.  He was five days old.

 

Those first few years flew by in a blur of sleepless nights with a crying baby, and endless trips to our local Target for formula and diapers.  Life as we had known it was wiped out in a nuclear explosion called fatherhood. More than once, we would exchange what-the-hell-did-we-get-ourselves-into types of glances at hearing the 3 a.m. cries echoing down the hallway.

 

But just when we were about to snap our mental caps, our little guy started sleeping through the night.  Soon, he was growing, babbling a few words, and crawling his way straight into our hearts.

 

Now that he’s age five and a half, I find that the role of dad to this little boy has grown in significance.  He wants me to throw the football with him in the back yard; he follows me throughout the day just happy to be in my presence.  I am constantly aware of how this little boy looks up to my person, repeats the words that I say, and takes his cues from my actions.

 

He’s five and a half now.  If I’m lucky, I’ll have another twelve to thirteen years or so to teach him the things that he’ll need to be a man.  I want to instill so much into my son.  I want him to demonstrate respect.  I want him to make change for a dollar in his head.  I want him to open doors for ladies, read passionately, and laugh at his mistakes while still learning from them.  I want him to fight through the tough times, take advantage of the quiet times, and pursue his passions with undeniable enthusiasm and energy.  I want him to feel at home in nature, to stand up for the little guy, and to know the words to at least three Adele songs.  He should be able to throw a football in a tight spiral, to dance without looking too foolish, and to feel the love and support of his parents each and every day of his life.  I want him to bound out of bed like he does now, ready for life and ready for fun.  I want him to be excited for ladybugs, homemade sugar cookies, and Christmas presents – even when he’s 18.  I want him to play more board games than video games.  I want him to love his Buzz Lightyear, Woody, and Lightning McQueen toys for another ten years. After all, we have a fuck-ton of money spent on those.

 

Is all of that too much to teach to one boy?  And how in the hell did my dad do all of this? 

 

So now my husband and I find ourselves stressing things like being polite and teaching him how to open the door for others, and even though he tends to block the doorway with his little body, he gets the idea.  The highlight of my day is reading his favorite bedtime stories at night, and he loves picking out the story for the night by himself.  We get excited taking him to movies, volunteering in his classroom, and planning his birthday parties.

 

In short, fatherhood is what our lives are all about anymore.  Dance clubs, ten-dollar martinis, and tight shirts no longer exist in our world.  We may be gay dads, but it's that label of dads that defines us.

 

Recently, this was illustrated when we took a trip to Las Vegas for a convention for my husband’s work.  There’s a huge jewelry show there every year, and my husband couldn’t believe that he’d finally get to experience it for himself.

 

While we were a little nervous at leaving our son’s side for the first time in five years for the trip, it helped when we made arrangements with my parents to come down and watch him for the duration of the five-day trip.  It’s hard to be too traumatized with missing your parents when your grandparents are in town.  It probably also helps that visits from grandma and grandpa are slightly more lucrative than visits from Santa and the Easter Bunny.

 

Las Vegas proved to be a great time, however, parenthood’s talons held us in a firm grasp as we were in bed by 11:00 all but one night.

 

Our biggest expense of the trip wasn’t money for the slot machines or the poker tables; it was our trip to the Disney Outlet.

 

When we our return flight finally touched down, we arrived home late at night, well after our son’s bedtime by a long shot.   While we were tempted to sneak into his room and wake him up, we resisted the urge.  For as fun as it was being in Vegas, it sure felt good to get back home and back to being a dad. 

 

This last idea was driven home the next morning when I was woken up by a very soft kiss from a certain five-year old boy that afterwards whispered quietly into my ear, "I missed you while you weren't here, daddy!"

 

Damn.  Fatherhood is powerful stuff, but you know what?  We wouldn’t have it any other way.

Fatherhood

By Todd Craig

Fatherhood.

That’s a pretty heavy word with powerful connotations at its every utterance.  When I was a socially awkward kid growing up, fatherhood meant finding a way to both meet my father’s expectations and balance them with the reality of being a very different person from most of those expectations, primarily with my being gay.

Let me be clear, however, that my father and I have a great relationship, one that’s evolved past my failed attempts at hitting a baseball, the arguments of adolescence, my inability to grasp algebra, and my predilection for kissing guys.

So how would I go about describing my father?  Well, he’s an amazing personality.  He was born and raised, like myself, in South Dakota.  He’s first and foremost an engineer; he’s even an engineer who’s the son of an engineer.  The math, science, logic, and schematics of the profession define his very essence and give a structure and stability to his soul that many long for.

But to say that his profession defines my father would be nothing less than a disservice.

My father is also intensely competitive, and that competitive nature belies a passion for life and winning -- especially winning.  He loves winning.  It’s crazy, but I’ve seen him will himself to victory in card games based on pure chance.  I’ve seen his balky putter roll a Titleist into the cup from forty feet away just to keep the upper hand in a match play contest at the golf course.  And as a child I lost probably fifty games of Chutes and Ladders and Uncle Wiggly at his hand before I earned my first, sweet victory.

So my father is an engineer and competitor, but still, those two labels fall short of defining him. My father inherited his thick, strong frame from my Irish grandmother.  He was an athlete from the get go, which helped him succeed in both social and academic endeavors as he grew up.  I’ve heard enough stories from his army buddies and college reunions to know that he was well-liked and popular throughout his life.  In fact, my father, for all of his freakish math and science understanding, is nothing like a character from The Big Bang Theory.  He’s an innately social creature, a people person capable of striking up a conversation with anyone about any topic. He loves sharing a cold beer with his golfing buddies and loves to “hold court” with anyone who will listen to his endless supply of stories and ribald humor.

True story about my father #1:  The first boy I ever brought home to meet my parents was the boy who ended up being my husband.  I was 32, and my husband-to-be was 20 at the time.  I was insanely worried about how they would react.  You see, my husband sashays into a room.  He rocks a Coach bag, pedicured toes, and enough attitude to beat the Queen of England into submission.   My parents gave him a fair chance though, and when my father saddled up to my husband and said, “We have a city councilman who just had that surgery to become a woman,” even as my eyes rolled, I knew that the conversation had begun, and that we’d all be all right as a family.

My father probably deserved a son carved from his mold.  He deserved a son who was athletic so that he could coach him about hitting a baseball and cheer him on as he broke tackles at the homecoming game.  He deserved a son for whom math and science came easily so that he could explain all of the ins and outs of engineering school.  He deserved a son who was as comfortable in social situations as he was so that he could take him out for a beer and introduce him to his friends at the golf course.

But instead, he got me. Where my father’s body was compact and athletic, my body looked like it was built for reading X-Men comic books.  And unlike my father’s natural ability to connect with anyone, this queer, bookish, liberal arts major certainly never held onto any amount of social swagger.  Growing up, I shared little in common with Dad. Where his world consisted of numbers and designs, mine filled with books and poetry.  Where he was social and outgoing, I was painfully shy and withdrawn.  Where he appreciated beautiful women, his son ended up gay.

Despite all of these hurdles to overcome, maybe it’s a testament to my father that he still tried.  He never gave up on me, and he found ways that we soon could bond.   He taught me how to swing a golf club, and even though I never demonstrated any athletic prowess, we watched countless hours of sports together.  Some, like my Denver Broncos, I grew to enjoy as passionately as he did.

True story about my father #2:  Shortly after the reception to our wedding began to wind down, the guests all gathered in our honeymoon suite to continue with the beverages and merriment.  There sat my father “holding court” again at the front of the table, regaling my Boulder lesbians about how even though the election had already been called for Kennedy how he went out and voted for Nixon anyway because he’d be goddamned if he ever voted for a Democrat.  It would have been awkward talking politics anywhere else, but not for my old man. He’s always stood for what he believed in.

Every spring, because of my father’s influence, I watch The Masters golf tournament.  And when they play clips of Jack Nicklaus’ final major victory from 1986 as they do every year, I remember watching it live with my dad who jumped out of his La-Z-Boy recliner when Nicklaus holed his putt at the par 3 17^th to take command of the tournament at age 46.  It was a moment of greatness in the game of golf, but more importantly a moment of greatness for fathers and sons watching together everywhere as my dad and I were.  You see, Nicklaus has eschewed a professional caddie that day.  Instead his son, Jackie, carried his father’s clubs and walked side-by-side with his dad on that day of his greatest win ever.

 

Looking back, my father has instilled a number of qualities in me that I couldn’t shake even if I wanted to.  He taught me how to work hard.  He taught me how to enjoy sports, even though my aptitude for playing them never really existed.  He taught me the importance of family and friends.  He taught me that if you’re not ten minutes early, you’re fifteen minutes late.  He taught me to eat dinner at 5:00, feel free to be stubborn when you’re convinced that you’re right, and to keep cool under pressure.

True story about my father #3:  My father voted for Obama in the last election.  The Republican party, for whom my father so steadfastly supported all of his life, lost him with their arcane social policies, their backwards thinking on health care, and their lack of sane candidates.

Now all of the lessons passed my father to me are inherently priceless.  They formed me.  They continue to shape who I am as I’ve advanced throughout adulthood.  And five years ago, they became the foundation of something far more important.

You see, that’s when my husband and I became fathers with the adoption of our infant son, and when I was given the task of trying to be a dad to a little boy of my own.

And it has occurred to me on a near daily basis that I have a pretty huge legacy to live up to when it comes to being a dad.

Why I'm glad Colorado's Civil Union Bill failed

By Todd Craig

Lots has been said and written about Colorado's civil unions fight that took place in the legislature this spring. While both sides rallied and the wheels of politics spun faster than even Twitter could keep up, hopes rose and subsequently crashed for Colorado's gay citizenry with equal speed as Republican Speaker of the House Frank McNulty politically maneuvered to kill civil unions in our state.

Even though I was optimistic when the bill was introduced, and even though I would have been happy to see the bill pass, I now find myself kind of glad it didn't. Here are three reasons why I don't feel overly bad about the failure of Colorado's civil unions law.

Civil unions, while a step closer in the evolution of equality, aren't marriage, and settling for anything less than total equality is, well, settling for less. I know what you're going to say to this, “It's about gaining rights.” And believe me, I'm all for getting more rights. I am a gay man, a husband for the last seven years, and together we're fathers to an adorable five year old son. We have a stack of legal paperwork about the thickness of the Denver Yellow Pages that we had to buy and notarize over the course of months just to get the same legal rights and protections as someone who naturally gets them after a flight to Vegas to be married by an Elvis impersonator over the course of a drunken weekend. But, I can't in good conscience look the love of my life in the eye and ask him to enter into a civil union with me. That's gay. I want the rights, sure, but I'm greedy. I want the word marriage, too. This point was made in the ruling of the Prop 8 overturn being upheld by the California Supreme Court when they wrote in the decisions that:

“We need consider only the many ways in which we encounter the word 'marriage' in our daily lives and understand it, consciously or not, to convey a sense of significance. We are regularly given forms to complete that ask us whether we are “single” or “married.” Newspapers run announcements of births, deaths, and marriages. We are excited to see someone ask, “Will you marry me?”, whether on bended knee in a restaurant or in text splashed across a stadium Jumbotron. Certainly, it would not have the same effect to see “Will you enter into a registered domestic partnership with me?”.  Groucho Marx's one-liner, “Marriage is a wonderful institution ... but who wants to live in an institution?” would lack its punch if the word marriage were replaced with the alternative phrase.”

Long story short, if the Supreme Court of California recognizes that the word marriage is as important as the rights that come with such a union, why should Colorado's LGBT community ignore that same importance?

The fight for civil unions earned energized Colorado again. The history of gay rights in our state has definitely had its ups and downs. But for every defeat our community has suffered, like Amendment 2 in the early '90s, there has been an opposite reaction of greater force in the years following with the trend is going in our direction more often than not. Even when the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman was written into the state constitution and a civil unions measure was defeated at the ballot box as recently as 2006, the fight for equal rights didn't end; it grew stronger. The following year in 2007, then Governor Ritter signed the second-parent adoption bill into law granting same-sex couples the right to adopt. And two years after that in 2009, Colorado's legislature passed the designated beneficiaries law that addressed some of the discrimination that Colorado's LGBT community faced. If history repeats itself, as it often does, Colorado's LGBT citizenry and their growing numbers of supporters should be able to move forward in their quest for equal rights despite such a defeat.

And tying to that last point – I'll call this the Obi-Wan Kenobi factor - which is based on the famous last line he uttered before being struck down by Darth Vader's light saber in Star Wars - “You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

Essentially, the fight for civil unions earned us more allies. We all have seen the polls that more than half of Americans are in favor of gay marriage, and as times change, more and more attitudes based on discrimination, homophobia, and fear are being left behind in the dust. As we have grown more visible and more real to the the world, so has understanding grown. As state after state and country after country around the world take steps to provide equal rights and protections to gays, lesbians, and their families, the cries and panicked screams of our opponents ring more and more hollow and out-of-touch. The world doesn't end when you give gays the right to marry. Institutions aren't harmed. Families and love grow stronger while our rich and diverse culture grows even more rich and diverse. The bottom line is that with each one of these fights – even losing ones – the gay stories are shared, understanding and knowledge is gained, and our number of allies grows. After all, it wasn't long after our loss that Judy Shepard and our Vice President convinced the President of the United States to come out in favor of gay marriage. With that announcement came magazine covers, another surge of publicity to our cause, and more allies, most recently with an endorsement from the NAACP. In the end, we may have lost a battle in the legislature, but we gained more positive press, more supporters, and the President of the United States in a whirlwind of pro-gay marriage spirit.

In the end, should civil unions have passed? Probably. Should we be bitter that it didn't? It would be understandable. But ultimately, the civil union law is dead, for now at least. Now it's time to move on and move forward. We need to marshal our energy, money, and resources from now until the November election. For if we see this loss as nothing but a loss, then nothing will be gained. If we see the death of civil unions as a lesson from which to learn, grow, and become stronger than we were the day before, then like with Obi-Wan Kenobi, even when we lose, we win. After all, Colorado's gay and lesbians deserve nothing less than the biggest win of all: total equality.