Balance of Power

    No this will not be a post about politics  or any  current world events that would make any sane thinking person to the conclusion that the world has lost it's collective mind. No...the loss of sanity I would like to talk about today is much closer to home. Finding the balance of power within your relationship....be that married, dating, domestically partnered, or any combination there of.....dividing up responsibilities such as who stays home, who pays the bills, who cleans what, who gets the kids to school can be more than a little crazy making....and a constant source of relationship negotiation.

Being both Gay and a stay at home dad, I think a lot of people may get a skewed idea that gay couples struggle both more and less than others do in this area. There are those who are still so hidebound in their notion of gender roles that anyone who stays home gets labeled as "the mom", with the working parent as "the dad"...and then, on the other end of the spectrum are the people who's only exposure to gay couples is on TV. To them we are all independently wealthy enough to afford nannies, have immaculate homes, and dress our whole family like an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog, all the while maintaining our perfect gym bodies. Yeah, right....as if...my tummy begs to differ.

Nope, we struggle the same as the next couple does with all the same issues as any other couple and being two men or two women does not alter the dynamics of coupledom much. Which is probably why one of the fights I am most likely to have with my husband is about "who" did "what" all day(or did not get done)....and what we think we are entitled to as a result. This can spark the flames of argument like nothing else.

 Sound like a recipe for disaster? Is it a sign of relationship problems?....pour yourself a cup'o joe and lets discuss...

The Hardest Question

Answering questions about being gay and being parents is part of our everyday experience on Gay Family Values. We have been open books about nearly every part of our lives. We have covered, coming out, bullying, our pasts(pasts both separately and together), adoption, politics, parenting, relationship issues, sex...you name it and someone has asked us a question about it. And for anything we do get asked, we have done our best to answer within reasonable boundaries  Now... we are not experts in any of these topics but most of the time you don't have to be, you just have to be a good ear and a shoulder to lean for someone who may not have anyone else to talk to about the issue at hand. But needless to say, we get A LOT of questions both from gay and straight people alike.

I think it's funny that the religious right always think that gay men are all about sex 24/7. If that was true, you would think that would be a large percentage of the inquiries we receive, but it is hardly ever asked about. Not never.... but very rarely. Instead, people most often want to know about issues that relate to love and family. And among those, there is always one question for which I have the hardest time answering and...no, it is not, "what is the meaning of life?"...it us actually:

"How do I find someone to love?"

Indeed...how does someone who stumbled into it himself answer a question like that?

Dan SavageConversations On Monogamy

A good friend sent me a video this morning that I would like to share with you all as today's topic of discussion...and being as how my last few posts have been kind of heavy I thought it would be good to take on something different and something that likely we will all have very different points of view on. The video  titled "Why Monogamy Is Ridiculous", a part of the Big Think series, and features Dan Savage offering his views on the need to rethink love and commitment away from an all or nothing stance to something more flexible and equal to both sexes. No stranger to controversy, Dan Savage says what he thinks and even though this video clip is only two minutes and forty seconds long, it is packed with enough Dan Savage goodness to light the comment section on fire....just like it has already done on YouTube.

Now, you may think you know where I am on this issue...but you may be surprised. The issue of monogamy is much more complex than it appears on the surface and touch's on issues of gender and sexual equality in addition to fidelity and so much more. So watch the video after the jump and fire up the keyboards...because I'm sure we are all going to have a lot to say.

What Makes A Marriage?

Is it a piece of paper?...A word?... Is it just the time you've been together?...I've been thinking about this a lot today...

Rewind back in time to last night...Jay and I were watching a gay themed movie recommended to us by a friend. The movie was awful, a crime against humanity in fact....so much so that I will not mention it's name for fear you will feel compelled to rent it and see just how bad it was. Needless to say, it was one of those movies designed more to create multiple opportunities to show off the actors butts than to create any shred of a believable plot. The movie, which hails from China, suggests that all women are merely accessories to men, that any man can be seduced into becoming gay, that all gay men have a secret heterosexual side,...and my least favorite theme...gay love ends in tragedy. After the movie was over, Jay and I were completely dumbfounded  and angry that we had wasted the time watching it. However, it did lead us to talk...about what we find sexy, fantasy, and attraction...and it was here that the second most horrible gay film of all time turned a bad night worse...

Just a Phase...My Firsts

How many times have we heard that phrase coming out? ..."its just a phase"...The implications being, that you decided be be gay on a whim. Like dying your hair bright pink and developing a taste for 70's punk. This off handed comment, often made by parents struggling to deal with there child coming out to them, completely ignores the soul searching and inner turmoil that we have to go through to accept ourselves let alone find the courage to tell those closest to us. It also ignores the fact that being gay is as much a part of us as the color of our eyes or the frustrating fact that I will never be any taller than 5'9". It hard for those around us to accept that we really thought about this....tortured ourselves over it...and that its the naked, unalterable truth. Its so mush easier to dismiss it as a changeable facet of our personality, like deciding to dye your hair.