This is the one about the kid.

Posted July 28th, 2008 by Mike Lawson

Yesterday afternoon I finished reading The Kid by Dan Savage. [Amazon Link]  The book, which is the story of sex-advice columnist Dan Savage’s journey into parenthood as a gay man in a committed relationship, brought me closer to the idea of starting my own family…then pushed me away…then brought me back…and I don’t know where I stand right now.

From the teaser:

In The Kid, Dan Savage shares his views on what it means to be gay and raising a child in America today.  In the process, he takes his usual scathingly funny potshots at everything from growing up gay to committing to a younger man, from the gay left to the religious right, homophobia…love…getting fat…getting married…getting older…and the very human desire to have a family.

And that “desire” mentioned above really hits the nail on the head.  Ever since I age 17/18 when I really put a name on my sexuality and accepted myself for what I truly am, I’ve kind of thought that the idea of my own family was out of question…but now homos all over are adopting and surrogating, and that “desire” is something that I could truly fulfill one day.

If you’re a gay, and you’ve thought about starting a family, I recommend this book.  Savage is one of the few people out there that is articulating those feelings we all have but can’t figure out how to say.

A quick excerpt:

Sometimes, late at night, I’d sit up and worry that we might be adopting to prove a point.  Were we doing this because we could?  On some level, I think, we were.  It wasn’t the sole reason, but even if we were only doing this to prove something to the world or to ourselves, there are worse reasons to have kids.  Straight people all over the world have kids for those much worse reasons every day.  They fall down drunk and get up pregnant.

The same impulse that drives grown gay men to walk around holding hands could be pushing us toward this.  For same-sex couples, taking a lover’s hand is almost never an unself-conscious choice.  You have to think about where you are, whether you’re safe, and you have to look.  By the time you determine you’re safe, you’re not even sure you want to hold hands anymore.  The genuine moment has passed, but you’ve invested so much energy and angst that you can’t not take your lover’s hand.  You wind up holding and the only reason you take your lover’s hand is to prove that you can.

Wondering whether we were doing this “just to prove we can,” made us wonder about our motives.  In that hesitation, the decision to adopt become more than “Let’s have kids.”  Public displays of affection for gays and lesbians are political acts, and what could be a larger display of affection than two of us adopting a kid together.