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Keywords:: Isocrat Authors, Scot

The Cliff Notes

My husband and I are, first and foremost, the parents of twins in elementary school. We have been married for about 13 years, together for about 16 years, having met when I was in my late teens. We have, in fact, not even had another boyfriend and have been, stereotypes be damned, 100% monogamous for all those wonderful years.

I was born and raised in a suburb of Salt Lake City Utah, into a robust, large, and largely LDS family, the youngest of 8 children. I grew up in a strict private christian school. It was a very different environment than most experienced, with prayer, Bible study, and a strictly enforced moral code, but I very much loved the experience and appreciate it to this day (probably because I never stepped out of line and got the paddle). Somehow, I have received a BS, a MS, and a PhD in a sciency field. To be clear, though on isocrat.org I look a lot at social science and psychological research, my expertise is more towards biology and chemistry.

I am a Christian by culture. I enjoy Christianity. The Bible, its imagery, and ideas have a comfortable familiarity that goes all the way back to kindergarten for me. I also very much appreciate the ethics presented by Christianity, not that we don’t have our disagreements here and there. I’ve settled on being a Christian-y Agnostic.

The Long Version:

• The Melodramatic Tale Gays Tell - Yet another coming out story.
• Birds of a Feather - Finding others like me, and yet not at all like me.
• Something to Fix - Realizing something had gone terribly wrong.
• Escaping the "Gay Lifestyle" - Falling in love.
• Public Vows - Why marriage was important for us.
• Heading Home - Deciding to become parents.
• The New World - A quantum leap.
• Activism - What I'm doing here, now.

The Melodramatic Tale Gays Tell

I knew I was gay by about age 14. More accurately, I knew I came out of puberty attracted only to males. For months I convinced myself that didn’t mean I was gay because I wasn’t an effeminate kid. It turns out that’s not a necessary qualification.

This fact nauseated and frightened me. I, like most of my peers, had used “gay” as a pejorative and thought the orientation alone a substantial sin. I was also pretty sure I was the only gay person within a quarter of a continent. Still, even if I did know another gay person (turns out I did, but had no idea) I’d not have approached them. I was the sort of kid who would never have actively come out in any way to anyone without telling my parents first.

For about a year I tried on my own to change. I didn’t ask for anyone’s help, but in prayer. This was the worst year of my life, thankfully; it's been up from there.

I did the average thing. I worried myself physically ill. My parents kept taking me to doctors who could find nothing wrong, and I’d admit to nothing. I had bouts of euphoria thinking I felt even an atom of attraction diminish. I then felt confusion and self-disgust, when it always returned like a tide.

I wondered why all my friends escape puberty attracted to girls and I got what most girls end up with. What did I do wrong, and so on… I thought fondly of suicide, but never attempted it. I prayed and prayed for it to pass. It didn’t pass.

Then one June day my parents told me they were going on vacation, and I told myself I’d not let them go without confessing. I’d never kept such a secret from them before, and felt guilty for that alone, and was afraid, with them gone, I may not merely think of suicide.

What would happen once they knew the ugly secret about their boy? I suspected I’d either become homeless or they’d let me stay on the condition I get treatment. I’d have welcomed the treatment.

In retrospect, I’ve never been more disrespectful to my parents than in my assuming only those two options. We never had really talked about what being gay would mean to my parents, and I was quite anti-gay myself and assumed they were too. But I was very wrong, and am still very sorry to this day (At least I paid for it in a wasted year).

Anyway, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t say it; I could hardly think it. I excused my backing out by thinking I didn’t want to ruin their trip, and so I let my dad leave, saying nothing. When it was time for my mom to join him, a day later, I stayed in my room.

She came in and said she wouldn’t leave unless I told her what was wrong. I tried to make something up but she wouldn’t believe me. I broke. I started to weep, and she, understandably, panicked. “What is it?” “Whatever it is we can fix it.” “Tell me, please!”

I said nothing. But after a couple guesses that were way off (Did I get a girl pregnant? Nope), she finally came to, “Are you gay?” Thank goodness she could say it, because I was simply not able. I, instead, forced out a yes.

She calmed me down; assured me all was okay with her, that she loved and supported me regardless. I'd never felt such gratitude, and disbelief at the same time. I felt that fear rise again, though, as she went to call my dad. I tried to listen in but couldn’t tell what he was saying.

Then my mom said, “Your dad wants to talk to you.” I hesitated, then took the phone and that horrible year was over. He told me he loved me, that it didn’t matter to him if his son was gay.

After about a month I could finally form the words, “I’m gay”. So? Now what?

To my surprise, my parents didn’t want me to change. They actually asked when and how I’d find other gay kids. They still expected a normal teenage life for me, dating and all. I didn’t know, but really didn’t want to know another gay person just yet. I still had some personal issues to work through as to the morality of homosexuality. I was still grieving the loss I incorrectly assumed in my future, as a husband and father. Did I still want to change?

This was not easy, but it was not traumatic. I worked through it at my own pace, and got to the end and felt satisfied with the results. I could live with how I am; I could rightly follow my nature like the other kids.

But before I could do that, I needed to tell my family, my largely devout LDS family. I didn’t want an awkward surprise for them, to hear of it by rumor. When told, some reactions were clearly negative, others gratefully ambivalent, and no negative reaction lasted. One sister, when told I had something important to tell her, also assumed I had gotten a girl pregnant and was relieved that I was “only” gay.

Then there were my friends. I had a strong circle of friends, and wasn’t too worried about them, but it was still tough. Though we were all very close, they had no idea. How would they treat me differently? The worst I got was an “As long as you don’t hit on me”. No worries there...

Now I was out, and, in retrospect, the worst part, for myself, was all the time I wasted in worry and procrastination. But I was not near out of the woods.

Birds of a Feather

I knew I was gay at 14. I’d told most everyone I cared about by the age of 16. Now, I was 17 and hadn’t yet even met another gay kid (knowingly). I can analyze to the point of doing nothing.

I finally felt I was ready, and so I think I actually looked in the phone book under “gay”, of all things. I somehow found the Stonewall Center, a GLBT community center in downtown Salt Lake City. They had a meeting for gay youth to socialize and talk through their problems each Wednesday.

I’ve never been more anxious for a Wednesday.

When it finally came, I found the place a half-hour early, walked in, and sat down in an empty room filled with tacky pro-gay posters. As I sat fidgeting, kids began trickling in. Then a group of kids from my own high school wandered in and sat opposite me in our circle of chairs.

I didn’t really know them; we traveled in different circles. Still, I had visions of them outing me to everyone. Of course, they had the same fear registering on their faces.

I could relax. In this case, if we were both afraid, we both had nothing to fear.

After whispering for about 5 minutes, one of them came over and nervously asked if I knew what this place was. Wasn’t it obvious? I’ve got some gaydar stealth coating or something? I wasn’t ready to say “I’m gay” to strangers, and so joked I was there for a hiking club. Anyway, they were visibly troubled by my answer; began stammering. They were trying to think of how to get this wayward student body officer, who oddly couldn’t read the pro-gay posters around him, to leave before the meeting began.

Definitely not my best attempt at jocular breaking of ice, but it worked; they laughed after I came clean, and suddenly I had more friends in my life. I’d soon become comfortable around these folks, though the place was as queer as Cher’s duvet cover, just as I had become comfortable with being gay myself, which can be two very different things.

That group was a great help in my life. Just to sit in that room each week was a blessing. Just to talk to others like me and have others understand exactly where I was coming from was invaluable.

I now knew gay people, and things were going great, but I was soon to be violently blindsided by gay politics, and sociology, about which I knew next to nothing.

Something to Fix

Slowly I began to notice something was wrong with the youth group; I had been phenomenally fortunate. Many were there secretly. Their parents had no idea, and, when some found out, the kids would often just disappear, sometimes moved to relatives in rural areas. Some were homeless, runaways or kicked out. In short, most all of them were hurt deeply by the people they loved most and it showed, whereas my primary antagonist was myself.

I was attracted to one kid, got to know him a bit and he asked me out. I consider him my first real date (the rest being luckless girls, who could never figure out why I’d no interest in them). Over the course of a couple conversations I came to find he’d been living alone in the city for a couple years, kicked out of his small-town home when his LDS parents found he was gay--tough “love”.

He was, of course, damaged.

To my great surprise, by about the 3rd official date, he started pushing me for sex, and I kept resisting. People had sex with those they were just dating? 3 dates?!

When I came out, my parents accepted me, but still expected me to be sexually chaste, as did I. But I didn’t get it. He was a kid starved of affection and he’d settle for its easy imitation if he could get it. And why not? He was a damned perverted addict anyway, right? He was ejected from his family, from his culture. He took his religious morals as a package deal and if that package said he couldn’t follow his attraction, he’d let it all go.

Finally, one night I went to pick him up from his tiny apartment, and he was clearly drunk. He made another advance. At the very second he could tell I was rejecting it once more he flipped out; started crying. He began telling me how he hated his parents and his life; he told me about all the men he’d been with. He resented his church, blaming them for his parent’s actions. He went out at night looking for closeted LDS “family” men, even bishops, for quick sex. He told me that it never satisfied him, and what some of those “family” men did to him, seemingly enjoying my shock.

And I was shocked; I’d no idea the world had such a side.

Just as I started to ask why was he telling me this, he turned on me. He told me he’d “wasted” so much time on me when all he wanted was sex; he said he knew men couldn’t love each other. He’d apologize and lash out in the same breath. He basically said he wanted to do to me, the naive kid from a loving home, what had been done to him. He never said “AIDS” but it was made pretty clear that disease was part of it.

His life had become an act of revenge.

I quickly went from sympathy to fear and tried to leave. He tried to stop me. Even though I was more than able to overpower him, there is little like feeling that someone wants to rape you. As I squeezed by him in his cramped apartment, he grabbed my neck and gave me a full kiss on the mouth. I cringed; my first ‘real’ kiss. He smiled a drunken smile, and I swear I could see a bit of blood on his teeth, as though he'd bit his lip.

I ran, and never talked to him again; I lost my nerve. Is that what being gay means? Do I have AIDS now? From a kiss (Yes, I was young and stupid)?! Did all my new gay friends live like that?

I didn’t return to the Stonewall Center or interact with another gay person that entire summer and into the fall. About 6 months later I gathered the courage to return. I was isolated again and thought I could put this episode behind me. But I quickly learned I could not.

I entered the Youth Group meeting much the same way I did when I first found it, meek and nervous. In came the kids. I was grateful my “friend” was not among them. I found some familiar faces and asked about him. I was told he slit his wrists and ankles about a week after that night. I never told any of them what had happened.

I was floored; I hadn’t considered that being a possibility. But, to my shame, I wasn’t really surprised.

I knew he was the most psychologically damaged person I’d ever met. He did all but say “I want to die.” Today I know I should have known, and there were steps I could have taken to ensure he’d be okay. But I didn’t take them. I instead went home and felt scared, insulted, hurt, and sorry for myself for being gay, once more.

I have tried to think, “I was just a kid. He was trying to hurt me. He was sick. His parents and religion did it to him.” Still, none of that really matters. One group may have made the first horrible choice by tossing a child, alone into a city, but then another group, my group, made the horrible choice of not catching him. To this day this event causes me sometimes to act irrationally and make enemies in both groups.

That is the most significant failing of my life. Over the years I’ve tried to make up for it, with my involvement in the gay community and helping others going through that tough time. This event explains a lot of why this site is here. But it’s never really enough to make me feel better about it, because I will never help that kid and it will never change what I didn’t do that night.

At the least, the obsession to repair the past can motivate you into action, even if your deeds will never do what you reflexively hope them to do, and actually repair the past.

It's sadly ironic that my friend was trying to do the same futile thing, along with so many other gays like him out there.

Escaping the "Gay Lifestyle"

Now I was a gay kid on a mission. I started going to Quaker meetings that were only meant to find ways to keep gay kids from suicide. I stopped looking for a partner, and started going to the youth group hoping to fix this pervasive looming problem with gay society. That’s not egotistical, right?

It didn’t work out too well. I was already getting guff for being “straight acting”. I couldn’t muster a lisp, and it took constant vigilance to keep a wrist limp. Ironically, my innate mannerisms caused some to discriminate. Those familiar with bigotry can be too quick to take it up (and can’t say I never have).

Anyway, once I started advocating abstinence until lifelong monogamy, I made a good number of enemies. Being anti-sex, in any way, can come across as being anti-homosexual, especially to those gay kids who’ve bought into their culture’s bias against homosexuality as being only about sex, and have treated it as though it was an addiction to sex.

I was about to give up the Stonewall Center for the Quakers, but it was friends and family night there and my parents wanted to go and I wanted them to speak (they’d be 1 of 2 sets of parents there, out of about 60 greatly dejected kids). One of my close friends came with us as well.

There, that night, a very handsome stranger caught my eye. I couldn’t pay attention to much but him at first until I realized he must be someone’s straight friend. I put him out of my mind and went on with the meeting.

But he wasn’t anyone’s straight friend. He had just heard of the youth group that morning. He was another gay man on the verge of doing something drastic, and he had come to the Stonewall Center as a last resort. He was back from his LDS mission, had just broke off an engagement, his father was an LDS Bishop, and he was gay.

It turns out he noticed me too, but thought I was the straight friend, and my friend was the gay child of my parents. Anyway, we, two gay men at a group for gays, were immediately attracted to each other but both were sure the other was as straight as an arrow.

Thank goodness he figured it out. Fortunately, my mom had mentioned my high school, which it just so happened his cousin had attended also. He found my last name in her yearbook, and called through all those sharing it in the Salt Lake valley (I was flattered). He finally reached and talked to my mom, actually, for about an hour.

Once I got home, she wouldn’t stop talking about this kid, that “straight” guy (to this day she very proudly tells everyone she brought us together). I hesitated a couple hours, and called him back. Once I got a feel for his wonderful personality, I, in one of the rare impulsive acts of my life, invited him out.

I told myself I was simply trying to reach him before my perceived gay menace did. But I think I knew even then, if anything was meant to be, this was it.

And it was. We hit it right off. Our morals matched, and personalities, though very different, clearly complimented each other. We’ve never been separated since, and never have we been with anyone else, and I dare say we never will. It was love at second sight.

That was about 16 years ago, and each day makes me more and more grateful for that night, the night that led to our union and our family and especially our children, to everything on which happiness hangs. Not many couples are as fortunate as we’ve been in being able to build what we’ve built, gay or straight, and I feel that blessing keenly each day I return home from work.

Public Vows

After over a year of dating, we began “shacking up”. At the time, I’d never really heard of gay men having any sort of public commitment ceremony, but I still wish we had waited until after getting hitched. Regardless, we already had eloped, in our own way. We made those promises, already were committed to each other and no one else, and we couldn’t wait for something we didn’t expect (I'm practicing my excuses for when I explain to my boys why they should wait here).

I believe it was one of my friends who brought it up first, asking us when we’d get married; then soon after most everyone was asking (something in the news?). At first I wondered why it would even get mentioned, if it wasn’t legally binding? Now, that seems dense. It’s easy to think a marriage is mainly about two people, but the families have a big stake in keeping unions intact, and making these promises in public, even without law, goes a long way to comfort them, and solidify the bonds.

I certainly wasn’t against it, but I wasn’t sure it was needed either. One of the blessings (and curses) of being gay in Utah then was that you were a bit of an outsider to your culture. We weren’t pressured by our society into following many norms once we broke the no-gay norm (family, is a different story…), and we could regard the reasons for them through eyes regular folks could not, and more flexibly decide if they were for us. I think this helped make values like monogamy, mutual sacrifice, and so on more our cherished values, what we chose, because we found the value in them; it wasn't simply assumed into us. So we got to and had to work out the reasons for public ceremony.

Could it be too offensive to some of our family? We know where we stand, and so why a ceremony? Do we really want to spend all that money? (No bride, so who pays? We do.)

Around this time I had the most vivid and life-clarifying dream I’ve ever had. It was a simple dream. I found myself years in the future, and my husband and I had split up (just one of those facts in a dream you know without knowing why). I'd found another partner, and we were entering a restaurant. There, seated and eating, was Rob with another guy.

I said hi, we exchanged small talk, laughed, I shook his date’s hand, and my partner and I sat down to eat. That was it, and there was nothing. No emotion between Rob and I. I felt nothing for him; I loved my new partner. Rob was just some guy I once dated, and we both were in love with and happy with someone else. Funny how dreams can make you feel what you’d never feel, and yet teach you a lesson about yourself.

There was no emotion in that dream, save for the knowledge that we were both happy and in love with another, but that’s exactly what made it a nightmare. I woke my self up sobbing; a hysterical mess over loosing him, loosing his family, my family’s lose of him, and so on. That’s been the only time a dream has ever affected me like that, and seemed so real. Once I got my bearings, I was immensely thankful to find him next to me, and I grabbed him and held him tight, probably too tight. He just had to put up with being horribly confused until I composed myself.

We’d been passively planning our ceremony, but that’s when I really knew it was the right thing, for us. I’d rather be tied to him, happy or miserable or indifferent, than happy with someone else, and private promises just would not do, too easily annulled. Marriage is just not only about love. Furthermore, it was clear that, while our relationship was great, its foundation was not as broad and robust as possible, not enough for family (his, mine, or, eventually, ours).

So we decided to tie the knot.

The invitations went out. We sent them only to those we thought would come, and those we felt obligated to at least inform, hoping not to offend anyone needlessly (After the wedding I got a stern talking to from some of the more conservative relatives we’d left out, assuming they’d be offended at the invitation alone; “too pessimistic” is the story of my being gay).

The morning of the ceremony we had a breakfast at the local club where I grew up swimming and playing golf (certainly a first for them). It was with all our close family and fiends. I think I cried through most of it, as I went around the tables thanking everyone for being there for us that day and all the many days past.

That evening we had the ceremony at my parent’s home (still wanted to save some money...). To our surprise, we only had a couple no-shows. The house and yard were packed, and it meant so very much. So many great people: my amazing parents; my buddies from my youth; my grandfather, the man who baptized me; my soon-to-be in-laws; too many wonderful people to list. I knew I’d been greatly blessed, and seeing them there emphasized the weight of what we were about to do.

It then came time and we stood up in front of our minister, with everyone gathered around. The minister spoke just long enough to quell the nerves, as we stood anxious across from each other; it almost felt like I was seeing him again for the first time. We began by making all those many critical promises, our voices hardly clear under the emotion. I gave him my ring, and he gave me his, so in whatever choices we make, the other is right there, always considered. We were then finally given the okay to pull each other close, and we were joined in a way in which we’d never been before. I couldn’t have anticipated how important that act turned out to be, as our relationship was new again, larger and stronger in just one day.

Secondarily but important also, our family and friends were there, and heard every word of what we promised. They saw our faces; that we meant it, for better or worse, and they could now hold us to it. They could and can count on us.

Heading Home

We had both always wanted to be fathers. I think we both actually always knew we would be, but for the first half of our union, all that seemed impossible.

We moved to and were living in California, and assumed we would never return to “backwards”, “repressive” Utah. This was a very odd, somewhat difficult, though important time in our lives. We were away from the familiar, and away from family. I was stressed with graduate school and he with work, but it was during this time we really refined our marriage. Also, during this time I’d go months without ever realizing we were “gay” (the sort with social consequences), such was the climate where we lived.

I had just finished up a MS, and was thinking of going on with a PhD there. But, at some point, we looked up and saw what was once hard to imagine had become commonplace--gay couples were raising children everywhere. The scales were tipped. A severe case of nesting hit us both, realizing a destiny implied to be near impossible was always there, waiting for us to be ready.

And we were urgently ready.

Suddenly, our great place in California, 10 minuets from the beach, didn’t look so hot. We knew we’d want our family around, want our children to grow up with their grandparents and their 35 cousins (We are from LDS families).

Suddenly Utah wasn’t “backwards”, it was the place holding all our fond memories of childhood. Utah seemed family friendly again (and, despite the politics, Utahns are largely so friendly, even towards our family). It’s where we knew we should raise our children, and in a matter of weeks we sold our house and headed home.

But it turned out we jumped the gun. We moved back too soon. We were “gay” again, reminded repeatedly by the local politics that we were less than them. Gay rights became far more important, and I regret we had neglected it for years.

We first planed to adopt. But we got to Utah just after a law passed making it impossible for “unmarried” (gay) couples in Utah to do just that. There are so many children in need of homes that they could not stop single people from adopting, and the law stops no single gay man or woman from adopting and many do. But we, as a couple, could not.

The New World

We eventually decided we should look for an option other than a Utah adoption. While we could do it with only one of us as a legal parent, it seemed and seems we both should be legally bound to the children we’d be raising, for both practical reasons such as health insurance and emotional reasons, and so we found an option where that would be possible.

From here, I must be discrete for a couple reasons. If you want to know how it’s done exactly, there’s a lot of info on the different options on the web (Related isocrat.org article).

I’ll say as much as I can, though, as I’d hope to do my bit to explain to childless gays and lesbians what it’s like (not only for their interest in becoming parents, but for their understanding of, for example, the gay fathers they might advise to “just leave your wife”). Besides, it is what I like to go on and on about most.

From the time we figured out what we were doing, to the birth of our boys, it was just over 2 years. These were two very amazing and trying years. We had setbacks that mark this period near the top in stress and sadness; we leaned on each other and they passed. But we also had joys that easily make all stress and sadness seem trivial.

It’s hard to explain, but, before our boys had life by anyone’s definition, we fell in love with them, whoever they would be (or even how many). As the process progressed, our lives became more and more about inevitable them. We turned a guest room into a nursery, way too soon. We painted their bookshelves five shades of blue until we thought it was right, and bought the rocking chair that would become our best semi-inanimate friend.

And we waited, and waited, our whole world suspended in anticipation.

Then, finally, one summer’s night came and went, and the next sun I saw might as well have been an entirely new sun, one that had an aspect I’d never known. The whole world, in fact, may as well have been replaced; everything, everyone was changed. We were the parents of two beautiful baby boys, twins.

My world was suddenly their world; what I once owned, I now rented. I had a career I respected, but it became just another thing I do for them, until I can go home to see them. My life was suddenly a cog in their life.

My parents, now their grandparents. My marriage, our marriage, was suddenly their family, and all those promises we made became promises made to them as well. We named them and they named us. I became “Papa”, and to remember what it was to not be a father became akin to remembering another’s life.

Everything changed. Years had been building to that moment, meant for that moment, and then it was a quantum leap. I’ve never felt so amazed, surrendered and determined at once, than when I first saw them.

I thought I knew all about love; I thought I knew what my parents felt for me. But I didn’t know a parent’s love, and it knocked us silly.

Much has happened since then. There are about 4 months I don’t quite remember. If one of our boys wasn’t up at night, it seemed the other was. We’d walk them over what seemed to be miles each night through our home. That was the only time in my life I’ve accidentally fallen asleep (sitting in a chair, chatting with guests, no less).

Still, every infant I see even today can’t help but make me think of those sleepless months fondly. I remember watching them kick and babble, and being brought to tears with their beauty, with what they meant, with how powerless and strong they made me at once. I remember breathing in time with them, as I’d lay blissfully trapped, as they’d nap on my chest. It was a wonderful, if not dream-like period.

The years since have flown by too fast. Each phase of their childhood seems to pass before I can grasp it fully. But the joys are replaced with joys: their first smile, their first words, their first book read. They learned to walk, talk, count, share, and on and on. We learned right along with them.

Today, they are becoming my little kids. They aren’t babies anymore, and they’ve left toddlerhood behind. I can now see hints of the men they’ll be on their innocent little faces; it’s wonderful and scary to think of how quickly they’re growing. They’re already planning their careers, “lumber jack” and “mailman or scientist”. It seems to me they couldn’t have more different personalities, but that too is a treat.

We’re teaching them how to read now, do simple math, and I’m answering innumerable “why” questions, some of which go far beyond my scientific knowledge and/or my philosophical expertise. They love swimming, and playing in our yard; they love their dog, their friends and family, and, now, their school. They very much love their grandparent, and they are very happy grandparents at that (I think they’d written us off as a source for grandkids). I know I’ve gotten off on my favorite tangent here and a bit too emotional, but, simply, our boys are our two greatest joys, motivators, and responsibilities.

One last thing here. My Rob, Dad, stays home with them, and I couldn’t be more grateful for what he does for us all. In just this week, at writing this, I’ve come home to homemade peach pie, chili sauce, raspberry jam, “twinkies”, and I’m sure I’m forgetting something. He keeps our home cozy, clean, and welcoming, and takes our boys on all sorts of excursions. I take care of them in the mornings, letting him sleep in, and I’m the main play toy at night, but he’s there with them near all the time. I am eternally grateful (and jealous).

Activism

I am somewhat ashamed to admit, for my falling out with the gay community described above, I have had little to do with gay activism in my life, on whole. I always was willing to help one on one, but I stayed away from the political factions. It wasn't until our boys were born that suddenly gay rights seemed important again, as rights between me and my spouse directly affect the rights of our children and many children in similar families. It has a big impact on such things as inheritance and health insurance. I've been glad, though, to find the gay community has changed a lot while I was gone, and is much healthier and less inwardly combative. I'm sure I've changed to be a bit more agreeable too.

But when we threw our hat in the ring we went all out. For me this site, isocrat.org, is another embodiment of that desire to do something for that worthwhile cause.

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isocrat > scot > scots_background
Created: 2008-09-24; Last Edited: 2008-09-24; (ID450)