piski

The recent uproar about the gay marriage amendment's made me think about family, something I'd often like to avoid because I'm afraid that it makes me unpleasant in a semi-anxious, somewhat-angsty sort of way. I've had to redefine my concept of family a number of times, and I'm still trying to figure out what home is. (I'm beginning to think that it starts with living someplace you're pretty sure you're not going to leave too soon, which would explain my confusion.) But I've been happy with all that fluidity, and I love the family that's grown from it. For example: my stepbrother, for whom I haven't used the "step" prefix in years; my "soul sister," my same-as-me-but-the-opposite-kind-of-way best friend; and a fellow with whom my relationship defies English vocabulary, so I'm not going to try. I just know that he counts.

It bothers me that while I've never been criticized for calling my mother's closest friend my aunt or referring to a guy I have no blood relation to as my brother, defining a female significant other as part of my family is still taboo. Family isn't as easy as biology. I don't know what it means and I'd do a crap job of trying to describe the love-pricklies that make it all fit. Particularly in a letter to my senators.

How did the far-right stake claim to the word "family"? Who are we to let them get away with that? How can anybody look me in the eye and say, "Your family isn't real"? I have a family, and I have plenty of family values, but they don't look much like the standard I've been told to hold them to. I'm fine with that, and I'm not sure how it makes anybody else's family, more "traditional" than mine or less so, any less sacred.