Today is our 27th anniversary. For
27 years, we have made a life together. We have walked the
streets together and roamed foreign cities and picnicked in the
parks. We have played in the ocean and spent summers by the
sea. We have picked blueberries and churned ice cream and skied
the slopes. We have danced through the night and into the
morning. We have read the same books; we have shared four
cats. We have celebrated birthdays and holidays, with friends
and family. And we have marched the lavender line down
Fifth Avenue on Gay Pride with our parents, holding a sign that
read: MOM
AND
DAD
AND
ME
AND
HE.
And all this, this life together, we have
created without any of the 1,138 benefits that the
US government affords to married couples. We have endured
housing codes which labeled one of us a domestic servant, in
order that we could live together. We have endured the shouted
epithets. We have endured the thoughtless remark from
co-workers and neighbors and the scapegoating in the media.
We came together not long after the newspapers
identified a new disease impacting gay men. We endured a
President who refused to utter the word “AIDS,” and a callous
administration that ignored a rampaging epidemic. We clung
together, stunned, as our friends got sick and died. We
attended so many memorial services and delivered too many
eulogies. We marched with ACT UP; we chanted and raised our
fists. We volunteered; we wrote letters and checks.
We were there as the world began to change—as the
Netherlands
allowed same-sex marriage in 2001, and then Belgium, Canada,
Norway, South Africa, and Spain. Then Massachusetts—and now
Connecticut.
For 27 years, we have stood together as
one—with the help of only our family and friends. We have kept
on keeping on in the face of a world that would shun us, deprive
us, deny us, ignore us. We have held on together because we
know this is about love: our love together. And no one can take
that from us—not then, not now, not ever.
Happy 27th, sweet boy.
With love, so much of it.
