CD21: Warning, this post is so long that it has footnotes.

Today's subject: Why I Blame Republicans for my Infertility¹


I recently had a long and heated conversation with a dear friend, a a Democrat who is deeply committed to social justice. Distressed by the divide in our country, she called for a ratcheting down of the rhetoric of evil. Quit thinking of the Republicans as evil. They're just people like us who were raised with a different set of values. If we think of them as evil we'll never be able to talk to them.

Eminently reasonable, right? A fairly mild call to lay down arms. Who could object to that?

It turns out that I do. I know I can't have reasonable conversations with Republicans about their views. I can certainly have reasonable conversations with them about other subjects, and do every day -- but the party affiliation is an absolute conversation-killer for me.

The problem is that I take it all very personally. The Republicans are, to me, the party of institutionalized homophobia. They use the hatred of gays as a lever in the culture wars in order to advance their economic interests.²

I'm sure that as a femmey white bourgie I've suffered less than many from homophobia. But the path that led me to this blog is paved with homophobia.

I'm part of a binational gay couple. This has had a massive effect on my life: my partner of 11 years has no immigration rights on the strength of our relationship.

We were crazy in love from the moment we met, and probably would have been married within the year.³ I can't help but imagine how things could have gone differently had we lived somewhere that recognized our relationship.

Because of our immigration status, we've never had more than a few years of knowing for sure that we were going to be in the same place. I crave security like Palin craves ANWAR drilling. For the past 11 years we've shifted from one short term solution to another. I really cannot overstate how much this freaks me out. I never felt like things were stable enough to start to try to conceive. Finally, at age 33, I realized that stable or not I could put it off no longer, and that I would just have to deal with the strong possibility of moving to a strange country with a small child.

Or, as it turns out, not. I'm turning 35 soon. This has been harder than I ever imagined, and I'm fully aware that the hardest times may yet be ahead of me.

So yes. I blame homophobia for denying us the social and legal support that is so important to young families. Of course it's not totally the fault of homophobia. I could have been better and braver and bolder. If I had had that courage to start this at a younger age, uncertainty be damned, I might well be pregnant by now, like the many young lesbians I have seen zoom by me over the past few years. I save most of my blame for myself. But I reserve a portion of blame for homophobia and, by extension, for the party that has chosen to wave the homophobia flag.

SO yes. I take it personally, too personally. I take it very personally that we may soon have to sell our house (in an increasingly terrifying market) and leave the country that I love⁴. I take it personally that if I have an aneurysm in Florida, I might not be able to spend my dying minutes with the person I love the most. I take it personally that the Republicans actively oppose my creating, nurturing, or protecting my family.

I hate that homophobia has made so much of this wide, vibrant country seem small and threatening to me. Again, if I were bolder, more of a risk-taker, probably it wouldn't be so. Or if I didn't have or want a family, it'd hardly matter. Rugged individualism works great when you've only got your rugged self to protect.

And that is why I fail at civil discourse. I can't talk Republican matters without being overcome with a wave of you either think I shouldn't exist or you don't care that the rest of your party thinks I shouldn't exist. I have a special place of impatience for gay-friendly Republicans. I get it, you care about my civil liberties, you just don't care enough to quit supporting your homophobic party.

Of course, if I had my way and everyone who was gay-friendly quit the Republican party, then who would exist to change the party from within? The Log Cabin Republicans claim they're doing just that.

After having puzzled over the dilemma, I've come to the conclusion that the moral thing for those people to do would be to join the Republican party, advocate as hard as they can for Teh Gays, and then when they get to the voting booth, vote Democratic.

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¹I've gone back and forth about whether to identify myself as "infertile" when it doesn't really describe the state of being a lesbian who has so far been unable to conceive. But in the end I've decided that "infertile" describes my experience even if it doesn't describe my physical state.

²To be fair, at least some of them hate gays sincerely and not as a cynical cultural ploy.

³ After we'd been together for a week, I went away for a week. She's said that she would have applied for a marriage license during that week. I don't think I would have put up with that, though. I want a big dress.

⁴ Even though I am a Democrat.