Gay or straight, true love is something to celebrate

This was a wonderful article by Ellen Goodman that I thought I'd share with you. It summarizes my feelings exactly. I hope I live long enough for America to see our relationship for what it is - a family of love and support.

Still, when I am told by Focus on the Family that gay marriage would be "a devastating and potentially fatal blow to the traditional family," I think about my cousin and the warm, funny Southerner he has brought into our lives.

What exactly is so "devastating" about the couple who brings an annual excess of mixed olives and good cheer to Thanksgiving? How on earth could their commitment - or marriage - for better or for worse, be a "fatal blow" to my own marriage? For that matter, how could their desire to adopt and raise children undermine their cousins' families? My daughter, stepdaughter and nieces, all deep in parenting, only hope that the next generation of cousins will grow up together the way they did.

In the middle of the evening, during dancing far too reckless for any middle-aged back, I realized again that what seems to me so rich about America - this great, open, changing, diverse society - is what frightens and sometimes angers others. They see an assault of family values. We see family. Our family. Our values.