“Why can’t you throw a spiral like I can?” our 8-year-old all-star asked as we tossed a football back and forth.
I didn’t have an answer, but he was on to something. I have spent my life surrounded by athletes; I should be able to throw a spiral.
When I was a kid, my dad — who at the age of 62 and height of 5-foot-8 still has aspirations of playing pro basketball — turned our driveway into a half-court and had us out playing every evening.
In high school, my best friends included the captain of the football team, the stars of our soccer team, and state champion swimmers. Even after I came out in med school, my friends were still the ones who organized the weekend basketball games or played in the gay soccer league.
I would have none of it. I was the book nerd whose only tryouts were for the debate team and the spring musical. In junior high, I played an entire season of basketball and never scored. Not once.
Yet, my friends didn’t care. They accepted me for me.
Last week, California’s Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment approved by voters last November defining marriage as only that between a man and a woman. Many of my friends posted comments on Facebook in support of gay marriage and wondered why this is even an issue anymore.
In an age where members of the gay community still worry about being beaten for publicly holding hands with the one they love, where my family is not yet legally recognized, where I can be a target of hate mail simply because of who I am, their postings appeared to be a bright light at the end of the tunnel.
It is clear that even now they are simply reflecting popular opinion. In an April Washington Post/ABC poll, more people supported gay marriage (49 percent) than opposed it (46 percent).
In Colorado, a bill was passed this year that will offer benefits to same- sex partners of state employees that for years have been afforded to opposite-sex partners. A new law will allow any two adults to designate beneficiary rights to each other. And recent years have seen the expansion of legal rights in public accommodations, parenting, and employment.
Increasingly, local employers and insurance companies are offering health care coverage to same-sex partners. More corporations are banning workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender expression.
The first application of a hate- crime provision occurred this year in Colorado in the successful conviction of Allen Andrade in the brutal murder of Angie Zapata, a transgendered woman from Greeley.
And, just this past year, four states have joined Massachusetts in providing for same-sex marriages, including Iowa.
This path toward equality has not been easy and unfortunately much still needs to be done. The federal Defense of Marriage Act remains on the books. Gays still cannot serve openly in the military.
But it is only a matter of time before those are no longer issues. The train seems to have been delayed temporarily in California, but the tracks continue to be laid all across the country. A new generation is pulling us toward a society that doesn’t care if I play sports or argue in debate, that doesn’t see in black and white or fret over with whom I build my home or how I define my family. As long as we don’t give up our fight, this upcoming generation will defend our rights for equality and justice just as they accept us for who we are.
I was assured of this last Sunday, during a soccer tournament for our younger son, who is 6. He, unlike his brother, was more apt to shy away from contact with the ball. But his friends didn’t care. In the end, they patted him on the back, said “good game” and congratulated him in uproarious tones when he almost scored.
They accepted him.
I recently e-mailed the captain of our high school football team, my best friend, and asked him why he never taught me to throw a spiral football. He replied, “I never noticed you couldn’t.”
Mark Thrun, M.D. (mthrun@comcast.net) is a hopeful gay dad living in the Highland neighborhood.
