The year 2014 brought many good things to the LGBTQ community. Over 19 States have legalized same-sex marriage in the United States of America, and many more are in the process of overturning bans on it, as well as passing non-discrimination laws; many other countries around the world also passed laws allowing same-sex marriage; and Laverne Cox, a transgender actress and activist, was nominated for an Emmy. These are all groundbreaking and history-making events.
But this article isn’t just about the good news, we also have to face the bad ones, too. And this includes facing the reality that Puerto Rico has yet to make as much progress as many have liked for it to do.
Puerto Rico does not permit same sex marriage and discrimination, although the Senate approved in passing a bill to prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation, is still at an all-time high, causing hate crimes, suicides, and many other horrors. And just recently, after two men, married in California, adopted a child through surrogacy, many are already questioning if such an environment is healthy for that little girl.
This is heartbreaking to me. Not because I was adopted, which I wasn’t, but because I have two mothers. Two women who love each other and who love me extensively, and it saddens me beyond anything that my island stands against a community filled with people who are no less human just because they don’t fit in the tiny square that others expect them to.
But this post isn’t about what one side says versus what the other says. This is my point of view; my reality of it. And although nothing would make me happier than to see people changing their mind and allowing themselves to broaden their view of the world, I know for a fact that change isn’t as easy as flipping a switch.
So, here goes.
For most of my childhood, I lived with my parents, a man and a woman. And that was normal. Then they broke up, something also relatively normal to our generation, and my mother and I moved in with another woman about a year later. Her partner. And up until now I never questioned it. For me, seeing my mother with another woman wasn’t strange. What felt strange to me were the looks I received from some of my classmates and from other adults when I told them of my family. I wasn’t a mind-reader, and my life wasn’t any stranger than the other kids, whether their parents were married, divorced, widowed, or if they were raised by other family members who weren’t their parents. What did I care if my mother loved another woman? She was happy, and for me, her happiness was critical.
Because in my life, the concept of love was never defined to strictly a man and a woman. It was defined simply by devotion to another person, be it a woman, man, transgender, or queer, be that couple straight, gay, bisexual, asexual, or pansexual. It didn’t matter because love was never a straight line to begin with. Love, to me, was a maze.
And after all the dead ends, the broken hearts, and having to start from the very beginning, my mom still found love. Just like everyone else in their lives at one point or another.
And that’s it! That’s whole point of it all. When it comes to love, it isn’t about the gender of the person or where they come from, it’s the devotion you give to that person.
And I’m not saying that the LGBTQ community is more advanced to this love. They’re just as likely to break up, cheat on, fight or hurt each other, just like heterosexual couples do. Because they are human beings, not freaks or creeps, people with blood and bones and faults.
And when they ask me how I ended up so “normal”, I have to bite my tongue to prevent myself from asking “What, exactly, is normal?” I’m just me. I’m a young woman who grew up with two wonderful people with a capacity to love– despite the hatred and the fears the rest of society project on them– and that is a source of comfort to me when I’m at my lowest.
I am not a product of horror. I am the result of endless love. My insecurities, my nightmares, do not come from my family, but from outside of it. And despite that, I can still smile and hope that the rest of the world will begin to accept humanity in its entirety, not exclusively.
Oh, and by the way, the only bad thing about having two mothers is the insane amount of bras we have.
Disclaimer: The photos were found in Google.