My first crush was on a boy named Kal Raustiala when I was in second grade. He had shaggy, leonine hair, a pet iguana, and a jungle gym in his basement. Although I didn’t really know why at the time, my heart beat faster when I was near him. When he wasn’t around, I wanted to be with him. And when I was with him, I never wanted to leave.
At no point prior to falling hard for Kal did I choose to be attracted to a boy. It just sort of happened, in the way that love often does: naturally, instinctually and whole-heartedly.
After college, I had a friend who, like me, was naturally, instinctually, and whole-heartedly attracted to boys. His name was Jeff. My roommate and I spent many Friday nights with Jeff and his partner Darryl, catching the latest movies and dissecting them over dinner afterward. Jeff was funny, smart, and a technological whiz. In fact, the least interesting thing about him was that he happened to be gay.
Gay rights are not something most of us think about, because most of us happen to have been born straight. But imagine how you’d feel if you were told that it was unnatural to fall in love with someone of the opposite gender. If you weren’t allowed to get married. If you couldn’t adopt a child with your partner or become a troop leader for the Boy Scouts. Imagine being a teenager who’s bullied because of your sexual orientation or being told by your church that you are immoral. In America, this is the norm for millions of LGBTQ individuals.
Those opposed to gay rights often say that they have nothing against the individuals themselves, just their desire to redefine marriage as something other than a partnership between a man and a woman. On the other side are same-sex couples and their friends and families, who argue that they deserve the same rights as heterosexual couples. The result is a country bitterly divided along the fault line of a single, contentious issue.
People are always afraid of the unknown, and banding together against the Thing That Is Different From Us is a time-honored tradition for rallying the masses. I’ve noticed that most people who oppose gay rights don’t have a personal connection to someone who is gay. On the other hand, those who have a gay uncle, a lesbian college professor, or a transgendered supermarket cashier are more likely to support gay rights, because the Thing That Is Different From Us has turned out to be, well, pretty darn normal. Instead of plotting the demise of the traditional family, as some politicians and religious leaders would like you to believe, gay folks mow their lawns, watch American Idol, videotape their children’s dance recitals, and have the same hopes and dreams that their straight counterparts do.
What does it mean to be gay today in America? How do we define a family? Those are two questions I hoped to answer while writing Sing You Home. I began by speaking to several same-sex couples, who shared their relationships, sex lives and struggles. Some of these people knew their sexual orientation in childhood; some (like Zoe in my book) had same- sex relationships after heterosexual ones. Then I interviewed representatives from Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian group that supports the Defense of Marriage Act, opposes gay adoption, and offers seminars to “cure” gay people of same- sex attraction.
Like Pastor Clive in my novel, their objection to homosexuality is biblical. Snippets from Leviticus and other Bible verses form the foundation of their anti- gay platform; although similar literal readings should require these people to abstain from playing football (touching pigskin) or eating shrimp scampi (no shellfish). When I asked Focus on the Family if the Bible needs to be taken in a more historical context, I was told absolutely not — the word of God is the word of God. But when I then asked where in the Bible was a list of appropriate sex practices.