What Does Obama’s Announcement Mean For My Son?

My son is not yet two years old, and as we haven’t had him tested yet, we can’t know if he’s got the gay or not. But we can guess.

He loves to dance. He may have a bit of a lisp. He enjoys wrapping things around his neck and playing with my wife’s makeup kit. He’s really into stuffed animals and has long eyelashes.

The writing is on the wall.

Of course, I’m joking. We have had him tested. But we tore up the results without reading them, a la My Two Dads, lest it influence what cartoons we let him watch.

Obviously it’s too early to tell, but neither my wife nor I could give a shit if our son is gay or not. He’s the greatest person in the world, despite the fact that he shattered my wife’s cell phone yesterday, and if he’s gay, then that is simply a small part of what makes him so great. That and my looks, because we are doppelgängers and he is STUNNING.

MomandBuried and I were very happy to see Obama finally come out and say what he’d been thinking for years: that all people are equal, except those scumbags who are so insecure about their own lives and marriages that they think allowing other people to get married will destroy the world.

And whatever your politics, it was refreshing to see a politician take an actual stand on something without regard for the political ramifications, even though that’s not entirely true, because Obama and his team surely wouldn’t have made such a statement had they not tested the waters and been at least somewhat confident that it was safe to jump in.

But it is an election year, and despite the fact that anyone in the middle, i.e., anyone who is still undecided about who will get their vote, certainly isn’t going to be swayed by the same-sex marriage issue over, say, the economy, it was still nice to see the President say the right thing.

What does this mean for my son? I’d like to say that it means nothing. That in my family, amongst my friends, in my little section of the world, he’ll be loved no matter what his sexual orientation or political bent or opinion on the Red Hot Chili Peppers or favorite sports team. But if the decision in North Carolina the other night made anything clear, it’s that there are still a lot of ignorant people out there. My son is be bound to run into a few of them at some point in his life, on cross-country road trips, or at Blue Collar Comedy tours, and if he is gay, such encounters might be less pleasant than if he weren’t.

But if there’s one thing that’s clear, with all this talk about being on “the right side of history,” it’s that every year of his life, unless we enter a new Dark Ages, there will be fewer ignorant people to worry about. And some of that will be a result of what President Obama said yesterday, because despite how far you think the office may have fallen (due to it being held by a Socialist Kenyan mini-Hitler black man who hates America), and although it’s still up to the states to change their own marriage laws, what the President says has impact.

So whether my son turns out to be gay or straight or David Bowie, I don’t care. I’m just glad that either way – if history bends the way the optimists among us think it’s seeming to – he’ll have significantly fewer ignorant people to deal with when he’s an adult.

I’ll ask again: what does Obama’s announcement mean for my son? Mostly nothing. But hopefully a little bit of everything.