We’re sitting in the sand, watching our daughters play together in the waves. We reflect proudly about how much their water skills have progressed in the four summers we’ve spent together.  We share swimming lesson stories and laugh as the girls play mermaids and try to catch minnows.  Our conversation flows with the waves and soon, we’re projecting ahead to the time when they’re teenagers and we fret about all the social pressures that come along with those years.

We’re sitting in the grass watching our kids practice their cartwheels.  We worry together about sibling rivalry and talk about our strategies for helping each child discover their strengths.  We watch as our spouses get pulled away for another unscheduled meeting and lament about how often life gets in the way and makes it tough to communicate as a couple.  Our relationships started in the same year and so, we find similarities in the changing cycles of coupledom.  We nod our heads in recognition of the struggles, mutual understanding that lasting relationships take work.

We stand side by side at the soccer field watching our sons play.  We yell encouragement and compare notes about the other kids on the team.  We talk about how hard it is for the boys to juggle soccer practices and all the homework that comes along with middle school.  We laugh at the invasiveness of 6th grade band and how the 75 minutes of required weekly practice brings the rest of the household to a standstill.  Nothing in our parenting manuals prepared us for trombone practice.

We exchange emails and phone calls, supporting each other through the ups and downs of in-laws and the ever changing landscape of aging parents.  We wonder if we have ever really been accepted by our mother-in-laws.  Some days we laugh. Some days we struggle to hold back our tears.

We lift the video cameras to our eyes and both begin recording our children in their Destination Imagination skit.  When they’ve finished, we wipe proud tears from our cheeks and laugh at how we both cry over everything.  Remember when they did their first skit as second graders?  Your daughter was Snow White and my son was the narrator. 

We’re friends on Facebook, and proudly display our families for all to see.  We upload pictures of our vacations, our children’s accomplishments, the sweet moments of our lives together that pass by all too quickly.  We update our status with the latest news about a school event, a birthday milestone, a lost tooth, a wedding anniversary.

We are so much alike. Our lives intersect in so many ways and yet, they are so different.  My marriage is recognized everywhere I go.  All of you, the other families that make up this collage, your's are not.  Some of you are lucky enough to live in a state where your marriage is legally recognized -  when you are there.  Most of you are not so lucky. 

I am blessed to be a part of your lives, to share in the love that surrounds your families.  I draw no line, create no distinction, between the bond that connects you to your partners and the one that connects me to my husband.  I can not visualize better families for your children than the ones you have created for them. 

President Obama, I am waiting to hear you say the word. In my heart, I believe that when no one is listening, when you and Michelle are sitting alone together over your first cup of coffee, you tell her that it’s what you really want. To say the word. You wish you didn’t have to play the cat and mouse game and could just say it.  I know you look at the children who are a part of these families and see that they have good lives, lives that vary only slightly from their school friends.  If you could just say the word and make it happen, it would make life easier for them, too.  

Marriage.  For everyone.  The time has come.  

Catie Curtis is a singer-songwriter who has lived her professional life as an openly gay woman.  She has also lived some of it as a legally married woman and the mother, with her wife, Liz, of two beautiful young girls.  Catie has used her music to express love, and pain, and the roller coaster ride that is also known as parenting.  She has taught me, through her words and her life, that love truly is universal.  I’ll leave you with the video of her song “Happy".