Living arrangements are rapidly changing in America, including when it comes to the number of same sex couple households, the recognition of marriages by individual states, and this month a ruling on the issue by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Based on data collected from the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS), there are approximately 594,000 same sex couple households in the United States.
In the mid-1990s, growing up in one of those families were Oak Parkers Ariel Levin, now 22, and her brother, Ben Levin, now 20, the children of Rebekah Levin and Sophie Kaluziak.
“Ben and I were born through the same sperm donor, so it was a very intentional thing for us to be raised by the two of them,” Ariel says, adding that there was “never a point where I thought one of them was my dad, and I have never grown up in a family where the parents were closeted about being gay.”
Her brother Ben says that as early as first grade he discovered that there are a few levels to being a boy of two moms, because “it is hard to say if me having a dad would have made my life any different in specific ways, but at times it would be nice to have someone to relate to, and you can’t completely do that with women… and, well, I was definitely embarrassed about my parents, but that was just because they were my parents,” he jokes.
Hannah Walsh, 18, is a 2014 Oak Park and River Forest High School grad who has just finished her first year at American University in Washington, D.C.
Her dad, Bob Walsh, came out as a gay man when she was 11 months old, so she says she never really knew him as a straight man.
“I always kind of figured that I had two dads, and so did everyone else,” she says. “I remember when I was in first grade and attending Whittier, my dad had this Rainbow Gay Pride bumper sticker on his car, and someone recognized it, and they said something about him being gay,” she recalls. “I was terrified by that, and asked him to take it off his car. I was six years old, so I didn’t really realize how horrible that was to say to him, and he was taken aback by it but told me that he was sorry, apologized, and took the sticker off of his car.”
She avoided the topic until she entered high school; it was the year that Fox’s Glee de-stigmatized, in a way, being gay, and having two gay dads became pop culture trendy.
“So, I started telling everyone,” she says. “Some people were a little bit taken aback by it, and some people were like, oh my god, that is so cool that you have two gay dads. I would say, oh yeah, but not really, it is just fun,” she says.
For Seth Lueck, 26, he became aware that he was the only boy child of two moms in first grade, “when we made a planting pot for Mother’s Day, and I was the only person in the class who had to make two,” he says, adding other reminders were when as a family they needed to fill out forms that required a signature of a mom and a dad, which did not match up with his parents.
But eventually, with explanations and advocating on that front, society has shifted into the future for families with same-sex partners. Thanks to the support he received in his home, Seth says he has acquired an appreciation for the arts, and played rugby through his college years, graduating from Evergreen State College with a Masters of Arts in English, and a Bachelor of Sciences in biochemistry. He is currently applying to Ph.D. programs, he says.
“I am in a committed hetero-normative relationship, and maybe I would have kids someday,” Seth says. “If I do decide to adopt children, or have biological children, I will be very happy to introduce them to their two grandmas. I would say, these are your grandmas, the wonderful women who raised me.”
Meanwhile, for Ariel and Ben, being raised by two publicly and politically active, moms has been empowering.
“What they accomplished is something for me to feel proud about them and my family,” Ariel says. “They stood up for their rights as members of the LGBTQ community, especially Bekah with her being an activist around a lot of different issues, from educating the school system about queer families to all of her Palestine stuff and she has been involved in a lot of other issues.”
Brother Ben says ditto to that, speculating that having two “gender queer” moms is no different than having a hetero-normative mom and dad.
Then, with a wry sense of humor, he speaks out again: “I only got an hour of computer a day until freshman year in high school. But, this has nothing to do with having two moms, it is just a complaint.”
