17 Year Anniversary

Wednesday my partner and I celebrated our 17 year anniversary.   During that time, we’ve been called a lot of not so nice things.  My personal favorites are, “a phase,” “an embarrassment” and “an abomination.”  People have also said our “lifestyle” is a choice or a preference.  I hope just the duration of time and the commitment we have to one another is enough to prove all that wrong, but I know that is still years down the road.  It is hard to understand that someone was just born the way they are and that is just that.  People have to explain in terms of making a choice or living in sin to justify differences.  Over the years, what I’ve discovered is this negativity actually helps fuel my positivity.  Everyone is entitled to their beliefs.  We just happen to live our lives together in a way we feel makes us right with the Universe.  We both have jobs in which we give back to the community.  We treat people the way we want to be treated.  We don’t judge others.  We try to be a positive force by maintaining good attitudes.  We respect and appreciate that people are different and that’s what makes us unique.  These are the choices that we make, while our lifestyle was not a choice, but a fact. 

Our plan is to keep doing our thing and living or lives openly and unashamedly.  One of the ways we plan to celebrate our anniversary (we celebrate for a few weeks) is by eating at chick-fil-a.  I’m pretty sure our money spends just as well as everyone else’s money.  I’m actually quite surprised that people are so shocked by chick-fil-a’s stance on same sex marriage…didn’t you always know that’s what they thought?  They can actually take the money we will spend on chicken for our anniversary and put it directly toward that agenda.  I’m totally comfortable with that because the bottom line is it won’t stop the progressive train that is changing people’s opinions about homosexuals.  At the end of the day, chick-fil-a will have served a meal to two lesbians who were celebrating 17 years of happiness, positivity and normalcy and all the money made on chicken sandwiches and donated to anti-human rights causes will never take that away.  The fact that we will eat there also makes us the bigger people…figuratively and literally.