Motherhood- Kathleen and Catherine

Catherine and Kathleen McAuley spoke with NPR's Dick Gordon, host of The Story with Dick Gordon on May 31, 2007 about their decision to have children together. Below is the email that Kathleen sent when she first got in touch with the show.

The photograph shows Kathleen McAuley (on the right) and Catherine McAuley, with their children Kace, Rowan and Georgia.

What makes a mom?

My partner and I are about 30 and having our first child, a son, due June 6, 2007. She is the one who is pregnant. We have been together for 6 years, she has changed her last name to my last name and if it were legal I'd marry her in a minute.

But, as the partner who is not "having" the baby, it's a real challenge to share the joy of simply being an expectant mom. It's hard because not only is it pretty obvious that I'm not 7 months pregnant so how could I be having a son in two months, people always want to know and feel totally comfortable asking intimate details about, "How did you decide who was going to get pregnant? Is the donor someone you know? How are you going to explain the gay thing to your kid?" and on and on and on. It's never the usual, "You'll be so tired, it's the most amazing thing" but more like, "Soooo, what's going to happen if you break up?"

And people ask us these questions like we've never thought of these things - they completely assume so many things. he hardest part is just being able to tell already that I, somehow, come off as not a "real" parent or as less of a mom than my partner simply because she is the one who is pregnant. And, I know from many groups and lists that I belong to and friends that I have, that this is a problem through gay communities in this country and I've always wanted to hear a story from my side, the side of the woman who is, too, having her first baby - but not giving birth. I think it would be an eye opening experience for gay and straight people alike to hear this story - and I'd be happy to share mine.

She did share her story, and you can listen here.

Love Without Borders- Ed and Tim

I met Tim at a bar in Raleigh. I had been out for a couple of years, had experienced a short romance, and had been single again for a few months. It was early on a Friday night, and the bar wasn’t crowded. I was talking with friends and saw him come in and take a seat by himself. I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t speak. So I did.

He was from New Brunswick, Canada, and had just moved to town when I met him, so we spent the evening touring downtown Raleigh. We shared our first kiss on the street near City Market, and I invited him to be my date for a Holiday party at my brother’s home the following night.

I wasn’t really looking for a relationship, but I found the love of my life that night. This coming December will mark the 11^th anniversary of our meeting, the beginning of our family.

Though we can’t legally get married, we’ve been with each other through sickness and health, through good times and bad times, through joy and through sorrow. We’ve made friends, and we’ve created a home. We’ve celebrated holidays, and we have lost friends and family members. Through it all Tim has been my constant. Tim is my family.

Our biggest sorrow, though, is yet to come. Because we are gay and cannot get married, the United States doesn’t recognize us for immigration. To the United States, we are strangers, and because of that, I have to watch Tim board a plan and leave me for a year. His visa is up, and to be eligible again, he must leave the country for 365 consecutive days… and I can’t do a damn thing about it.

To show your support for Ed and Tim's immigration struggle, visit their Facebook page.

A North Carolina Love Story - Jake and Ted

Like a lot of couples, we met in college. But before we were both calling Raleigh home, we grew up with very different backgrounds.

I was raised with a small family in Mt. Airy, the small town that was the inspiration for Mayberry. I was accustomed to neighborhoods surrounded by cow pastures, a high school surrounded by green fields full of crops, and mountains ever present on the horizon. Ted grew up in Charlotte, the state’s largest city, with four siblings, and a city skyline in the distance. Fast forward a few years to my freshman year in college, and we’re both living in the state capital on North Carolina State’s campus. Living in neighboring red brick dorms, we were bound to meet. That meeting finally happened by my second semester in college, shortly before spring break. Like many colleges with dorm living, at NCSU you are booted off campus during holidays and breaks, and sent home to live with your families for a week. This can pose a challenge to a brand-new relationship, because, as everyone knows, a week apart is an eternity for a young couple. However, this love story does have a happy ending.

We’ve been happily married now for slightly more than a year and been together for over seven years. Although I came from a small family, we are now both a part of a very large family (that's a picture of all of us above), and I wouldn’t have it any other way. We were married in Boston with our families present, and had a wonderful reception in our current home town, Chapel Hill, with nearly a hundred family members and friends.

These days, Ted is a graduate student at UNC and I’m a graduate student at NCSU. We are happy to live in the only southern state without a marriage discrimination constitutional amendment, and look forward to the day when our marriage is fully and equally recognized. Although we may be a house divided between the Tar Heels and the Wolfpack, we couldn’t be happier or more in love.

Jax's Story- Shana, Megan and Jax

The best thing about being a new mom is watching my son learn and grow. Jax was born with Cerebral Palsy and did not start receiving early intervention until he moved to North Carolina to be our son. He is physically and developmentally delayed, but is making up for lost time with new milestones everyday. He is truly amazing and we couldn't feel any luckier to have the family that we have.

Jax was immediately put into foster care because of his birth mother's history and we found him on a special needs adoption website in Texas. A lot of people wondered why we would want to adopt a child with special needs. The short version of the story is that Megan and I were ready to adopt and because of our experiences with the special needs community, we felt comfortable caring for a child with special needs. We already had Mary (an older woman with multiple disabilities who we care for and lives with us), volunteered at the special education school in our city, and Megan had over 12 years of experience working with adults and kids with special needs. We chose to look in Texas because North Carolina has a contract with Texas so that they pretty much treat the adoptions as if they were coming from their home state because Texas, being a bigger state, has more children in foster care.

Because Megan and I are same-sex partners, only one of us is able to legally adopt- even though we both went through the necessary foster-to-adopt training. Megan is Jax's legal guardian and once the adoption is finalized in September, I will have to sue her for parental rights in order to be his second parent. It is a simple $40 civil suit, but the principle of the matter is that we have both been his moms since he came home in March. I take that back, we have both been his moms since the day we saw his picture and profile online and submitted our home-study to his social worker in Texas. We never inquired on another kid, even as the months passed. We knew it was against the odds that they would pick a couple of lesbians from NC out of all of the home-studies they received, but we still knew he was ours. We began buying him clothes, decorated his room, and imagined calling him Jax (we changed his name).

Megan and I often reflect on the moments of vulnerability and craziness we endured in the adoption process. We went so long without any news or progress on his case, we were going crazy with anticipation... hello shopping therapy! Eileen, our adoption coordinator from Family Lutheran Services was a huge support, as were our family and friends. When we traveled to Texas to meet our son after being chosen to be his parents, we were shocked at his living conditions. He was one of twelve medically fragile kids in a group home, somehow called a foster home. He threw up on him self all day and night, had no early intervention or therapies in place for his delays, and was stuck in front of giant TV 90% of the time. There were kids in every corner of the room, laying on the floor, ignored. We were shocked. He moved here with nothing and we were told he would basically not be able to be do anything. He was written off.

Since Jax has come home to NC, he has been attending the Infant/Toddler program at Gateway Education Center and has made huge strides in his physical and intellectual developments.

He gets specialized speech, physical, and occupational therapy and is taught in a classroom with his peers. I can not even begin to tell you how much he has changed and how great he is doing. It's seriously like night and day. Even the professionals at his school didn't think he would come this far so fast. Jax has been fully accepted into our family and he is growing and changing everyday. We are so excited for our future and already know we will be adopting again. We are still unsure if we will adopt another special needs child or a typically developing child, but we know that our family isn't done growing. I would recommend adoption to any family who thinks they can provide a safe and loving home to a child.

You can read more about Shana and Megan on their blog, http://carignanadoption.blogspot.com/

Getting the Egg Rolling

This is a story that Shawn Long, our administrative coordinator here at Equality NC, wrote for the Equality NC blog earlier this year. It’s reproduced here in an edited form.

To the right is a family picture from Jan. 2009. From left to right, there's Craig, Isaiah, a.k.a. "Kid", (age 7), and Shawn.

Craig, Kid, and I got to go to the White House egg roll this past Monday. We got tickets as part of an outreach effort to LGBT families and families in the South to ensure that a diversity of Americans was represented. (Thanks to the Equality Federation and Brian Bond, White House LGBT Liaison, for coordinating that.)

First thing in the morning, we went to the White House Conference Center on Jackson Street to pick up tickets.
We got the 1:45 time slot, so shortly before 1 pm we dutifully approached the White House.

It was hot and tiring waiting in the long pre-line, but it began to move after half an hour, and then we flew through it. They were efficient once things got going! We went through a security checkpoint (where we were metal detected and had all of our pocket belongings and cameras carefully inspected), and then we got on the Ellipse.

We were given free snacks and drinks here - no food or beverages are allowed on the actual White House lawn. This was a good move, since everyone, kids and parents included, were all grumpy and thirsty. While we waited here, there were entertainers on a stage who sang songs and encouraged the crowd to do a variety of activities to get us moving in fun ways.

My family lay on the grass and waited. We did some rock-paper-scissors and talked about the stuff we expected to see.

After another 15 or 20 minutes, we got in the actual line to the White House lawn.

It was a bit of a process getting thousands of people to assemble into coherent single-ish file. Parents and kids held hands or walked hand-on-shoulder in order to stay together. People actually formed multiple lines that converged into one.

Finally we made it through the gates onto the White House lawn. The lawn was set-up like a mini-festival, with multiple activities and events for kids.

The event was well-staffed, with dozens of volunteers around at all times, wearing pastel hats and green aprons with a bunny on the front. We could see the White House, which seemed surprisingly small in real-life. There was a small stage set up for dancing-related activities, like hula-hooping to songs.

Kid got to enter a small fenced area and watch Disney's Zack and Cody read him a story. Us parents got to stand outside of a small fenced area and watch their kids watch Disney's Zack and Cody read them a story.

There was a stage set up for performers. Unfortunately, we missed the cast of 'Glee' (which Craig loves) and instead got to be entertained by the screechy pop-styling of teen-singer Justin Beiber. (I don't know anything about him. Props to him for not lip-syncing, but there is something to be said for production values in music! Thankfully Kid didn't care for him. Now if Miley Cyrus had been there ....)

There was an actual egg roll, where kids tried to race eggs down lanes using large plastic kitchen spoons. It was all in fun, so there were no formal winners or losers.

Then, after an hour-and-a-half, we were done. We headed for the exit.

We never got to see any of the First Family (the President was throwing a baseball at the Nationals, but I'm not sure where the First Lady or First Daughters were), but we did get a souvenir egg with Barack and Michelle's signature on it, as well as a pack of yellow Peeps (tm).

Oh, and did I mention the gay people. We were there! There was at least one other LGBT family from North Carolina there, and I saw two lesbian couples with kids. Also, at least two of the White House staff there were gay, one chef and one security guard.

My favorite, however, was a group of high school kids from a gay-straight alliance (can't ... remember ... name of school). They had these awesome shirts, that you can see on the right.

This is the world we're working for, one where all types of families can come together at a common event, and HAVE NO ONE CARE. Oh, and having equal rights for all of those families, too.

Events like this are a step forward towards that day of true equality. It was an amazing experience, and it'll be something Kid will remember - the first time he went to the White House.