I'm just a man who loved a woman enough to want to never leave her side. We're just a family now, getting started in an often indifferent world. But we have each other. We can be loving parents. We have a commitment that is honored not only by each other, but by the state and the country we live in.
This is denied people who are just like us. And if I were to be honest, that takes something intangible, something ethereal, something -- dare I say it -- spiritual, away from the union of our family when the Union we proudly choose to live in doesn't grant this same gift to everyone.
This is not a diary about a preacher, or a policy, or a proposition, or even a president-to-be. It's about people.
I was raised in an intolerance that did not recognize the essential humanity of gay Americans. I believed the rights they were asking for was a perversion of something sacred. As time went on, I met men and women who lived the kind of life I had considered so wrong. They became my proverbial "gay friends."
But unlike the cliche goes, they became more than my gay friends. Rather than becoming a defense for my own homophobia, they became my friends. I saw that it was not they, but myself, who was in the wrong.
They wanted what I wanted, what every human being wants -- a person who understands and loves them enough to want to be their partner. Someone with whom they can stand up with and face life with, who will always fight for them and give them the strength to tackle and overcome any obstacle in the world.
I have that. And perhaps even more beautifully, I am able to give that to another. And maybe most beautifully of all, the two of us together are able to provide that same loving support to a third -- a child.
I am not angry today. I am saddened that this seems so far out of reach for so many. It's not any one thing that has brought me here. The conclusion I've come to comes from the life that I live and the family that I call mine.
Every American, every last one who wants it, should be able, should be allowed, should be encouraged, to have what I have.
No preacher, no policy, no proposition, and no president has the right to stand in between any person and a happy life lived with the people he or she loves and is loved by. That is a law that goes beyond any person's politics or any person's holy book, or any person's beliefs.
I wish I could tell you how we could reach the goal of having this simple concept recognized. I don't know how it ultimately will, and I don't know how we can get closer to it.
But I do know that it will. Struggles and setbacks aside, we live in a country that has always moved, sometimes laboriously slow, toward inclusion and equality. The process often moves at a glacial pace. Sometimes the process is painful. Sometimes it seems like no progress is being made at all.
But don't be fooled. It will happen.
In my heart, I see a country where people's legal recognitions and their right to self-direction are not limited depending on who their souls lead them to. It may not be as far away as it seems.
So right now, let us breathe deeply. Let us heal. Let us come together. We have to prepare ourselves for a long, hard slog toward freedom.
It's a battle we're going to win for one simple reason. The other side is well-funded. They are powerful, and they are organized. But for all their rhetoric to the contrary, they don't have love on their side.
That is why we will win.
And as for myself and my house, we're not going to stop until every American can have what I have.