As some of you know from previous writings, I have Type 1 (Juvenile) diabetes. It requires multiple daily injections of different types of insulin, and can never be cured or managed by oral medication, diet, or exercise. It is a disease that can neither be caused nor prevented in any way. I pay around $12,000 per year, out of pocket, in order to stay alive. (No private insurance company will insure a Type 1 Diabetic, of course, so I'm stuck with Michigan's Blue Cross Blue Shield, which covers such a small percentage of my diabetic care, it's practically worthless.) And, even with modern advances and treatments, and assuming I never make an injection error that leads to my immediate death, I will surely live a good decade or so less than I would have without the disease.
But this is not a health care diary, as some of you may be assuming (though as you can imagine, I'm a strong public option supporter!) And no, it's not a Sotomayor diary, for those of you who know she's also a Type 1 Diabetic. :) It's actually just a few thoughts on how becoming diabetic made me understand gay rights, and how becoming a father (and a YouTube ad) made me understand marriage equality.
My Type 1 diabetes didn't trigger until I was 21 years old. Such late onset juvenile diabetes is rare, but not unheard of. What many people don't understand is that Type 1 diabetes isn't so much an "illness" as it is an "event" -- it's actually more equivalent to organ failure. A friend of my mother's became a Type 1 diabetic in a motorcycle accident -- his pancreas was destroyed, and now he'll be dependent on insulin injections for life, like me. When your pancreas stops functioning, your body no longer can process any sugars or carbs that enter the body. In most Type 1 diabetics, it occurs when your white blood cells are attacking a bad cold or flu, and accidentally kill off all your islet cells at the same time. Since these cells never regenerate, you no longer can produce insulin, and if untreated, you'll be dead (or at least comatose) within weeks.
At the time of becoming diabetic, I was still a pretty right-wing conservative, as college kids go, and I doubted that homosexuality was a matter of genetics, rather than a matter of choice. It wasn't until my first year being diabetic that I realized the question is irrelevant. My argument against homosexuality wasn't a moral one (I wasn't religious), but a practical one: reproductive organs are designed for reproducing, and therefore homosexuality simply can't be natural in a genetic sense. But neither, of course, was my diabetes.
I had been rather shocked at how freely people would insult my new condition to my face, especially early on. After all, many still treat diabetes as something you deserve, that you brought upon yourself through gluttony.
"Well, I guess you shouldn't have eaten all that fast food." Or, "that's what you get for drinking sugared pop." Or, "if you actually worked out every day like I do, you wouldn't need insulin." And so on. Even alcoholics are treated with more respect than diabetics.
Yet for all Type 1 diabetics, and even the majority of Type 2 diabetics, there is absolutely nothing they could have done to prevent the condition -- it's just genetic luck of the draw. And I defensively explained this to anyone who would listen. But I remember thinking, well, wait... what if my illness could have been prevented through a different diet. Would that really make discrimination against me any better?
There are only two (non-religious) arguments against gay rights: 1) homosexuality is a choice, not genetic, and 2) even if it is genetic, it's a genetic error. Yet neither of these positions justifies discrimination against gay individuals. If the first argument is true, then so what? Adult Americans are allowed to make their own choices on who they love, and being gay isn't infringing on the rights of anyone else. If the second argument is true, then doubly so what? I'm "supposed" to have a functioning pancreas, too -- does that mean it's okay to discriminate against me now that my pancreas has failed, because in a "normal" person, their islet cells function just fine? It simply makes no sense.
For the record, I certainly no longer think of homosexuality as merely some negative genetic abnormality, such as Type 1 diabetes. But that was the path I came through, in order to be an ardent gay rights supporter. It is simply not logical to deny equal rights to gay or bisexual Americans regardless of the nature vs. nurture argument, and when that fact "clicked", I was finally able to open my mind enough to accept that what makes us "different" doesn't make us any better (or worse).
Gay marriage, however, was still not something I quite understood the need for. I've been a supporter of gay marriage for some time, but never understood the anger against those who preferred civil unions instead. After all, I certainly don't think my friends and family who support civil unions over marriage are "bigots". I don't think Hillary Clinton or Obama are "bigots". A word is just a word -- I just didn't understand the big deal, and I would have been content with either one.
So let me show you the recent ad, from TruthandHope.org, that finally made the importance of full, unequivocal marriage equality, and nothing else, "click" for me.
As most of you know, I am affiliated with TruthandHope.org, but I was not involved in the creation of the ad above, so I viewed it without foreknowledge of the content, just as anyone else would. And it hit me, hard. I must have watched it 50 times in a row when Eugene sent me the cut a couple days ago. I will freely admit to you that, by the third viewing, both of my cheeks were very, very wet.
I'm the proud daddy of a two-year old girl. I believe she is the most amazing human being I have ever met. And something about this ad triggered every parental, protective instinct in my body. Remembering how I initially came to support gay rights in the first place, I found myself wondering what it would feel like if my genetic difference meant that I wouldn't be permitted all the same rights of parenting or marriage that a non-diabetic might have.
I'm not implying diabetics would ever be in any danger of losing marriage equality, of course. But after I started imagining such a world, I couldn't stop imagining it. I even found myself coming up with "rational", "logical" objections to a diabetic having full marriage and procreation rights, such as high blood sugars possibly affecting my judgment to enter into a binding marriage contract, or not passing certain genes onto the children, or providing a dangerous risk if I was watching my daughter while going into insulin shock... or simply that my condition made me not quite normal, and therefore it'd be best if I just settled for a civil union instead, whose own protections and rules could be modified or stripped away at the whim of the elected or the electorate.
I've sent the ad to quite a few friends and family in recent days. The response, even from those who are opposed to gay marriage, has been overwhelmingly positive. There's something about the presentation that invites the viewer to imagine the importance of their own families, their own rights and freedoms, that seems to work in ways other ads cannot. This family seems so happy. They seem normal. The thought of taking away their marriage rights is viscerally offensive. One friend's emailed response was: "Wow, you win. Civil unions don't cut it."
Anyone can recognize one thing about themselves (weight? height? club foot?) that others might not find "normal", and imagine a world in which it arbitrarily prevented them from legal protection of a recognized union with whom they love. That was the missing piece for me, and this ad filled it. You will no longer find me ever again defending "civil unions" as a possible, fair alternative to full equality. And I bet I'm not the only one out there who will be affected the same way.
Eugene first posted the video here the other day, but it fell off the diary list in a matter of minutes. So I thought I'd share my own personal story instead. I will steal his final paragraph, however:
We firmly believe that this is not an LGBT issue, but a progressive issue, a democratic issue, a human issue. We further believe that support for Equality cannot be picked and chosen based on subgroups, but can only exist in one form, which is equality for all and in all forms.
We are honored to do our part. Here is how you can help right now:
- Join our mailing list at TruthandHope.org and share this video and/or this diary ten people.
- Join our Facebook group and invite anyone you know who supports equality.
- Contribute what you can today. Every $25, $50, $100 or more supports production and airing of these ads that share the stories necessary to change hearts and mind, not for a moment but forever.
And if the ad hits you, or someone you send it to, in a similar way, be sure to let us know. In the meantime, I'm going to go hug my beautiful daughter a little tighter than normal.