We recently sat down with our friend Lance Toma, who we have known for about eight years, or roughly as long as he has been half of a couple. Lance met Erik and fell in love. Falling in love is easy, you just fall, but staying in love and becoming a family (Erik has a son, Reggie) takes work, patience and perseverance.
Talk drifted to the routines of domestic life: balancing career demands with family obligations, juggling insane schedules, paying the mortgage, cleaning the yard, taking turns driving Reggie to school. It is all so blessedly ordinary. They even have a dog, Mauka.
Nowadays conversations either start with same-sex marriage or quickly get there. We asked Lance why he and Erik married at San Francisco’s City Hall four years ago. What would “being married” add to the life he, Erik, Reggie and Mauka already have? After all, the importance of marriage seems to be fading. California has over 600,000 unmarried partners, and that number is growing at a rate almost five times that of married partners.
“Your stats are irrelevant,” Lance said, grinning. “Even if the number of marriages is declining compared with other domestic arrangements, there are still six million married couples in California, and marriage remains a viable institution.”
Turning serious, he explained that he and Erik married because marriage is a public statement of a love strong enough to support a lifelong commitment to share lives.
“Marriage has wonderful consequences. We are parents. Our own parents are now related. We have a place in the family hierarchy. We have in-laws, and Reggie has grandparents.”
They also married because of Reggie. Although the legal rights automatically conferred on married couples may be acquired by couples who are not allowed to marry through domestic partnership applications, Lance feels that it is not quite the same.
“Marriage is a fundamental concept,” he said, “It is imbued with rituals, responsibilities and obligations. Marriage confers dignity, respect and the title of family. Nobody has to ask what it means to be married. Children have parents. Reggie does, too; he has two fathers. And somehow, the word ‘parent’ is a warmer, more loving and better descriptor of the obligation and honor than ‘legal guardian.’”
Each family has unique rituals that make them happy, rituals children recall when they have children. Lance and Erik have dinner together as one of their rituals. Whether at 6 or 8 or 10 o’clock, they will have dinner and have it together. Often the dinner conversations are about racism and homophobia. Reggie’s elementary school experience was wonderful. But now in middle school, the taunts have started, and it is a more blatantly hostile environment.
Lance is the oldest son from an Asian American family. His parents love him as their son. Their oldest son has a life partner, a good career and has given them their first grandson. It is as it should be.