From France to Salt Lake City, same-sex parent adoption is all over the news these days. Depending on who and what you read, it is good for kids, bad for kids, protects non-biological parents, threatens non-biological parents, threatens straight parents, threatens national security. It's times likes these when I like to schedule a playdate with Dan Savage, an old friend I've never met.
Savage, as you may well know, is the editor of Seattle's weekly paper The Stranger, a sex columnist, and a commentator on "This American Life." He is also a gay dad, and the author of one of the best books ever on gay adoption: The Kid. I love this book. I love Savage's other book, too, and I really love this article he wrote a few years back about his family's evolving relationship with his son's birth mother. Savage is unabashedly sexy, political, and somehow both self-deprecating and completely unapologetic. He is a gay dad who refuses to buy into the idea that in order to be accepted by straight society he must play down the "gay" and play up the "dad."
Until I just happen upon him at the local playground (doubtful for oh so many reasons, the first being I don't live in Seattle, the second being his son aged out of such frivolities a while back), I'll be hanging out with Savage on the printed page where he does an unparalleled job of reminding his readers that parents who welcome children into their families regardless of how those children were welcomed into the world are anything but a threat.
