Maybe the most surprising thing about our adoption journey has been how much being a gay couple seems to barely figured into it at all.

Of course we don’t live in a perfect utopia, and our foster/adoption agency has made it clear that some social workers representing kids still won’t place with gay families. And there are states in the US, and many other countries where this would be difficult or impossible.

But the shocking fact is that we’ve spent a year finding an agency, doing foster/adopt training, doing our home study, doing workshops and classes, and it’s been possible to do all this without thinking too much about the fact that we’re gay. I’m so thankful for this bubble we live in!

I think about being involved in starting my university’s gay student group 25 years ago, and how vitally important it felt that I let it be known that “I’m gay I’m gay I’m gay.” It was important to me then, but it’s amazing to realize that now if I were to list 5 or 10 key things about myself, I’m not sure being gay would make the list. It certainly wouldn’t be the burning issue it once was.

Which I guess is to say that all our work has paid off. Coming out in schools and workplaces and families has changed the landscape. Modern Family has made gay dads part of the TV sitcom landscape. To a remarkable degree it’s a new world.

As that New Yorker cartoon said a few years ago, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re used to it.”