What is a family? According to all-knowing Wikepedia,

“Family denotes a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, and co-residence. Although the concept of consanguinity originally referred to relations by “blood,” many anthropologists have argued that one must understand the notion of “blood” metaphorically, and that many societies understand ‘family’ through other concepts rather than through genetic distance.”

Yeah. That sounds about right.

I have a lot of family. And thanks to right-wing, self-righteous politics, many of my family members don’t have the basic rights that I enjoy.

Take for example my own mother. My mom married a man when she was 20 years old. By the time she was 22, she had two kids. By the time she was 30, she had three kids, and by the time she was 40, she was divorcing.

It was a very strange time, that. Weird times where we all stomped around and grieved and loved and mourned and celebrated. It was all of those things in a complicated swirl. My mom’s best friend, Beans, was going through a similar situation, and had a small child. With both of them struggling to pay their bills, provide for their kids, and get through the day, they moved in together to make all ends meet. And we have lived as a family ever since.

I am not outing my mother. Frankly, it’s a conversation that we’ve never had. It doesn’t matter. My mom always told me that “you love who you love,” and that’s how we all approach it. It doesn’t matter. And yet, to our government, it’s everything. Because the woman that my mother shares her life with, her bills with, her day-to-day, her parenting, her sorrows and her joys with, has no rights under the law. No right to make decisions about my mother’s health in case of an emergency, even though she knows her best. No right to continue to live in the home they share if something were to happen. She couldn’t even take FMLA to help take care of my mother if the need arose, because she’s not “family.”

Oh, but these women are family—and it’s not just co-residence that determines that. And family isn’t determined by what’s going on (or isn’t) in a bedroom. They are family just the same. There is consanguinity. There is affinity. And there is love. My kids call her Grandma Beans. I love her like a second mother. I love her family like my own. And I know she feels the same about me and mine. That is family.

Both my sister and I, at various points in our teenage years, made teary calls to Beans for help, because we knew she’s understand and love us anyway.

She taught me how to drive in the snow with her brand-new, beautiful pick-up truck, and she didn’t even yell once.

I call her daughter my sister.

She and my mother are the people we would turn to if we ever needed someone to parent our own children.

I rail against a machine that refuses to recognize same-sex couples, and yet I benefit from the same machine that sees my own relationship as “legitimate.” But the law and our nation’s attitude has cost me plenty, beyond the basic rights that my friends and family cannot enjoy. It was a part of the reason that my mom and I did not have a relationship for almost three years.

You see, during my parent’s divorce, my mother’s “orientation” was of great interest to my father, and my father’s lawyers. Because there was a prevailing thought in divorce law that if mom could somehow be shown to be unfit, then the Dad could have custody. My dad didn’t want me or my sister (we were almost 18 by that time.) But he definitely wanted my baby brother. And he thought that if he could prove that my mom and Beans were more than just friends, more than just two single moms trying to claw their way out of a bad situation, then he would have a way to take my brother away from my mom. There’s no reason to judge my dad here. This is the way the system worked then, and it’s not much different now. At different times, I was asked to testify in court as to the nature of my mom’s relationship, who slept where, who parented whose children. I was 19. There was a lot I didn’t know then about how the world works, and shouldn’t have been expected to.

My mom was understandably terrified to lose my brother, and an elaborate dance ensued. It was hard to say what was a secret, what was “just for us to know,” or what might send the court case in an entirely new direction. I don’t want to get into it, but it wasn’t pretty for anyone. I don’t even think I could reliably report what all occurred. But the main premise provided to the court was, “known physically abusive father is a better option than a potential lesbian, even though she’s been a fantastic mother by all accounts.”

It’s possible the courts would have agreed. We will never know, because my brother eventually became of the age to decide for himself.**

Today I’m writing for families like my own. Families like those we love. (We often note that our kids think a heterosexually-headed family is the anomaly, because we have just as many single and same-sex families in our sphere.) The best thing we can do is keep teaching our children, keep pushing our government, and keep telling our stories.

I gave a litany of reasons last year why these ideas of “keeping marriage safe” are stupid, irrational, illogical, and poorly argued. But this story– the one so close to my own heart– is the biggest reason why I feel how I feel. I bet you know someone in this exact situation, too. Have you heard their story?

** Updated to add: This is actually not true, though I believed that it was when I wrote it. After I published this, and talked about it with my mom, I found out what I never knew: my mom lost all parental rights to my brother during this trial. She had no court mandated visitation, and in fact was forbidden to have my brother in her home overnight. The judge in the case cited her “alternative lifestyle,” which was never verified (not that it should have mattered, I only say this to illustrate that rumor enough was enough to strip my mom of her parental rights.) It might be surprising that I never knew this– but remember that I was away at college, and that my mom and I weren’t really speaking throughout it. I never knew until today that this happened.