Happy Father’s Day From This Gay Dad! #FathersDay #HappyFathersDay #FamilyCloud

Some guys become dads because of an accident. Some guys become dads because they chose to be. We became dads after a decade and a half of hard and focused work.

But why fatherhood? We had such a wonderful free life before!

We were free, but not fulfilled. We are no longer free to do as we like, go wherever we choose, whenever we choose. We are locked into our son’s school schedule. And that is not just annually, that is daily. Weekends we cannot sleep in, we are at the mercy of our son’s sleep and activity schedule.

And we couldn’t be more happy. We choose this path, we worked hard for this path, and the rewards from this choice come to us every second of every day that we are dads, the position in life that we wanted more than anything else.

I have always loved children. I love playing with kids. I went out of my way to see my nieces and nephews, and then found a partner who felt the same way. This solidified our bond early on in the relationship. But being Uncles was not enough. Some people want to give the crying baby back to its parents, we never did, we wanted the entire, full parenting experience. We wanted to watch every part of the process of having a child and being full time parents.

And thankfully, in the United States of America, in the year 2003, we were allowed to adopt our son. Arizona had no issue with us adopting the child, and New York allowed us to adopt together rather than do two separate adoptions which had been the way things had been handled just a few years previous.

And to those who think same sex couples should not adopt, I say PHOOEY! You don’t know us, you don’t see how we live, you speak out of ignorance and some imaginary fear. We were born gay and as far as we can see, our son was not. And he will grow up with an understanding and compassion for all people, whoever they are, however they were born, and will hopefully have far less judgement than my generation. As I remind everyone all the time, we are gay but that doesn’t mean there is a disco ball turning from the living room ceiling. We are two parents demanding the best out of our child when it comes to homework, requiring he have the utmost respect for all people, and joining him as we all spend time with our extended family several weekends a month.

WE ARE NOT GAY DADS, we are dads that are gay.

I find it humorous that there is a thing called Father’s Day. For me, after all the work we did to become parents, every day that I have a child is Father’s Day, because every day that I see my son I am reminded that my Higher Power (and the US government) allowed me to have the greatest gift possible for anyone living on this Earth. So for Father’s Day, I thank my son! Who is now 12 and seems to still want to have fun with us!

This is not a sponsored post, we just were lucky to be at an event for the new Amazon Cloud service where we had excellent professional pictures taken by Tory Williams. And thanks to Cool Mom Picks for arranging everything, these pictures are perfect for this day!