I had a very encouraging conversation with my Dad this morning... glad I got to sleep early enough last night to see him before he left.

We started out talking about politics... both of us are very disappointed in the available candidates. He mentioned McCain... I said I felt betrayed by his recent pandering to the religious right, that I thought it was a big mistake on his part since those are precsisely the people who hate him and the people who liked him are the kind who don't care much for the political end of the religious arena, basically describing myself here. We talked about that for a few minutes before I mentioned that McCain wasn't the only supposedly socially liberal Republican I felt had been betraying himself, that Arnold Scwarzenegger who once struck me as precisely the kind of socially liberal republican that was desperately needed in the party had thrown aside those principles, vetoing a bill legalizing gay marriage.

I talk with my dad about politics a lot, this type of conversation was very normal for us. What we talked about next though has me feeling much better about my future relationship with him. Basically, we both agree that the state has no right to dictate who marries whom among consenting adults, that no state ought have the right to abrogate a marriage merely because the couple have crossed into their borders... he said he would raise a huge fit if someone tried to tell him he were no longer married to my mom just because he had crossed a state line.... He said he though it wasn't "right" in the natural sense, since their inability to reproduce by normal means would mean that they would die out, but I pointed out that Gays have been around since at least as early as the ancient Greeks, and he followed that up with an example of his own where something that shouldn't (in terms of natural selection) be a part of the gene pool was still around. I said that I could accept an opinion that it is outside the normal natural order of things, given that the sex drive is normally a matter of producing children, but that in terms of contributing to the continuation of the species, there's always adoption. He agreed.

I love my dad. He's worked hard all his life to provide me with a good life that he never had, because of this he was away for much of my early childhood, and later when he retired from the Navy he was often busy even at home, studying this or that Computer programming book... We don't talk much about ourselves, but we love to talk about things... history, politics, religion.... I am so lucky to have my father.

I'm not ready to "come out" to him yet, it will be a few years before I can do that. I want to get myself established in my relationship with Silven, and financially fully independent first, no longer because I fear my dad might cut me off, but because I want, when he first learns of what I am, for him to see me somewhere where he can be proud of me for it.

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In other news, I wrote another poem. Silven, my love, this is for you.