I Never Gave Homophobes A Second Thought. Then My Husband And I Became Dads To Twin Girls.

As a gay man, I’ve managed to escape a lot of the homophobia that afflicted many of my peers who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s. I started coming out at 14, in an Asian American enclave in Silicon Valley. Though it wasn’t the gayest place one could grow up, I felt reasonably safe coming out and never felt particular pressure to perform or mask my identity.

This continued into college in New York City and well into my adult life in Raleigh, North Carolina, where I now live. I always felt I could be openly gay and never feared homophobic attacks. 

This changed when my husband and I suddenly became dads to twin girls in the summer of 2020. Our girls were placed with us for adoption at four and a half months old. Despite the chaotic circumstances of those early COVID days, we quickly settled into being dads. The girls did all the things babies do, and we did all the things new parents do, including worrying that we were doing it wrong. 

For me (and, to a lesser degree, my husband), there was also a worry about leaving the house with the girls. I’m very visibly Asian, and my girls are very visibly not. (My husband is white, and though my girls are not white, they could pass for his biological kids if you squint.)

This was around the time that the word “groomer” was gaining widespread usage on Fox News, Twitter and Truth Social. It’s a term that implies that just by educating children about sexuality and gender identity (or even just existing in their presence), queer people are sexually manipulating them. It is particularly violent and vitriolic when aimed toward LGBTQ+ parents, or parents of queer kids. 

According to the Human Rights Campaign, “anti-grooming” narratives surged over 400% on social media following the passage of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill in 2022, and the hateful “grooming” tweets of 10 key influencers, including several federal elected officials, were viewed 48 million times.

Before my kids could talk or even physically express their relationship with me by cuddling or clinging, I got long stares in public from strangers wondering what my connection to these two babies was. Some broached the subject in a roundabout way (“Oh, what beautiful kids! Are you their … Daddy?”), others with more aggression (“There’s no way these are your kids.”).

I knew to expect reactions like these as a transracial adoptive parent, but I feared what would happen if folks found out I was gay and walking around with kids who don’t look like me.

Now that the girls are 4 years old and talking up a storm, they are very vocal about the fact that my husband and I are “Daddy and Baba” when we are out and about. And as heartening as it is to get positive feedback from strangers at Costco or Wegmans, we still do get stares and sidelong glances, and occasionally a rude interaction. 

Unfortunately, the anxiety that these instances cause often overshadows the goodwill of the rest of our community. I fear that someone will get in our faces, call us names, or try to commit an act of violence against us. I fear the psychological effects any of those actions would have on my girls. Worse yet, I fear someone will try to forcibly separate us from our kids just because we don’t fit the standard of a hetero nuclear family.

Friends and family have told me I am overreacting to a hypothetical situation that would never happen now that same-sex marriage is legal across the country. But those rights aren’t firmly codified. It hasn’t even been a decade since my marriage was federally recognised with Obergefell v. Hodges. My status as an adoptive parent is also subject to Obergefell and a subsequent case, Pavan v. Smith, which overturned an Arkansas Supreme Court decision that barred same-sex couples’ names from jointly appearing on a child’s birth certificate. 

We’re already seeing signs that “settled law” can change. In the 2022 Dobbs decision overturning the right to an abortion, Justice Clarence Thomas specifically cited Obergefell as another precedent worth revisiting. Last year in Oklahoma, a lesbian mom lost custody of her son due to a state law that recognised the parentage of her son’s sperm donor over her own. Also last year, in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed S.B. 254 into law, which allows the state to take trans kids from their parents if they are receiving gender-affirming care.

All around the country, families like mine are going through costly and humiliating “confirmatory” adoptions to ensure they will still have parental rights if Obergefell is overturned.

So what do we do about it? The long-term solution is passing federal legislation that codifies the rights of same-sex couples and queer parents. The Respect for Marriage Act, which President Joe Biden signed in 2022, was just a Band-Aid — instead of codifying our rights, it merely stipulates that states must recognise marriages and adoptions across state lines. Like the trigger laws that took effect in the aftermath of Dobbs, according to a report by PolitiFact and the National Conference of State Legislatures, nearly half of states have some sort of law in place that would make gay marriage illegal following an overturning of Obergefell. 

The only way to be absolutely sure my kids won’t get taken away from me is the passage of a federal version of something like the Massachusetts Parentage Act, a piece of legislation currently passed in the Massachusetts House and awaiting passage in the state Senate, that would protect the rights of same-sex parents and guardians regardless of whether their marriages are still recognised or whether they built their families through adoption or surrogacy.

It will also take action at the individual level. My husband and I recently hosted a playdate for our kids with a friend whose parents are straight. At some point, we mentioned our family’s “escape plan” if North Carolina passes a law that might threaten our ability to stay together.  

At first, the other couple laughed, thinking that we were joking. And as we got more and more into the details, and it became clear that we were serious, their faces got somber, as they started to imagine what it might be like to actually plan for this eventuality.

I made a joke to lighten the mood and quickly changed the subject so I wouldn’t ruin the playdate. In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d leaned into the horror of the situation and asked for their help. Because we need every ally we have going to town hall meetings, PTAs and school boards, and standing up for families like mine. 

I want them to be mad that books are being banned just because they dare depict a family like mine. I want them to know that the discussion of diverse families is not inherently sexual, and I want their kids to know why it’s important to model compassion and inclusivity in the classroom.

Most of all, I want to be strong enough to do all of this for myself. Before my kids, I had no problem with standing up to a racist or a homophobe and making it clear that I wouldn’t back down from a fight. But I’m embarrassed to admit that I find myself masking that willingness to fight for the sake of appearing presentable, for the sake of sparing my kids the trauma of seeing me upset and under attack.

What I’ve realised is that I don’t have the luxury of staying quiet. The rage and fear I feel are psychological and physiological responses to very real danger, and I owe it to myself to address that danger. It’s the only thing I can do, and I hope that you’ll join me so it doesn’t feel quite so scary.

Dennis Tseng is an Equity Strategy Program Manager at Google, a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow, and a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project. The views expressed here are solely his own.