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Spilled Milk: Prop 8 — The Color of Pee-Pee

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This post is the first in a series of Spilled Milk columns by Emmy Award-winning writer and producer William Lucas Walker that chronicle his journey through parenthood. Hereafter, Spilled Milk, which originates in The Huffington Post, will appear on these pages every Saturday.

 

Our son was three years old when Prop 8 passed, too young to understand what was going on but just the right age to articulate his thoughts about those yellow “Yes on 8” signs he saw everywhere. They were, he announced, “the color of pee-pee.”

On some level, he got what was happening to his family.

Six months earlier, on May 14, 2008, my children and I had helped their Papa celebrate his 40th birthday. Since Kelly was born here in Los Angeles, we took him on a sort of “This Is Your Life” driving tour. We visited the hospital where he was born, his childhood home in Sylmar, his kindergarten and elementary schools. After that we drove to Pasadena so we could show the kids the spot where Kel and I had met, in the courtyard of All Saints Episcopal Church. Growing up, Kelly’s mom had told him that if he was lucky, he’d meet the person he was going to marry at church. As usual, she was right, though I doubt she pictured a bride with my testosterone levels.

The next morning, May 15, a late, unexpected birthday gift arrived. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could wrap or slip into a card. It was too big. Huge, in fact. The California Supreme Court had just handed down a landmark verdict: Kelly and I were no longer banned from getting married. That night, after nine years and two children, I was finally able to propose to the love of my life. There were tears, so it was fitting that our daughter captured the moment on the video camera we’ve used to record every moist event in our family’s life together, from her sticky birth to the time she threw up on her grandfather.

Kelly insisted that we marry the first day such unions would become legal, June 17, before — as he so presciently put it — “they try to take it away from us.” Bastards. That’s what I was thinking. Our children will no longer be bastards! Our plan to correct this problem was to take the kids to the county courthouse, pay for our license, and get hitched then and there. But our next-door neighbor had other ideas.

“You finally get the right to marry, and you’re not having a wedding?” cried Judy. “You have to have a wedding!” I told her we were on a tight timetable — three weeks — and besides, a wedding wasn’t in our budget. Judy was hearing none of it. “We’ll help you,” she said. “We’ll make it happen.”

“Who’ll make it happen?” I asked.

“Your neighbors. The Ladies of La Punta Drive!” I wondered why it was so important for her to see us get married, so I asked, and she answered: “Because we love your family, and we want you to have what we have.” A moment I’ll never forget.

So the Ladies of La Punta kicked into high gear. Mary, an attorney, forever reversed my low opinion of lawyers by baking us a spectacular, three-tier wedding cake. Alexa augmented a $100 flower budget by grabbing a machete and taking to the street like some feral florist, whacking down enough greenery to turn our living room into a lovely, low-cost garden. As for Judy, she took pictures with a broken wrist, while Lisa handled the nuptial food, demonstrating what every parent of a pregnant bride has known for years: there’s nothing like Costco for a quickie wedding reception. Neil, our daughter’s godfather and an Episcopal priest, officiated. Our attendants were our children: Elizabeth, then 7, and James, 2-and-a-half. Elizabeth called herself our groomsmaid and never looked more radiant. Or proud. James froze on the aisle, as 2-year-olds have done throughout time. Still, he managed to strew a path of leaves for his parents as they strode toward a day they thought would never arrive.

Nothing can compete with the birth of your kids for sheer depth of joy, but our wedding day was a close second. Kelly and I repeated the vows we’d made to each other at a religious blessing of our union at All Saints Church in 2001. Only this time we were able to use the words “lawfully wedded.” We were married, in the eyes of our god, our state, our friends and family, but, most importantly, our children.

The reception rocked. Way back in 1995, I had written the gay wedding episode of Roseanne, the first time a national television audience had witnessed such a(n illegal) thing. At his sitcom reception, Martin Mull, who played one of the grooms, looked aghast at the wedding cake topper Roseanne had concocted for him. She explained herself in her trademark nasal whine: “I couldn’t find anything with two grooms, so I ripped off the bride and stuck on one of D.J.’s action heroes from Pocahontas.”

I loved that cake topper and had kept it as a souvenir. When Mary told me about the three-level, 18-million-calorie confection she planned to bake, I dug the topper out of storage. And once again, these two little men, plastic but clearly meant for each other, took their place on the frosting, this time as a legally married couple: Mr. and Mr. Captain John Smith. Our children thought it was funny.

But as Elizabeth and James watched our wedding day unfold, what neither of them realized was this: though it may have seemed to be about us, this day was very much about the two of them. Marriage has a way of providing kids with a sense of stability most children take for granted. Now our kids no longer had to stand on a playground wondering why everybody else’s parents could be married but theirs could not.

Five months after our happy day, the “Yes on 8” campaign convinced over half of California’s electorate that my family’s having equal access to marriage is a Very Bad Thing. I heard them say, a lot, “Why do you need to be married? You guys get the same rights and protections as marriage. It’s just called ‘domestic partnership’; really, it’s exactly the same,” as if pointing in the far distance and saying, “See, there it is, way over there. Squint.” I grew up in the segregated South, and those arguments sounded awfully familiar. I was in a domestic partnership for eight years; I’ve now been married for five. The water does not taste the same.

In the final weeks leading up to the election, as I was driving Elizabeth home from school, we passed a newspaper stand on which someone had plastered a “Yes on 8” bumper sticker. She became visibly agitated, as she did whenever she saw a “Yes on 8” yard sign. She asked if I would stop the car so that we could scrape off the bumper sticker. I explained to her that we live in America and there’s a thing called freedom of speech, which means everyone has the right to express their opinion, as long as they’re not hurting anyone. She started to cry, saying, “But they are. They’re hurting our family. Why do all those people want to hurt our family?” It was one of my lowest moments as a father.

Prop 8 passed that November. Elizabeth’s second-grade class had been following the presidential election, so she knew about percentages and majorities. What she was unable to wrap her mind around was the fact that over half the voters in California thought we had no legal right to be a family.

It was months before she told me about the nightmares she’d been having, dreams of people with yellow signs coming to our house with torches, trying set fire to our home. I wish I were making this up. Sadly, no. Thanks, National Organization for Marriage. To you I would say this: if, as your misleading campaign ads bleated for months, your main goal is to protect children, how could you possibly do this to mine?

We got married that very warm, first possible evening in June, not to be part of history or to make some political statement, but because we’re a family and want what’s best for our kids. Luckily, California’s Supreme Court subsequently held that our marriage, and the other 18,000 marriages performed during those five months, had been entered into in good faith and could not be evaporated by a vote. But what about the other families, the ones who weren’t lucky enough to marry when they had the chance?

With last February’s decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholding Judge Vaughn Walker’s finding that Prop 8 is unconstitutional, you’d think things were looking up. Not for kids with gay parents. With ProtectMarriage.com now trying to convince the U.S. Supreme Court that our families don’t deserve legal recognition, and the freshly-minted Republican Party platform calling for a nationwide ban on marriage equality, it can only mean one thing for these children: a lot more time standing on playgrounds wondering why they can’t have married parents like their friends.

* * * * *
William Lucas Walker is an Emmy Award-winning writer and producer whose television credits include Frasier, Will & Grace and Roseanne. He co-created the critically-acclaimed Showtime comedy The Chris Isaak Show. Bill and his husband Kelly are the parents of Elizabeth and James, born in 2001 and 2005. The children were gratified by the legal marriage of their parents in 2008, an event that rescued them from a life of ruinous bastardry.

Spilled Milk chronicles Bill’s misadventures in Daddyland. The first recurring humor column by a gay parent to appear in a mainstream American publication, Spilled Milk has regularly landed on the front page of The Huffington Post.

Follow William Lucas Walker on Twitter: @WmLucasWalker, @SpilledMilkWLW or Facebook: “Spilled Milk” by William Lucas Walker.       

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Trump Appears to Confuse America’s Revolutionary War With the Civil War

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President Donald Trump, speaking about war as he attempts to decide whether or not to actively support Israel by bombing Iran, appeared to confuse America’s war for independence —the Revolutionary War—with America’s Civil War.

Asked in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon if he’s made a decision about what, if anything, he will do regarding Iran, the President told reporters, “I have ideas as to what to do, but I haven’t made a final.”

“I like to make the final decisions one second before it’s due, you know, ’cause things change. I mean, especially with war, things change with war, it can go from one extreme to the other.”

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“You look right up there,” Trump said, pointing to the wall, “I don’t know, you see the Declaration of Independence, and I say, I wonder if you, you know, the Civil War always seemed to me maybe that could have been solved without losing 600,000 plus people.”

The Declaration of Independence was America’s declaration it would no longer be ruled by England. It effectively became a declaration of war: the American Revolutionary War, or the American War of Independence, which lasted from 1775 to 1783.

By contrast, the American Civil War was fought in the following century, from 1861 to 1865, over slavery.

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Critics were quick to mock the President.

“I think we all remember our schooling, when we learned how the Declaration of Independence led to the Civil War,” snarked former journalist Landon Hall.

“As a Canadian, even I know that the Declaration of Independence has absolutely zero to do with the Civil War, what is going on down there?” asked filmmaker Robert Fantinatto.

“Does he think the Declaration of Independence was written in response to the Civil War?
What is he talking about?” asked attorney Robyn J Leader.

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‘Feckless or Complicit’: Hegseth Blasted in Heated Hearing Over Social Media Influencer

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June 18, 2025

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U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth faced sharp and stern criticism during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing over his highly controversial decision to fire Air Force General Timothy D. Haugh, head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command. Reports suggested a far-right social media influencer was behind the move to terminate the NSA Director in what some have called a “loyalty purge.”

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“Public reports indicate that the removal of General Haugh, who has served his country proudly, has been influenced by social media influencer, an influencer— a personality on social media, Laura Loomer—spreads conspiracy theories. She’s been denounced even by Republicans,” Senator Rosen charged. “And the idea that any leaders within our agency responsible for out nation’s security—somebody would be dismissed based on the advice of a social media influencer is alarming to say the least. It’s surely not how we should be running our military.”

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Senator Rosen demanded to know if Hegseth was “consulted” regarding the dismissal of General Haugh.

“Well, Senator, I would not advise believing everything you read in the media,” was Secretary Hegseth’s response.

After a heated back-and-forth, Hegseth declared, “I’m the decision-maker for the department. And we all serve at the pleasure of the President, and we have the prerogative to make those decisions.”

Refusing to state specifically that he personally relieved general Haugh, Hegseth served up a more generic response.

“Anyone at that level who was relieved would be relieved by the Secretary of Defense,” he stated.

Hegseth also refused to respond when asked if there was a specific justification for General Haugh’s dismissal.

“Uh, Ma’am, we all serve at the pleasure of the President and the President deserves the type of Commanders and advisers that he thinks will best equip…to accomplish the mission.”

Hegseth also refused to say if he discussed dismissing Haugh with Laura Loomer.

“I don’t discuss who I talk about anything with, but ultimately, this is my decision, and he serves at the pleasure of the president, and that’s why he’s no longer there,” was the Secretary’s reply.

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‘Middle Finger to Parental Rights’: SCOTUS Conservatives Scorched Over Trans Kids Ruling

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June 18, 2025

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Legal experts, advocates for transgender youth, and the liberal justices of the U.S. Supreme Court are condemning SCOTUS’s 6–3 decision to uphold a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for minors. All six conservative justices sided with the ban—some going further to disparage scientific expertise, dismiss the value of medical consensus, and signal that transgender Americans should not be granted protected class status.

Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion upholding the ban, known as SB1.

“An estimated 1.6 million Americans over the age of 13 identify as transgender, meaning that their gender identity does not align with their biological sex,” Justice Roberts wrote at the opening of his opinion, acknowledging that transgender youth exist. In his footnotes he also acknowledged their use of pronouns: “We use ‘transgender boy’ to refer to an individual whose biological sex is female but who identifies as male, and ‘transgender girl’ to refer to an individual whose biological sex is male but who identifies as female.”

Approximately 25 states across the country have some form of ban on medical care for transgender youth. Those bans—including puberty blockers—likely will now stay in place, affecting more than 100,000 transgender youth (as of 2023), according to the Williams Institute.

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Justice Amy Coney Barrett took extra steps to write that “transgender status” does not constitute “suspect,” class deserving of strict scrutiny, a higher level of judicial review.

“The Equal Protection Clause does not demand heightened judicial scrutiny of laws that classify based on transgender status,” she also wrote.

Justice Clarence Thomas denigrated what he called “the expert class.”

“There are several problems with appealing and deferring to the authority of the expert class,” he wrote. Justice Thomas added, “whether ‘major medical organizations’ agree with the result of Tennessee’s democratic process is irrelevant.”

“To hold otherwise would permit elite sentiment to distort and stifle democratic debate under the guise of scientific judgment, and would reduce judges to mere “spectators . . . in construing our Constitution.”

Meanwhile, Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent is being praised by transgender advocates and trans-supporting legal experts. And in her dissent she directly opposed Justice Barrett’s claims.

“To give meaning to our Constitution’s bedrock equal protection guarantee, this Court has long subjected to heightened judicial scrutiny any law that treats people differently based on sex,” Justice Sotomayor wrote.

She said in her opinion that Tennessee’s law discriminates against transgender adolescents, and “expressly classifies on the basis of sex and transgender status.” In its ruling, the Supreme Court, Sotomayor wrote, “abandons transgender children and their families to political whims.”

“Tennessee’s ban applies no matter what the minor’s parents and doctors think, with no regard for the severity of the minor’s mental health conditions or the extent to which treatment is medically necessary for an individual child,” she noted.

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“This case presents an easy question: whether SB1’s ban on certain medications, applicable only if used in a manner ‘inconsistent with . . . sex,’ contains a sex classification,” Justice Sotomayor concluded. “Because sex determines access to the covered medications, it clearly does. Yet the majority refuses to call a spade a cspade. Instead, it obfuscates a sex classification that is plain on the face of this statute, all to avoid the mere possibility that a different court could strike down SB1, or categorical healthcare bans like it.”

“The Court’s willingness to do so here does irrevocable damage to the Equal Protection Clause and invites legislatures to engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight. It also authorizes, without second thought, untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them. Because there is no constitutional justification for that result, I dissent.”

Attorney Andrew L. Seidel labeled Sotomayor’s dissent, “Clear, concise, and brilliant.”

Attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, responding to the ruling, wrote: “Solidarity with trans people today, who are facing growing state oppression here and globally.”

Writer and former Human Rights Campaign spokesperson Charlotte Clymer wrote on the ruling: “The Supreme Court’s ruling prioritizes the discomfort and fear of some non-trans people over the health and wellbeing of trans youth. It disregards science and every major medical authority. It endorses the state controlling parents and doctors. Every resulting suicide is on the hands of these anti-trans justices.”

Illinois Democratic Governor JB Pritzker, responding to news of the decision, wrote: “Illinois has enshrined protections to meet this very moment. In a time of increasing overreach and hateful rhetoric, it’s more important than ever to reaffirm our commitment to the rights and dignity of the LGBTQ+ community. You have a home here always.”

Political scientist Dr. Norman Ornstein, a contributing editor to The Atlantic, declared: “In effect, the Supreme Court has given a middle finger to parental rights by accepting a Tennessee law banning gender- affirming care for youth. This is a decision that should be made within the family. They love parental rights when it fits right wing aims.

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