Today I met a writing friend of mine for coffee in Westwood. On the way over, I was beset with bogged down traffic on Santa Monica Blvd. so I took an alternate route through Beverly Hills on Carmelita. I was following a black Prius from one stop sign to the next traveling west. I noted that the Prius had one of those stenciled pictures on the back of a family with lots of kids and two dogs. My first thought was that was a big family. At the next stop sign I looked closer and realized that the stencil showed a parent on the left, then two kids, then two dogs, then one child, finishing with a second parent on the right. Not so many kids, after all, just spread out over the back of that Prius.

Off we went heading further westward when at the next stop sign, I looked more closely at the stencil. Instead of a mother and a father, the stencil showed two women on either side of all those kids. Suddenly, I realized that this was the very first gay family stencil I had ever seen. This was a family with two mothers. Also, from the position of the children – a mother, then two kids on one side, then two dogs, then one child on the other with the other mother, I had to conclude that this was a blended family. I imagined that perhaps the two women were divorced and had found each other after two failed marriages. Of course, that was just a guess. But this was definitely the first gay stenciled family I had ever seen.

There was a part of me that wondered if that family needed to communicate so much information about itself on the back of their car. Was that safe? Have we gotten to a point in our society that we need to tell people so much about ourselves? (Ironic since I do that every night on this blog.) Still, what about kidnappers? Couldn’t they go up to a kid heading for that car and say, “Your moms said I was supposed to take you home today.” I admit I have thought the same thing when I have seen the heterosexual version of this same stencil. Does this communicate too much information to strangers? I suppose that is a debatable issue.

On the other hand, I had to smile. We’ve come a long way in our society to have that stencil on the back of a car with no fear from the occupants. That is progress for absolute sure. Life is getting more open and accepting all the time. That freedom from fear trumps all those other concerns. I am happy to see that we’ve moved to a time in society when we can all celebrate who our family is, no matter what the configuration.

Good for us.