Open Letter to Florida Attorney General, Pam Bondi

Dear Pam Bondi, Attorney General of Florida:

In just over a month, my family will celebrate the first birthday of three of our children - Liam, Lilly, and Leo, triplets born on April 1, 2013 in St Petersburg, FL.

My life has seen extraordinary change in the past year. My family has doubled in size, expanding from me, my amazing partner Patrick and our son Lorenzo to include the triplets. I have grown more and more comfortable in my role as a stay-at-home father. We are making a home in our new, larger house, just outside of Tampa, to accommodate for our unexpected growth in family size.

Our life together is the bright life of two dads working our hardest to provide for our four amazing children. We prepare healthy meals for our kids. We take them to school. We have cookouts with our family members on the weekend. We go shopping.

And we are happy - we are so, so happy.

Patrick and I have built a wonderful life in Florida, and we have learned such amazing moral and spiritual lessons here in the Sunshine State. And yet, our state has not made it easy for us to build our lives here: Despite our love and commitment, Patrick and I do not have the freedom to marry in Florida. Because of laws prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying in our state, Patrick cannot cover me on his health insurance as I take care of the kids full time; even our domestic partnership - which we entered into in the City of Tampa in 2012, the only legal family status available to us - means nothing in our home now that we've moved out of the city limits.

"Patrick and I have built a wonderful life in Florida - and yet, our state has not made it easy for us to build our lives here."

We love our state, and we refuse to move to another state in order to get married. We know that even with a marriage license from another state, as soon as we return to our home, Florida will act as though the license is invisible. 

We love that we have built our home here - but we need more in order to fully dignify our lives, our family, and our place in the state. We need to become a whole part of society. We need to make sure our children - future leaders of this state and this country - are protected and respected by the law. We need to make Florida a better, safer place to live - and we hope you'll stand with us as we work together for a better future. We need the freedom to marry in Florida. 

For us, marriage is not a romantic idea - it's a necessity: We need the security that marriage provides. We need the protections to ensure that we can raise our family safely and be treated equally. We need to know that we are respected by our government and our community - the government that we pay taxes into, the community that we love.

We live in an incredible time, Attorney General Bondi - and we have great hope for a future where families like mine are fully respected by the law. You have the opportunity to help make our dreams a reality - and we hope you take advantage of this chance to stand on the right side of history.

Elected officials around the country have taken the time this year to reflect on why marriage matters for same-sex couples - and increasingly, they are arriving at the conclusion that the freedom to marry for same-sex couples hurts no one. They are seeing that being able to marry helps these same-sex couples and their families in myriad ways, some tangible - like the security of being respected as a family come tax season - and some intangible - like having the reassurance that, under the law, they are entitled to the same respect and dignity as their neighbors. From Pennsylvania to Virginia to Nevada, attorneys general have stopped defending anti-marriage laws, and it's because they have come to a simple conclusion: These laws are truly indefensible.

"From PA to VA to NV, attorneys general have stopped defending anti-marriage laws, and it's because they have come to a simple conclusion: These laws are truly indefensible."

I know that this letter is only the story of one family in the great state of Florida - but it represents thousands of other families like mine who are living in a state where we are told again and again that we are not welcome. By denying the freedom to marry to same-sex couples and defending anti-marriage laws, you are hurting our families.

Our family's first year with Liam, Lily, and Leo has been a remarkable and blessed time. Now, we hope that in the second year of their lives, our dreams of marrying in Florida and living equally under the law come true. 

Thank you,

Juan Luque • Valrico, Florida

Photo by Stephanie Nicolaas @ fb.com/enlightenedhumans

2Dads+4 Kids have to dance

There are so many things going on right now, i need to write, I need to write and I need to write more. For now this is all I have

5 minutes of chaos

After "you have your hands full" which is the comment #1 about our family, the question, How you guys doing, it's the most frequent. It's such a wide open question that after thinking a few seconds or many long minutes the answer is always the same: WE DONT KNOW HOW WE DO IT, WE DONT THINK ABOUT IT, WE JUST DO IT. 

 The key to keep our family manageable is to have a schedule and some planning ahead. There are two things our children cant tolerate at all, hunger and tiredness. So if we feed them and put them to sleep on schedule most of the day can go very smoothly until it won't. 

Today somebody decided to save some formula, because, sometimes, they can left one or two ounces or even more. Guess what, you never can save on formula, its a bad idea. You can save at the wrong moment and that can affect the feeding schedule for the entire day.

I was feeling a little slow because I had a visit to the dentist and they numbed my left side of the mouth to do some deep cleaning. So I was half here, half in venus. 

It is about dinner time, kids are in their chairs by the pool, Patrick started to prepare rice (don't ever let a white boy cook rice, ok?) so i said: since they are behind in their schedule, we should start preparing their last bottle now. Patrick said: lets give them a bath first. Here we go... I though... I can see it coming...

Bathing triplets is like factory assemble line. Everything need to be done in an order so you don't forget to clean one ears or wash another's head twice. As soon as we placed the babies in our bed (that is where we start the process) they started to cry, why? because they are hungry.

In the meantime Lorenzo is going thru a new phase, he closes every door he find in his destructive toddler path. So here I am Preparing 3 bottles at light speed, checking on the, now abandoned, rice still cooking in the stove, opening doors that Lorenzo close immediately after I passed them. "Oh no! Lily has a rash in her butt" I hear from Patrick in the other side of the house."Bring me the butt cream with the blue cap" he ask with urgency, I am still working on the bottles, the cereal we add to their night bottle is empty, so I need to open a new box, but Patrick need towels this time, then he question me why the bottle are not ready yet, I run back to the kitchen for the 4th time, I stand in the middle of the kitchen and I think. What am I doing here? oh yeah the bottles, then I prepare the baby bottles. I finish the bottles, wait, these are the wrong nipples! cereal formula require nipples #3, I have to remove the nipples #2, clean the mess of formula spilling all over, put the new nipples (this is all 3X ok, don't ever forget that part), wait, I left 2 babies in the bed with not supervision, I run back to the bedroom, open the door that Lorenzo closed again, babies are ok, they are screaming like little piglets but they are safe, I run to their nursery to prepare their cribs and dispose their dirty diapers, Lorenzo is disposing some new baby hats he found in a drawer (he is so quick) I remove the hats from the trash can, Patrick is asking again for the butt lotion for Lilly, I can't find it. So I am ready to dress the already bathed babies, OMG, the rice! Run over there and just started to laugh, not like a nice healthy laugh but more like a maniac, psychopath kind of laugh. The I hear patrick screaming "Lorenzo get out of here!!! OMG OMG OMG" - he is washing Liam's head in the sink, Lorenzo is "reorganizing" the cabinet underneath- "the baby is peening on Lorenzo head!!!". And it is only 5 minutes since Patrick decided to give the babies a bath off schedule. 


How we do it? You tell me how we do it. And please don't get confuse, we are not looking for advice. Pleeeease do not give me any advise on this. The lady with the black cat that used to do that, was permanently blocked. (referring to my FaceBook page follower)

Right now, Lorenzo is taking a quiet bath, babies are sleeping and the house is very quiet, I am writing this and preparing to see the last season of Breaking Bad.

Tomorrow all these memories are gone and we are already collecting new ones.

Have a good night.