I am not queer.

• Author: Link, David

There were 14 of us at the family dinner table, representing four generations. We were at my sister's house just outside of Victorville, part of a growing community in Southern California's high desert, about two hours east of Los Angeles. It was a little above 30 degrees outside, and the sky was a clear window on a million stars.

My sister and parents, as well as a number of my uncles and aunts, had moved here partly because of the affordable housing, partly because they are golfers and their neighborhood is built around a lovely golf course, and partly because it is the kind of quiet community that is the antithesis of the city none of them ever liked. They are endlessly satisfied with the distance they have put between themselves and Los Angeles. In most of these details, I am very different from my family.

Still, I come up to visit them often. They are my family, and I enjoy spending time with them. But they are also something else to me: They are my ground. A large part of the country is made up of people like them, people who do not often get involved in the political rhetoric I am used to--the rhetoric of the media, of academic debates, of the centers of power. People like my family, suburban, church-going people, are consumed with the day-to-day details of their lives and have little time for things like the big picture, the effect society has on individuals, the law. I have always been drawn to big-picture issues.

But in the small things, the family rituals, I share a great deal with them. My family is located squarely at the heart of the middle class, and so am 1. In that way among others, I am much like them. And here among these people I loved, having one more in a lifetime of family dinners, I noticed something that struck a chord in me, not because it was unusual, but because it was so very usual that it went without any comment at all. As I looked around the table, I realized that of the 14 people busily loading their plates and talking, five of us were gay.

And no one cared.

The cast of characters was for the most part as familiar to me as the photographs on the walls of my apartment. My grandmother and parents were there, as were my sister and brother-in-law. Two of my seven uncles were with us: One sat next to his wife, while the other was there with his longtime male lover. My sister's stepson Rick had brought his girlfriend. Early in the evening Rick's brother had called to let us know he would be there too. When he arrived, he introduced us to the young man he had brought along as his date. Since in my family there is always enough food, my sister set another place at the table for the additional guest with little fuss. The fact that he and his date were the same sex was no big deal.

Just before dessert, my Aunt Ann and Uncle Fred dropped by. Even among my family--who, with rare exceptions, are conservative Republicans--these two have always been especially conservative. I have long been uneasy with both major parties, but I am a registered Democrat, and I sometimes espouse Democratic Party positions I don't wholly support so that Fred and I will have something to argue about. The never-ending political debates between Fred and me are a family tradition as predictable as turkey on Thanksgiving, and Ann is always there to chide me with some argument Fred might have forgotten. Our debates are usually loud and intense; whatever the details, we both care deeply about politics. Because of our political passions I have long felt a special kinship with Fred and Ann, and they have always felt close to me. Most of the rest of the family discusses politics only reluctantly.

In making her greetings to everyone, Ann, as usual, saved a special zeal for my uncle's lover. He is one of those people who came into the family's enthusiastic embrace easily. While my family generally accepts all comers, in the natural course of things some are more loved than others. My uncle's lover was a favorite from the start.

This domestic picture will be an affront to some people who are homosexual. I have long been aware that the family I come from is not like the families many lesbians and gay men were brought up in and had to escape, the families that the notorious Mad Pats at the Republican Convention thought they could use as a weapon against lesbians and gay men. While that strategy backfired badly, it remains true that because of the disquiet the Mad Pats exploit, many gay people are unable to have the kind of relationship with their families that I have.

That said, I bring my family up for a very specific reason. They are not alone. They and hundreds of thousands of families like them are too often absent in the discussion about gay rights--not as weapons against gay people, but as their imperfect allies. The public discussion of homosexuality tends to take place at the extremes; since the loudest objections come from radical conservatives, the opposition tends to be equally intense, equally extreme. While this makes for symmetry, the fervor on both sides sometimes excludes people like my family who have a more moderate interest in the issue. Those people, who are neither particularly...