When I was a kid I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I did know what I didn't want to do. I didn't want to grow up, have 2.2 kids, get married, the whole white picket fence thing.
I'm very traditional. I want to have kids. I want to be - not a stay-at-home mom, but to be able to take care of my kids and have a family and cook. A white picket fence and a dog.
Yeah, you got the family dog and the white picket fence, and you just think that's all there is. Some of us had to grow up in poverty-stricken urban neighborhoods, and we just had to adapt to our environment. I know that it's wrong. But people act like it's some crazy thing they never heard of. They don't know.
It's like the old thing: The parents stay together for the kids, but the kids know that you don't want to be together. The kids would rather you be happy - and separate - than together and miserable. I don't want my kid to grow up around two parents who just don't work.
I used to live with my grandmother. I used to wonder why the other kids in school went home with their mothers and fathers. I wanted to be the guy that got married. I wanted to be the guy with the children and the white picket fence. I never had that.
I grew up with the white picket fence. My dad went to work nine to five, and he had a station wagon.
I wasn't one of those kids who grew up watching movies thinking, 'That's what I want to do when I grow up.' I didn't really particularly know I had an aptitude for it.
I’d like to have a nice home set up, with a couple of dogs, and a fence, white picket fence.
I’d given up on the white picket fence after Kisten had died—finding out my kids would be demons was the nail in the coffin.
I don't want to be married. I don't know - it sounds crazy, but in my mind, it's all connected. You get married, you have kids, you grow old, then you die. Somehow, it seems to me, if you didn't get married, you wouldn't die.
I might want to do a hundred things in a given day, but I know I have to pick up my kids between 5 and 6. That is the most important thing. So I fit in everything else around that. I know what needs to be done, and then I know what I want to get done.
Kids are a great analogy. You want your kids to grow up, and you don't want your kids to grow up. You want your kids to become independent of you, but it's also a parent's worst nightmare: That they won't need you. It's like the real tragedy of parenting.
Now all of us in our thirties are the first generation that get to say, "I don't know how I feel about that system, I don't know if I want kids, I don't know if I want to get married."
I'm not in this just to change the law. It's about changing society. I want gay kids to grow up believing that they can get married, that they can join the Scouts, that they can choose the life they want to live.
My favorite leader is George Washington. Because he came from very modest circumstances. He wasn't the son of a plantation owner. He was the son of a farmer. He had no formal education, very frustrated. He started writing a diary when he was in his teens, and he wrote things like, "When I grow up, I want to be respected. When I grow up, I want to be successful. When I grow up, I want to know things." What I find fascinating about Washington is he wanted to make something of himself.
When I was a kid, they'd say, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" kids would go Wonder Woman, an astronaut. Do you know what I always said? World domination - so we're on our way.
The good thing about kids is they want to be mobile; they want to be running around nonstop. They want to play. They want to be outside. So they're inherently more active than we are, because we get much lazier as we get older. Part of being a parent is keeping up with your kid.