KK and I thought about marriage for quite awhile before we got engaged and one of the first questions that popped up for us was: what should we do about the name issue?
Since there isn’t a wealth of documentation on gay marriage and family building from a gay perspective and we are trailblazers of a sort, the answer didn’t come quickly. We spent a lot of time considering it, but a firm decision was always put off because we didn’t plan on marryin’ until May 2012. There was time to be had! Then, when the Marriage Equality Act was passed on June 24th, we realized that it was probably time to buck up and do some serious thinking. Soon after, we found out that we’d be married at the Pop Up Chapel on July 30th. That was about the time I went into full on panic mode.
The way we saw it, we had four options: we could keep our names just as they were; one of us could take the other’s name; we could hyphenate; or, and this option was our favorite from the get-go, we could mash our names together to symbolize the creation of a new family. We immediately wrote off hyphenation. While it does seem to be the stereotypical go-to naming convention for the rest of our gay brethren (and a lot of Hispanics, too), it’s clunky and pretty impractical for future generations. We didn’t want to keep our given names because solidarity was important to us, and God forbid one of us was hospitalized while traveling in a state that doesn’t recognize our marriage. We regularly find ourselves in both Florida and North Carolina, for instance, so we’d at least be a little bit ahead of the game if something happened and we shared a name.
In the end, it came down to either my name or the mash-up (Stage + Marks = Starks). I’d decided that I would continue to run my photography business under my given name, and for simplicity’s sake, Katie offered to become Katie Stage. This gave me the jibblies for a couple of reasons. First, a lot of people have some really idiotic ideas about lesbians, our “lifestyle,” and gender roles. I had approximately zero interest in people assuming me to be “the man” or even the dominant player in our relationship simply because Katie took my name. Second, my relationship with my name has always been tumultuous; so much so that I seriously considered changing it to Kennedy, my mother’s maiden name, for many years. I never did because I waited too long, and it seemed silly to start my professional life over with a whole new name after I’d already accomplished all that I had. At this point, because I have a registered DBA for the business, I can function under that name and a legal married name.
The answer seemed obvious, but the problem was that Katie genuinely loved and wanted to take my last name. I think, for her, the whole ordeal was a bit simpler because she grew up with a very heteronormative life plan. In other words, she wasn’t expecting to marry a lady, and always assumed she’d take a man’s last name. Taking my name was less of a leap than the very fact of our relationship and, well, she obviously crossed that bridge awhile ago.
We found ourselves at a stalemate, and with a limited amount of time to make a decision, so we did what any other reasonable pair of people would do in this position. We asked our parents. Katie’s mom voted for hyphenation; my mom said she’d support whatever decision we made. We asked Facebook and Twitter. Pretty even votes for Stage and Starks in both venues. We asked celebrities on Twitter. Neil Gaiman voted for Stagemarks; Auntie Cher chose not to weigh in. We flipped coins. Stage dominated Starks there. We threw a party and had people put suggestions into a hat. Scissorfist was, surprisingly, never an option. I cried. A few times. Katie consoled me.
When it came down to it, I was the one with the qualms, so I was the one with the weight of the decision. I knew that Katie would be happy with either name. I also knew that it was one of the biggest decisions I’d ever have to make, and I didn’t want to make the wrong one. No matter how many ways I tried to spin it, I couldn’t make myself comfortable with Katie taking my name. Plus, I really liked the idea of creating something entirely new and entirely our own. That’s one of the many joys of non-traditional families: you’re not really held to historical mores and some people are inevitably judging you anyway, so you may as well do what’s going to make you the happiest.
Starks is egalitarian and pays homage to both of us. To me, that’s as perfect as you can get, and so that’s what went on the marriage license.
At least my initials didn’t change,
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