Ever since Michael and I won our landmark court case, that made New Jersey the first state in the nation to put gay and unmarried couples on equal footing to married heterosexual couples in the area of adoption, we have been quite the public family.

Even though our families begged us to keep the kids out of the spotlight, we saw the importance of having them with us and whenever we could, we had a bouncing baby or toddler with us.

Of course, kids grow quick and as Adam was becoming more and more unpredictable, so we began doing more and more media and events as a couple without the kids, but always as parents.  We spoke at colleges and universities across the country but with us always, a huge poster of our children on a tripod and a 10 minute video to introduce us, which included home movies of the kids as well as many news clips where we were featured both a positive and negative light.

Our message was, is and always will be that are family is equal in every way to a heterosexual family.

Well, the kids are much older now and the beauty of adopting a teenager (Rosa) is that you become grandparents before all of your peers. So, after only 16 years at family building, we have 3 children, 3 grand children and a son-in-law.  A pretty impressive feat considering so many had said we could never have children!

With all that out of the way, I really want to share an event at Montclair State University.  We were fortunate enough to be asked to speak about our family by Spectrums at MSU on November 9^th.  They had entitled our presentation “Growing up in a Homocentric (love that word!) Household” so we gave our prepared presentation a much needed update.

We had our 10 minute video with the home movies and history lesson play but then this time Michael and I spoke for only a brief time (20 minutes) about our history together etc.  Then we brought down our children (to thunderous applause) to stand with us.  This is when we turned it over to them and asked each of them, Adam, Madison and Rosa, questions about growing up in a homocentric home.  We had warned them this would happen and told them to speak openly and honestly and they did.

I’m not going to go into all of it right now but when they were finished we then brought down our 3 grand daughters, Maryanna, Leila and Joselyn along with our son-in-law, Jose. It was a magical moment for me.  My in-laws were then recognized in the audience and my father-in-law spoke and again….magic!

Sure, fighting bigotry and putting your family out there in the spotlight can be an exhausting scary thing at times but it is events like this one that makes it all worth it.  I hope it was as fulfilling for the students and faculty at MSU that attended, our hosts seemed pleased.  For me, selfishly, it really didn’t matter because I got a moment to see just how wonderful, how powerful the family Michael and I fought saw hard to create is.

The Galluccio Family ROCKS!

JON HOLDEN GALLUCCIO, AUTHOR OF “AN AMERICAN FAMILY” WITH MICHAEL GALLUCCIO AND DAVID GROFF, IS A FINANCIAL SERVICES REPRESENTATIVE WITH METLIFE. HE RESIDES WITH MICHAEL AND TWO OF THEIR CHILDREN IN NORTH HALEDON.  HE CAN BE CONTACTED AT WWW.GALLUCCIO.COM