Raised by Unicorns, page 15
Six short months following my discovery of the newfound pride I felt towards my family was the momentous day that will go down in history as the day that love won. On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that marriage equality was a constitutional right. I think that day was probably one of the happiest for gay families all across the country. I mean, who could want more than endless rainbow flags and drag marches as far as the eye could see? I spent my “Love Wins” day with my two moms in NYC, marching along in the annual drag parade covered in glitter and rainbow gear headed towards the Stonewall Inn. I can assure you that this was, without a doubt, the gayest thing that I have ever done—and my God, was it fabulous.
In the years following, I continued to kindle my pride for my family and my involvement in LGBTQ+ family rights and advocacy work. It’s not uncommon to see me rocking my rainbow socks on any given day of the week. I love introducing my friends to my parents, and practically show them off and gloat about them as a five-year-old would his new toy at show-and-tell. I guess that is the result of fifteen years of pent-up emotions. There’s nothing I wish more than to be able to go back and sit down with my six-year-old self. I would do anything to erase the years of shame and embarrassment that weighed down on me, for what I see now as superfluous reasons.
If I could tell anything to my younger self—besides start watching fashion shows ASAP—it would be that if you feel like you have to hide any part of yourself for another person, they probably aren’t worth your time, anyway. Some of my closest friends to this day are the ones I felt comfortable enough to bring home for after-school playdates; or the friends who would laugh along with me and my moms carpooling to softball practice. Hiding a beautifully unique part of your identity serves no one. After all, they don’t say we were raised by unicorns for nothing.
BEAUTY AND THE BUTCH
AN INTERVIEW WITH JOE VALENTINE, age 38
AS THE EDITOR of this anthology, I had the privilege of hearing from many different people, from all walks of life. It was truly an enlightening experience and gave me a greater sense of empathy. One of the gentlemen I had the pleasure to speak with was ex-major league baseball pitcher, Joe Valentine. Together, we decided to do his chapter more like an interview, so I sat down with him and we just chatted. Here is the result—it’s a very enjoyable story and a true depiction of LGBTQ+ family life.
Frank Lowe: I guess the most obvious question is, tell me about your family. You grew up with two moms?
Joe Valentine: Well, so I was born into my gay parents, my lesbian parents, at birth.
FL: One of them carried you?
JV: One of them did carry me, yes. That is my biological mother, Deborah. My non-biological mother is Doreen. They met in high school, then moved to Las Vegas—what every young lesbian couple in the 70s apparently did. I am their only child.
FL: What year was this?
JV: Yeah, 1979. I was born on Christmas Eve. Spent a few years out there, then they moved back home because the climate changed. The 80s were getting a little too crazy in Vegas.
FL: Did they use a sperm donor or was it a friend? How did they conceive?
JV: Well . . . let’s just say it was the 1970s in Las Vegas.
FL: Okay, gotcha. Wow! My follow-up question would then be, have you connected with your biological father at all?
JV: No, I have not and have never really desired to. But I was given the story in essence. It is what it is, you know?
FL: How young were you when they told you that . . . how it all came about?
JV: According to them, I was always pretty in-tune with what was going on, but I started asking questions around four or five. Not super in-depth questions, but people would ask my moms in front of me, “Where’s the daddy?” They explained it to me. I never really gave it much thought.
FL: Sure, because you would see other people, or your peers with “traditional families.”
JV: Exactly. I definitely was a unicorn. I definitely was sticking out like a sore thumb myself, but being in New York, it wasn’t really a social issue, it was pretty much accepted even in the early 80s.
FL: Did you live in Manhattan?
JV: No, we were actually in the suburbs of Long Island, in a town called North Babylon. We initially lived a few years with Doreen’s parents. They had an apartment above their house so we stayed with them. My parents opened up a hair salon, because that’s what one of my moms did for a trade. Then we wound up buying a house a few years later. It was just me, my parents, and my grandparents—Grandpa Joe and Grandma Evelyn. They were my immediate family that were very close to me.
A funny thing to mention is that my mother, Doreen, has two siblings, and both are gay. My one grandmother who I wound up living with—who is my rock to this day—had three kids, all gay.
FL: All three gay! Now when you say gay, were they all lesbian, gay, or . . . ?
JV: Well, yeah. I’d say gay—a younger brother, and the youngest is her sister.
FL: So two lesbians and a gay man. For those who argue that there’s nothing to genetics, then there you go right there, that’s pretty much proof-positive. What about your other mom, Deborah’s side of the family?
JV: They are very prim and proper, and didn’t speak much about the family dynamic.
FL: Well, I can at least imagine Thanksgivings must be very interesting.
JV: Let’s just try not to fight, you know?
FL: Do I ever! Are your moms similar to each other or more opposites?
JV: My moms are literally “Beauty and the Butch.” Deborah—Deb—is the beauty queen. She was the hair stylist, she always wore high-fashion clothes, and she loved that industry. I guess she’s what you’d call a “lipstick lesbian.”
Doreen, on the other hand, was a hard-working, blue collar worker. She was the one who would play and get dirty with me. We practiced a lot of baseball together.
FL: I would assume that their dichotomy worked really well as far as parenting is concerned. Give me a quick background about your career and how you got into sports, like what kind of path took you in that direction?
JV: I took the normal path that I think every other kid out there does, really. My parents put me in baseball and soccer and whatever I asked for, and things I didn’t even ask for—including dance.
FL: Dance? Tell me more.
JV: I took ballet, I took tap, I took jazz, whatever it was, but I also played a lot of the sports at the same time. Eventually, when I got to be about twelve or thirteen, I was like, okay, putting on the tights and doing all the stuff was getting to me. It was taking away from my passion that was growing into sports.
FL: So at some point, your passion for sports overcame your passion for dancing?
JV: Yeah, my main three staples were dance, soccer, and baseball. And at maybe thirteen or fourteen is when dance started to take a back seat. Then at fifteen, I completely stopped dancing altogether.
FL: Were you getting stigmatized?
JV: Oh, yeah, absolutely. But I quit mainly because soccer and baseball were taking over—they just consumed me. At fifteen, I realized, “Okay, I’m a little bit better than most at sports.” I was a very modest kid, but you kind of . . . you just saw what was happening, so I focused on sports.
FL: So then how did that narrow down into baseball?
JV: Living in New York, soccer and baseball are two different seasons—I never had to choose. Baseball was in the spring, soccer was in the fall. Soccer I loved, but I didn’t love it as much as baseball, and something was pulling me toward baseball, so I went with it. By the time my senior year arrived, it was strictly just baseball.
FL: Okay, and then I’m going to assume from there you got baseball scholarships to college, is that how it works?
JV: Yeah, so I got a few offers, nothing crazy, and decided on a local college here in Long Island, Dowling College. It was only about fifteen minutes from the house.
I only went there for half a semester—I was not happy. I was feeling not ready for college. I was like, if I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do this. I felt like I was living too close to my family. My parents would come pick up my laundry and bring me trays of lasagna. It was too much.
If I was ready, I was ready to go away. I wanted to play baseball, I wanted the full college experience. So I withdrew from Dowling in December. I just stopped going. Then I went back to college the following fall, to a junior college to play baseball in Brewton, Alabama.
FL: Oh, man. That’s a switch!
JV: Yeah, yeah. It was a total culture shock. But I was actually at the junior college for a year and then got drafted into pro baseball.
FL: And what was the first team? Did you change teams throughout your career?
JV: I did. I changed quite a bit, actually. There were a few teams that I played on, but I initially got drafted by the Chicago White Sox. I spent a few years there in the minor leagues, then got traded—actually twice within twelve months—to the Oakland A’s, and then from there to the big leagues with the Cincinnati Reds.
FL: Did you face any discrimination about having two moms, or did you keep it a secret?
JV: Well, for a while I kept it secret. I wanted to have somewhat of a cemented feeling about myself being in the big leagues. I didn’t break out and tell my story until 2005, and Cincinnati was still very red at that time.
FL: Understandable.
JV: I had to make sure that I was in an okay place to be able to do it, and I spoke with a couple of PR people about it, and it just so happened to come up when I was being interviewed with my local paper here in New York, and he said, “Can I ask for your parents’ names?” And I told him. Without even thinking, the interviewer goes, “Wait, what?”
FL: I doubt he was expecting that answer!
JV: Jeff Pearlman is his name. I’ll never forget his name. And he goes, “Wait, what?” I go, “Deb and Doreen.” I spelled out, “D-O-R-E-E-N.” And he said, “Are you telling me you have two moms?” I go, “Yeah, why?” He says, “Don’t you know this is a big fuckin’ deal?” I go, “Off the record, this is my life, right?” FL: Exactly.
JV: I said, “It’s not really a big deal, it is what it is.” He replied, “We have to put this out. You’re a professional athlete that’s grown up with two moms.” I said, “Not only did I grow up with two moms, but they’re also not what I call a conversion family. Like Mom and Dad have kids and all of a sudden one of them realizes, ‘hey, this is not for me.’”
FL: Which is a very common thing that occurs, unfortunately.
JV: But yeah, so then I talked to my parents and talked to the people that were around me, the loved ones, and they said, “How do you feel about it?” I said, “I don’t really feel any way about it because it’s so natural for me to talk about it. So . . . ”
You know you’re gonna get some backlash. Listen, if I can’t deal with it, I can’t deal with it. I’ll be all right. Then the story broke, and that’s when backlash ensued. But a lot more positives than negatives—the positives outweighed them exponentially. I have printed out emails that I received from kids, parents, aunts, uncles, whoever, that thanked me for coming forward.
FL: Yeah. Definitely. That’s so awesome you could do that. My next question would be, prior to that moment, what would you tell people?
JV: You know, for a long, long time, my cover-up, even with my best friends and people I was close to, was, “This is my mother, and this is my aunt.” You know, my friends came over, and they either got it, or didn’t get it. Like, “Where’s your aunt?”
FL: There was no one who ever came over and tried to call you out or something like that? That never happened?
JV: It happened a few times in high school. And at that point, I’d go, “Yeah, two moms. What are you gonna do about it? Step outside, if you have a problem with it.”
Because one, I was bigger and stronger than most, and two, I’d say, “Who’ve you been talking to?” I would say something athletically to make ’em feel inferior, or whatever.
FL: So you used words. Words were your weapons.
JV: Yeah, then it would really hush them up really quickly. And the one line that I always used, and it was only once I was older, to be able to verbalize and feel who I was, was, “I got a lot of things in my life that are gonna be bigger than you and this moment, so I’m not gonna ruin it for this.”
FL: That’s excellent, that you had that instilled in you.
JV: I’d kinda leave it at that and walk away.
My parents always said, “In that moment, you always have bigger and better things that are going to be ahead of you, so don’t waste it on that one time that you lose your temper.” Doreen, who is the butch one, would secretly add, “Rip his fucking head off.” And my mother Deborah, would be like, “Just don’t ruin your cheekbones.” You know, this was a long time ago. Like, don’t get any facial scars.
FL: Right, right. Avoid fighting if you can, but if you must, don’t hurt your pretty face. I love that, that’s great.
From your observation, what would you say is the most significant difference about having both gay parents versus straight ones?
JV: I don’t know. I had my eyebrows tweezed, at like twelve. I knew how to verbally attack someone. I grew up in a hair salon, it was a gay community, it was gay men, women, whatever. But I think the biggest benefit was seeing that it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what color, what creed, what sexual orientation, big, small, it didn’t matter.
FL: So you’re saying the big difference is that there was no difference. It was just intrinsic to you, almost engraved in you, from birth essentially.
JV: Yeah.
FL: Your experience was no different than any others, in your eyes.
JV: No, it wasn’t, and I swear that it helped me become a better person, because I didn’t have any bigoted comments being flung around my house. It wasn’t made a big deal. And what I saw was people just loving each other for who they were, at an early age. I knew we were different, but it didn’t matter, it just didn’t matter.
FL: Was there ever a time or moment that your peers were talking negatively about LGBTQ+ people, and it made you feel uncomfortable or ashamed? And then, how did you handle that, if so? Not necessarily talking about your moms specifically, but just in general. You know, you hear the word faggot, or dyke, or something like that.
JV: The actual words never really affected me. It was the connotation, it was the story behind it. During my childhood, if another kid said, “Don’t be a fag,” it didn’t carry the weight that it does now, because I was a kid. But now it does. Some of those words are just . . . to me, it breaks my spirit.
*silence*
But there were very few times that I ever had to say something. There’s only a couple moments in my career that I felt compelled to speak up.
FL: Okay, so this is now in your adult life, is what you’re saying. Not—
JV: I never felt compelled to then go after a fellow friend or companion in school, because one, I felt like I was more mature than everybody else. And I also said, “They don’t know what the hell they’re saying, so why even waste my breath?”
FL: Right. They’re ignorant, essentially.
JV: Yeah, they’re ignorant.
And one time when I did feel the need, it was actually the same day that I was speaking to the reporter and told him my parents’ names. I’m talking about two hours prior to this call.
We were in the bullpen. Typically, there were three things we didn’t talk about in the bullpen: religion, politics, or sexual orientation. Like those were just three things in pro sports you really didn’t talk about.
FL: Those are excellent parameters if people actually followed them.
JV: Somehow we got into the topic of gay parents. A teammate, who I will leave unnamed, said to all, “Well, anybody raised by gay or lesbian parents has to become fucked up.”
And so I said . . . I sat there for about five seconds and I kind of just looked at him. I said, “Hey man, what do you think of me?” He goes “What do you mean, what do I think of you? I think you’re a great guy, a little too pretty for my liking.” I go, “Yeah!” I said this didn’t happen by mistake and I’ve always said that. There’s a lot of effort that goes into how I look and that’s because of my parents—I was a pretty boy.
Then he goes, “Well, what are you saying?” I go, “Dude, I was raised by lesbians.” He’s like, “Get the fuck outta here, there’s no way! You gotta be bullshitting.”
So, I didn’t say anything and two minutes later he goes, “Wait, are you serious?” I replied, “Yeah, serious as a heart attack.”
I go, “How do you feel about it now?” And he said, “Well, I guess I just put my foot in my mouth.”
I kept on with, “I’m not trying to put your foot in your mouth, but don’t judge a book by its cover. By your thinking, I was going to be fucked up. I’m the most normal dude you know. You know, right here and now.”
And that was it, there was no animosity, there was no nothing.
FL: I’m sure he was shocked and embarrassed.
JV: It was a pretty enlightening moment for him. He came up to me about twenty minutes later and said, “Dude, never think of that situation ever again.”
FL: Yep. He felt—
JV: He was disappointed in himself. And then literally two hours later, at the end of the game, is when I did the interview explaining I have two moms.
FL: Do you think that incident in the bullpen inspired you to do the interview?
JV: It was a gate opening. Yeah, I think that was definitely the gate opening.
When the story actually broke, I had some people who I felt would distance themselves from me. Baseball is a very southern sport. I’m a New Yorker. Raised by lesbians. The friends I was making there were few and far between.
