There’s a gorgeous ceramic Day of the Dead figurine, La Catrina, looking down on me. Her name’s Lily, as her dress is patterned in black-and-white lilies. She’s reminding me not only that her special holiday approaches, but to take a moment to appreciate National Hispanic Heritage Month. After all, I’ve married into this heritage.
My husband is Mexican American, born in El Paso, Texas. You could call him an “anchor baby,” if in some corners that phrase might be sneered as a pejorative. He’s certainly my anchor.
A racist might consider him a lesser American than me, because he’s first generation American, while I’ve got potato-famine-era Irish roots from New York. And because I’m as pasty white as they come. The irony is that my husband was born in the United States; I was not.
[adert1]
Marrying into Hispanic culture was something of a surprise to me.
I’ve learned that when you get involved with someone of a different race/ethnicity, there are often assumptions of some kind of fetish. While I’ve fielded an “Ooo, you like Latin boys, huh??” dozens of times, I’ve seen the same reception of anyone in a “mixed” match. I suppose there sometimes is a fetish. Were you to line up all the guys I’ve ever lived with, however, you’d see variations on vanilla.
At least, my first serious-and-consummated crush was a Puerto Rican Jew, perhaps owing to my fondness for Juan Epstein during adolescent years watching Welcome Back, Kotter. Notably, the actor playing Juan, Robert Hegyes, actually claimed Hungarian-Italian ancestry. Maybe Jewish, but not Latinx. Possibly, I am guilty of fetishizing Middle Eastern men. Puberty was hitting full force while living in Tunisia, so it’s hardly a puzzle. But Fernando is the first Latino with whom I’ve had a serious relationship, much less married.
With the white boys, my world expanded to include the Pennsylvania Farm Show and a Mayflower descendant. Nothing too exotic. Fernando welcomed me into a world that continues to teach me. So much of his family, from El Paso to Albuquerque to San Diego, have also welcomed me warmly. He has a big family.
And he does a much better job of keeping in touch with kin than I do. Is that cultural? I don’t know. No tribe is monolithic, certainly. And there are no rules claiming any identity. Still, I do feel possibly tighter bonds within his family. My family is wonderful, certainly, but a bit more laissez-faire.
What is unarguably Hispanic is the cooking. Early on, Fernando tried to convince me that Mexican cooking didn’t routinely feature garlic or onions. What? Turns out that was how he was raised. These otherwise awesome alliums can too easily cause heartburn in his family tree. So, hardly a cultural trait, but a familial one. But now we’re both on heartburn medication and one of our especialidades de la casa is our Hatch green-chili chicken enchiladas, full of garlic and onions.
The Hatch, N.M., piece also illustrates the culture I married. New Mexico is a big part of our domestic brand. While my husband was born in El Paso, he and his three siblings, as well as my late mother-in-law, Blanca, all graduated from the University of New Mexico. Go Lobos! (There are maybe a half dozen college mascots I know, and now UNM’s is one of them.)
The religion component is also curious. Hispanic culture has no specific religion. There is no denying, however, that there’s loads of Catholic influence. That should be familiar to me. Fernando and I were both raised Catholic. But it’s still been so different. A Catholic funeral in my family is over and done in an afternoon. In Fernando’s family, it’s easily a three-day affair. At least it’s familiar enough that, even in Spanish, I know when I’m supposed to sit, stand, or kneel.
Among my favorite initiation nuggets has been learning an inside joke. Though I’m using “inside” loosely. I’m told that nearly anyone in New Mexico would understand this:
What do you call a guy from Española with one leg shorter than the other? Not even.
Even if you could hear me doing the accent, for the uninitiated, it falls flat. But damn if the El Paso nieces don’t think it’s hilarious when I tell it. And damn if my heart doesn’t warm a bit when they call me tío.
Across these 20-plus years of our relationship, it has been such a privilege to be brought into an extended family whose culture is rich and vibrant and joyous. Of course, Fernando has been fully welcomed into my own family. Honestly, I can’t blame many of them for seeming to appreciate him over me. He really is very charming.
The diversity of our species is wondrous. Having sprung from a single source, to migrate to all the corners of our planet and evolved, to now be reintegrating into a human whole is life-affirming. Should you be lucky enough to enjoy some measure of that in your own life, savor it. Growth is the purpose of life, and Hispanic culture has nurtured so much of mine. Muchas gracias, mi familia.
Will O’Bryan is a former Metro Weekly managing editor, living in D.C. with his husband. He is online at www.LifeInFlights.com.
With Obergefell at risk and 32 states poised to restrict same-sex marriage, LGBTQ advocates push to enshrine protections at the state level.
By Maximilian Sandefer
August 6, 2025
On June 22, 2022, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision with Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Abortion rights were now no longer guaranteed nationwide as the issue was left up to the states. This shock reversal of over 49 years of precedent left reproductive rights activists scrambling as anti-choice state laws stemming from as far back as 1864 were revived and reinstituted.
As people's ability to access to reproductive care dwindled in conservative-led states, activists also found their footing. The 2024 election saw abortion rights ballot measures win in seven out of ten states. As we navigate a landscape where it will likely be a long time before we see any form of successful federal legislation protecting a woman's right to choose, state-by-state activism seems to be the driving force behind change.
In her first televised interview since her 2020 confirmation, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett appeared on CBS Sunday Morning to promote her new book, offering only vague commentary to host Norah O’Donnell in defense of the Court’s legitimacy when asked whether justices might overturn Obergefell v. Hodges.
Barrett was pressed on recent remarks from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who told the Raging Moderates podcast that the Court will likely “do to gay marriage what they did to abortion” and “send it back to the states.”
The former Kentucky clerk -- and anti-LGBTQ culture warrior -- who went to jail rather than issue licenses to same-sex couples is now targeting the landmark 2015 ruling.
A decade after catapulting to right-wing stardom, Kim Davis -- the former Rowan County, Kentucky county clerk who chose jail over issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples -- has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn its landmark 2015 decision that legalized marriage equality nationwide.
Represented by the anti-LGBTQ Liberty Counsel, Davis has formally asked the nation’s highest court to strip away the right of same-sex couples to marry.
A Mike Huckabee acolyte and four-time married fundamentalist zealot, Davis rose to fame in 2015 when she refused to issue marriage licenses to any couple -- gay or straight -- after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision struck down all state-level bans on same-sex marriage, including Kentucky’s. Ordered to comply, she instead spent six days in jail for contempt of court.
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There’s a gorgeous ceramic Day of the Dead figurine, La Catrina, looking down on me. Her name’s Lily, as her dress is patterned in black-and-white lilies. She’s reminding me not only that her special holiday approaches, but to take a moment to appreciate National Hispanic Heritage Month. After all, I’ve married into this heritage.
My husband is Mexican American, born in El Paso, Texas. You could call him an “anchor baby,” if in some corners that phrase might be sneered as a pejorative. He’s certainly my anchor.
A racist might consider him a lesser American than me, because he’s first generation American, while I’ve got potato-famine-era Irish roots from New York. And because I’m as pasty white as they come. The irony is that my husband was born in the United States; I was not.
[adert1]
Marrying into Hispanic culture was something of a surprise to me.
I’ve learned that when you get involved with someone of a different race/ethnicity, there are often assumptions of some kind of fetish. While I’ve fielded an “Ooo, you like Latin boys, huh??” dozens of times, I’ve seen the same reception of anyone in a “mixed” match. I suppose there sometimes is a fetish. Were you to line up all the guys I’ve ever lived with, however, you’d see variations on vanilla.
At least, my first serious-and-consummated crush was a Puerto Rican Jew, perhaps owing to my fondness for Juan Epstein during adolescent years watching Welcome Back, Kotter. Notably, the actor playing Juan, Robert Hegyes, actually claimed Hungarian-Italian ancestry. Maybe Jewish, but not Latinx. Possibly, I am guilty of fetishizing Middle Eastern men. Puberty was hitting full force while living in Tunisia, so it’s hardly a puzzle. But Fernando is the first Latino with whom I’ve had a serious relationship, much less married.
With the white boys, my world expanded to include the Pennsylvania Farm Show and a Mayflower descendant. Nothing too exotic. Fernando welcomed me into a world that continues to teach me. So much of his family, from El Paso to Albuquerque to San Diego, have also welcomed me warmly. He has a big family.
And he does a much better job of keeping in touch with kin than I do. Is that cultural? I don’t know. No tribe is monolithic, certainly. And there are no rules claiming any identity. Still, I do feel possibly tighter bonds within his family. My family is wonderful, certainly, but a bit more laissez-faire.
What is unarguably Hispanic is the cooking. Early on, Fernando tried to convince me that Mexican cooking didn’t routinely feature garlic or onions. What? Turns out that was how he was raised. These otherwise awesome alliums can too easily cause heartburn in his family tree. So, hardly a cultural trait, but a familial one. But now we’re both on heartburn medication and one of our especialidades de la casa is our Hatch green-chili chicken enchiladas, full of garlic and onions.
The Hatch, N.M., piece also illustrates the culture I married. New Mexico is a big part of our domestic brand. While my husband was born in El Paso, he and his three siblings, as well as my late mother-in-law, Blanca, all graduated from the University of New Mexico. Go Lobos! (There are maybe a half dozen college mascots I know, and now UNM’s is one of them.)
The religion component is also curious. Hispanic culture has no specific religion. There is no denying, however, that there’s loads of Catholic influence. That should be familiar to me. Fernando and I were both raised Catholic. But it’s still been so different. A Catholic funeral in my family is over and done in an afternoon. In Fernando’s family, it’s easily a three-day affair. At least it’s familiar enough that, even in Spanish, I know when I’m supposed to sit, stand, or kneel.
Among my favorite initiation nuggets has been learning an inside joke. Though I’m using “inside” loosely. I’m told that nearly anyone in New Mexico would understand this:
What do you call a guy from Española with one leg shorter than the other? Not even.
Even if you could hear me doing the accent, for the uninitiated, it falls flat. But damn if the El Paso nieces don’t think it’s hilarious when I tell it. And damn if my heart doesn’t warm a bit when they call me tío.
Across these 20-plus years of our relationship, it has been such a privilege to be brought into an extended family whose culture is rich and vibrant and joyous. Of course, Fernando has been fully welcomed into my own family. Honestly, I can’t blame many of them for seeming to appreciate him over me. He really is very charming.
The diversity of our species is wondrous. Having sprung from a single source, to migrate to all the corners of our planet and evolved, to now be reintegrating into a human whole is life-affirming. Should you be lucky enough to enjoy some measure of that in your own life, savor it. Growth is the purpose of life, and Hispanic culture has nurtured so much of mine. Muchas gracias, mi familia.
Will O’Bryan is a former Metro Weekly managing editor, living in D.C. with his husband. He is online at www.LifeInFlights.com.
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