Dominick Zarrillo says all he wants for
his son, Jeff Zarrillo, a plaintiff in the case challenging Prop 8,
is a fighting chance.
In a moving op-ed published in The
New York Times, Dominick Zarrillo talks about supporting his
son's fight to marry the person he loves, Paul Katami. The couple,
along with two women, are challenging California's gay marriage ban,
Proposition 8.
“After Jeff finished college, we
would travel cross-country from New Jersey to visit him in
California. A few times we would run into his best friend, Paul,
whom we liked a lot.”
“Jeff would fly to visit us, too, and
when I would take him back to the airport, I would sit with him until
his flight boarded, just the two of us. Every time, I could tell
there was something he wasn't saying, something knotted in his
belly.”
“Finally, he sat us down and said he
had something to tell us. We told him that we already knew, and that
we really liked Paul, and that we were happy for him. We laughed
about how scared he had been to tell us, and after that it was Jeff
and Paul, Paul and Jeff. We visited them; they visited us. We took
vacations together.”
The elder Zarrillo, who lives in New
Jersey, said Jeff and Paul shared a “true love.”
“As this Father's Day approaches, all
I could think about was how much I want my son to experience the joys
of being a father, how much I want him to marry the person he loves
and to raise a family.”
“I'm his father, and it's Father's
Day, so let me believe it,” he added.
In a bulletin from AFER, the group
supporting the legal challenge, Jeff Zarrillo called his father “my
hero.”
“This weekend, we celebrate Father's
Day and I give thanks to the hero in my life who has been there every
step of the way,” he wrote.