I’ve filed my taxes.

It’s said that money is the last taboo. People talk about their sex lives and reveal their deepest secrets on TV, but nobody talks about their income. If someone started a blog meme in which people posted their tax returns online (minus things like social security numbers and home addresses), how many people would actually do it?

This is going to sound really cheesy, but as I was filling out my 1040A and consulting the instructions last night, all with their pink-and-white color scheme, it was moving to think that a vast nation of people is filling out the same sheets, filling in the same pink-and-white boxes, looking at the same instruction booklet. Imaginary Americans entered my brain, such as a middle-aged born-again Christian couple in Kansas, their house filled with 40 years of knick-knacks and memories; a Hispanic bus driver who lives with his wife and kids in Queens; a 30something gay couple in Seattle; a single mom who works as a secretary or waitress. And me. It made me feel patriotic.

Then I thought, you know what? Here I am, doing my taxes like everyone else, filling out this pink-and-white form like everyone else, and yet there are people out there, including many in Congress, who want me to be a second-class citizen just because I’m gay. I deal with the same pink-and-white forms that everyone else does, but there are people in power who don’t want me to be able to marry for love, or raise kids, or even just have the kind of sex I enjoy.

And the color scheme is white and pink.

What a country.

P.S. I typed gay tax into Google and found:

The Anti-Gay Tax Refund
Unfair Taxation of Homosexual Citizens