Josiah's Friends

Henry

I wanted to write something poignant, elegant, or at least memorable about Amendment 1, but I am so angry and disappointed in my state right now that every time I sit down and type nothing but vitriol pours out of me. I want to write something that will convince you why this amendment is wrong, and bad, but what it keeps boiling down to is that if you vote for this amendment you will hurt children. And not in some vague "the children of Africa are starving" kind of way. Not in the way that you feel sad about hurt children who you don't know when you see something on the news. You will be hurting Josiah's friends.

You will be hurting Henry, this amazing, happy little boy. You will be telling him that his mothers are so awful that we had to codify discrimination against them into our constitution. You will be "justifying" and spurning on other children of would-be bigots who would try and bully him because hey, if the state says it's ok to marginalize his family, why can't everyone else also treat them like crap? But most of all, should anything ever happen to his birth mother, you would be putting his future in jeopardy. This vague language, "...the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State" could mean that Henry would be taken from the only other parent he's ever known. The first mother who held him. A mother who loves him and feeds him and reads to him and gets up at night with him and comforts him when he cries. Imagine a child losing both parents at the same time. Can you even fathom the damage that would do?

Their life is no different from any other family. They go to the grocery store, go to work, go to school, take their child to daycare, bicker over driving, have meals with friends. If their life is anything like ours was with a 10 month old, there is very little of "the gay sex" going on that worries some of you so much. Theirs is a partnership based on love and trust just like every other good relationship out there. There is nothing deviant about their behavior. They are just people who love each other.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.
~Albert Schweitzer

This sentiment is powerful. If you plan to vote for amendment 1 then you are not thinking about the harm, the suffering, you will cause solely because you think you have a right to tell other human beings how they should live and who they should love. You are not thinking about the consequences of your actions. You are not thinking about Henry. And you are not thinking about Josiah.

I want to end by making one thing very clear: If you vote for Amendment 1 you will be hurting children I love. If I find out that you actively sought to hurt children I love I will have a very difficult time allowing you to be around Josiah. We remove him from the presence of people who hurt children. Your skewed morality of bigotry and discrimination is not how we are raising our child and not something he's going to grow up around. This. Is. Important.