An open letter to Virginia’s voters
On November 7, Virginia Voters will be given an opportunity to write discrimination into the Commonwealth’s Constitution, through the so-called “Marriage Amendment.” How we have come to the point in our society that we feel it is appropriate to allow the masses to vote to deny rights to a group of citizens is beyond my understanding and flies in the face of democracy. 
For that reason, I am compelled to tell you about my family and how this denial of our rights affects us in the most practical of terms.
This is my family. The photo was taken when Sue and I were married in Massachusetts on August 5, 2004. We have two children ““ our daughter Alexis who is 11 and Garrett who is 2. I tell my story in an effort to put a face – to put a family – on the discrimination that may be adopted into the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia if you vote yes.
To give you a little background, let me say that I had never had an interest in having a “false” marriage, i.e. my marriage in Massachusetts provides me no legal protections, nor does it offer me or my family the opportunity to have the same rights as my fellow Americans. However, when my mother matter-of-factly informed me that she expected to take Garrett if I were to die, I thought we should do anything that we could to show the world that we are a family.
Like most American mothers, I want only to protect my family and protect my children. I am the primary wage-earner in our family, while Sue is the primary care-taker. She works as a school bus driver so that she can have the same schedule as our children. I work as a Vice President of a $70 million company that provides employment opportunities for people with disabilities.
If I were to die tomorrow, Sue would not be entitled to the Social Security benefits afforded married couples who are raising children and my family would potentially be out on the street ““ that is if Sue is lucky enough to be able to keep our children together. If I am on business travel and our son is hurt and has to go to the hospital, I have to hope that we find sympathetic healthcare professionals who will recognize our legal papers and let Sue make medical decisions. This only scratches the surface ““ there are countless other issues that keep me awake at night worrying ““ whether it is healthcare for my family, discrimination against my kids, equal legal rights for Sue and myself ““ the list is endless.
I won’t turn this letter into pages and pages of the ways that my family is given fewer rights than other American families. However, please understand that the decision you make on November 7 on Ballot 1 will have far reaching impact tomorrow. It was only 45 years ago that our elected officials felt it was appropriate to segregate blacks and whites. That black people should ride at the back of the bus and that we needed separate water fountains for white and black citizens. We now look at those days with shame and disgust. I suggest that in another 40 years, we will look back on this blatant discrimination against American citizens with the same amount of shame and disgust. One heterosexual man that I met commented that we are only creating a huge mess that our children will have to work to correct in another 20 years when we finally look back and realize how bigoted and wrong this action was.
I am appalled, ashamed and deeply saddened that while American soldiers continue to die every day in the name of worldwide democracy and freedom, that we as a country so easily use the most profound symbol of democracy ““ our Constitution ““ to so blatantly deny rights to a group of American citizens.
At the end of the day – I am a human being just like you, I am an American citizen who pays taxes just like you and most of all, I am a parent trying to make the world a better place for my kids. When you pass laws or amendments like this, you send a message that it is ok to treat me and my family as second class citizens. When you do this, kids like Matthew Sheppard get the life beat out of them and they get hung up to die on a fence in Wyoming. When you do this, we live in fear that people will take our children away from us. When you do this, you tell people it is ok to bully and make fun of our kids.
If Ballot 1 passes, my kids could lose their health insurance and if one us dies, our family can be torn apart because none of our legal documents will be recognized.
Read it all – Vote NO on Ballot 1.
Sincerely,
Lisa Ward
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Lisa,
I have “read it all” thus I am voting no.
Having said that I have a question. I look at your beautiful children and wonder if you think a “father role” in their lives will be an important thing. I hear so many people say things like:
“We will be loving parents” or “We can be both father and mother to our children”
I guess what I am saying is that I believe we often minimize how important fathers are to children.
And before you ask me, yes I think the most important thing is for a child to have people who love and take care of them.
However I do believe that fathers and mothers are important to children.
I don’t think it’s an accident that biology requires both a male and a female to make a child.
Please know that I ask this question with all respect and admit that this is often an issue that perplexes me
Sue and I thought long and hard about that before we made the decision to have a child together. Alexis has a father that she sees on semi regular basis, but Garrett does not.
I personally did not know my biological father growing up. My mother was not married and he did not stay around and play a role in my life. I found him when I was 18, we met and we didn’t maintain a relationship.
In the end we considered all the factors and felt that we had a very loving home in which we were raising Alexis. We felt that any child we brought into the world would have that same loving home and would be someone who would have a great life and who would bring joy to the people around him/her.
Sue and I don’t pretend to say that we can be both mother and father – but we are two parents who bring different perspectives and different personalities to our children. I can also say that we have a huge group of diverse friends who are active in our childrens lives – both males and females. Our kids are exposed to some really neat people. In the end, I feel that in many ways our kids gain greater benefits in terms of real life learning because of that.
We never know how our kids are going to turn out. I have known kids who were raised in loving homes and ended up having lots of problems as adults and I have known kids who were raised in horrible homes who ended up to be really great adults. All any parent can do is raise there kids with love and do what they think is best for them.
Lisa,
I agree that we can never know how our children are going to turn out. I myself have five siblings and we range from very stable and responsible, to terribly irresponsible and rather “out to lunch”. (However she may be the happiest one of us all LOL).
But it seems to me that if we (the collective we) want to give our children the most beneficial start in life, that means having a mother and father.
Knowing what I know about how important a father is in a child’s life that seems the fair and correct thing to do for children. To do anything less then that would seem somewhat selfish on my part.
I do believe in the notion of a village. Although my kids have both mother and father we, like you and Sue, work very hard to ensure they have a large group of loving adults around them on a regular basis. Our theory is that that our kids can never be “over loved”.
Thanks, Phyllis, for this wonderful question.
I think I understand where you are coming from – that because we need male and female individuals to reproduce, it must stand to reason that we need them in a particular configuration to nurture the next generation. I see why that seems to make sense, and is reinforced by what we have all grown up with and think of as natural, but I think some of that is serving to mask a deeper truth. I discuss this further in an essay here.
The statement is often made that marriage has always, for all time and in all cultures, been between one man and one woman, but one survey course in Anthropology easily explodes that myth. The ways that families are configured varies widely, including forms that we don’t recognize as “marriage” at all. But I don’t even want to get into all that. What we need to look at is outcome in the context of our own culture, and what all the professional associations say is that two parents of the same sex are just as good as two parents of the opposite sex in terms of how kids turn out. This conclusion is based on meta-analysis of all the research so far available. A list of these statements is available here.
Simply the presence of a father (or a mother) in the home is no guarantee of anything. Membership in a gender category doesn’t automatically give one particular attributes or parenting skills, nor can you assume that two men or two women don’t have complementary attributes. Chances are that any two people who end up committed to each other and building a successful life together have some working system of complementarity, and they would bring that to parenting as well. At least, that is what I have observed in the couples I know, both gay and straight.
Thank you for your willingness to ask a difficult question in a way that is conducive to dialogue – and thank you for voting NO. You should visit Vivian’s Voting NO page. Tell her I said hi 🙂