HR6 is still in committee after having been amended to change the language to preclude courts from deciding the "definition of marriage." The vote to send the bill to the rules committee failed. My Senator, Warren Limmer of Maple Grove, is a Republican who seems to think his argument against the bill is procedural: If we don't pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, there will be court challenges to our state statutes banning gay marriages. I've been gay for 49 years and I'm tired. Still, I wrote a letter to my Senator, and I've included it in this diary in case it might be helpful to someone else who might then write theirs (in MN or other states).
Dear Sen. Limmer,
I watched the committee hearing on HR6 today with some interest. You can't imagine how difficult this is for those of us who are conservative in nature, but alas, also gay. I was originally a Republican and worked actively on the Ford campaign and the Thompson campaign in Illinois, but the efforts you and other Republican legislators today are making to drive me to the left are astounding.
Sixteen years in a single, committed relationship. Ten years in Maple Grove. We own a home. We own a business (for 15 years). We have brought millions of dollars into the local community and the state through our payment of taxes, purchases of services (for out of state clients) and by employing residents in our business. We obey the laws and drive the speed limit (while NOT talking on a cell phone). We are as disgusted with all the sex and violence in the movies and on television as, no doubt, you are. We don't swear in public or in front of children. We give our time and money to charity and we vote.
We have also spent thousands of dollars on legal documents to try to protect ourselves in the event that the unthinkable happens, yet you would remove all of those protections by prohibiting the state and its subsectional governments from offering any type of legal recognition to the relationship we have built over the years. And don't try to tell me that the "slippery slope" doesn't run both ways, because it does. Only in your case it's "will groups try to get married next?" In my case it's, "will I lose my home, my business, my retirement, my freedom, even my life?" Could you live under those circumstances?
And don't pretend not to know that criminalization is the next step in the minds of the proponents of this amendment. You are not that naive.
So, tell me, what in particular I have done that would suggest to you that allowing me to have any of the benefits allowed every other citizen of this state would have a significant negative impact on this state or any of its citizens?
Or at least, tell me what I have done that should allow the government to permanently classify me as something less than a citizen, removing my choice to afford myself of the benefits of citizenship while still requiring me to meet all of the obligations?
So far, every argument I have heard in favor of this amendment is specious. You protect children by requiring that their needs are met, not by denying them benefits based upon their parentage. You don't pass an amendment to the state constitution to prevent legal challenges to what may just be an unfair and unconstitutional statute. And you don't attempt to disguise religious bias and your personal fear of something you don't understand as somehow being in the interest of the state.
You are my senator, too. You may not like it, but it is a fact. You should at least make some attempt to recognize that, if you were to actually look at this in a reasoned and rational way -- removed from your prejudice and ambition -- you will not find a logical or legal argument for the state's interest in reclassifying myself, my partner and others like us as sub-citizens of this state.
You can't possibly know how tired I am of this. Dealing with this crap all my life and never understanding what is so unacceptably different about me that people should speak, think and behave they way they do when addressing my issue -- my life. You don't even know me. You have never met me. Yet you think you know that somehow I will destroy the very fabric of life in the state of Minnesota if you don't put an end to my perfectly benign pursuit of happiness this very second.
How moral is that? What kind of person does that to another? You tell me.
Sincerely,