Bringing back 2008
November 04, 2012
I was really excited about the 2008 elections. It was about bringing back good government after eight years of decay.
I’m not so excited this year. Now, it’s about defending middle-of-the-road policy and a weak economy against another regressive movement. It’s also costing $6 billion.
But I just got a little more excited. Washington (my home state) has a referendum on the ballot to legalize same-sex marriage. The North Kitsap Herald published a letter in opposition. My friend and fellow law student Courtney Fraser wrote a reply that’s just plain awesome and rekindled some of the fire from the last election. Here it is:
Ms. Lamar,
Your statements are conclusory and lack support. You have failed to show how Referendum 74 will increase the complexity of sex education – or why, if true, this would be undesirable – or how it will adversely impact “the best interests of children and future generations.” How sweeping! Bland and inflammatory, your assertion appeals only to those who suffer a knee-jerk reaction at the mention of a threat to “the children” – even if such a threat is neither proven nor, indeed, delineated. There’s a reason your words want for specificity: there is no decent argument against marriage equality that can be advanced.
You are correct on one point: gender identity is an immutable part of every one of us. For many of us, “queer woman,” “gay man,” “lesbian mother,” or any of a multitude of other designations is an indispensable part of who we are. Referendum 74 does not ask us to erase gender, but to embrace it – acknowledging identity in a way Washington state law heretofore has neglected to do. It asks us to see gender, understand gender, and then accept that gender makes no difference with respect to love, to marriage, or to family. Indeed, far from “encumbering” our language, Referendum 74 would simplify it, simultaneously giving us words to talk about all of the kinds of families that make up our community – not just heteronormative ones.
Ms. Lamar, we are not “the few” seeking psychological comfort in the outcome of Referendum 74 – you are. You are part of the few who continue to overlook the diversity of the people and families around you, the few who doggedly try to impose their will to simply elide our existence through the sheer force of denial. In opposing marriage equality, you hope desperately to preserve something that is (blessedly) fleeting – the outmoded definition that stipulates only one kind of love as legitimate and, in doing so, panders to the prejudice and closed-mindedness of people like you. We are not the few. We are everywhere, and the hourglass is running out of sand in which you can bury your head.
Courtney Fraser
J.D. Candidate, 2015, U.C. Berkeley School of Law.
The original letter is here.
Update: the referendum triumphed.
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Tagged:
2012 elections,
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referendum,
same-sex marriage
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