Chick-Fil-A

I posted this on Facebook this morning, and just wanted to share it here, as well. The response was very encouraging.

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I know this is long, but please, please take the time to read it. 

Up to this point, I've not been doing a very good job of expressing myself about this, because I've been letting the hurt come out as anger, and that's certainly not conducive to communication. 

But for the past few days, Shrike and I have both just been tied up in knots over this whole crazy Chick-Fil-A thing, and I just have to t

ry one more time, calmly (I hope) to make some sense of it.

I would like to think that, since LGBT rights issues do not personally affect most of our friends and family, that they just don't realize how this affects us.

For us, this is not a question of free speech (it's about the money to people who work against us), or about different "opinions" or "beliefs."

We certainly don't expect to agree with everyone about everything, and we know that there are many of our friends and family with whom we disagree pretty much 180 degrees on many issues, and we recognize that different people have different opinions about all sorts of things, and we certainly agree that everyone has a right to have their own opinions.

But we're not talking about opinions about the best flavor of ice cream, or the best football team, or even how to best address the concerns facing our nation and which candidate or party will do the best job of it.

We're talking about opinions about us, and about our family.

It's very, very upsetting to see so many people that we love, so many of our friends and support network, proudly posting on Facebook about going of their way to show support for a someone whose "opinion" is that our relationship is not as legitimate as theirs, our family is not as good as theirs and our child does not deserve the same legal protections as theirs.

If you really don't like me and Shrike and Peeper then you can stop reading right now and just go ahead and defriend us both, but if you are our friend, if you do love us and support us, then please, please take a moment to consider a few questions:

Do you believe that we should be paying $200/month for me to have crappy "special care" (poor but not as poor as "medical assistance") health insurance, because I am a stay-at-home mom and Shrike can't put me on her policy?

Do you believe that we should have had to go to court and ask a judge's permission for Shrike to be on Peeper's birth certificate. Keeping in mind that a> Shrike is Peeper's genetic mother, and b> that it was not at all a given that the judge would agree. We have family members who had exactly the same request denied in another county.

Do you believe that if - heaven forbid - Shrike or I dies before Peeper is grown, the other should have to raise her without the help of surviving spouse social security benefits?

Or, for that matter, if we live to be 110 before one of us dies, that the survivor should have to lose the other's benefits? Or that I should have to hope that I go first, because Shrike has paid in a lot more than I have (between my teaching years and my SAHM years) and she will be better off without my social security than I will without hers.

Do you believe that it should be illegal for us to express our love physically? For the first year of our relationship (depending on what we might happen to be in the mood for) it was. And the organizations that Chick-Fil-A funds would like for it to be again.

Do you believe that when we get a new job or a new boss, we should have to worry about whether this is the place or person that will fire us if we dare to talk about our family. That we should have to weigh the possibly ramifications of saying, "Oh, my partner and I ate at that restaurant last week, it was really good." Do you talk about your spouse with your coworkers? Have you ever tried not to?

Do you believe that if one of us is unexpectedly hospitalized, the other should have to worry about whether the hospital staff will recognize our relationship and allow her in the room? Or that we should have had to pay an attorney to create documents giving each other the right to visit us and make medical decisions for us?

Do you believe that we should have to worry about how we are going to explain to Peeper that there are people who don't like her Mommy and Mama, just because we love each other. And people who aren't going to like her because she has two moms. And that there may be kids who will not be allowed to play with her, or to come to our house, or to attend her sleepovers, because of who her parents are.

If you really do believe those things, if that truly is your opinion of our family, then don't expect us to "accept" or "tolerate" that belief or opinion. And don't be surprised when we have our feelings hurt to find out that you feel that way about us.

But if you don't believe those things, if your actual opinion is that our family is as good as yours and deserves all of the same rights, privileges and protections that yours has, then please stop and think about the impact of your actions before supporting someone who does believe those things.

We certainly don't expect all our friends and family to stop eating at Chick-Fil-A, but it would be nice if not so many of them were bragging about going out of their way to do so on "I agree with the guy who doesn't like gay people" day.

Please put yourselves in our position for a moment and try to understand how we could possible think anything other than "Oh look, s/he doesn't like gay people," when we saw the photo of you holding your waffle fries and smiling in our Facebook feeds on Wednesday.

And why that would be so upsetting to us.