Thursday, January 23, 2014

An open letter to Speaker Bosma and the Indiana Legislature:

My husband and I have these two good friends.  Well, best friends really.  Casey and Annie are they types of friends most married couples probably have; the kind who will watch your kids in an emergency, pick you up when your car won't start, or bring you meals when you have a baby.  We've taken vacations together, we laugh, play games, go to movies, debate religion and politics; all in all the types of things that most people do with their friends.

I have known Annie for a long time.  She and I went to medical school together, completed our internship and residency in pediatrics together, and even worked together in the same pediatric practice for a year.  Annie is currently completing additional training in pediatric critical care, spending long hours, nights, and weekends in the ICU to compassionately care for the very sickest children and their overwhelmed families.  She's really good at it.  She is the epitome of the physician you would want taking care of YOUR critically ill child should tragedy strike.  You could not quantify the number of families in Indiana who have benefitted from Annie's care.  This is just a small example of what makes Annie the type of person she is.  She never has a mean or negative thing to say about anyone.  She loves children.  She loves animals.  She's creative, kind, and funny.  She is that friend we all have who seems to make friends out of everyone she meets.  She demonstrates no external judgements about anyone, and is able to immediately find and bring out the best in everyone.  In short, she is a wonderful person, someone who has formed an essential part of my community and extended family here in Indiana.

Casey and Annie were married a few years ago.  They spent the majority of their initial relationship apart, as Casey is in the Army and was working in Cuba at the time.  This was, of course, after an active duty tour overseas, serving our country honorably in Afghanistan.  Over the years, Casey has also become a very good friend of ours.


Casey and Annie live in Indianapolis.  They have two dogs, jobs, and a house.  They want to become foster parents.  They want to have kids someday.  If you met them you wouldn't think they were different from anyone else.  Except, maybe you would, because Casey also happens to be a woman.


I grew up in Indiana, attended medical school here.  I work here, I live here, I choose to raise my children here.  Despite the good-natured ribbing that I take from my coastal friends about living in "back-woods" Indiana, my husband and I have chosen to live our lives here and have been happy with our decision.  But, in all my years as a Hoosier, yesterday was the first day I was truly ashamed to call this state home.  Speaker Bosma's political wrangling of HJR-3 is beyond reproach.  Yesterday I honestly wished I could sit him in a naughty chair like I do with my spirited toddler and have him "think about what he's done."

How ironic that HJR-3 comes to a vote just days after we celebrated the life of one of the greatest men and Civil Rights proponents of all time.  What would Dr. King have to say about Indiana entrenching legislative discrimination in the name of religion?  Lest we forget, the church, in addition to being a driving force behind the Civil Rights movement, was also one of the biggest opponents AGAINST Civil Rights for decades.  Slavery has been preached from the pulpit.  Oppression of women, abuse of children has been actively played out in so-called Christian congregations.  The Bible has been used to defend, for decades, some of our most heinous cultural institutions.  The most vocal proponents of HJR-3, what would they have said against Dr. King and his contemporaries had they been campaining back then?  What offensive racial epithets would they have hurled, what discriminatory beliefs would they have espoused, what would they have publicly preached in the name of supposed "morality" against Dr. King -- the same man who only days ago they lauded and celebrated?

If your religion and your upbringing inform you that same-sex marriage is wrong, and that homosexuality is a sin, to that I say, good for you, feel free to live and preach your beliefs.  We could debate that point until the end of days and probably not come to an accord.  But here's the thing.  HJR-3 is not, actually, a religious issue, despite what you may so strongly believe.  HJR-3 IS A CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE.  We are all, all of us, every single one of us, afforded the exact same rights and protections under the law according to the U.S. Constitution.  Religion may discriminate, and in fact it does so freely and willingly, but the law cannot discriminate.  If you want to fight tooth and nail against your church or your denomination performing same-sex marriages, then wonderful, please, go ahead.  But, under the law, you CANNOT deny rights to one group of citizens that are afforded to other citizens.  There is a reason that Lady Justice is blind, though this seems to have been forgotten or even willfully ignored in Indiana.

In the end, this letter may not matter at all.  You have probably already made up your minds how you will vote today, and certainly mine is not the first "gay people are just like the rest of us" story you have heard in the past few weeks and months.  But I don't think I'm really writing this for you anyway.  I'm writing this for them, for Annie and Casey, and the countless other same sex couples in Indiana and beyond who today are feeling the sting of discrimination, hatred, and legisltative injustice.  What a morally reproachable state of affairs that an American soldier who risked her life in Afghanistan and a pediatric critical care doctor cannot even obtain a mortgage or file their taxes together.

The thing is, Casey and Annie aren't our "best gay friends."  They are our best friends who also happen to be gay, which happens to not matter to us.  And it shouldn't matter to you.

Make no mistake, universal same-sex marriage WILL be achieved in this country, and I hope, pray, and believe it will happen in my lifetime.  Now it's a question of how Indiana will be viewed through the lens of history.  Will we be the protagonists of our own story?  Or will we live up to the rest of the country's general beliefs about a state like Indiana?

The choice is up to you.