My Family is Not a Threat
By Rachel Jackson, Champaign, Ill.
My partner of five years is my daughter’s basketball coach; they’re at practice right now. I just put a lasagna in the oven to bake, a load of laundry in the washer and came upstairs to check e-mail.
The first email I read is from the Human Rights Campaign alerting me to the fact that the right wing is at it again: fooling Americans into thinking my little family is a threat to our well-being as a whole. I find that so ironic, because it is my family that is threatened every day. My family is vulnerable, with no legal protections. If I die, or something happens to my partner, there is nothing in the law that honors or regards our years of life together.
My daughter is vulnerable as a result. I also find it ironic — how could we be a threat? My partner is in graduate school to become a teacher … she has such a heart for motivating kids to do their best. My daughter is in the gifted program at school and has such a compassionate heart. I am a rape crisis counselor and educator, laboring daily to make people's lives better. We love our church family and neighbors. There is no way our little family is a threat to marriage, families all over or morality.
Yet this is what comes from the mouths of the right wing. It is that lie, which destroys lives and divides families, congregations and our nation. Thankfully, I have my family.
When I'm done with my e-mail, I will go downstairs and clear the table of mail for dinner, wait for my beloved family to come home, eat dinner and hear all about practice.
Feb. 24, 2006