Anti-Gay Laws Send People Fleeing
January 2, 2005: Sometime in the last few weeks, I read an article about a lesbian couple in Virginia leaving their home because of that state’s vicious anti-gay laws. Here’s another article on the same subject, in this case two women fleeing Arizona. From the Arizona Daily Sun:
In mid-December, Jeanine, Nichole and Isaac Soterwood left a home they loved, solid careers and a wide circle of friends.
The state of Arizona does not allow them to be a legal family, so the Soterwoods moved from Tucson to California, where Nichole and Jeanine will file papers to become the legal parents of Isaac, who is 22 months old.
“This is tough for us. We love Tucson. And I had a great workplace and a promising, good career,” said Nichole, 35, who was a systems engineer at Raytheon Missile Systems. “I was disappointed to leave and my co-workers at Raytheon were disappointed. But they understood that family comes first.”
How many times must some people hear the same story before they realize that when you write bias into law, you hurt families and undermine communities? What good is done by forcing these women, who sound like productive members of society, to leave their homes? More proof that no good can come from hatred.