Thank you for coming out today in support of marriage equality. My name is Chelsia Rice and I’m with the Equality Coalition.
When I was asked to speak today, I wanted to address three arguments against legally recognizing same-sex marriage as stated in the 2004 Oregon Voter’s Pamphlet. Author, Glenn T. Stanton wrote that same-sex families always deny children of either their mother or father, that if same-sex marriages are legally recognized, schools will be forced to teach that the homosexual family is normal and finally, that same-sex families are a vast, untested social experiment with children. Based on my experience as a child of a lesbian household, these statements are themselves untested and inaccurate.
It is FALSE that same-sex families always deny children either their mother or father. I was not denied my father – rather my father left us. While he was gone, nearly 10 years, my mother and her partner raised me and when he decided to return to my life, his presence was invited and welcomed. In fact, we all made it a priority to get to know each other, to get involved in each other’s new lives for the sake of family. Suddenly my family was much larger and much more complex.
But if it takes a village to raise a child then I had a village. I had many mothers: the two that raised me and a stepmother. I also had an entire community of straight, gay, and lesbian family friends, and on top of all that, a father. I had an array of female and male role models. Three family's worth of aunts and uncles, cousins, friends, and grandparents, to help me navigate the world in a variety of ways with a variety of perspectives.
What wasn’t easy is how society dealt with my family and how same-sex families are still treated today. The opposition says that if same-sex marriages are legally recognized, “Schools will be forced to teach that the homosexual family is normal.” Well, if the schools would have even come close to recognizing my family’s existence in a classroom - it would’ve made my life a lot easier. But, because we had to remain closeted to remain safe, it took me 13-years to meet another kid with lesbian parents. And when she approached me at school and told me she had lesbian mothers too, we celebrated and we instantly became friends. But regardless of knowing someone else, I still had no one to help protect me from societies scorn; I still had to defend myself from a barrage of bullies.
And it wasn’t just my peers – who often made spectacles of me in classes by passing notes and spreading rumors - in grade school, the PTA gathered to warn other parents that my mother might teach them how to be lesbians resulting in a huge loss of childhood friends who were no longer allowed to hang out with me, spend the night at my house, or come to my birthday parties. And when Measure 9 was on the ballot in the early 90s, even some of my high school instructors posted YES on 9 signs in their classrooms and on their desks. I even had one teacher who made us listen to Rush Limbaugh during lab. Not to mention, our house was vandalized several time during that election year.
