Yesterday was a momentous day for us. There are lots of
elections for various offices, but it’s always particularly exciting every four
years when there’s a presidential election. This year, not only was there a
presidential election, but there were two proposed amendments to the Minnesota
Constitution and every voter in Minnesota was given the opportunity to vote for
or against these amendments.
One of them was the voter ID amendment. The purpose of this
amendment was to require more restrictive identification in order to vote. Back
in my first year of college, I had my first opportunity to vote in an election.
I was supposed to vote “absentee” (by mail) for offices and ballot initiatives
in my home state of Illinois, but my ballot didn’t come in the mail on time.
Instead, I went to the local polling place for my college campus and registered
to vote there. The registration process involved showing my college ID and
giving the address of my dorm in order to prove that I was living on-campus and
in the boundaries of the polling place. Because of Minnesota’s same-day
registration process, I was able to exercise my right to vote in Minnesota rather
than in Illinois. I remember this as an important turning point for me as I
began to think of myself as a Minnesotan. If this amendment to the Minnesota
Constitution had been in effect back then, I would likely have been unable to
vote at all that year. The idea that other people in similar situations, maybe
even you when you grew up to be a young adult, would have the right to vote be
restricted like this made me very uncomfortable.
The other amendment was the marriage amendment. The purpose
of this amendment was to re-define marriage as being between a man and a woman.
You see, at the time that I am writing this, it is currently not possible for
two men or two women to get married in our state. There are many same-sex
couples who live together and have families together, but being legally married
is something that can only happen between a man and a woman. When your father
and I got our license to be married from the government, we even had to raise
our right hands and swear that one of us was a man and one of us was a woman. I
sincerely hope that by the time you are reading this, this fact will seem terribly
outdated and foreign to you (as it does already to me and your father), but for
right now, it is the state of how things are in Minnesota and much of the rest
of our country. While it is not possible for same-sex couples to get married
here, we’ve been seeing lots of changes in the last few years as some other
states have begun to make it legal for two men or two women to marry one
another. Some people in Minnesota don’t like these changes and it was decided
that there would be a question on the ballot asking voters if they wanted to
define marriage as being just between a man and a woman in this state. If a
majority of voters voted “Yes” to this question, then the state Constitution
would be amended to say that marriage is only between a man and a woman. This
would make it harder for Minnesota to become a state where same-sex marriage
would be legal. If there wasn’t a majority of voters voting “Yes” then the law
would stay the same – marriage in Minnesota would still be only between a man
and a woman, but there wouldn’t be something in our Constitution saying that this
is how it should always be.
I brought you to the polling place with me, all snug and
secure inside my belly. There is so much that I can do to protect you right
now, but I know that that won’t always be the case. As I filled out my ballot,
I rested my hand on my belly and thought of the world that I hope to create for
you. I thought about whether you’ll choose to get married someday and what it
will be like for you the first time you vote and start to make decisions about
what kind of world you want for your family.
When your father and I got home that evening, we built a
fire and turned on the news. Election coverage is usually pretty exciting, but
in every election, there are always those who are happy with the results and
those who are disappointed. We were terribly nervous that this might be a year when
we would be disappointed. There were many exciting pieces of news throughout
the evening, including two states that voted to make same-sex marriage legal,
but here in Minnesota we still didn’t know whether our voters would vote for a
constitutional ban on it. I had to go to sleep before I knew what the results of
either of the amendment questions would be.
When I woke up in the morning, I started looking for
election results right away. When I found out that Minnesota had turned back
both amendments, my heart quickened with pride. You may have trouble
understanding this, but the recent polls had indicated that there was a good
chance that these amendments would pass. When I looked at the raw numbers, I
saw that not only fewer than half the voters voted for them, but more than half
had voted against them. This meant that
not only was a majority of Minnesotans unwilling to vote for the amendments,
but a majority of us actively made the choice to vote against them.
I spent much of the rest of the day overwhelmed and excited.
I cried tears of joy on the way to work. In particular, it had been a landmark
day in gay rights history. For the first time, voters in all the states where a
same-sex marriage question was put on the ballot had made a choice in favor of
marriage equality. Until yesterday, the states that had legalized gay marriage
had all done so through the legislatures or the courts, never through a direct
poll of the people. In most cases, when the people were asked to vote on a marriage
equality issue (which has periodically come up in several states, often more
than once, over the last 15 years or so), they had made the choice against marriage
equality. Last night, however, four states made key changes in this trend.
I very much hope that this is a sign that positive changes
are on the way. I hope that you will spend the majority of your childhood and
the entirety of your adulthood in a society that values you for who you are. I
hope that you will never doubt that your vote will count, that your voice will
be heard, that you deserve the privilege of exercising your rights as a citizen.
I hope that you will find happiness with a partner who you love and that you
will always feel that your love is accepted by the community in which you live.
I am hopeful for Minnesota. I am hopeful for us as family, raising you here in
Minnesota.
Between the election news and the math content that I was
teaching today, I was a very excitable person all day long. You responded by
vigorously moving about in a way that I’ve never felt before. You used to make noticeable,
big movements about once every few days or even go weeks at a time without any
huge movements. Today, though, I was feeling you flip around in my belly every
few minutes. I hope all my adrenaline didn’t scare you. I hope that you felt
the love that I feel for you and the hope that I feel for the society that we're creating for you. After
all, I voted for you. I voted for my
bambin@’s future.
Love,
Mama
Beautiful!
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