MI Hate: Receiving E-mails from a Homophobic Governor

You all know that I try to be rational and see multiple points of view. I try to share my story rather than quote statistics. I try to engage in discussion. However, I'm tired and frustrated, and I've been listening to "Brave" by Sara Bareilles on loop ("I wonder what would happen if you say what you want to say, and let the words fall out; honestly, I want to see you be brave!"). In other words, I use the "MI hate" label pretty sparingly these days, but it's time.

 

Nonetheless, this is a message that I just sent to Governor Snyder as well as several Michigan legislators, the Secretary of State (Ruth Johnson), and the Attorney General (Bill Schuette). I encourage you to send your legislators and other leaders this message or a similar one.

 

Hello Governor Snyder,

I am again responding to a message from you. While I am aware that I could unsubscribe myself, I wish for your office to be inconvenienced in a small way, since your blatant regard for civil rights has greatly inconvenienced me, my family, and the community to which I belong. Therefore, I am requesting that you direct whoever manages your subscription list to remove me from it and issue me an apology for rubbing in my face that you and your family have many privileges afforded to you that I cannot expect.

For instance, a member of my community's long term same sex partner was recently hospitalized. Although this community member works for the Henry Ford Health System, has insurance through them, and has set up care for her family there, where the administration and staff are LGBT friendly and do not discriminate or deny basic human rights, nonetheless, her partner recently had a health emergency and ended up at St. John Providence, a Catholic hospital. Under Michigan law, Catholic hospitals can and do discriminate against LGBT families. In this case, the partner was in the ICU and unable to make her own care decisions, but her spouse was denied ability to make decisions for her on the basis of their status as a same sex couple. Instead, the mother of the patient was contacted, despite not being aware of a great deal of her daughter's medical history, and refused to let the spouse make decisions. I had been assured by Michigan Republicans, over and over, that the need to pass statewide legislation against this type of discrimination is nonexistent because it doesn't happen. However, it clearly has. This is unacceptable. Religious institutions serving people not of their community - as is the case with hospitals - should not be permitted to enforce their religious rules on non members of that religion; if they do so, they should be stripped of accreditation and state funding, not protected by "right to discriminate" laws put forth by members of your political party. Waffling on providing these basic rights is unacceptable. Refusing to provide leadership to Michigan's government to pass protections that should already exist in a progressive, supportive, business-friendly, family-friendly state is unacceptable. Allowing the Christian equivalent of sharia law is unacceptable. Putting families already under a great deal of stress due to medical emergencies under additional stress by preventing them from making care decisions is unacceptable. You may argue that this family could have attempted to take additional steps to protect themselves by going out of state to marry or hiring a lawyer to fill out paperwork, but the truth is that you would never tell a straight couple to do this, and as such are recognizing that straight families have privileges that same sex ones do not.

Furthermore, with Michigan's same sex marriage case continuing to pend Supreme Court review, my partner and I will be unable to accurately file our taxes this year in a timely fashion or possibly at all, because constitutionally, some judges have affirmed our status as a married family and others have not. This could necessitate calculating our taxes jointly for federal (since we're married according to California and 30 something other states) and separately for our home state where we have chosen to remain on the misguided notion that by now, this would be resolved. Once the case is resolved and the ruling states that our marriage should be recognized, as the vast majority of precedent, and all Supreme Court precedent indicates, we will then have to file again for a revision. It is my understanding that we will in no way be compensated for this major inconvenience, despite the fact that I will face the opportunity cost of spending quality time with my medical resident wife who works 80 hour weeks or of performing work for which I would be compensated at an hourly rate, or the loss of interest on our tax return that will result. I once again urge you to direct Bill Schuette to drop this appeal, stop wasting state funds, and join the civilized world.

You could also direct Ruth Johnson to train her employees to stop discriminating against same sex couples who wish to change their identification based on a marriage name change from out of state, as they are doing to my wife and me. I have been assured by her office that everyone is aware that this discrimination is happening, but I inform those who ask for state-issued identification confirmation with my financial transactions (my financial institutions, employer, and the federal government use my married name) of this discrimination, and they are unaware. To date, no one has told me that this policy is reasonable. This is not only discrimination against me, it is a snub against the legal system in California that issued me a legal marriage certificate expected to be recognized in other states, just as ALL straight marriage certificates across the country are, regardless of whether laws against marrying cousins, required waiting periods, blood tests, etc are reciprocated. I was even told that your Secretary of State was willing to issue me an invalid enhanced driver's license that could cause me to get stuck in another country because it didn't match my federal information. Your Secretary of State has also issued the incorrect information that once I changed my name with Social Security, I could change it back on the basis of Michigan's discriminatory policy. While I do not wish to do so, given the lifetime limit on the number of Social Security cards that may be issued to an individual and the likelihood of having to change it back once your discriminatory policies are corrected, I verified this possibility. Social Security indicated that without an additional legal document, such as a divorce certificate (which, by the way, I cannot obtain given your policies), the Social Security office doesn't allow this. This policy has caused my partner and I to waste countless hours looking for alternatives (we cannot file with the county to legally change our names through the courts because we've relocated too many times in the last few years, and that costs extra time and money anyway, reinforcing our status as second class citizens) and worrying what could happen. Ask your wife how frustrating it has been for her and her friends to change their names after marriage. Multiply that by 1,000. That's my situation.

When I saw that you had been re-elected, it was as though I was seeing that we had re-elected one of the Southern governors who refused to integrate school districts or proceed with any other civil rights issues. History is likely to judge you for that, much as we now judge all of them. You could choose to make the morally and ethically, not to mention financially, correct choice to right these wrongs, and you have not.

Respectfully,

Erin