That was a great article. Your mother’s a fine wordsmith. It’s a shame you have to make such a decision and leave the country of our birth just to have what it won’t rightly give you because of its ignorance and bigotry. Just the same, we’ll be glad to have you and Canada will be the richer for it. Our weather kind of sucks a lot of the time, but we don’t have those large pesky clusters of righteous evangelical bigots who have enough political clout to bend the ears of important lawmakers.
With any luck the political pundits in the US will either die off or fall out of favour and be replaced with more right-thinking individuals with common sense who will rip these dumbass constitutional amendments out by the root and replace it with proper anti-discrimination laws when it comes to gay marriage, but until then, here’s a pre-welcome to Canada. Your mom’s welcome any time for some good Tim Hortons coffee.
Thank you for the compliments, I have passed them on to mom. She is very excited, though now that it is too late she is a little worried about repercussion She is very active in a coalition for Safe Schools and gives classes to counselors on dealing with gay and lesbian students so I don’t think she needs to worry.
A funny story from this. a fact checker from Newsweek called her and asked if that was our real names (yes) and if we knew about the article (yes). How horrible if the second answer was no, and to be outed nationally by your mother!
That mistake has now been rectified, but Jeeves’s mom is identified as Chaffee (two f’s) in the byline and Chafee (one f) in the photo caption. A shame, as Nadine’s contribution is well-written and well-reasoned. Too bad we can’t edit the Newsweek site in order to correct such errors…
Congratulations to your mom for a great essay! And thank her so much for having the courage to voice her support!
Last year, my own mom was brave enough to write an essay in support of me, her lesbian daughter, in a nation-wide newsletter for Canadian Lutheran women. Although Canada as a country is supportive of gay rights, it can still be rough going among certain religious communities. But even though church is a big part of her life, my mom “outed” herself and risked condemnation and isolation out of love for me. As it turns out, she didn’t have to worry – good people came out of the woodwork over her essay to support her, and many shared stories about their own gay sons and daughters. I am so immensely proud of her.
My partner and I were married in my parents’ back yard in Saskatoon two summers ago. Although we live in the US right now, we often talk about moving up to Canada to claim the rights that our marriage would offer.
Just received the hardcopy of the Feb. 5th Newsweek at our library, and there it is, on pp. 22-23. The essay looks great, and I didn’t see any typos in this version.
Very well written, indeed! I’m a fan of Newsweek and especially the “My Turn” column; I’m now planning on buying this issue. Your mother’s done a wonderful job of making arguments which people need to hear. I’ll be interested in next week’s letters to the editor, though.
Wow, it is very exciting that other papers are publishing the article. I don’t think that mom knows that, I emailed her with a link.
The responce has been overwhelmingly positive, even from people that she did no expect to be positive. This has been a great experience for her. There has only been one weird responce so far, and no negatives yet.
