Feb 12 2009
Standing up and being counted
I fully support equal civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered Americans. Period.
For those of you who haven’t been involved in the various discussions on the Archives & Archivists listserv or on other blogs, this might be a bit of a departure from my usual posts. I’ve been tossing this post around in my head for a few days with no definite idea of what exactly I wanted to say– and I think that much of it has already been said more eloquently by colleagues and friends. Instead of belaboring the point, I’d like to encourage you to visit the links below.
My goal here is to simply add my support for my colleagues and others, and to stand up for what I believe is a fundamental issue of civil rights.
For more on the discussion of SAA and Prop 8, take a look here:
Archives & Archivists forum- first related thread
Beaver Archivist- I <3 equality!
ArchivesNext- Advocating for the rights of gay and lesbian archivists
@rchivista- Sobre archiveros, derechos civiles y el papel de las asociaciones (”About archivists, civil rights, and the role of associations”)
By no means an exhaustive list, but a few links on advocacy:
List of rights denied to GLBT populations (compiled by the Kentucky Equality Federation)
I’m with you. I think about my gay friends and wonder how anyone would ever want to deny those folks the right to marry the person they fall in love with.
And this is a point that many have made before me, but I fail to understand how allowing two people to marry threatens anyone else’s existence in any real way. (Have these people seen the divorce rate?) I understand that some religions may not want to perform the ceremonies because it’s against their faith & teachings, and that’s fine. No one is forcing anyone to do anything.
Thanks for posting on this important issue! And, remember, everyone, write to Council! Because I doubt very many of them are reading the blogs and God knows, Facebook probably won’t mean anything to any of them (except Tom). They need to hear what people think!
Kate
Alison, I agree. Thinking about my friends who have that right (because they live in MA) and comparing them to friends living elsewhere in the US, it’s absolutely clear to me that things in this country need to change.
Kate, thanks for stopping by. I really hope that other archivists take the time to write to Council on this issue– now that it’s been brought up as a discussion topic, I think that the responsible course of action is to stand with our colleagues and not be silent on this. Hopefully others will feel the same way.