On Friday, August, 30, 2013, Diana Coe and Li Hooper, residents of Forsyth County, North Carolina, will request a marriage license at their local Register of Deeds’ office as the WE DO Campaign continues to grow across the South. In this stage of the WE DO Campaign, we are seeking a local elected official in the South who will grant a marriage license to a LGBT couple as an act of conscience.
Diana and Li are seeking a marriage license because they wish to have their relationship recognized by North Carolina. Despite a state ban on same-sex marriage, they will ask the Forsyth County Register of Deeds Office to issue licenses as an act of conscience. “Li and I share a home together and raise a child together. We have a fundamental right to legally marry each other–as best friends and life partners,” says Diana Coe, who first met Li when they were undergraduates. Decades later, the couple reunited, an old spark rekindled.
During their years apart, Li realized that he is a trangender man. Now a student at Wake Forest Divinity School and a candidate for ordained ministry in the United Church of Christ, Li is in the process of medically transitioning from female to male. His current identification indicates that he is female, but he will begin the process of legally changing his name and gender in North Carolina this fall, at which point he and Diana would be issued a license under current laws. “That is, fundamentally, the best example of how illogical current marriage laws are,” Li says. “When I take this action on Friday, it is as a trans person standing up for LGBT equality. Transgender people are a clear and present reminder – a living reminder – that there are an infinite number of ways to be human. We are a reminder that human rights apply to humans. Period.”
You can send Diana and Li a message of support here and read their letter to the Forsyth County Register of Deeds below.
August 26, 2013
Dear Mr. Holleman,
I am writing to you because I have a serious matter, relating to the lives of many in our county and in North Carolina, that I would like to invite you to consider.
My partner, Diana Coe, and I very much wish to be married and recognized as a loving, committed couple in North Carolina. At present, however, we are not permitted to do that. We are not permitted to do so because, under Amendment One, same-sex couples are legally prohibited from marriage, as you know. We believe this law is as politically unjust as much as it is ethically and morally unjust, in that it negates the personhood of countless people and prevents them—and us—from equal access to a basic civil right. In response, we stand, with others, in a place of conscience and concern for the lives of all of us adversely affected—and legally erased—by this prohibition. We invite you, if you will, to stand with us by issuing us a marriage license when we come before your office on August 30, 2013.
Please know that I fully understand what I am asking of you—that I am asking you to take the bold and daring risk to step out in conscience and make a statement of resistance to an unjust law. I am quite aware of the courage, conviction, and inner fortitude it takes to publicly engage in an overt act of compassionate resistance and to state, clearly, that the suppression of the rights of any human beings to basic civil liberties is wrong. I know how hard it is because I, daily, live under a set of discriminatory parameters that make simply walking out of our house with my partner an act of both conscience and risk. In addition to the systemic and legal oppression we suffer, there are places where we are simply not safe. I know that what I am asking of you is difficult—that you take a moment to consider deeply what we are really asking for and what is at stake in the lived expression of our lives and seek your own sense of real justice, then act upon it accordingly. But, please, for a moment contemplate what really is the issue.
My partner, Diana, and I met 30 years ago in art school in Philadelphia, even though we were both from North Carolina. We dated in college and maintained a deep and abiding friendship. We stayed in contact and supported each other throughout the years and not-so-lasting other relationships. We shared one another’s joys, sorrows, break-ups, trials and successes and watched each other grow. In 2009, when we were both single at the same time [I, for a few years], we realized that the long-standing love between us and the underlying friendship was too important to us to allow our fears of being hurt to prevent us from being together. We began dating again and Diana, I and her son [a wonderful boy she engaged in years of alternative insemination to have] became a family together, under the same roof, in 2011. We raise her son—our son—together. He is a wonderfully smart, capable and is developing into a fine young man. He is surrounded by love and support from us, family, extended family, and spiritual community. We want to marry for the same reasons that all the heterosexual couples I know want to marry. We deeply love, respect, care for and are committed to each other. We grow in love each and every day and are upheld by the foundation of a real spiritual friendship. The love between us is obvious to others. Ours is the kind of story that prompts the writing of songs, poetry and books. If we were heterosexual, no one would even hesitate to celebrate with us the beautiful gift we have been given in each other.
Yet, because we are not heterosexual, the love we share is made less significant by legalized repression of who we are as people and our lack of access to the civil right of marriage. This is the real issue.
As you think about our story, I want to share another aspect with you that, I think, clearly illustrates how insanely illogical the ban on same-sex marriage really is. I will soon turn 50 years old. I have lived my life as a lesbian, but have done so somewhat by default. I am transgender. And, at the same age that all children begin to process and recognize their gender identity, I spoke out about mine. My subsequent encounters with the medical and mental health theories of the time left a lasting negative and scarring mark on me. It took most of my young adult life to work through the psychological and emotional pain and disconnection I suffered. It took me until last year to fully address my gender identity. I am, now, a year into sexual affirmation/reassignment. So, here is the real point of illustration:
We have been coming before your office requesting a license to marry since we began the “We Do” Campaign. Each time, we have been—as we expected—denied. In a few short months, my name and my gender-marker will change. After that, when we stand at the counter in your office, a clerk will award us a license to marry….with, I might add, no awareness of my transsexual medical history! The irony is staggering. Nothing will really have changed in regard to my personhood, except that there will be a check in a box that indicates “male.” The essence of who I am—who I was each time we were denied a marriage license—remains the same. Nothing about mine and Diana’s relationship or shared love, mutual respect, and commitment will have changed. Nothing about the kind of co-parent I am will have changed. I will have simply checked a different box on your form and my outward appearance, now, more and more closely matches my inward sense of self. I ask you, does this make sense?
Many have tried to confuse the matter by making it about religion and religious definitions, but since we moved marriage out of the church and into the civil arena, it became a civil matter and thus is a civil right. As loving people, who just happen to be same-gender loving, we want and deserve access to the same civil rights, privileges and protections as all other citizens in the common civil community. We are, in fact, afforded such equal access under the parameters of our founding documents. We simply want the right to be fully human, in a civil society, and to express ourselves, our commitment, and our lives in a legally recognized way. We want to be full persons under the law.
Finally, as a person of faith, I believe without reservation in a God who is ever so much larger than the human systems of codification which have arrogantly assumed to know the mind of God and have, thus, limited God and its creation. I believe we are all children of a God who is love and who designed and created us to engage in and thrive in loving relationships. However, as a person of faith and a person patriotically committed to the spirit and intent of our founding documents, I also firmly believe in the separation of church and state. I also believe that the sacred integrity of a system of faith, as well as the integrity of our governing processes, both depend upon and demand such separation. The founders of our country also believed this. I suspect that few would argue that the right to love and marry the person of our choosing is central to a full life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness.
I am asking you to consider all of this—to consider our story, in the context of your own or that of others you know. I am asking that you sit in a moment of silent contemplation and consider what it would feel like if you or someone you love were denied the right to decide to marry and then to do so. Then, I am asking you to listen to and trust whatever is revealed to you in that silence…and to act from a place of that conscience. I am asking you to stand with us. I am asking you to do so with full knowledge that I understand the gravity and difficulty of what I am asking…and that I, too, stand with you. I stand with you as a citizen. I stand with you as a person of faith. I stand with you as a person who loves my partner and my son and wants a fully realized life with them. Will you stand with us?
Thank you for your time and consideration of my appeal to your conscience. Peace to you, Mr. Holleman.
Respectfully,
Li Hooper
We’re rolling out the next phase of the WE DO Campaign, using a new strategy. We are actively seeking a local elected official in the South who will grant a marriage license to a LGBT couple because it’s the right thing to do.
WATCH:
[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jQxNB5FsPc’]
