The Senate Committee listened to 45 minutes of testimony in favor of, and then 45 minutes in opposition to the proposed constitutional amendment. The amendment failed to get past committee.

[UPDATE 4/5/2006: Watch it online.]

Here are my remarks from the hearing. You are welcome to excerpt/quote, provided you include my name when I do:

I’m Abigail Garner. While it is an honor to have the opportunity to speak today, I am saddened that this conversation is necessary at all. In 1993 my father testified at the capital in support of the human rights bill by talking about the name-calling and discrimination he suffered as a gay man in a white collar job. Today I follow in my father’s footsteps to speak out against discrimination in my state.

I have lived in Minnesota since I was an infant. I am a taxpayer, a homeowner, and a graduate of the Minneapolis Public Schools. I also happen to be heterosexual. I am one of the estimated 10 million children in this county who have one or more parents who are gay lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

My father came out to me as gay in 1978 when I was five years old. My mother agreed to joint custody, putting aside her anger and betrayal about being misled into a 16 year marriage with a closeted gay man. My brother and I grew up in two households located just two miles apart — my single mother in one home, my father and his partner Russ in another.

This month, my father and Russ will celebrate their 28th anniversary. The date has never been marked by a ceremony or a written document, only a private commitment that has endured longer than then many of the legally recognized marriages of my friends’ parents.

Ten years ago, Russ had a stroke while my father was out of town. Adding to the stress of my family crisis was the nagging question as to whether the hospital would treat our relationships as family at all. With a bit of luck and some necessary lying, I was able to navigate my way to Russ’s hospital bed. That time I was able to get through. With the passing of this amendment, however, access to him in an emergency will be even more complicated, if not impossible.

As my two dads approach the age of 70, I have new worries for my family. Among these worries are how end-of-life decisions will be handled. While this is never pleasant to think about, it is distressing and downright insulting to realize that my gay parents are at the mercy of distant extended family who may or may not contest decisions my two dads make for each other regarding life-support, long-term care, funeral arrangements, and inheritance.

Stripping my family of its already less-than-equal rights will not improve the well-being of even one heterosexual family in Minnesota. All this amendment would do for heterosexual-parented families is sanction a sense of superiority to gay-parent families. While that kind of bullying still thrives on the playground, dehumanizing one group of people to make another group feel superior has no place in a government that was created to represent us all.

When my father testified in 1993, I never imagined that the dignity of my family would again be up for debate thirteen years later. But I have faith that you will make your decision based on truth and not on fear. The truth is our families exist. No matter how you feel about homosexuality, changing the constitution to discriminate against my family will not make us disappear.

Remember that it is the children with gay parents, being raised in loving stable homes who have the most to lose if you allow this mean-spirited amendment to move forward.

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