Jun 19th, 2008
Marriage Equality: Melding Personal and Private Worlds
Today’s Minneapolis StarTribune published a vivid commentary about marriage equality, identity and family by Ashley Harness, a twentysomething daughter of lesbian mothers.
Read it here:
A love that, today, may dare to speak its name
by Ashley Harness
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Posted June 18, 2008
In addition to expressing her joy about California’s ruling, she also provides the backstory of her own experience growing up in her family. It’s a story that resonates with mine and many other queerspawn I’ve met. And like many adult children who reflect on their childhoods, the experience is seen most clearly after stepping out of the world in which we grew up:
It wasn’t until I got to college on the East Coast that I realized I had the emotional survival kit of a 50-year-old lesbian. Far from the example of my parents, most of my gay and lesbian peers paraded their sexuality like any other college kid in 2001. And while part of me felt they took the struggle of generations past for granted, I envied their freedom. I wanted desperately to live and love with the fearlessness of a post-AIDS-as-gay-cancer, post-Will-&-Grace, post-legalized-sodomy college student.
Ashley’s name will likely ring a bell for readers of my book — and my columns from way-back-when. She and I worked together on many queerspawn projects while she was a teen in Minneapolis. I interviewed her about homophobia in her school, and the article was very popular among teachers and school administrators. (See “Decreasing Homophobia in Schools,” Sept. 1999) A couple years after I wrote that, I had the honor of attending her high school graduation where she gave a speech in which she shared a podium with Coretta Scott King.
She once showed up to march in Pride with a sign she made:
A.I. Baby: All Grown Up.
Indeed. Go Ashley!
Abigail, Thank you for sharing this. I really resonate with this as well.