Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi is either extremely naïve or is so out of touch with her political base that she has lost track of both her responsibility to them and to the people of Florida. Recently, I’m sure you’ve heard, Bondi responded to a lawsuit filed last March by eight gay couples and the American Civil Liberties Union. The lawsuit argues that the state of Florida is discriminating against those couples and others by not recognizing same-sex marriages performed in states where they are legal.
Bondi’s official response can be read in its entirety should you care to wade through the legal jargon and political rhetoric that inspired it. But there is a paragraph that you should not miss.
“Florida’s marriage laws have a close, direct and rational relationship with society’s legitimate interest in increasing the likelihood that children will be born to and raised by the mothers and fathers who produced them in stable and enduring family units.”
Before I go any further, let me be clear about one thing. I could not agree more that children deserve to grow up in a loving and nurturing environment. To Bondi, that apparently means a husband and a wife living with children they have conceived and birthed. By her court response that is the complete reality of the bubble that constitutes a “family unit.”
Forget the husband and wife that have adopted a child or two. Forget the woman who gives birth as a single mother. There is no place for them in Florida according to Bondi and by association our governor Rick Scott.
But this case is not about those people—straight and loving and hopefully living in “stable and enduring family units.” This case is about recognizing same-sex marriages that are totally legal in many parts of the United States. In those states, a man who loves another man, or a woman who’s crazy about another women, can marry, flourish and raise children, pay taxes and grow old, without ever worrying that someone will suggest that their love and their stability is any less real than a man and a women who are similarly wed and form a family.
Before you ask, Bondi is a Republican of the most fundamental form. She is a member of the Tea Party, and carries all the political clout and baggage that such an affiliation merits. But like many members of the Tea Party, the plastic bubble in which they live is not transparent. They can not see out into the real world of very real families that include interracial couples, adopted children, gay men, lesbian women, and, lest I forget, the under acknowledged bisexual and transgender population who have family units as well.
Bondi says it is her responsibility to the people of Florida to defend the law. “In 2008, Florida voters amended their state constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman,” said in a statement released Tuesday. “In response to a recent challenge to this provision, and in keeping with my sworn duty to uphold the laws of the land, my office recently filed a legal brief defending the voters’ decision,” she writes.
What Bondi is failing to understand is that the world—and Florida’s place in it—has changed since 2008. In the Attorney General’s rush to defend some voters’ rights, she has stomped on many others. She places same-sex families is a class of subspecies that would do “harm” to the state by merely existing. In doing so, she does more than attempt to defend a law that gives the state the right to discriminate. She trivializes same-sex marriage and those families they nurture. And there is the real harm. Real families, real people, real love.
Follow