Family time

Last week Indiana lawmakers made an excellent decision. People worried about their civil union statuses and the application of equal protection in Indiana, can breathe again as Senate Joint Resolution 7 was killed in a statehouse committee on April 3.\nThe proposed amendment to Indiana’s definition of marriage ambiguously stated that no Indiana law could be construed to require the legal recognition of civil unions. With seemingly innocuous wording, the resolution opened an alarming can of worms in trying to define family. In articulating that businesses and the government themselves are not required to recognize nontraditional families, it said, without a direct ban, that homosexual and unmarried heterosexual couples are undesirable as families and unwelcome in our state. Thankfully, the committee members had their wits and this dangerous amendment was just barely squished. For now.\nFamily has been on my mind recently. Between Easter, Passover and wedding showers, a good deal of my friends have been traveling back to their families, and with those travels have come myriad conversations about family dynamics and relations. My friends’ family structures are very diverse. Nuclear families, divorced parents, additional stepparents and siblings, foster parents, adopted parents, unmarried nuclear families, two mommies, two daddies, single parents: they’re all accounted for with my friends’ families. The similarity between my friends, no matter their home lives, is that they are all amazingly strong, intelligent, loving people, dedicated to their crafts and to each other. Their respective families, traditional and nontraditional alike, raised these productive people and continue to emotionally support them to the best of their abilities.\nI don’t know if it takes a village to raise a child, but it certainly takes all styles of families to weave the beautiful and diverse quilt of faces in the American experience. If our government has any authority at all, it is to necessarily protect the marketplace of culture from the homogenization of dominant, traditional thought. Families build a nation. Through the strength of emotional support systems and personal definitions of family, the country becomes stronger.\nIt’s only wise to honor and acknowledge every idea of family and to alleviate nontraditional families of the added burden of defending their legitimacy. No matter the form exhibited, the dedication and commitment required to successfully build any family are equally heavy across the board. Therefore, if the government is going to give any special privileges to anyone who takes on that phenomenal responsibility of raising a family, it must extend those privileges to all families in fulfillment of the Fourteenth Amendment. \nThough this initial rejection of Senate Joint Resolution 7 is a victory for nontraditional Indiana families, the battle is nowhere near over. This resolution will continue being brought before the committee, and the proponents of civil-union discrimination, just like those of us fighting it, won’t stop until the cause is ascertained. Stay vigilant and keep an eye out for the next incarnation of Senate Joint Resolution 7. Be ready to defend equality and family once more.