Parenting As A Civil Right

If you read my blog with any regularity, you know that I hold no one in higher esteem than my mother, who passed away in 2010. She was a really fine woman, and a terrific mother. I cannot imagine a more supportive, loving person to have as a parent. She was not perfect, and she had a temper, but she was never stingy with love and/or praise. Her love for all of us kids was unconditional. Everything about me that is good, today, I can trace back to my mother. She was a phenomenal parent.

My mother was also a person with multiple disabilities. I mention this because there are people who believe that men and women with disabilities cannot be parents. They think that the need of a wheelchair, or a service animal or assistive technology makes a person unfit to parent a child. This sort of thinking is just plain backwards. Parents don't love and support their kids with arms or legs, eyes or ears. A person with a chronic illness or limited mobility can love and nurture a child just as well - or as badly - as anyone else. Parenting is not about how well a person can see or hear or speak, but about how well they can show love, set boundaries, and create a safe environment where children can meet their full potential. My mother's chronic respiratory disease, degenerative bone disease, kidney failure, and blindness prevented her from doing many things in life, but they never prevented her from being a great parent.

To state that a person is unfit to parent because of her disability is no different than saying a gay person is unfit to parent because of her sexuality, or that a black person is unfit to parent because of her ethnicity. It's a bigoted concept, plain and simple, and any move to deprive a good parent of custody of her child based on the fact that she has a disability is a violation not only of her civil rights, but of her fundamental human rights. Unfortunately, this is exactly what a woman named Jessie Lorenz is going through, right now.

Jessie is a nationally recognized disability rights advocate whose expertise regarding accessibility, workplace accommodations for people with disabilities, and the Americans with Disabilities Act has served the City of San Francisco, Google, Schindler Elevators, Yahoo, Facebook, and UPS, to name just a few. Her work in this area has garnered an invitation to the White House, for this year's 25th Anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act. She is a Paralympic gold medal winner.  She is one of the most independent, self-sufficient people I know. She is incredibly knowledgeable about cutting-edge technology, which she uses every day when she goes to work as Executive Director of a not-for-profit organization specializing in disability rights advocacy. She is a single mother of a wonderful 4 year old girl who I am happy to have as a little friend.  Jessie is also blind.

Jessie, who has had custody of her little girl since the day she was born, finds herself in a position where, suddenly, her fitness as a parent is being challenged. The only issue at hand? The fact that she has a disability. It seems insane to me that such an allegation - that a person who is blind is unfit to parent - would even be entertained by the justice system. Unfortunately, we have not yet reached a moment in American history where the discriminatory nature of such a charge is universally recognized for what it is:  prejudice and an attempt to deprive a parent who has provided her child with the only stable, supportive home environment she has ever known, of her basic human rights.

If you've read this far, I urge you to read Jessie's own words and, if you can, offer your support. I ask, too, that you share this link with people you know. This sort of discrimination can happen to anyone with a disability. It could have happened to my mother - the thought of which makes me sick. People with disabilities are regularly discriminated against in school, in the workplace, in the housing market, in the business sector and, sadly, in Family Court. This is not someone else's problem - it's OUR problem, as a society, and it's OUR job to fix what's broken so that future generations will not inherit a world where discrimination is the order of the day.

On Same-Sex Marriage: An Open Letter to Rosa Parks

Court dismisses suit by lesbian who couldn’t see dying partner at Hospital

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African American civil rights activist whom the U.S. Congress eventually called the "Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement". On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger.

In 1960 four black freshmen from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro strolled into the F. W. Woolworth store and quietly sat down at the "whites only" lunch counter. They were not served, but they stayed until closing time.

Dear Miss Parks:

Didn't anyone tell you that the seats in the back of the bus are identical to the ones in the front? That they're made of the same fiberglass and vinyl? That seats in the front have old pieces of chewing gum stuck underneath them, just like the seats in the back? That neither seat is particularly comfortable for your back after a long day's work?

Didn't anyone every tell you these things, Miss Parks? Didn't you know?

Someone must have mentioned it, but there you were, pushing your uppity self onto the bus and sitting right down in the front. In a seat that wasn't meant for you. In a seat that was meant for someone else. Someone who had a right to it. What could you have been thinking, Miss Parks?

And there's another thing, Miss Parks. While we're at it, I feel compelled to point out that the food served at the Woolworth's lunch counter was not all that, Miss Parks. Maybe, in fact, probably, there was some negro restaurant right there in Selma or Mobile or Montgomery that served better food than anything they ever even thought to serve at the Woolworth's counter. And I bet a person could get a better milkshake, too. Didn't anyone tell those young people that making a big stink over those seats at the counter was a waste of time? That there was perfectly good food to be had in the colored section of town? Why, then? Why sit down and demand to be served? What did they have to gain?

President Obama opposes same-sex marriage, but supports the idea of civil unions that provide same-sex couples with the same rights as marriage. Let's ignore the fact that civil unions do not, in fact, provide same-sex couples with the immigration protections and privileges that heterosexual couples enjoy, or that a little something called Social Security is a federal program which does not recognize civil unions. Let's not even get into the 1,100+ federal programs that pertain only to male/female couples who are legally married, and not to people in civil unions. Let's ignore the lie about civil unions being almost exactly like marriage in every way. Because, you know what? Even if that were true, "almost" is not good enough, anyhow.

Let's instead, think about another right. Maybe voting. How would it be if one group (I don't know, white men, maybe) had always been denied the right to vote ? And then, as a concession, the new president stated that he felt white men should have all the same basic rights as everyone else, except, techincally, for the right to vote. Let's pretend that, instead, the new president would like to set it up where white men could "opinionate" on election day. In other words, when all the rest of the world was voting, white men could stand on line to "opinionate." Their votes wouldn't really count, in terms of really swaying anything. And the rest of the world would still be the only ones allowed to actually vote. In all other ways, though - standing in line, getting into a booth, having confidentiality - in those ways, voting and "opinionating" would be exactly the same. And when white men had kids, if their kids were boys, they'd have to tell them that, one day, when they were old enough, they could, of course, "opinionate", but not vote. Because voting was for everyone else. For girls. And black people. And Hispanics. God, after all, wants it that way, they'd have to explain. And, really, "opinionating" is almost exactly like voting. Would that feel very nice? Would it be fair? Would that tiny difference in rights seem irrelevant and insignificant? Would it be fair to say that the little white male child who has just found out he can never vote still has all the same opportunities as every other child? That he can still dream and hope for the same things?

I don't think so.

The minute a person - child or adult - finds out that there are very real limits, due to discrimination, to what he or she can actually hope to achieve in life, things change.

I did not grow up dreaming about marriage. Lots of people do, though. And they should be allowed that dream. Even if they're queer. Liberal straight people, who don't want to find fault with the presidential candidate they fawned over in so many shows of political correctness, liberal straight people who are still basking in the self-congratulatory afterglow of the inauguration love to spew the neat, little lie that civil unions are exactly the same as marriage, and every bit as good. And then most of them run out and get married. Funny that!

And really, how dare anyone say it's not a big deal, or that civil unions are almost exactly the same as marriage, or that gays are making a big deal over something irrelevant. Especially a mixed race president - the product of a marriage that, not so long ago in American history, would have been illegal.

How dare anyone who enjoys a privilege take it for granted in such a cavalier way, when others hope and pray for that same, basic privilege to be theirs before they die. When thinking about why the right to marry is important to same sex couples in America, think about Miss Rosa Parks. Civil rights pioneer. Warrior. Stroppy woman.

On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. Later, recognized as the mother of the American civil rights movement, she noted,

"People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day.....the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

Getting a seat on the bus was not what the greater civil rights movement was about in America. Getting a husband or wife isn't really what the gay rights movement is about. Miss Rosa Parks didn't care about that seat on the bus - that front seat that was almost exactly like the back seats. She saw the bus rules as a festering symptom of a greater systemic injustice.

Those seats in the front of the bus were not all that comfortable, and they were made of the same stuff as the seats on the back of the bus, but you sure as hell wouldn't tell that to Miss Rosa Parks. Nor should any of us have the audacity.

© 2009 Lana M. Nieves

Limited Licensing: I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the Creative Commons Attribution license, granting distribution of my copyrighted work without making changes, with mandatory attribution to Lana M. Nieves and for non-commercial purposes only. - Lana M. Nieves