Testimony From Bob McDiarmid
Board Member, Your Family Friends and Neighbors 

Speaking in Opposition to HJR9
Proposed Amendment to the Idaho
Constitution to Ban Gay Marriage

___________________________________________________________________

Dear Chair Field and members of the committee:

My name is Robert McDiarmid. I am proud to speak to you today as a board member of YFFN, Your Family Friends and Neighbors, and as an out - proud gay citizen of Idaho.

YFFN's mission is to promote respect and understanding for all people, especially in regard to sexual orientation and gender identity. Keeping that mission in mind, I speak to you today to encourage you to vote no on HJR9.

You are considering a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would bar marriage between gay people. This bill claims claims to protect marriage and Idaho. We all need to be honest about what this bill is designed to do.

The rhetoric about protecting families and the great state of Idaho is merely an excuse, a politically convenient disguise for the real agenda behind this proposal, to bash gay people in Idaho. Those who are advocating this amendment are behaving just like bullies on schoolyard playgrounds who try to make themselves popular by picking on the weak and the unpopular.

Apparently the only group that is still acceptable to openly discriminate against is homosexuals.

This bill is really about hate. It is about discrimination. It is about providing a respectable vehicle for people to advocate hate and discrimination against a minority group while denying that they hate and discriminate. If the state legislates that it's okay to hate gay people by denying them marriage,

- what stops antigay violence?

- what stops other steps to further discriminate against gay people in Idaho?

- what stops a bully from beating a gay youth on a schoolyard?

HJR9 sets a legislative example that it's OKAY to hate gay people.

This next weekend, my partner Jon and I will celebrate 8 years together. 

We are just one of very many gay couples who call Boise home. Some of our gay and lesbian friends here have been partners for decades and at least two couples we know have been together for more than 50 years.

My partner and I love Boise and Idaho. We have good jobs, live in a moderate home, love to camp and fish and spend time with family locally and in eastern Idaho. We belong to a gay couple's group that gets together once a month for potlucks. During those pleasant evenings we discuss politics, home improvement projects, our children and or our pets, the proposed new convention center, the war in Iraq, and occasionally the Idaho Legislature. We discuss relationship issues and support one another. In between times spent as a group, some of us get together for dinner and play cards or dominoes. We live a quiet life, full of routine and occasional adventure.

Sound boring?

Sound familiar?

And yet, here we are today, speaking of changing the state constitution - that very body of laws designed to protect and keep safe all of our citizens - to discriminate against one group of people. HJR9 singles us out as a threat and denies us full participation in the very institution that is said to be a building block of society. How can we be citizens if we are invisible?

I fail to see how two happy people who love each other but happen to be two men or two women can be seen as a threat, and stand accused of tearing down marriage. My partner and I have not caused the divorce rate to soar. Our lesbian friends in the next neighborhood over have not caused the rise in single-parent families. To make gay people the scapegoat for the problems that plague society and marriage and propose alarmist, discriminatory legislation is absurd. How is my committed relationship a threat?

In fact, to the degree that gay Americans wish to join in marriage, it ought to be seen as an endorsement of the institution, as a recognition that the civilizing merits and rich emotional rewards of marriage appeal not just to people of all cultures, races and ages, but to people of all sexual preference as well.

The interest of gay Americans in getting married is a celebration, a validation of marriage. It is not a threat.

This effort treats our state's constitution as if it's a malleable playground. This bill treads on dangerous ground.

It would be creating a precedent allowing the manipulation of the state's constitution to promote a narrow and divisive view of marriage in America today. 

If you pass this legislation and allow this to go to a vote - please keep this in mind. Years from now, we're going to have to go back into the Idaho Constitution to pull this hateful language out. Some of the very politicians who today will vote in favor of that language will no doubt be there when it is repealed, sheepishly trying to explain how it wasn't really about hate and discrimination, how back then they were just worried about protecting marriage and the family.

And you know what? Nobody will believe them. Nor should they.