By Louise Chernin,
president & CEO
Greater Seattle Business Association
After so many decades of meetings, organizing, strategizing and hoping, it’s hard to wrap our arms around the full impact of last Friday’s historic decision. It’s joyous and emotionally overwhelming to hear that SCOTUS, the Supreme Court of the United States, has affirmed, unequivocally that we are equal under the law and that our relationships and marriages will be recognized in every one of the 50 states. For many of us, it’s a day that we could never have imagined.
June 26 will be known as the day that changed the future for the LGBT community. With this recognition of our families, there is hope that future generations of parents will no longer have to worry about the safety of their children; children of LGBT parents can un-ambivalently invite both their parents to school events and just perhaps our gay children will no longer feel so much shame and anguish that they commit suicide.
Even with the success of Washington’s Referendum 74 in 2012 and then the Supreme Court’s Windsor decision in 2013; even after watching state after state refuse to uphold bans on same sex marriage, it was not a given that the US Supreme Court would once and for all recognize same sex marriage as a constitutional right. Perhaps no one could have said it better than Justice Kennedy’s closing paragraph:
“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”
Although we have achieved this significant victory, we also recognize that there are still many struggles for the LGBT community in our country, including youth homelessness, care of our seniors, equal access and respect for our trans community, and employment nondiscrimination and religious exemptions laws. GSBA will continue to work until equality is achieved for all, which has been our focus since our founding in 1981. But, for now, this is a day to celebrate!
Equality is good business. It was in 1981, and it still is in 2015.
