Dear Senator Stevens:
I have not been shy about assertive political debate in Washington. I realize that today, for the many millions that live here, the stakes could not be higher. Jobs are at hazard. Security is uncertain. Even public health is at risk.
In times like these, the animus of our collective parties can take battlefield forms, and it’s only aggressive language, challenges, and promises that rise above the noise of common process to stir the populace to action, even if that action is simply casting a ballot.
But it should never escape the conscience of any public official that behind the metaphor are lives: men, women, and children, and that a carelessly-worded statement from a position of authority can put thousands, even millions of these lives in immediate and dire peril.
Today, I read such a statement, and it came from your office – possibly from your very pen.
Senator Stevens, your most recent call to action on Referendum 71, for the members of the Protect Marriage Washington Political Action Committee, starting “Could this be the final battle…” is a deeply frightening and unnecessarily warlike tirade against a group of people who count among their ranks millions of innocent men and women – including children – that deserve no less than the full faith and credit of every one of the public institutions in this great state, down to the last helping hand.
I am aware of your causes’ immediate need for support in order to be successful. I realize the protection of marriage as traditionally defined is a critical component of the faith that so much of our country shares. But I would expect that you, as a senior member of a government in charge of so many millions of lives, would realize that a higher ethic must span your conscience and act as a damper on the rasher actions you might stress in times of crisis.
This wise influence, however, I do not see in your latest statement. In its place, I see a fall – a slide into patterns I had hoped we as merciful and tolerant citizens were rejecting: bigotry, prejudice, even hatred against a group of fellow Americans.
Your own words:
“After 27 years of relentless pursuit, homosexuals finally received protected class status from the Washington State Legislature in 2006, making it illegal for you to refuse to rent them a house, or hire them on account of their homosexuality.”
In casting refusal to hire or provide a home to members of the homosexual population as a desirable outcome blocked only by meddling legislation, you have ignored – or attempted wittingly to undo – generations of progress supported not only by the state of Washington, but by citizens all over this nation. The Civil Rights Act of 1960 and 1964, the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 among others are the proud legacies you plow under with these words.
While it may be abhorrent to me personally for you to encourage the voting down of R-71, to withhold pension benefits, medical visiting, even child custody from same-sex couples, the stance is not in itself an unethical use of your power.
Encouraging the citizens of this state to withhold jobs or homes from others based solely on their sexual orientation in clear violation of Washington State law, however, is, and puts real lives at hazard.
If you truly consider this a battle as you say, Senator, you’ll know there are only two choices available to you when it comes to the thousands of families you’ve encouraged to be put out of work and home through your own words. You can either realize your actions have created casualties and take steps to heal the damage, or you can decide that these are simply bodies to trample underfoot on the road to your victory, and let that be the legacy that you leave.
Either way, the voters of Washington are watching.
Respectfully,
Charles N. Cox