Coco'sWords

At age 22, I thought I found the one true love. I don’t know, and I will never know if I was right. We were students living in Paris, a place where it still is not an easy task to become nationalized. After several attemps to extent my visa, I was asked, très poliment, to leave. She remained in City of Light to finish her studies and that is how the story ended.

Twenty years have gone by and not much has changed there or here in the United States. After becoming a naturalized American citizen, thanks to the due diligence of my parents, I met a tall, witty blond called Dawn, who is my lovely fiancé. We have been engaged for years; however, since the State of Nevada is not that progressive, we cannot get married. Even if we could get married, and I was not a citizen, she could not file a petition on my behalf.  We were lucky to find each other when “my papers” were not longer an issue, but for my friends Monica & Sylvia, Jose & JP timing was not perfect. They were just not as fortunate. As a result, they are now forced to live in the shadows of a system that could break them apart forever at any given time. That upsets me! That is why today I am raising my voice for comprehensive immigration reform.

Our current system is broken. It needs to be fixed. It needs to be inclusive. Keeping families together doesn’t and shouldn’t translate into “keeping traditionally defined nuclear families together.” Families come in different shapes and sizes. Dawn is my family. The day we decide to adopt, those children will be our family too. LGBT partners and LGBT families have the right to stay together just like anybody else. Comprehensive Immigration Reform just cannot wait. Our generation and many generations before us have already waited for justice for too long.

http://www.hrc.org/blog/entry/immigration-reform-that-includes-the-lgbt-community