06/29/2022
As Pride month wraps up, and with the Supreme Court's devastating decision on Roe and it's likely implications for same s*x couples, we thought we'd share the cover letter our founder, Becky, wrote for an RFP for The Gill Foundation and 🏳️🌈 Our votes have impact. Our voices matter. People's lives literally depend on the choices we make.
In lieu of a typical agency intro letter, please allow me to break with convention and begin on a personal level. On 6/26/15, I had just arrived home to the home I shared with my girlfriend, Lennon, when I saw the news that marriage equality had passed through the Supreme Court. I immediately began sobbing out of sheer relief.
You see, I’m a woman and, up until I met Lennon, I had only dated men. Because of this, marriage was always a given - something I had taken for granted. When Lennon came into my life, I very quickly realized that my person was, in fact, a woman, which changed things. A wedding wasn’t impossible, but there would be hoops and, with them, the realization that our union would not be universally recognized. That is, until the Supreme Court decision came through. Lennon came home that day to find me covered in tears and we just stood in our doorway, holding on to each other for the longest time. That decision meant we could get married like every other “normal” couple - like the normal couple we are.
We eloped in the fall of '16 in Vermont - the first state to allow anyone who loves each other to get married. Exactly 3 months later I gave birth to our beautiful, twin daughters. Would we have had our girls without the marriage? Yes. However, the ability to do so forged our family legally and made it possible for Lennon to be listed on our girls’ birth certificates - which was extremely important to us.
Reflecting back, it's overwhelming to consider how different things would be for our family had the decision not passed...
