A message from Oklahomans for Equality: demand fair immigration policy

Oklahomans for Equality released the following statement today, June 19, 2018.

Oklahomans for Equality shares much of the nation’s dismay and heartbreak over the current administration’s mean-spirited policy of separating children from their parents at the country’s borders and placing them in detainment camps. Like you, we have seen the nightmarish photos and heard the anguished cries of the children and parents alike as immigrant families are being attacked.

But as LGBTQ Americans, we also are all-too familiar with having our families attacked. We know how it feels to be told that we are unfit, immoral parents and have our children taken away from us. We know the sting of being told that our very existence is against the law. We understand the hurt of having some individuals in our government constantly trying to undermine our rights to family equality.

As LGBTQ Oklahomans, we also understand the fear that is great enough to make a person flee everything they know for the purported safety of another land, even sight unseen. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have for decades fled unwelcoming and dangerous places – including Oklahoma – for the promise of the opportunity to live safely and more freely elsewhere, even though doing so often meant leaving family and friends, jobs and homes behind. Indeed, LGBTQ people around the world every day flee their homelands in search of safety.

Immigrant families are not the subhuman villains that the current administration would have people believe – neither the undocumented ones nor the ones legally seeking lawful asylum. And regardless of any opinions on immigrant rights, it is unconscionable to defend the tactics now being employed by our government.

We at Oklahomans for Equality demand that this horror stop and that our government instead put its energy toward enacting meaningful, just and fair immigration policy that sees the humanity in all people and places value on all families.

Copyright The Gayly. June 19, 2018. 1:46 p.m. CST.