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A Gay Woman Fights Back in Arkansas
Monica PottsIt wasn’t just Wal-Mart; thousands of regular Arkansans signed anti-RFRA petitions. All is not lost, even in the Ozarks.
It’s easy, from a distance, to think that Arkansas is awash with backward, homophobic yokels when its legislature passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which would allow businesses to discriminate against gay couples getting married. Governor Asa Hutchinson has sent it back to the legislature for rewording. Part of the reason is undoubtedly that Wal-Mart and other big corporations had asked him to veto it. They were worried about their bottom lines after watching many other businesses, and at least one state, pledge to boycott Indiana when the Hoosier State’s own version passed a few days earlier.
But there were plenty of people who call Arkansas home and didn’t like the law either—and like the Southerners who opposed joining the Confederacy, it’s important that history doesn’t forget them. In the past few days, my Facebook timeline has been awash with shares from people—voters, taxpayers, and proud Arkansans—who want the governor to veto the law, and there have been public statements from religious leaders and other state organizations expressing their disproval.
They don’t want their home state to be a source of embarrassment. One of them is Cira Abiseid, who grew up in my hometown, and married her partner in Hawaii in December 2013. She and her partner also had a ceremony in Arkansas for friends and family, though the state does not legally recognize their union. (Marriage equality is being pursued in the courts there.) Their local paper carried their wedding announcement, which was heralded as the one of the first same-sex wedding announcements published in the state.
“I’m very proud of my state and where I come from, that’s why I still live here. Arkansas is a great place,” Abiseid, now 31, told me. “It’s disheartening and one more thing that the state of Arkansas says ‘You can’t do and can’t have because you are second-class because of how you were born and who you are as a human being.’”
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/02/a-gay-woman-fights-back-in-arkansas.html