Meet Kent and Diego Love-Ramirez, the
two fathers of two-year-old Lucas.
The two Michigan dads have been
invited to the White House for the Father’s Day celebrations this Friday (14
June).
Back in 2011, the two dads were there
when Lucas was born. In Love-Ramirez’s words, they have been ‘very attentive
and very intentional parents’ ever since.
When the invitation arrived last week
from the White House, they considered it an honor and a validation.
‘For us, it’s especially meaningful,’
Kent Love-Ramirez told the Lensing State Journal. ‘Because Michigan doesn’t
have second parent adoption, we’re not both legally recognized as Lucas’
fathers. Only one of us is.’
He added: ‘It’s nice that even though
we don’t have legal recognition in our home state that the White House has seen
fit to include us.’
The couple have volunteered for the
Family Equality Council, and also launched a mission against a bill allowing
Michigan adoption agencies to discriminate against gay couples.
‘By all accounts, our adoptive story
is a perfect example of how children in need should find their way to loving
families,’ Love-Ramirez said at the time.
‘Yet these bills threaten to allow
bigotry and individual subjectivity to trump the state’s criteria for
determining the eligibility of a family.’
The couple were picked when the White
House was looking for names of ‘dynamic father leaders’.
But there is one small problem to
being chosen to represent gay families at the White House – they won’t actually
be together for Father’s Day.
Diego Love-Ramirez is a pilot for
Delta Air Lines and is currently being trained on a new aircraft in Atlanta. As
he will be in Washington DC on Friday, he’ll have to make up the training when
everyone will be celebrating Father’s Day on Sunday.
‘But we’re OK with that,’
Love-Ramirez said. ‘We’ll be apart for Father’s Day, but we’ll be together for
this.'
Awww.
ReplyDeletenow we need MORE gay fathers @ the White House
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