Celebrating Father’s Day, Honoring the Past, Hopeful for the Future

Going into Father’s Day weekend usually is a mixed bag of emotions for me.  Eleven years ago, on the Friday before Father’s Day, I took my dad off life support through a phone call with his doctor, leaving him to take his last breath alone in a hospital room 900 miles away.  It’s not that I didn’t want to be there. The company I worked for allowed only four days unpaid leave.  That day also led me to a journey to fight for paid leave for all.

2020 and the coronavirus pandemic has brought up the same helpless feeling I had in 2009, as people I know had to make the same difficult decision to remove family members off life support remotely. The pandemic itself, though, has also brought national attention to the fact that we all need paid leave – and that people of color and the LQBTQ community are far more likely to lack access. Here’s what I’ve learned:

• Same-sex parents are 4 times more likely to adopt and 6 times more likely to foster than straight parents.
• A 2016 report on hunger found that LQBTQ adults were 1.6 times more likely to live in poverty.
• People of color are also more likely than whites to identify as LQBTQ, so not only are they already suffering from racial wage gaps, but two-mother households are also subject to gender wage gaps.
• It’s not uncommon for people in the LQBTQ community to have strained relationships with biological family and therefore often form their own families – which seldom have equal protection under the law.

What This Means For Me 

So, this year as I celebrate Father’s Day with my son who recently turned 18, I will honor my dad’s memory, but also continue to work on paid family and medical leave so that ALL have access to time to care regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or economic status. As a trans man who identifies with my Indigenous/Latinx roots, we need to do more to close the gaps.  If we can take one positive thing from 2020 and the coronavirus pandemic, it’s the growing recognition that paid leave for all is policy that is long overdue. We need to keep pushing forward till this is accessible to everyone.

Currently 8 states and Washington, DC. have passed paid leave programs. As a nation we have work to do to win a national policy. However, to make that happen we need to make sure that the policy we put into law includes families like mine, with an expanded definition of family to ensure that everyone is covered.

Call-to-Action

With the pandemic fresh in our minds, please remember to make your voice and wishes heard now and in the November elections. Reach out to your Congressman or Congresswoman and let them know that this legislation is important to you and your family. All Families deserve access to paid family and medical leave!!

By Kris Garcia, a leader in Colorado 9to5 and member of the Paid Leave for All Worker Advisory Group.