My July 25 post described the District of Columbia's official response to proposed legislation that would solidify the parental relationships of same-sex couples and their children in this city. The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) wrote an offensive and ignorant letter, and then sent no one to the actual hearings on the bill.
Earlier this month, the same office responded to the lengthy supplemental testimony I wrote detailing just how offensive and ignorant their concerns were. Their brief letter says we misunderstood them! "To be clear," it reads, "we support giving appropriate legal recognition to the familial relationships that same sex partners have for the children they care for..." The letter continues, however, with the claim that the bill needs revisions, without identifying a single substantive change they want in the bill.
Since I responded to the substance of every claim they made in their initial letter, their response containing no substance at all is bewildering, annoying, frustrating, and, actually, infuriating. Legislative drafting can be complex; I don't mind help getting the job done from anyone supportive of LGBT families. But it's no help at all to say the bill needs revisions without spelling those out, and if the OAG thinks I got something wrong in my memo, well, they need to say what it is. Otherwise their support doesn't look like support at all...