Dear Representative,
I'm a student at Princeton University and a resident of your district. I want to tell you about being a gay man looking hopefully toward marriage equality.
My parents immigrated in the 1970s from Taiwan. My mother had to wait a year after my father arrived to join him here. Becoming American citizens took a lot of patience, but it was worth it.
My mother told me about the differences between the Taiwan where she grew up and the America where she and my father raised me. My grandfather told my mother to be politically silent or else be "disappeared" by the government. In America, she could be hopeful that her sons could be whoever they honestly were.
In 1982, I was born in Red Bank. My parents raised me as an Evangelical Christian. I came out to my parents in 2006, and my parents now support marriage equality.
Through their patient work while waiting to earn American citizenship and through their acceptance of me as their gay son because they knew me personally, my parents taught me that acceptance and recognition reward patiently introducing one's honest self. That's why I'm hopeful as a I write this letter about my family story, my American story, and ask for your vote to pass marriage equality in New Jersey.
Civil unions are not a substitute at the hospital for being able to say, "We're married." I am a gay New Jersey resident hoping to be allowed to have a husband one day, so I honestly need your vote.
Sincerely,
David Liao
Legislative District 15
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