A woman with a terminal illness has one request before she passes: She wants to meet with Fla. Gov. Rick Scott to discuss LGBT protections on behalf of her gay son.
Dr. Marie Bristol was in a car accident several years ago that left her with an illness called scleroderma, a chronic connective tissue disease. Currently, there is no cure for it.
Bristol wrote a letter to Scott, asking him to meet with her to discuss showing his support and helping pass the Competitive Workforce Act.
“I am a dying woman,” she wrote. “With a mother’s wish, I wish that you would meet with me, very soon please, because I do not know how long I have to live.”
The Competitive Workforce Act would protect LGBT persons against discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.
“While I would like nothing more than to have my child by my side in these last months God grants to me, I cannot because my son, Douglas, lives and works in another state,” she wrote. “You see, in Florida, depending on where he lives, Douglas could be fired just for being gay. I don’t understand, Governor Scott, why there are protections in some of the counties and not all?”
Bristol, with the help of Equality Florida, has started a Thunderclap page to raise awareness of her cause.
Thunderclap is a crowd-speaking platform that helps people be heard by having the same message blasted through social media.
Bristol is hoping that this blast of attention will be enough to get the governor to meet with her so she can talk him into getting on board with the Workforce Act, which he has yet to come out in support of.
“Would you meet with me and hear what I have to say about why this matters, why it is time to act and support the Competitive Workforce Act,” she wrote. “I’m running out of time, but if I could meet with you, at least I would know I’d done everything I could for my son.”
You can read Bristol’s letter in its entirety on her Thunderclap page here.
