A plea for family values

I am a culinary food scientist who arrived in Baltimore a quarter century ago with little more than my degree in hand. I embarked on a career with local food manufacturers and have lived for more than two decades with my life partner, a health-care administrator with a renowned local medical institution. On our 10th anniversary we were joined in a civil union at an Episcopal church in Vermont.

I helped my partner raise his son, who made us extremely proud by serving this nation honorably in Iraq. I cradled his infant daughter in my arms a few hours after her birth in a Western Maryland maternity ward, and I held that little girl's great-grandfather in my arms just hours before he died at an Eastern Shore hospice.

Yet sadly, according to the law of our land, these loved ones who are so engraved on my heart are not my kin.

My partner and I ask our fellow citizens, to whom we've devoted our professional lives nourishing and nurturing, to expand the definition of family values. We and many like us beseech them to uphold civil marriage equality for all Maryland families. In the November referendum, please vote YES on Question 6.

William Borner, Baltimore