Dear Friend,

Mother’s Day can be beautiful—an opportunity to express gratitude for your mother or an important caregiver in your life. For some of us, it’s also a day that signifies loss or other forms of exclusion.

For me, my wife and two sons, it’s both a day for celebration and a day of sadness and frustration. The U.S. government doesn’t recognize me as the mother of my son, Lucas, and they don’t recognize him as a U.S. citizen from birth.

That’s why we’ve been in the courts for three years with Immigration Equality, not only to right the wrongs for us, but for all LGBTQ families. Please give $100 today so we can end this cruel State Department policy! Together we can make a real and lasting change for our community.

My wife, Stefania, is an Italian citizen, and I’m a U.S. citizen. She carried Lucas, and both our names are on his birth certificate. I’m his mother as much as Stefania is, and because I’m a U.S. citizen, Lucas is a U.S. citizen from birth. Yet the government refuses to recognize this fact.

When we had our son Massi, who I carried, we had no problems with his citizenship. That’s because I’m biologically related to him, and that’s how the State Department policy views families: as biological relationships.

But they’re so much more. Love makes a family, not biology.

Contribute $100 to the campaign on behalf of all families like ours hurt by the government’s discriminatory policy. If you join us in protecting the civil rights of queer families, we can build enough momentum to get past the finish line.