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1,324 Reasons to Say “I Do”

Well I’m not about to break out into song with “Get Me to the Church—uh actually, Synagogue—On Time” but New York Governor David Paterson’a recent directive to state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions has gotten my toe tapping.

My partner, Lynn, and I have always said that when same-sex marriage is legal in New York State that’s when we’ll get married. Our concern has always been getting all the rights and responsibilities we’re due—like filing our state taxes jointly or having unfettered access to one another when either of us is in a hospital or another type of care facility.

After being together for 13 years—our anniversary is in a few weeks—we already consider ourselves married. Both of our names are on our mortgage and house insurance, we’ve named each other in our health care proxies and our wills, we wake up in the same bed each morning and we’ve raised a son together with his father and step-mother who has turned out to be a real mensch. If that’s not married, I don’t know what is—except, of course, for all the legal stuff that straight folks take for granted.

But now, despite the fact that we can’t say “I Do” legally in New York, our governor has decided to do all he can to pave the way for marriage equality in the Empire State. On May 14th, the governor’s legal counsel, David Nocenti, instructed all state agencies that same-sex couples married elsewhere “should be afforded the same recognition as any other legally performed union.”

There are 1,324 statues and regulations in New York State that will be affected. They run the gamut from the very serious such as filing our tax returns jointly to being eligible for workers compensation death benefits and immunity from having to testify against a spouse in court to the more recreational such as transferring fishing licenses between spouses.

If you want a full run down of all the rights and responsibilities us same-sex couples are missing, go to the Empire State Pride Agenda’s website, www.prideagenda.org and click the red box entitled “1,324 Reasons for Marriage Equality in New York State.” You’ll download a 108 page report co-authored by the Pride Agenda and the New York City Bar Association detailing exactly what, up to this point, we haven’t been entitled to because we can’t get married. But with Governor Paterson’s order, same-sex couples who marry in Canada or California will soon be able to afford themselves of those rights and responsibilities. Only same-sex couples who are legal residents of Massachusetts can actually get married there so lesbian and gay New Yorkers must either go north or west to tie the knot.

When Governor Paterson sent a videotaped message to the Pride Agenda’s annual spring dinner in Rochester on May 17th, he described his action as “a strong step toward marriage equality.” What his action has done is move New York closer to fully legalizing same-sex unions.

Last year, then Governor Eliot Spitzer introduced his own program bill to legalize same-sex marriage in New York. That bill was passed by the New York State Assembly 85-61. The State Senate never took action on the bill. Whether the bill will come up for a vote again this year still remains to be seen but when it passes both houses Paterson is ready to take his pen and sign it into law. I don’t think that will happen this year but it is a distinct possibility after this fall’s presidential race.

No matter who the Democratic presidential nominee is, New York State will vote democratic. With an expected landslide on the D side of the voting machines and the New York State Democratic Senate Campaign Committee in better shape than it’s ever been, we just may see the Democrats take control of the State Senate. With both the Assembly and the Senate in Democratic hands and Governor Paterson in the executive’s seat, it is quite likely that New York will legalize same-sex marriage in the next few years.

So our dilemma is . . . should we wait until it’s really real in New York State or find our way to California beginning June 17th  when same sex couples can start marrying there? Lynn’s cousin has already offered her home outside of LA and Disneyland as a honeymoon destination is quite appealing—at least to me. I won’t start singing but perhaps humming the Lerner and Loewe classic may just be the right note to hit!

Life and Death

It’s hard enough to be sick in a hospital. Now imagine you’re there and the one you share your life with is deliberately left out of medical decision making or even barred from visiting.

Not a problem for married heterosexuals but a big problem for lesbian and gay couples. Because our relationships are not legally recognized in most of our fifty states, lesbians and gays can find themselves in legal limbo when it comes to protecting the health and well being of our loved ones—and not just our partners but our children as well.

Just ask Kenneth Johnson, an attorney who lived with his partner, James Massey and their adopted son, in Virginia. When they lived in California, they had legally registered as domestic partners.

In 2006, Massey was rushed unconscious to Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C.  Because their relationship was not legal, Johnson had to go back home to retrieve documents—like a medical power of attorney or a health care proxy—before the hospital would allow him to make medical decisions on the part of his life partner. Instead of being able to just be with his partner, unencumbered from the red tape and homophobia, Johnson had to fight for his rights as James slipped away. He died the following day. 

These are the stories of our lives. In most states, second parent adoptions are not the norm so when two gay men adopt a child only one has the bone fide legal relationship, only one can legally make healthcare decisions despite the fact that both are equally committed to raising the child.

The Human Rights Campaign in partnership with the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association have embarked on an ambitious project to help alleviate the pain and frustration we must endure in healthcare settings because our relationships are devalued or because as individuals we are devalued because of who we love.

HRC’s new project is called the Healthcare Equality Index, HEI for short. Similar to its Corporate Equality Index which over the years has had a substantial impact on the employment practices of Fortune 500 companies, the HEI seeks to determine how well our hospitals treat lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people.

All hospitals and hospital systems in the United States were invited to participate in an online survey which focused on five healthcare policy areas—patient non-discrimination, hospital visitation, decision making, cultural competency training for hospital staff and hospital employment practices. Only 88 hospitals or systems participated. 45 responded positively to each of the 10 LGBT specific survey questions.

So what were these questions? They were quite simple really. Did the hospital’s patient bill of rights or non-discrimination policy include sexual orientation or gender identity? Did the hospital’s written visitation policy allow LGBT domestic partners the same access as heterosexual spouses and next of kin? Did same-sex parents have the same access to their children as opposite sex parents? Did the hospital have a policy recognizing the ability of same-sex partners to make healthcare decisions for one another or same-sex parents for their kids? When the hospitals’ staff gets trained does that training include cultural competency on LGBT patients and their families? Did the hospitals’ own non-discrimination policies include sexual orientation and gender identity? Did the hospital offer domestic partner benefits?

These are important questions to ask. But they’re questions you don’t want to have to think about when you or a loved one is suddenly a patient. You just want to know you’re going to get the best healthcare possible regardless of your sexual orientation or gender identity.

While only a handful of hospitals responded to the survey, it is an important first step in advancing these policy issues in our nation’s hospitals. When the Corporate Equality Index began, only 13 Fortune 500 companies received a perfect score. By 2008 the number had increased to195. I expect that as word of the Healthcare Equality Index gets out, more LGBT hospital employees will talk to their CEOs about it and, in turn, the CEOs will talk to each other and before we know it hundreds of hospitals will be answering all the questions correctly.

The Healthcare Equality Index defines ten easy steps to start making the healthcare system inclusive for LGBT families. With all that’s wrong with our healthcare system, I would hope that hospitals would jump at the opportunity to adopt a common sense, low-cost alternative that heals wounds of a different kind.

Spinning Wheels

I’m not a big game show watcher. But I do know that you get to spin big wheels on The Price is Right and Wheel of Fortune. Sometimes you hit the jackpot, sometimes you land in a good spot and sometimes you get skunked.

And, that’s exactly what it’s like fighting for lesbian and gay marriage equality. With three spins of the wheel this week, we landed in two decent spots and got skunked once.

Out in California, while folks are waiting on pins and needles for the state’s highest court to decide on the legality of same sex marriage, the state’s Court of Appeal ruled on Tuesday that that when it comes to believing you were in a registered domestic partnership you have the same rights and responsibilities as straights who thought they were legally married.

It seems that Darrin Ellis thought that his ex-partner had sent in the fully completed, signed and notarized paperwork of their domestic partnership to California’s Secretary of State. He trusted his ex, David Arriaga--a common mistake.

It turns out Arriaga never mailed it in. When Ellis went to legally dissolve the partnership and get the assets from the relationship he thought he was legally entitled to, he found that the domestic partnership he thought he had never legally existed. Arriaga, on the other hand, asked the trial court handling the dissolution to dismiss it because the couple’s relationship was never legally recognized. The trial court complied and that’s when Ellis reached out to Lambda Legal, the nation’s largest LGBT legal rights organization.

Tara Borelli, Lambda’s staff attorney handling the case, argued that AB 205, California’s domestic partner law, gives same-sex couples the same protection under the state’s “putative spouse doctrine” as people in heterosexual relationships who believed they were married only to find out later that their marriage was not valid.

In what I can best describe as a back-handed complement, the Court of Appeal agreed with Lambda’s argument saying jilted same-sex partners who were hoodwinked should be treated the same as jilted common law wives and husbands.

I know this is definitely a step forward but I feel like my spinning game show wheel landed on $50 instead of $5 million. When I spoke with Borelli she told me that the separate and unequal system of domestic partnerships “simply isn’t going to be enough to help same sex couples. We’ll have to go to court over and over again for legal patch jobs to get the system to work.”

Fly across the country to New York State and another legal spin of the same-sex marriage wheel said that if we’re legally married in any other jurisdiction, say Canada or Massachusetts, we have to be treated as married in the Empire State.

Living in Rochester, Patricia Martinez and her partner Lisa Ann Golden went to Vermont for a civil union in 2001 and then to Canada to actually tie the knot in 2004. Martinez, who works for Monroe Community College as a word processing supervisor, wanted to add Golden to her health insurance policy. The college refused because health benefits for domestic partners were not included in the contract the Civil Service Employees Association had negotiated for its members. That has since been rectified.

However, before the contract negotiations began Martinez sued. In August 2006, the State Supreme Court agreed with the College because, as Justice Harold Galloway wrote, the state legislature “currently defines marriage as limited to the union of one man and one woman.” Martinez appealed and the appellate judges who heard the case overturned Galloway saying that there is no legal impediment in New York to the recognition of same-sex marriage and that those legal marriages, like Martinez and Golden’s, must be recognized as such. This week, the Court of Appeals, our highest court, refused to hear the College’s appeal.

Spin the wheel one more time, land on Michigan and the news isn’t good. Because that state’s ban on same-sex marriage was written so punitively, the state Supreme Court ruled that local governments and state universities there can not offer health insurance to the partners of gay or lesbian workers.

This is the legal merry-go-round lesbians and gays live with day in and day out. Some days we spin the wheel and win. Some days, we don’t. We’re forced to take a patchwork approach because we’re seen as second class citizens. But we’ll keep spinning our wheels until we hit the jackpot--liberty and justice for all.