National Same-Sex Commitment Ceremony at Equality Forum 2010

What kind of world do you want?

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Lauri and Celine

My partner, Lauri, and I got married at sea on 2/14/1991. We had been together for 9 years at that time.....we got married at sea and had the signed document with the captain’s seal just in case it ever became legal! We remained together forever, until she died on 4/19/2005....and we are still together in spirit. I just can't imagine loving anyone else the same way we love each other. It does get lonely at times, but I have lots of really good friends to hang out with...and life is good.

Doug and Michael

We have been together for almost 30 years now. When we met in a bar in Ohio, all of our friends said it would never last! I guess we showed them. We are getting ready to celebrate the 25th anniversary of our Holy Union that was performed at a Metropolitan Community Church in Ohio. We have lived at different periods of time in Ohio, of course, Florida, Maryland, California and Virginia. We were married in California by an old friend and pastor of ours outside of Sacramento August 31, 2007. We are one of the ones that the state still recognizes. Unfortunately, the Federal Government, who I work for, does not. I have not been able to get Michael on my health insurance benefits. In addition, we can't file a joint Federal tax return. This would be a significant benefit for us because of my salary being significantly higher than Michael's. And last but not least, even though Michael is a Veteran, we can not use his VA benefits to buy a house together because the VA will not recognize my income. Even though the Federal Government does not receognize us as a couple because of DOMA, our families do and they include the 3 dogs that we currently have and the three that we have previously had!

Stewart and Leland

We have been together 20 years and a have a 10 year old son and a 4 year old daughter. Leland has been working on marital rights since 1983 when he chaired the task force which wrote the first Domestic Partnership policy enacted into law. We had been looking forward to President Obama keeping his promise to grant full federal marital rights to all "legally-recognized unions," a term his campaign invented. This would have covered 14 states for all same-sex couples in marriages, domestic partnerships or civil unions. Such legislation would have had the added advantage of focusing on legal fairness and would, therefore, have a shot at passing Congress because it was not about marriage, per se. Unfortunately, organizations like Freedom to Marry and others insisted that the proposed legislation ignore President Obama’s suggestion and grant federal marital rights ONLY to same-sex couples who were married. This would have only covered only 5 states if passed. But, in reality, it would cover nobody because everyone knew that federal legislation which only focused on marriage, and not on the rights of marriage, could not pass Congress.

Indeed, this legislation was declared dead less than 3 months after it was introduced. It will be many years, maybe decades, before we have large Democratic majorities again which can pass legislation to give us federal marital rights. We are grief stricken that our children will grow up without any of the federal protections of marriage, not because President Obama did not suggest a way to thread the needle, but because our own community insisted on a losing strategy. A sad victory of ideological purity over the mundane efforts to win much needed marital rights because those rights may not be labeled "marriage." We are pleased that Project 1138 has been started to try to correct the failure of our community's marriage-only strategy. Even if we have to try to painstakingly win our 1138 rights one at a time, it is better than the strategy of failure which brought us 33 electoral losses in 31 states (with no victories), 45 states banning same-sex marriage, 17 of those banning domestic partnerships and the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act. The few states, along with the City of Washington, DC, which allow same-sex marriages only do so because, in those jurisdictions, it is extremely difficult to put an issue on the ballot to overturn a legislative or judicial decision. Same-sex marriage victories in those jurisdictions do not present a broader winning strategy. Maybe Project 1138 will. We can only hope.

Jim and Don

We've been together for 33 years with all the ups and downs of any long-term relationship, regardless of marital status or sexual orientation. We were plaintiffs along with a dozen other couples, gay and straight, who participated in the attempt by our ACLU of Oklahoma chapter to stop State Question 711 from being put to a vote of the people in November of 2004. The ballot question was placed on the ballot by a majority vote of both Houses of our Legislature with equal support from both political parties. This was the Oklahoma constitutional amendment making marriage legal only between one man and one woman. It also outlawed common-law marriages, but some haven't figured that one out yet. The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that our lawsuit had been filed too late to be considered and that was the end of any legal avenues in Oklahoma.

The amendment passed with the voters condoning discrimination and continuing the momentum we've seen across the rest of the country that says our gay/lesbian civil rights are a prize to be handed out like raffle tickets to the voters of any state, be it red, blue, or purple. Only in this case, there was more than one winner: every hate voter was a winner, all 76% of them.

As Don and I get older we are bumping up against the discriminatory wall that separates our relationship from our civil rights as taxpaying citizens. As we need to make decisions about property distribution, inheritance, health and hospital coverage and denial, we realize we're looked at by the law as no more than close friends who have no legal responsibility toward the other. It's very discouraging as we look at the time being wasted by this supposedly gay-friendly Washington administration even as the religious wingnuts continue to throw verbal and physical rocks at our movement and even gain in strength as the denial of civil rights continues in allegedly blue states such as New York and New Jersey and the successful repeal actions in California and Maine.

Living here in red-dusted and red-minded Oklahoma it's hard sometimes to think we're making any progress or having any positive influence. Your website is a big morale booster to those who live in the smaller areas of the country, at least for Don and me.

Click http://tinyurl.com/ybs4896 to see the Supreme Court of Oklahoma document