Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Will you gay marry me?

About two weeks ago, my childhood friend Laura Grubl Gillette died of Myelodysplastic Syndrome, a bone marrow disease that had no business taking the life of my sassy middle school friend. Laura was 27. She met her husband in college and married him about three years before she died. The chances of something like this happening to me or my partner is slim -- just as slim as it was for Laura.

Trying not to be alarmist, I told my partner that I think it's time for us to at least be each other's medical power of attorney. We don't want to have a wedding at this point in our lives, but Laura's diagnosis and death are a wake-up call to me that I shouldn't procrastinate on being proactive. E and I are each much closer to our mothers than to our fathers, and our mothers are in full support of our relationship, whether legally recognized or not. If something happened to E, I have no doubt that his mother would treat me as his partner. If something happened to me, I'm only about 75% sure my mom would treat E as my partner, and that's only if they agree on everything. Our fathers would be wildcards.

I am generally opposed to the notion of legal marriage. Given the option, I'd rather replicate the legal rights and responsibilities of marriage without actually having a legal marriage. (I talk more about that here.) When I casually broached the subject of medical decisions with my mother, she indicated that she wouldn't treat E as my "husband" unless he was, because the lack of marriage (or at least a symbolic wedding?) indicates that he does not hold that place in my life. That, of course, is the wrong conclusion to draw from our lack of legal or symbolic marriage. (Not to mention that with or without marriage of any sort, we have no intention of being "husband" and "wife.")

I started looking at Lambda Legal's toolkit for dealing with exactly this issue. I was hoping for some easy-to-fill-out forms, but found that it's not that easy. So I looked up a lawyer I know who is himself in a marriage not legally recognized by the state, and who deals with estate planning and related issues. After some searching, I determined that replicating just one or two of the things that automatically come with marriage would cost at least $500. We're both employed, and while we don't have much left over at the end of the month, we could find a way to manage that. But then I looked up what it takes to get a marriage license in our county. Fill out a form, pay $67, then have a civil ceremony in the magistrate court. (It could be $27, but I don't think we want to go through state-approved premarital counseling.) To be fair, I can't find any information on what a civil ceremony requires or if there are costs involved, but for now I'm assuming it's free. I can get a no-contest divorce in the state of Georgia for about $300.

When I told my partner this on the phone today, he got the sudden urge to donate to a mainstream gay organization that deals with marriage equality. I could pay somewhere around $500 for a document that may or may not get me into my partner's hospital room, or I could pay $367 for an ironclad assurance of that and many other things AND dissolve it whenever I wanted to.

This is what marriage inequality is about. And this is what happens when relationships are valued based on the state's interests instead of the people's interests.