Our Journey to Marriage

Geographically, we cover Massachusetts from Boston to North Hampton and down to the Cape. We span in age from 37 to 62. We are men and women who have been in our committed relationships from 9 years to 34 years and represent a variety of professions. We come from a range of religious backgrounds including several UU's. Four couples have children, ranging from the age of five to adults. One couple are grandparents.

The legal process began with the filing of the lawsuit, Goodridge vs. the Massachusetts Dept. of Public Health. This civil rights action alleges that we, the seven gay and lesbian couples, have been deprived of the freedom to join in civil marriage with the person we love in violation of the law of the Commonwealth. We lost our first round in court and appealed the decision to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

On November 18, 2003 the SIC of Massachusetts ruled that it was unconstitutional for same sex couples to be denied the right to marry. They reaffirmed that decision on February 4, 2004 after the Attorney General's Office had asked for clarification on the ruling. Before I go any farther with the legal side of this issue, I'd like to tell you about my family and why marriage is so important to us.

From the beginning, we have thought about this whole experience as a journey. A journey that we thought long and hard about before embarking on. It is a journey that is based on 16 years of love and commitment that began with the two of us and has expanded to include our daughter Paige. Together we have built a strong relationship, two successful careers in teaching and nursing, and most importantly have been raising Paige together for the past thirteen years.

Our relationship and family are just like most others that you know. We get up for work every day, get Paige ready for school, bring her to dance class, horseback riding lessons and chorus practice. We chaperone field trips, volunteer at school functions, attend church meetings, town meetings, and everything in between.

We have caring, loving, and supportive families. Thirteen years ago, Rich's mother asked us to move back to Rich's family home with her and assume the responsibilities of the house. She now lives above us in an in-laws apartment and is involved in our lives on a daily basis.

My sister and her family purchased a home less than two miles from us. My parents live in an in-law apartment with my sister. We have a wonderful family support system in both our families.

This is us - this is our lives. So when we shared the news with family and friends in April of 2001, a few of them asked, why now? The answer is simple: We became educated! While working with Rich's mother to put some of her legal affairs in order, we began to learn a lot about our legal system and the protections that married couples have that we as a gay male couple did not.

In terms of medical care, if Rich or I were to have an accident that required us to be hospitalized, we could be refused admittance to each others hospital room because we are not legal spouses. We would not have any rights in the decision making for the others care while in the hospital. The unexpected hospitalization of your partner is frightening enough for most of us; add to that the anxiety about whether you would have access to each other during the hospital stay. We had taken legal steps to protect each other and Paige regarding our home, at an additional expense to us. These same protections come automatically for married couples.

About two years ago we discovered that I needed to make some changes in my pension plan because Rich was not eligible to receive my full benefits as he would not be considered a surviving spouse in the case of my death. By the same token, Rich would not be eligible for many of the tax benefits afforded to a surviving spouse in the event of my death, nor would I. We would not have control over each other's estate if one of us were to die. We would not have access to each other's Social Security benefits. The list goes on and on. We have a 28 page document that lays out the protections, benefits and obligations of marriage under Massachusetts and federal law, a list of 1400 protections and benefits all of which did not apply to Rich and me, or to any of the gay and lesbian couples in Massachusetts.

Rich works as a part time instructor at Quinsigamond Community College and as an ER nurse at Milford Hospital. Because both positions are part time, Rich was not eligible for health insurance through either employer. Although I paid for a family plan for Paige and myself, I was unable to add Rich to my plan because he was not my legal spouse. This meant that we paid an additional $320 a month for a health plan for Rich. This greatly affected our family on a monthly basis! We were spending close to $4,000 a year on this health plan. $4,000 that we should have been putting into Paige's college fund.

Because there was no legal recognition for our committed relationship, we were not considered to have any legal relationship to each other. This affects our lives financially, legally, and emotionally. This lawsuit was simply asking that our committed relationship be respected and valued under Massachusetts's civil marriage laws. We are an average American family seeking the same protections for each other and our family under the law. This suit was about Rich and I taking care of each other and Paige, now and in the future.

As I mentioned earlier, we spent a lot of time debating whether we should be part of this lawsuit. Our main concern was Paige and how this would affect her. We decided to participate because we realized that for the several years, we have been teaching Paige the importance of believing in yourself, respecting yourself, and standing up for what you believe is right in your heart. We knew in our hearts that this was the right thing to do when I overheard a conversation between Paige and my nephew, Sean. Paige was telling Sean that she could marry anyone that she wanted to, male or female. Sean told her that she couldn't do that. Paige's response to him was, Of course I can, my dads are married, and so are our friends, Lesley and Jaye. At that point, Paige turned to me as I was coming into the room and said, "You and Dad are married, right?" I should not have had to explain to my daughter why her parents are not married and could not be married even though they loved each other very much.

Over the past four years since the lawsuit was filed, we have received hundreds of e-mails, phone calls and cards - some from total strangers cheering us on and offering support. We have been interviewed by newspapers, radio stations and television reporters, although we are still waiting for a call from Oprah. We have had the opportunity to engage in conversations about marriage with people with whom we may otherwise never have had the opportunity to do so, including local and state politicians. Not all of them were or are in support of us; however, discussions are taking place, and that is a positive thing.

A few of the highlights of this past few years actually involve many of my former students. The first highlight was when a former student, who was 14 at the time, came to visit me after school. His exact words were, "Mr. C, I wish you could have waited until I became a lawyer and I would have fought this fight for you!" We had an hour-long discussion about he lawsuit during which he told me, "Mr. C, You taught me about things that went beyond school. You taught me to care about myself and others, to get involved in the community and to stand up for what I believe in." I believe in you and in what you are fighting for. We both ended up in tears.

A second highlight occurred back in April of last year when I came under attack in a local paper by a member of the Religious Right. I was so upset and angry after reading an editorial that had been written about me in response to a story that had run in the paper, that I went home that evening and wrote my own letter to the editor. The following day I called the reporter that had written the original story to let her know that I would be sending my letter. She informed me that there really was no need for me to do so as several of my former students had dropped off their own letters to the editor in response to what they had read in the paper. The following week, some of those letters were printed in the paper. My former students had come to my aid and offered their support.

This has been an amazing four years for us! Rich, Paige, and I have always known how lucky we were to be blessed with loving and supportive families and friends; however, words cannot express our experiences since April 2001. In our struggle for justice, we have encountered so much love and beauty. However, we have always been realistic. We know that there are people and groups out there fighting the battle against us and that they are well organized and financed. This has definitely been the case since the SJC decision in our favor on November 18, 2003. The Religious Right, our Governor and several state politicians came on full force and have invested a great deal of time and money into making sure that we were not able to obtain marriage licenses on May 17, 2004.

In January of last year, the Attorney General asked for clarification on the SJC decision due to the fact that in their decision, the Justices gave the legislators 180 days to make changes if they so choose. This 180 days gave the legislature a chance to correct wording, and for towns to redo their forms to be non-gender specific. However, some people saw this as an opportunity to come up with something else, such as Civil Unions. On February 4, 2004, the SJC once again ruled in our favor.

The SJC Opinion says government may not deny marriage rights to same-sex couples.

• The Justices stated clearly today that civil unions do not offer the same protections and rights as marriage and, therefore, are unconstitutional and violate the equality and liberty guarantees of the Massachusetts Constitution. The fact that "prejudice exists is not a reason to insist on less than the Constitution requires."

• The Court rejected the proposed civil union remedy and said: "The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal.

• The Court said, "No amount of tinkering with language will eradicate that stain" of exclusion from marriage rights.

• As in the original decision, the Court emphasized that every religious faith remains free to make its own decisions about whom to marry and on what terms. People of different faiths take different views, but the court's role is to uphold constitutional guarantees for all citizens.

• As the Justices wrote, "The Court stated then, and we reaffirm, that the State may not interfere with the convictions or with the decision of any religion to perform religious marriages of same-sex couples."

The Constitutional Convention reconvened on March 29th and an amendment banning gay marriage but allowing Civil Unions was passed. This amendment will come up for debate at the next Constitutional Convention. If the amendment passes again, it will appear as a ballot question in November 2006.

We believe, along with many others, that Human rights should not be put to a vote

• Putting people's human rights on the ballot is the first step to writing discrimination into the Constitution.

• When one individual's civil rights are put to a vote, like some popularity contest, no individual's human rights can be safe and guaranteed.

• "As the court concluded in Goodridge, the traditional, historic nature and meaning of civil marriage in Massachusetts is wholly secular and dynamic legal institution, the governmental aim of which is to encourage stable adult relationships for the good of the individual and of the community, especially its children."
• The only issue for legislators is whether or not they will go out of their way to write discrimination into the Constitution and take away rights from gay and lesbian families and their children.

The down side to all of this is that we still have a Constitutional Convention to contend with which will take place sometime in the next several months, most likely in September based on comments made by the Senate President. Although we picked up many pro-gay seats in the November elections and a few more in some March special elections, our opponents and geared up and heavily funded to defeat us. It has recently been reported that Gov. Romney is working with others to actually defeat the current amendment (which is no to marriage but yes to civil unions) at the convention so that they may introduce a citizen initiative to be put on the ballot in 2008 that would say no to both marriage and civil unions -they hate the idea of both just as much. Your help is needed more than ever in the next several months to help us to protect marriage for all Massachusetts citizens.

On that note, let me conclude by sharing with you our response to a question that has been asked of us many times over the past year, How has marriage changed your lives? This is not an easy question to answer. We have been in a loving, committed relationship for almost 17 years now. We are both working class people doing our very best to raise Paige, whom we love so much, facing the everyday ups and downs that life has to offer. So you see, we have been a married couple in every possible way for the last 17 years. We just have not had the legal recognition of marriage. So how has marriage changed our lives? Marriage has provided us with a sense of security. It has provided us the same legal standing that our heterosexual counterparts have always had. It has allowed Rich to join my family health plan and become a full beneficiary to my pension plan. Our right to marry tells everyone that gay and lesbian couples are equal citizens in this Commonwealth and that our relationships are valid. It affords me the ability to introduce Rich as my husband and have everyone understand up front what that means. It is as if someone has been quilting our family quilt and has finally added the last square to make our family quilt whole.

We will be forever grateful to our attorneys, Mary Bonauto & Karen Loewy and everyone else at GLAD, to our families and friends who stood by us every step of the way, and to the other six plaintiff couples for the love and support we provided each other and to people like you for listening to our story.

We still have some battles ahead of us, we know that, however, with love, compassion and justice on our side, we will continue to win!

Gary Chalmers