SCOTUS hears Prop 8 and DOMA cases

People camped out to get a seat to hear the oral arguments before the SCOTUS on Tues and Wed.

If you want to consider the history of same sex marriage in the US, you have to go back in time pretty much to the founding of the country. (Fun fact: The only known conviction for lesbianism in American History happened in 1649 in Plymouth Colony- Sarah White Norman and Mary Vincent Hammon were prosecuted for "lewd behavior with each other upon a bed". Sweet!!!)

You have to go back at least to the early 1900's when suffragettes fought for and earned the right to vote (a few of them were making sweet whoopy with each other while they got it done).  You have to go back to the 50's and 60s and 70's: The eras of "Pinko commie" McCarthyism and the sexual revolution and long-haired-hippy anarchy.

You'd have to go back to the 80's: when gay men were dying all over the place.  HIV and AIDS decimated the community and then parents and relatives (many of whom had rejected their gay sons) would come in and take possessions and property that was left behind.  Such emotional and devastating circumstances of course had been a regular part of the lives of gay and lesbian couples in every time and century.  But the magnitude of the AIDS crisis and the way it required a community to mobilize into activism to literally stay alive and protect each other at the last moments of life changed something in the collective psyche of LGBT Americans.
 
That was the real beginning of marriage equality in my mind... Because as most married people will tell you, you don't need marriage benefits to get to feel the passion or the love, for the joy of the dance, to experience the fineness of wine or the deliciousness of cake.  You don't need marriage, for the age of Aquarius... You need it for what happens after happily ever after.

You need marriage for when your lover has died in your arms after a year of declining health that culminated with him shitting his insides out in the bed you used to have carefree sex in; and his parents want to know when you will be moving out.
You need marriage when they prohibit the only people who know and love you from visiting your ICU room.
You need marriage for when they try to deport the woman you love.
You need marriage for when some bullshit happens one day and two skyscrapers crumble to the ground and your kid's other dad (the one who brought home the bacon) disappears in a cloud of filthy dust.
You need marriage for when someone becomes disabled, or slips a disc, or gets cancer or the gay plague. 

Marriage is what allows you access to 1138 federal rights, benefits, and protections.  (And I'm not even including the stupid, helpful ones like getting a "family membership rate" at a gym or health club.)

Someone once told me, "Marriage is not so much about who you want to be with for the rest of your life, but who you don't want to be without..."

When Katy and I first met in the fall of 1999, the state of Vermont was 3 months away from allowing same sex couples to enter into a Marriage-like contract called a civil union.  So, even for us- the lucky ones- the ones that never doubted our self-worth and never experienced rejection by our family or friends- when we met, the idea that we might get married and/or be a (legal) family, that was a construct that did not exist.  That was something we would have to "fake" and/or "make up".

On May 17, 2004 (Four months and 1 day before we had a non-legal church wedding with 150 guests) the commonwealth of MA started allowing couples of the same gender to marry.
It wasn't a "civil union" like Vermont had made famous.  It was the actual, M-F'ing thing!!!

Except there was a problem... in 1991 (before I even knew I was gay)  3 same sex Hawaiian couples sued the dept of public health to be allowed to marry.  The case went all the way to the state's supreme court who ruled in favor of the plaintiffs- it ruled that the prohibition of gay marriage was unconstitutional.  And all manner of backlash followed.  Hawaii changed it's constitution to prevent marriage equality.  And the federal government passed a law that essentially said, "If a state passes a law allowing gays to get married, the federal government will NOT recognize those marriages."
The ironically named "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA)  had 117 co-sponsors and only 81 "no" votes out of 508 votes cast in the house and senate.  Bill Clinton signed without hesitation.  That is to say this was about as bipartisan a bill as we get to see these days...

Hindsight is 20/20.  I don't know how long people thought it would take for
1) A state to legalize same sex marriage and
2) For a legal challenge to DOMA to reach the SCOTUS, but that day is here (16 years, 6 months and 5 days later).

The remarkable thing, though, is not the 16-250 years it took to get us here.  The remarkable thing is what has happened in the last 4- 6 months.  You should know, as someone who's life will be directly impacted by what the Supreme court decides related to prop 8 and DOMA, I was nervous when they announced last fall they would be hearing the case this year.  I just thought, "It might be too soon."

History will be on our side, but if SCOTUS rules that prop 8 should stand or that DOMA is constitutional, it will be a LOOOOOOOOOOONG time to undo that nonsense.  In November, the voters of four different states voted either to enact marriage equality or to defeat a prohibition of it... That had NEVER happened before in the US.  Though several states had legalized same sex marriage, they did it either through the courts or through the legislatures.  Before the 2012 election, voters had been asked to vote on same sex marriage 30 times in 30 states and NOT ONE TIME until last November did the majority vote for marriage equality.  There are many who think that equal rights should not be put to a popular vote (include me in those numbers) BUT it is significant (understatement) that support for marriage equality is starting to become the majority opinion...

My wife and I got married in 2004 (non-legal, non binding church wedding).
We got a civil union, the first day we were legally able October 1, 2005.
And 5 years later, marriage equality was enacted in CT.  At that point our civil union passively converted into a (ta-da!) marriage.

10 states have enacted marriage equality since 2004 (CT, DC, IA, MA, MD, ME, NH, NY, VT, WA).
The sitting president of the United States has come out in favor of marriage equality; and the Democratic National Party added marriage equality to it's platform. And literally in the last month, the scales have tipped and public opinion polls are showing for the first time, a MAJORITY of Americans believe that SS couples should be treated equal under the law.

And tomorrow... the SCOTUS hears oral arguments.  People have been waiting in line since Thursday morning to get a seat.  Families like ours are crossing our hearts, holding our breaths and whispering prayers (while still trying to take care of our homes and our kids, like everyone else that doesn't have to consider their legal standing as a family on a daily basis.)

At issue:
1) The Prop 8 case - Is is legal to vote on civil right as related to marriage equality? if not, does that apply to only the California case? or does it apply to all states that have put these rights to a vote via ballot measure? 

2) The DOMA challenge - Is DOMA constitutional? Shouldn't federal and state governments have to treat all married couples equally?  Specifically, should the federal govt have penalized 83 year old Edith Windsor $360,000 in estate/inheritance tax when her wife, Thea died. (if Thea was her husband, that tax would not have been levied).  If DOMA is unconstitutional, does that apply only to the federal government? or do states that have their own DOMA laws also have to rectify the problem?

[A handy schematic]

I'm known to get a little fired up about marriage equality...
You should see what we have to do to get our taxes done (and by "WE" i mean "Katy").
- We have to prepare a federal joint tax return so that we can use that to file a joint state tax return.
- Then we have to prepare a "married filing jointly" state tax return.
- Then we have to imagine how our finances would look if we were not a couple, not a family and create a "fake" financial picture to complete our TWO "actual" federal "single" tax return filings.

So, yeah, I'm "excited" and fired up that this might be the last time we have to do "that" (and by that I mean LIE ON A FEDERAL FORM AND SAY I AM SINGLE, MOM, HEAD OF HOUSEHOLD WHO IS LIVING WITH [BUT NOT MARRIED TO] ANOTHER SINGLE, UNWED MOM...
WHEN I AM ACTUALLY A MARRIED WOMAN LIVING WITH MY WIFE AND OUR CHILDREN...)

But the surprising thing is, I'm really quite emotional about it.  (Read: Choked up)
I'm really quite hopeful (and only a little scared) that this court will support our rights as a couple and a family and parents.  It's hard to describe and explain because I swear to you I know in my heart that I am every bit as worthy as any other citizen, but after a good long ten years of the public debate of whether or not you have the right to exist as a family, it does get tired and hurtful and if this could possibly be the END of that???  I'd just be happy to consume myself with other, more mundane things.
In the last 10 years, the haters have had a lot of opportunity to gloat.
The courts keep ruling against them, but trust me when I tell you this is nerve-wracking.  The cases will be made tomorrow and Wednesday; the decisions won't come down before June.  But tomorrow, we will be figuratively standing there, forcing them to look us in the eyes and say it...
Go ahead, say it... 
Are we equal? Or are we 2nd class? 
Are we still too "yucky" to get access to Cobra and Social security and Military survivor-ship benefits? 
Will we have to wait another 16 to 20 years carefully explaining to our kids some convoluted version of the truth- that it's okay to trust and serve a society and a government that allows discrimination and bullying to be enshrined into state constitutions and federal regulations?

Or will it somehow (as if by magic) be decreed that we can move on to other fights, other debates.
That equal is equal.
That our relationships are worthy of that legal acknowledgment that comes only with "marriage"?

Hold your breath, this is going to be one of the big ones...

A real woman

I think about gender a lot. I think it about it when I parent. I think about it when I write. I think about it when I make new friends. I think about it (a lot) when I work. I think about it when it deems my marriage unequal. I think about it when I walk alone down a city street. 

Gender, just for clarity, is how we define ourselves, not necessarily what we're born with. Gender expression is what we do with our internal understanding of ourselves in order to present it to the rest of the world. For most of us, what genitals we have and the hormones we produce match how we would define ourselves to the outside world. Whether we have one or two X chromosomes drives a lot of what happens in our development. For the most part we're all the same embryologically until those chromosomes start telling us to differentiate: XX and suddenly everything is more emotional and you get paid less, XY and boom! you get to rule the world.

The reason this is on my mind right now is the issue of whether Smith College, my beloved alma mater, was discriminating against a transwoman when it rejected her application. There has been an incredible backlash online both to the woman and to the college, often in infuriatingly angry and knee-jerk ways. Is she a woman? Does Smith discriminate? Do trans people belong at Smith or women's colleges in general? Is the current policy sufficient? But what I think every one of the articles and blog posts I've read has missed completely is this: What is a woman?

Whether you're a man or a woman, you have some baseline definition for this, but you probably don't think about it specifically on a regular basis. How do you know I'm a woman? When I speak I use no qualifiers that would tip you as to what gender I am, at least when I'm speaking in English. But. I have long hair. Long eye lashes. Low, pudgy cheek bones. I have curves. I have a relatively high pitched voice. I giggle. I wear dresses. I cry at romantic comedies (no seriously, every time). I wear lipstick. I have never registered to be drafted for war. I attended a preeminent women's college. How many attributes do I need before you think I'm a woman? Until you believe I'm a woman?

Because I'm also tall. I play a lot of different sports and truly enjoy watching them. I'm competitive. I like whiskey. I know how to drive a fire truck. I'm particularly good at math and science. I curse like a truck driver (sorry, Dad). If these were the only things you knew about me, would you think me a man?

By and large, we don't walk around looking at people's genitals in order to determine their gender. We rely on these traits, feminine and masculine, to determine how we will relate to the person we're interacting with. How many feminine traits must I have before I am automatically labeled female? And what's more important: what I say I am or what I was handed by chromosomal command? Does that change if I medically or surgically alter what structures I have or hormones I make? And if I have exactly the same number of feminine and masculine traits does that make me something other than male or female? Do physical traits trump personality traits? Do I decide or do the people around me decide? And, to make it more complex, how do we define gender institutionally? You might not want it to matter, but it does. It matters in all kinds of ways: it changes how things get funded, it helps ensure some measure of equality, it drives what kind of health issues you'll be at screened for, whether or not you'll be involuntarily sent to war, it directs you to a type of bathroom, and in this case, determines whether you'll be allowed to enter an all female college.

We have a reflexive drive for the binary. We don't like in between. I was reminded of this in the recent New Yorker article about kids who are transgender. At least one person suggested that because being transgender is becoming more common (or at least more visible) that it is, essentially, OVER-accepted and we're starting to label children transgender when they're not in an effort to be ultra-inclusive. To me that's not an issue of whether or not the kid is transgender; that's an issue with us continuing to insist that we all pick a category rather than getting comfortable with the middle ground. I can understand wanting to know right this second with no questions and no exceptions. How easy would that be? But, like so many things in life, that's not really how personal identity or identity expression goes. It's nuanced. It changes. It morphs. It refines. And then, just when you think you know someone (or yourself), it changes again.

On the subject of stereotypes: stereotypes exist because they're often true. They are, frankly, incredibly useful most of the time. But they can be damaging if used to pigeon hole or assume or discriminate. The cost of usefulness is having to self-monitor more often to avoid missing the real person. A skill we could all use to practice more often.

Sometimes the binary system is useful. It gives us a sense of belonging. We are on a team, just by the virtue of our genitals or gender expression. As humans, especially in this culture, we operate largely on comparison, on competition. It's a motivator as well as a measure of success. The thing about drawing a line in the sand, though, is that it creates an us vs. them mentality. Which, if you brave the divide, can evoke a sense of betrayal, of severe otherness. The discordance between how comfortable you are in your own body and the exogenous expectations of those around you is a steep cliff.

No one really understands why some people cannot tolerate their biological sex as their gender. I'll leave the scientific theories for my lectures, but suffice it to say that gender dysphoria absolutely exists. Something happens that makes the hormonal effects of your biological sex intolerable for some people. From changes in how you dress and wear your hair to hormone therapy to surgical procedures, there are ways to make this discordance less severe and in some cases resolve it completely. We're in the middle of cultural conversation about which of these changes constitutes the transition from one to the other (a conversation that would be obsolete if we were more comfortable outside a binary code).

So what makes me a real woman? Am I defined by my ability to conform to enough of the cultural expectations that delineate a "real" woman? Am I defined by the absence (most of the time) of more masculine characteristics? Am I defined by my insatiable use of the letter F on forms that require gender or sex? (Maybe I'm more accurately defined by my frequent use of the word that begins with F).

I don't know if Smith is in the right or wrong here. I don't know what the actual thinking was behind the decision. I do know that in our society you must belong to one or the other and there isn't a lot of tolerance for the in between, the transition. I think it's incredible that transgender adolescents and their families have the strength to make these changes. If you identify as female when you apply for college, then you should be given the same chance for admission to a women's college as anyone born with female genitalia. But as a culture the issue lies with how we decide who is female or male. In this particular case at least one of the issues is that the state of CT defines it based on genital structure, whether that be natural born or surgical. I don't agree with it, and it's part of my work to get that changed, but for right now that's what it is. From another perspective, though, we are significantly more progressive in that we allow a change at all, which is not true in many many states. DMV documents and passports can also be changed without surgical procedures. These changes are painfully slow for those who are transitioning or have transitioned. It's awful to be the leader of the pack when the pack is small, outnumbered, and going against one of the fundamental identifiers of everyone everywhere.

I often feel grateful that I feel comfortable in my body. The physical changes that have happened to me over the years, from puberty to child-bearing, have not felt like a betrayal. I don't have to think about what I'm doing when I check "female" on forms, whether someone somewhere might think I'm lying, or, worse, not a real woman. Because of the way I look I almost never have to convince anyone that I am, in fact, female. Maybe the mitzvah for being comfortable in your own skin is to be open to the conversation, to be looking for ways to ensure that policies and institutions adapt to the ways that we are changing as humans and as a society. To not be afraid to talk openly and constructively about this in mixed company. To take a thoughtful approach to the transition, if you will, of society and institutions. To be part of the conversation and not part of the stone-throwing.

DST= I'm so tired

Daylight savings time is like that hot, undercover cop who comes to your high school to "deal with the drug" problem but then she ruins the life of the valedictorian because he's sweet on her and she asks him if he knows how to get her some drugs...

And by that i mean, it's nice to get that extra daylight and all, but really- the time shift 4 days ago has  messed up these kids' sleep cycles.  I don't know how or why it happens.  It doesn't make any logical sense, but everyone is all coo-coo for coco puffs at bed time and all night long... And getting out of the house on time in the morning is a joke.

Keeping me on my game

The other day, I'm buckling Jake into the car seat (seriously, every other kindergartner we know can buckle themselves in) and he holds up his hands in a full shrug:

"So, what's a 'Husband' anyway?"

I can't help feeling like I'm walking into a trap.  I know he knows what a "husband" is, after all.
I think he's pretty much asking me why we don't have one, but I don't want to over-blow it.
I take a deep breath, knowing I have 15 seconds to figure out how to play this and I lead with my inner goof-ball.

"You KNOW what a HUSBAND is?!?" I say in my best, exaggerated, game-show host voice.

"No," he says with a convincing earnestness.

"A husband," I say matter of factly, "Is a man who is married.  If a man is married, he's a husband.  If a woman is married, she's a wife."

Jake contemplates his fingernails, while I continue, "When a man and a women get married, they are a husband and a wife." I employ a sillier voice at this point, "HUSBANDS and wives. Husbands AND wives.  Husbands and WIVES...  But SOMETIMES, there's a..." I pause for dramatic effect "WIFE and a WIFE..."

"Like in our house!" We say it in unison and he smiles.

I let it hang in the air like a "Ta-Da!!!"

"And SOMETIMES," my voice is full of drama and mischief, "There is a HUSBAND and a HUSBAND...  But USUALLY..." I borrow the cadence of that dog food commercial from the 80's.  "Usually... it's husbands and wives, husbands and wives, husbands and wives." (Kibbles and bits, Kibbles and bits, kibbles and bits).

Jake all but yawns.  "Yeah," he says completely unimpressed with the theatrics, "I guess you just have to decide who you love..."

(sigh.)

Yeah...