Courting Equality

Greater Boston PFLAG (Parents, Friends, and Families of Lesbians and Gays), at their annual meeting on Sept. 24th at 7 pm, will donate Courting Equality: A Documentary History of America’s First legal Same-Sex Marriages to all Gay Straight Alliances (GSAs) in Massachusetts public schools and offer it to all public high school libraries. Lexington High School GSA will be present to receive the first copy.

PFLAG’s annual meeting will be at the Congregational Church of Needham, 1154 Great Plain Ave., Needham, MA 02492.

Greater Boston PFLAG worked tirelessly to assure marriage equality in MA. The organization believes that sharing the history of this important civil rights victory with high school students will encourage diversity and tolerance. Courting Equality shows how all people can fight for their rights in a democratic society.

The Lexington High School GSA was asked to accept the first book, because Lexington schools have been challenged over their commitment to diverse education. Article 8 Alliance and MassResistance, led by Brian Camenker, have taken the town to court for including books that recognize love between two people of the same gender in its curriculum.

Gay Lesbian Advocates and defenders (GLAD) will be filing a Friend of the Court brief in the First Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of Greater Boston PFLAG in support of Lexington town officials who have stood firmly in support of diversity and safe welcoming schools for children of all families.

Chip McLaughlin and Keith Maynard of Cambridge, who are pictured on the cover of Courting Equality, contributed funds to Greater Boston PFLAG to make the donation to each GSA and high school library possible.

The PFLAG annual meeting is open to the public. For more information and the agenda go to the PFLAG site.

Beth Robinson c0-counsel in the landmark Baker case that essentially won equality in the Vermont courts in 1999 but lost it to a new invention called “civil unions” in the Vermont legislature in 2000 continues to push for full marriage equality. In the August 12th issue of the Rutland Herald, she sensibly defends the Vermont legislature’s creation of a “primarily citizen panel” that will take up the real inequities of the rights afforded to same-sex couples with civil unions contrasted with full rights afforded to heterosexual couples with marriage. 

While some Vermonters who do not support marriage equality are saying that this panel, that will report back in 2008, is divisive because other priorites for families are more pressing, Robinson argues pointedly that all families of Vermonters need to be considered. “For many of us, what’s divisive is laws that put families formed by same-sex couples in a separate category from families formed by heterosexual couples. The commission process won’t create division; it will repond to fissures that exist in our laws to help heal the division.”

Vermont House Speaker Gaye Symington and Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin should be applauded for creating a panel to consider, as Robinson says, “whether there’s a good reason to keep separate legal structures for same-sex couples and heterosexual couples in Vermont.”

Robinson, Susan Murray, and Mary Bonauto were visionary in forging the Vermont case that led to our nation’s first shred of same-sex relationship equality, civil unions in 2000. Bonauto’s 2003 marriage equality victory in the Massachusetts courts set a new standard of equality for same-sex couples. Robinson points out that 2007 is a different era from 2000. For one, Massachusetts over the past 3 years has demonstrated that full marriage equality for all citizens does not breed any social discord.

Robinson led the way for same-sex couples in Vermont in the courts and as the chairwoman of Vermont Freedom to Marry she is sensibly leading the way in democratic discourse among citizens. The pace of progress is measured and Robinson and others have their eyes on the prize of full marriage equality. She knows it works in Massachusetts. Her visionary colleague Bonauto has shown the way in the state just south of Vermont.

The story below from Indiana illustrates one of the disastrous dilemmas that committed same-sex couples face in not being able to have a legal relationship with each other. In Massachusetts, some of the most convincing arguments put forth by our legislators as they debated whether to support our Supreme Judicial Court’s decision allowing same-sex marriage were those focused around times of a medical crisis. Legislators and those of us advocating for same-sex marriage realized that medical crises for loved ones are often the most stressful moments of our lives.

After same-sex couples began marrying in Massachusetts on May 17, 2004, more reassuring stories about emergency rooms gave us insights into the power of marriage.In Courting Equality, Dawn Paul and George Smart share reassuring stories about being able to be with their spouses immediately upon announcing that they were married.

Patrick Atkins and Brett Conrad were not so lucky as 365Gay.com recounts:

 Indianapolis, Indiana. For a quarter century Patrick Atkins and Brett Conrad shared their lives including a home and bank accounts but when Atkins fell near fatally ill Conrad discovered he had no rights in determining the care or who would deliver it to his ailing partner.

In 2005 Atkins collapsed while on a business trip to Atlanta. He had a ruptured aneurysm and later suffered a stroke while hospitalized.

When Conrad arrived in Atlanta Atkins’ family directed the hospital to refuse him access to the ailing 47-year old, the Indianapolis Star reports. He was allowed by sympathetic hospital staff to sneak in after hours and after Atkins parents had left.

When Atkins was moved to a nursing home Conrad again was forced to sneak in to see the man with whom he had spend more than half his life. 

Later that year Conrad filed for guardianship of Atkins. But the now severely disabled man’s parents quickly moved their son to their home and have refused to allow Conrad access to him. More