Stories Have Meaning

Yesterday and today are important days in the fight for equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. The HRC has encouraged people to wear red in support of Marriage Equality (please don't call it gay or same-sex marriage, you don't say straight marriage), which has prompted most of my Facebook friends to change their profile pics to a red version of the HRC Equality symbol.

I didn't. I did change my pic to one of Ellie and I at our wedding though, because that was more important to me--putting real faces on this situation, reminding people that, should we ever move to one of the 40 states that don't recognize our marriage, we're as good as strangers to each other. It's not that I don't appreciate the love, support and sentiment expressed by my family and friends--things like this really do go a long way toward promoting acceptance and understanding by a larger audience. But a symbol is often just that (think about all the times women post their bra or purse color in "support" of breast cancer awareness--that goes nowhere to help further the research toward a cure). I don't think this is the same, but I'm still undecided about how I feel about all this.

I do know how I feel about the image I posted above. This morning on my commute, I checked Facebook and saw this image on the personal account of Erica Ewing Photography (yes, I'm cool enough for my photographer to friend me on Facebook!). For some reason, THIS made me tear up. I found Erica by accident at a wedding expo and instantly connected to her. It helped that she recognized Jeremy from a blog post he'd done previously. Her answer to "Have you done a same-sex wedding before?" also helped. Erica smiled & said "I haven't had the opportunity to, but I hope I can" or something like that. So many of the other photographers were disingenuous: smiling too wide & avoiding eye contact because they didn't want to be rude, but clearly NOT comfortable with the idea (you're being obvious, so I won't even think to hire you, don't worry about it); or making up excuses about why they don't have experience with same-sex weddings (I don't actually expect most mainstream photographers to have experience, I really just want to know how to feel about it).

Erica is a professional photographer, and she made money off of us (that's why one goes into business for oneself--to make money), but she CARES--the gifts and time and repeated comments about how much she enjoyed our wedding have gone a long way to make me realize that we ARE just like everyone else.

I lucky to know part of Erica's reason for changing her profile picture, but I don't know the story behind most people's change--these stories are what will change the minds of the undecideds, the ones who don't think they know anyone affected by Marriage Equality, who don't think they know an LGBT person. Don't just change your profile picture, tell the world WHY you're changing it.

"Being Gay is Expensive"

I am totally ripping off the title of the post that inspired me to write. Because it's true, and very few people, even within the LGBT community, know just how expensive it is. I'll admit that, while I knew it was more costly to be a married same-sex couple than a married hetero couple, I never really broke it down.

Us at her brother's wedding; personal photo

Christina laid it out in ways that I can only steal because I'm not married yet, and because, honestly, a lot of this stuff either goes over my head or puts me into a coma. There are 1,138 rights, protections and benefits that couples get when their marriage is recognized by the federal government. Some don't really affect us, like immigration issues. Some are a bit complicated however: if for some reason I had to go onto Ellie's medical plan, we would be lucky enough to pay the same rate as a hetero married couple because MA recognizes our marriage. When April 15 comes rolling around though, Ellie would have to pay federal taxes on the "extra income" she is receiving from her company for covering her "unmarried partner." Being the former HR person that I am, I'll try to explain it for you other non-math people (hypothetical numbers here):

Ellie's job pays $100/month towards the cost of a family plan. If she was on a single plan, they would only be paying $25/month. The "extra" $75/month her company is "giving" to her is taxable because it's not actually covering her married dependent, so the feds tax it.

Shitty, huh?  So, I'm on Ellie's insurance, but we're on vacation in Florida and I get attacked by a shark. Even if we've paid a lawyer thousands of dollars (to get it done right) to create, notarize and file paperwork allowing her to visit me & make decisions on my behalf, that hospital can deny her access and allow me to die alone.

If she ever convinces me that having a child is a good idea, we get into an even bigger set of drama--only one of us is biologically the mother. Sure, I can be added to the birth certificate since we are lucky enough to live in MA, but here comes that pesky DOMA conundrum again--other states don't have to recognize it! This means yet MORE money, time and hassle going through second-parent adoption, iron-clad wills. Christina said is very succinctly: It’s hard not to resent that a guy just has to have an orgasm to get full parental rights, and we get the legal and financial runaround." This is all on top of the cost to actually conceive the baby--no, Ellie's not going to "do it the traditional way"--even if she did, it would cost money to   work up the contracts with the bio-father, and we would always have a risk of him wanting the child, and getting it because we're gay.

About the only good thing DOMA is doing for us? My federal school loan payments are income-based, and since the feds won't consider us married, only my measly income is counted in the calculation of how much I have to pay. If we were married, both of our measly incomes would be counted, resulting in much higher payments.

I still think I'd take marriage equality.

We Inturrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming

One of the wedding-related blogs I regularly read is A Practical Wedding, who's tag-line is "Weddings. Minus the insanity, plus the marriage." You can see why I like this site (not to mention it promotes the idea that a wedding should be made up of "wants" instead of "shoulds."

Today was a guest post by a photographer in Atlanta. I typically don't read the guest-posts by sponsors because, honestly, they are typically just big (although not overtly) advertisements for the vendor making the post. This one was different though, I could tell right away when Meg's intro comment mentioned the AWP Yay New York event. The post itself opened with a quote from Teddy Roosevelt, "This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in." 

As I continued to read, I was reminded just how LUCKY Ellie and I are that we live in MA, work in industries that are mostly accepting and supportive of our sexual orientation (you always have a few bad apples), and have friends and family that are also accepting and supportive. Most of the country is not afforded the same rights--there are no laws protecting them from being fired for being LGBT, or to punish people who harass them. I can't do this post justice, and can only HIGHLY recommend you see it for yourself. I feel so strongly that everyone should read this post, I'm going to tease you with the 1st paragraph:

On Sunday morning, I had the incredible pleasure of meeting LGBT Subject 1 and LGBT Subject 2 at an undisclosed location to make their engagement photos. We had an incredible time, but I can’t tell you about it. I took amazing photos in an exciting environment with people who were deeply in love and fun and spontaneous, but I can’t show them to you. If I did, they could lose their jobs.

Honoring Marriage Equality

I'm lucky enough to live in MA, where same-sex couples are free to get married. However, there are still many places where my future status won't be recognized. Because of this, I want to ensure that I incorporate things that will show I am aware of this inequality and support the continued efforts towards attaining marriage equality. In light of that, I have been planing to have my officiant include this passage from the 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision to legalize same-sex marriage (I'd like the quote to be a surprise, but if you REALLY want to know it, you can look it up). I also just thought of another thing I can do--tie white ribbons in knots around Ellie & the boys' boutonnieres, and possibly the girls' facinators. I guess we'll see how that looks once I actually start working on them, but I think it'll be okay with the peacock color scheme.

I don't want my wedding to scream "Look!!! This is a LESBIAN couple getting married!!!" but it's important to recognize that what I am doing is not recognized everywhere, and that there are still many people who will have to jump through hoops to gain hospital visitation/healthcare decision privileges (and still be denied by family or hospital staff), who have to go without health insurance because they cannot be covered by their partner's policy (or it costs more than for hetero couples). I don't want to rub it in people's faces, not on what is supposed to be a happy celebration, but I do want people to be aware.

Money, Money, Money, Money, MONEY!

Really? Have I not mentioned the honeymoon thinking/planning here yet? I want the honeymoon to be something special and amazing, with a mix of stuff to do and ability to sit around and just enjoy being together wherever we wind up. It's also very important that we go somewhere none of our family/close friends have been to avoid all the, "You should do X" or "This is what MY experience was like..." We want our own memories and experience, untainted by others expectations. We also REALLY want to go international.

Which is why I am happy to have convinced Ellie that a Honeymoon Registry is the way to go. A friend is registered at The Honeymoon, so I checked it out to not only see where she is going and what they are planning to do, but also to see if this was a good registry for Ellie and I to eventually use. One thing I am really trying hard to do it use vendors that are LGBT-friendly, and this site uses the term "Partner" instead of "Wife" or "Husband" on the sign-up page! When the time comes, I'm still going to weigh my registry options, but this will factor into the final decision.