This is a difficult story to tell. It’s long, and I don’t want to reveal too much personal information, and it’s still going on, and it’s been the dominant theme in our lives here for months. But I think it illustrates a point, so I’m gonna take a whack at it.
A few weeks ago, my boyfriend got a call from his mother. His father was in jail. He’d been picked up on a warrant for outstanding child support payments. Eleven years’ worth of outstanding child support payments. For a child he’d fathered when he had an affair with a relative of his wife’s, eleven years before.
The affair had almost torn their marriage apart when it happened; my boyfriend was young then, and his parents’ anger spilled over onto him both emotionally and physically. He took care of his little sister, and weathered the bad times, and got through it, and grew up, and got good grades and a scholarship, and left that little town behind.
And now, all of that resurfaced. His father had known about the child support demands for years, and done nothing, preferring to drink instead. He may also be the father, as we find out, of two other kids by the same woman. His mother wanted a divorce. His sister was out of the country. His two younger siblings, still in high school and junior high, were witnessing all of this.
He went back home immediately. He helped his mother, held her, got her finances in order. We gave them money, we gave them a car. He visited his dad in jail, where his dad claimed that my boyfriend was obliged to get him out of this, because they hadn’t thrown him out of the house when he came out to them.
This all happened over the couse of weeks. A new crisis would rear its head every day. His mother discovered that the taxes on the house hadn’t been paid in years. His mother’s arthritis was so bad she had to quit her job. And so on.
For a while, we thought they’d be homeless, and we got ready to have them move in with us. For a longer while, we thought we’d have to take in one or both of their kids, and we made plans on how to rearrange our lives so as to be ready for that. We had my boyfriend’s younger brother here for a week.
My boyfriend was on the phone every night, up there every weekend. Meanwhile, my mother was dealing with my grandmother’s death. And I was doing everything I could to help them both; I was researcher, shoulder to cry on, source of strength, source of jokes, giver of perspective. I helped my boyfriend with the demons that all of this was raising for him, we talked long hours about how to deal with all the possible outcomes. There were a lot of tears, and a lot of stress.
His dad got out of jail, and has quit drinking, and has been going to work every day. He has a suspended license, and a massive debt hanging over him. His mother has decided against the divorce, and is looking for a job that she can do despite her health. It’s not over; the family is fragile, and we’re trying to convince them to try counseling, and we’re helping out where we can.
My mother is recovering from her mother’s death, which was really, really rough. We helped get her through it with an odd but effective combination of humor, support, and Netflix.
And now, his sister is back in the US, and staying with us, looking for an apartment for herself and her husband.
My boyfriend and I supported each other through all of this. We dealt with each others’ families, helped them, gave them everything they needed to get through their crises. We leaned on each other throughout all of this. We needed each other, we came through for each other, and loved each other deeply throughout this ordeal.
We’re married, just as sure as any couple who can legally fill out the paperwork is.
If we hadn’t been there, together, my boyfriend’s family might not have gotten through this. His mother might have lost her house, and had nowhere to bring her two kids. My mother certainly wouldn’t have had the same quality of support from me that she got; my boyfriend has made me a much better man. Together, we’re much stronger than either of us was apart. And for a time, we had the lives of all our families leaning on us, and we took that weight, and held.
We’re going to continue to be there for each other, and for the people we love. We will rely on each others’ strength to help us weather the hard times, and we will take joy and pride in each others’ achievements, and we will revel when times are good, and we will spend a lot of nights just laying around, watching movies and holding hands.
Funny thing, though. Just before all of this started happening, my boyfriend and I had to give up the idea of buying the house we currently rent. We both work, of course, and we could afford the payments and everything. The only problem was that the tax deduction for the interest payments wasn’t going to be sufficient to justify buying the place. Why? Well, we can’t file jointly.
We have all of the responsibilities that any married couple has, to each other, to society, to our families, to our friends. We have none of the essential legal recognition that makes life easier for married couples.
And there are ignorant idiots who call our marriage ‘pretend’.
Gay people stand by their mates, through thick and thin, the crises that come to all relationships, comprised of families and illnesses and deaths and children and jobs and money, and we do so knowing full well that there’s nothing keeping us from walking out. No marriage license. No ceremony. And most people expect our relationships to fail anyway, so there are no expectations.
When we join our lives together, we do so out of love.
We deserve the protections that the legal institute of marriage affords, to ourselves and to our children. The lack of those protections affects our lives deeply, negatively, constantly. The only foundation for denying us these rights, called fundamental by the supreme court of the US, is sheer and simple bigotry.
