We’ve paid a lot of legal costs to ensure the protection of our family and our resources. This includes the money and paperwork for a second-parent adoption. If we were a straight, married couple, our son would be recognized as our son, regardless of who the sperm donor was. But we can’t get married in our state. For six months after our son was born we hoped that I (the partner who carried our son and gave birth) wouldn’t get hit by a bus (or some other random thing) since my partner had no legal connection to her son. Fortunately, she’s a legal parent now – but we had to go through our gay legal “underground” connections to find a judge who would approve the adoption. Worst case scenario, we would have had to move from the city to the county if there weren’t any open-minded judges in the right jurisdiction. But we got lucky and there was one judge in the city who would let us adopt jointly. If and when we have another kid, we’ll have to play the wheel of fortune again.
Oh, and we have to make sure to carry copies of all our legal papers, medical powers of attorney, and what not, in the car in case of emergency. While this is good advice for anyone, we have the extra burden of having to prove a relationship to anyone bigoted enough to give us a hard time. Waving paperwork in someone’s face doesn’t always work, but it’s better than nothing.
Currently my partner works for a company with partnership benefits. However, she’s on a contract position. If she doesn’t get another, I don’t know what we’ll do for her health coverage. My son and I will be covered by my insurance, but my company doesn’t have partnership benefits, and it would really hurt our budget to have to buy her insurance outright. If we could be married, we would just put her under my insurance.
Missed the edit window. I thought of something else. Now, this is sort of a future harm, and may end up being irrelevant if social security goes under… nevertheless…
Let’s suppose you have a couple. One partner decides to be a stay-at-home parent to raise the children. The other goes off to work for the years that the children are growing up. Now, social security benefits are based on lifetime earnings. The stay-at-home partner makes a sacrifice of not only current income but future income. For a married couple there is some protection. If the working partner dies, the other gets survivor benefits – which make up for the fact that the stay-at-home partner missed out on all those working years. Can’t marry? Tough luck!
Things like this affect our decision-making about how we raise our son. Off to daycare kid! Both mommies need to work!
Thanks to all of you for sharing. Some of the things mentioned here are so far beyond anything we’ve had to deal with that I know I can’t truly comprehend the pain involved. After all of the debates, philosophical crap, legal wrangling, religious arguments and everything else I really felt that the human element was an afterthought sometimes.
I know I said at the beginning that I was looking at the tangible injustices, but that wasn’t at all to say that the intangibles were any less important. The simple joy of planning a wedding, the security of knowing that your relationship will not be questioned by any legal authority, being able to say ‘We are married’…all of these things and more really do mean something and I hope that doesn’t get lost in the ongoing conversation either.
Thanks again, I look forward to the day that these sorts of things are in the past.