Demanding Equality

It’s been eight months since Shari Wilson and Teresa Hiatt made a
little bit of history together.

The two women are still shocked that they were able to walk into the
Pima County Courthouse on Feb. 12 and walk out with a license to
marry.

According to Marriage Equality USA, which organized a nationwide
series of rallies at courthouses in states where same-sex marriage
remains illegal, Wilson and Hiatt ended up being the only same-sex
couple to succeed in getting a marriage license as part of those
equality rallies.

On Feb. 12, Wilson and Hiatt woke up and started doing what they do
every weekday morning: They got their kids ready for school and headed
to work. Around lunch, they met up and decided to head to the
courthouse for the rally. When someone asked them if they were
interested in going in to try to get a license, Hiatt said yes.

They walked in with a male couple who had volunteered earlier to
participate: Buck Bannister and Michael Koch. While Bannister and Koch
were denied, Wilson and Hiatt were handed the sheet of paper that
allows them to be married by a judge, a justice of the peace or a
minister before the license expires in February 2010.

However, even if the couple decided to get married, it still
wouldn’t be legal. After all, Arizona’s Proposition 102, passed in
2008, amended the state Constitution to say that only marriages between
one man and one woman are legal. (Pima County was the only county in
which a majority of voters went against the proposition.)

With the easy passage of Prop 102—and the surprising defeat of
Proposition 8 in California—many people in the Tucson LGBT
community began to wonder whether it made sense to keep pushing for
marriage equality. Why not fight for civil unions instead, in an effort
to ruffle fewer political feathers?

But Wilson, Hiatt, Bannister and Koch say that for them, marriage
remains the only viable option, and they remain committed to changing
the law.

At Wilson and Hiatt’s house, they sit at a table surrounded by items
one could find in any three-bedroom house in the United States. Tables
and shelves are lines with framed photos of their children; there’s
unopened mail sitting on another table; books and magazine are
scattered around the living room.

“Our life is no different. I tell everybody, ‘We have homework; we
have dinner; we have bath times and bedtimes, and we have bills,'”
Wilson says. “Teresa and I struggle sometimes in our relationship. We
are no different than any other American family. We’re saving for
college. Our daughter wants a car next year,” Wilson says.

Teresa adds: “We’re trying to raise kids like so many other American
families. We have pets, one dog and one cat. One boy and one girl, and
two parents.

“I don’t know what people think goes on in here. We’re no different.
We’re just as boring as the next married couple,” Teresa says,
laughing.

In frustration, there is humor. Shari recalls a joke by Roseanne
Barr that says something to the effect of: If you think gay sex is
gross, then you ought to let gay couples get married, because once you
get married, the sex stops anyway.”

Humor, however, only goes so far to ease the frustration of living
without equal rights. Wilson pulls out of a piece of paper from her
back pocket that she started carrying with her on Feb. 12.

“When this all happened, I suddenly started reading our
Constitution. I wanted to learn more. I read the 14th Amendment, which
was originally put together for civil rights, for African Americans to
own property and have the right to vote. I carry the last statement:
‘No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall
any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due
process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the
equal protection of the laws.’ That’s what we’re talking about here in
the state of Arizona.”

Wilson says she often thinks about the 1967 legal case Loving vs.
Virginia, involving an interracial couple arrested for violating
laws in Virginia that prevented African-Americans and whites from
marrying. The two were released and told not to return to Virginia.
They left for New York and filed a lawsuit that went all the way to the
U.S. Supreme Court.

“That case decided (the laws banning interracial marriage were) not
allowed because of equal protection of the laws. I don’t see any
difference, and that’s how the fight to marry is going to take place in
this country.”

To Wilson and other marriage-equality activists, the fight begins
with small steps, like going to courthouses and applying for marriage
licenses like any other couple.

On Feb. 12, Bannister and Koch went up to a male clerk who was
closest to them near the entrance, while Wilson and Hiatt went to a
woman who waved to them from another counter. The couples’ experiences
were like night and day.

“She was smiling and said they were expecting that same-sex couples
were coming in today,” Hiatt recalls. “We thought they’d turn us
away.”

Instead, the clerk told the couple she thought everyone should be
allowed to be happy. When it came time to take an oath that the
information they provided was true, Wilson says she asked—at
least three times—whether the clerk was referring to the
information they wrote on the application, or whether they were
affirming the language on the application that forced the couple to
list the bride and the groom.

The clerk, according to Wilson, told her they were swearing to the
information they wrote on the application. They took the oath and were
then handed the license.

Some reports after the rally noted that one of them must have been
disguised to look like a male. But Hiatt says she decided to be listed
as the groom on the application specifically because her long brown
hair made it obvious she was not a man.

Bannister remembers the women were wearing business-casual clothes,
jewelry and makeup.

“It was obvious they were both women,” Bannister says.

A reporter at the Arizona Daily Star called Bannister for
more information after the rally. The reporter told him a claim that
one of the women was disguised as a man came from the court clerk’s
office.

“That’s nothing but CYA, because I was standing five feet away from
them. I can show you pictures of them, and you are going to see that
neither one of them was dressed like a man. I’m glad the reporter ended
up talking to me that day, because they were kind of running with that
story at first,” Bannister says.

While he was glad that Wilson and Hiatt received a license that day,
Bannister says he was personally disappointed.

“If they were going to give out marriage licenses that day, I would
have liked to have gotten one,” he says.

Hiatt says she could see Bannister was disappointed, even while he
hugged her outside the courthouse.

“That clerk was not nice to them. He was sort of disrespectful, and
very different from our clerk. I always wonder how Patti Noland talked
to her staff about what was going to happen that day,” Hiatt says.

Noland, Pima County clerk of the Superior Court, is in charge of
issuing marriage licenses in Pima County. About 10 people in her office
work the counters. She insists that no one was given instructions on
how to handle any of the same-sex couples they anticipated that
day.

“We are here to take applications. We ask everyone to fill them out
and swear an oath that the information is true. We don’t make judgment
calls on who is male or who is female,” Noland says.

The application, however, is obvious: Next to the word “groom” is
the word “male,” and next to the word “bride” is the word “female.” But
Wilson, again, says they were told they weren’t taking an oath on the
information printed on the form, just the information they
provided.

Noland disagrees, and believes that when a couple takes the oath,
they are affirming all of the information on the form—including
the pre-printed words.

Wilson says there was some discussion that the couple could have
committed fraud, but she refers to the marriage-license-application
statute that doesn’t refer to a man and woman wishing to be married,
but persons who wish to be married.

“That would be us,” Wilson says.

Bannister and Koch have been together for 12 years, and have lived in
Tucson for two years. They both experienced major health crises before
they moved to Arizona: Bannister underwent a liver transplant, and Koch
was diagnosed with colon cancer.

They joke that if you think fighting for marriage equality is a
struggle, dealing with health problems while uninsured is an utter
nightmare. They lost their home and pets, but during the crises, they
remained at each other’s sides and were each other’s strongest
advocates, Bannister says.

They lived in South Carolina, and they say most people were
respectful; during Bannister’s liver-transplant operation, the hospital
staff allowed Koch to sleep in Bannister’s room.

However, during one of Koch’s blood transfusions, the couple
discovered that an earlier doctor had written in his notes that Koch
was a gay male and HIV-positive.

Yes, Koch says, he’s a gay male. But he is not HIV-positive.

“He wouldn’t even come near me in the room,” Koch recalls. “He stood
in the doorway. I remember getting all these bad feelings from him. I
was kind of freaking out. We didn’t know anything about him at that
point. I didn’t like him, and I didn’t trust him.”

Since gay and lesbian couples can’t get married, they have to go
though extensive (and expensive) legal efforts to protect their rights
by assigning power of attorney and developing wills. Bannister says he
and Koch are protected and that everything they have is owned together.
But that doesn’t mean they don’t need marriage.

“I think it has to do with common respect for a relationship. That’s
one reason I got away from thinking civil unions would be fine, because
people don’t really understand what they are,” Bannister says.

He refers to a New Jersey study released last year by the New Jersey
Civil Union Review Commission. The study says civil unions do not
guarantee rights, because they are often misunderstood. In other words:
Under civil unions, gay and lesbians continue to face
discrimination.

“If you have a civil union, you basically have to walk around with
the law in your back pocket,” Bannister says. “If you don’t, and you
have to find a judge, by that time, it may be too late. It doesn’t
work. People don’t understand that concept. But marriage? Everyone
knows what it is.”

Bannister says he hears many gay and lesbian folks say that they are
OK with civil unions. However, they have never had to deal with a
partner having major health problems.

He also disagrees with those who want to take a state-by-state
approach to legalizing gay marriage. Right now, it’s legal in
Connecticut, Vermont, Iowa and Massachusetts; it is slated to become
legal in New Hampshire on Jan. 1, 2010, and could become legal in Maine
depending on an initiative on the November ballot.

“I’m a federalist from way back. I think when it comes to civil
rights, you have to look to the federal government. I mean, I’m from
the Deep South. If it weren’t for the freaking federal government, my
high school would still be segregated. So, no, I’m not one of these
people from Gay Inc. who come out of the northeast and think we’ll just
do this state-by-state thing, and that’ll work. No, because you’re
going to leave some people behind.”

Koch says he doesn’t completely agree with his husband.

“I don’t see … politics leading us to anything, but what I do see
are my nieces and nephews embracing us. I do see them questioning
religion. That’s what I see: The change (on opinions regarding gays and
lesbians) in peoples’ everyday lives, and then someday, it will
transcend into politics.”

John Allard-Lawson, chair of Marriage Equality USA’s Arizona chapter,
thinks marriage equality will one day be the law nationwide—but
it isn’t going to happen until the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is
repealed.

DOMA, which passed in 1996, is a federal law that defines marriage
as being between one man and one woman and allows states to decline to
recognize marriages in other states.

Allard-Lawson lives in Phoenix with his husband. They got married
last month in Iowa, where Allard-Lawson grew up.

“We had planned to not get married until it was legal everywhere.
One of the reasons I left Iowa was because I never thought I’d be able
to live a full and open life there,” he says.

When gay marriage was legalized by the Iowa Supreme Court this year,
Allard-Lawson says he was thrilled, and that he and his husband decided
to get married. His parents were excited, too.

“Friends and family from across the country came, including several
relatives in their 80s,” he recalls. “We did our paperwork the day
same-sex couples could (first) get married in Vermont. It was all over
TV.

“The sky hasn’t fallen (because of gay marriage). Because of that,
social conservatives feel like they have to move as fast as they can
right now, because the more data there is as more states pass these
laws, the more we understand that same-sex marriage doesn’t do all
these things they are always predicting.”

Massachusetts is a good example. Gay marriage has now been legal in
Massachusetts for five years, and Allard-Lawson says that the divorce
rate in that state has gone down and is now one of the lowest in the
country. In fact, he says, if you look at the states that now allow
same-sex marriages, almost all of them have divorce rates among the
lowest in the country.

If and when DOMA is repealed, it will be harder for states to
continue to deny same-sex couples the 1,138 rights offered through
marriage, such as immigration status, Social Security survival benefits
and hospital visitation.

Allard-Lawson discovered that when he and his husband got married in
Iowa, they had the option to change their last name legally through
marriage, so they both agreed to hyphenate their names. Because of
that, the federal government and other states had to recognize that
change. But they did not have to recognize the marriage.

“If we looked at it this way—this ethnic group can only be
(given) these rights (in certain states)—that would never fly.
That’s not what America is all about,” he says.

Right now, Marriage Equality USA is working on overturning DOMA and
raising money to help in states where campaigns are underway defeat
marriage-equality laws, such as Maine.

“We don’t think rights should be up for a popular vote. If people
are allowed to come in from other states and dump all kinds of money
into a religious message, we need to be doing the same thing,”
Allard-Lawson says.

Wilson and Hiatt say that in the past, they’ve been concerned about
rattling cages too much, because they wanted to protect their children.
However, they say they are now rethinking that decision because of their children.

“This is really about protecting our families,” Hiatt says. “If
something happens to me, I want my son to be raised by Shari. … I
want the state to recognize us as a family and to protect my children
through the rights provided through marriage.”

This article appears in Oct 8-14, 2009.