Inequality Sucks

It was one thing to hear about all the things LGBT couples go through because DOMA exists and Prop 8 passed, but let me tell you, living through it is something else.

I know we are usually super upbeat and happy on here, but there is a tougher political side of same-sex wedding planning that is coming to the fore.

Bear with me as I vent.

A domestic partnership in California, where we get all of the state-given rights (not federal rights) associated with marriage, but not the word “marriage,” isn’t enough legal protection for us. Israel, where will spend most of the first year of our marriage, does not recognize domestic partnerships from abroad, but they do recognize same-sex marriages.

This means we need to travel to one of the states that has marriage equality. And since we don’t have much time after our wedding and before we go to Israel, we have to get married before we get married.

DC was our preferred location, since it had no waiting period and was close for my family to drive in. When Kerry won a free trip to DC for winning an essay contest, we knew we would use that trip to get our marriage license, whenever the award ceremony was scheduled. It turns out the ceremony will be the week after Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately, DC has a 10 day waiting list in order to have a civil ceremony through the licensing office. That means we have had to scramble to find a judge –because we wanted to keep this as secular as possible– who was willing to sign the form. Luckily, my cousin Jonathan knows a few judges, and I think we have one now.

Because we have so many people that love us, a number of our family members are flying in for the event. It’s wonderful, but this isn’t what I want. I want to get married like everyone else does – one time in front of all of our friends and family (Kerry adds: and God) during a big, took-a-year-to-plan kind of wedding. I don’t want to get married before I get married.

Despite going great lengths to even get a license, our marriage will not be recognized in most states. Say we are in Arizona, and Kerry is knocked unconscious in a rugby tournament (let’s be honest, not so far-fetched), our wedding license would be meaningless and I wouldn’t be allowed to make any medical decisions for her. Instead, they’d call her parents, who are 2,000 miles away.

This inconsistency from state to state means we need to find an attorney to build walls of legal protections, medical/financial/power of attorney/etc. And we shouldn’t really begin sharing bank accounts/investments until we talk to an attorney that can advise us on the best course of action. That’s because while the state of California will recognize our union for tax purposes, to the federal government we will be legal strangers.

All these legal protections and extra travel aren’t cheap. Flying to DC and having this ceremony, with a nice meal after is going to cost a few thousand dollars. And paying a lawyer will cost even more money.

This is all part of the higher costs gay couples face over their lifetimes. The New York Times did an excellent job covering the various expenses couples like Kerry and myself face due to our lack of equality:

Here is what we came up with. In our worst case, the couple’s lifetime cost of being gay was $467,562. But the number fell to $41,196 in the best case for a couple with significantly better health insurance, plus lower taxes and other costs.

These numbers will vary, depending on a couple’s income and circumstance. Gay couples earning, say, $80,000, could have health insurance costs similar to our hypothetical higher-earning couple, but they might well owe more in income taxes than their heterosexual counterparts. For wealthy couples with a lot of assets, on the other hand, the cost of being gay could easily spiral into the millions.

Nearly all the extra costs that gay couples face would be erased if the federal government legalized same-sex marriage. One exception is the cost of having biological children, but we felt it was appropriate to include this given our goal of outlining every cost gay couples incur that heterosexual couples may not.

The reality is that Kerry and I will need to pay for the lawyers, pay to go to DC and put up with all of these extra costs until DOMA is overturned, either in the courts (most-likely) or in Congress (not anytime soon).

We’re not looking for pity. We’re both too strong for that. But we do want you, our family and friends, to know what marriage equality really means, not in the vague everyone-should-be-equal sense, but in the practical, oh-shit-this-costs-a-lot-of-money-and-who-has-time-for-all-of-this-anyway sense.

If this shit pisses you off, chip in a few bucks to AFER, the non-profit behind the Prop 8 case, which currently in the court of appeals.