Category: Rights

This weekend Kerry and I went to a “making marriage work” shabbaton (shabbat weekend retreat). It was a gathering of engaged and newly married couples, plus a few therapists to teach us how to, well, make our marriage work. The rabbi marrying us strongly encourage us to get some sort of pre-marital counseling, just as a matter of routine.

Kerry did a bunch of research to find a training that would be inclusive to same-sex couples and Jews, and largely struck out. We were assured that this program was really good, and that we were not going to be the only same-sex couples there (it’s a Jewish program, so we weren’t worried about that part). It was really important to us that we could go there just like any other couple and learn about marriage, not educate about building a space inclusive of non-opposite-sex couples. We didn’t want to be activists- we wanted to focus our energies on building a strong marriage.

It was not to be. The very first thing they had us do was to stand in two circles, men on the outside and women on the inside. When we started to object, they told us it was totally fine, nothing to worry about. The icebreaker was a version of speed dating, where you have a short convo, then rotate one person clockwise. They could have just as easily asked one partner to stand in the middle and one on the outside. Frankly, that would have been better for the straight couples as well. Several mentioned to us that it felt really weird to be speed dating (something they were long done with) – meeting a bunch of people from the opposite sex when they were there to build their marriage and meet other couples.

In the span of about an hour, we had two additional instances in which different facilitators continued to split activities by gender. So despite our goal to learn, and not teach, we had explain why we were so uncomfortable. To their credit they were very eager to take the feedback and adjusted the rest of the weekend, but it was really shocking that they had not taken the time to plan for our attendance. It hadn’t even entered into their thought process, when making the adjustments in advance would have super small and easy. They were simply dividing couples by men and women because that’s how they’d always done it (for 30 years), rather than just allowing couples to decide which partner would go with which divided group.

In the end, we had a nice weekend, mostly because it was great to talk with a bunch of wonderful couples all in a similar stage of life. It was really great to get out of town and be out in the boonies where you can hear animals chattering, go for hikes, and see the stars. We didn’t get too much out of the programing because it turns out that we have had the conversations they were trying to facilitate – at least once if not multiple times. If nothing else, the weekend was an affirmation that we are on the right track with our relationship. And that we will always be educating, even when we’re trying to learn.

The marriage certificate from the District of Columbia is signed and in-hand. Kerry and I are officially civil married, and we’ve been having lots of fun calling each other “wife” at every opportunity.  🙂

The ceremony was the height of glamour: conference room decor in the basement of an office building, next door to the gym (Kerry wanted to get in a quick work out before the ceremony but I said no). We had a standing room only crowd of about 30, and Chief Judge Emily Hewitt of the United States Court of Federal Claims presided. There were tears, lots of flashes (not that kind), and the traditional exchange of Ring Pops.

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. Continue reading “Inequality Sucks” →

It’s one thing to fight as a staffer for marriage equality and lose — because you know it’s the right thing to do. It’s another to rest your hopes on a single court decision, hoping will be able to marry the woman that you love — and the court tells you that you can’t.

Most people know that Prop 8 is currently being challenged in federal court. We have an amazing legal team of Ted Olson and David Boies, backed by the American Foundation for Equal Rights. They won in district court and I was helping Rick Jacobs liveblog the trial over at the Prop 8 Trial Tracker, a site I helped create/build while working for the Courage Campaign. It was an incredible thing to be a part of and witness history being made.

But after Judge Walker ruled that Prop 8 is unconstitutional, a stay was placed on his decision. So nobody is allowed to get married while the lawsuit makes it way through the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Our side filed a motion a few weeks ago to rescind the stay, right when Obama decided not to defend DOMA (which bans the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages). Today the court decided to uphold the stay.

Kerry and I had formulated a plan in case they repealed the stay. We’d get our parents to fly out and immediately head to the courthouse, with some friends to be our witnesses. Kerry was looking into if we should include the first part of the Jewish wedding ceremony, which traditionally was the engagement contract. We knew that the people who had previously gotten married during the so-called “Summer of Love” in ’08 had been able to stay married and we assumed that likely would hold true if the stay was lifted.

I knew that the likelihood of the stay being lifted wasn’t big, but it really was our best shot to be able to have a civil marriage from the state of California before our Jewish wedding ceremony. So we were holding out hope, which was crushed today. The rain today matches our moods.

The court case is proceeding so slowly that it is unlikely that there will be a ruling from the Supreme Court by our wedding date, June 3, 2012. We will have to wait until September for the California Supreme Court to weigh in on a standing question that the 9th Circuit Appeals Court asked of them. And in the meantime, we will talk to lawyers to find out if we should get a civil marriage in one of the states where that is legal, instead of just a California Domestic Partnership — especially in regard to our year in Israel, which recognizes same-sex marriages performed in other countries.

Bottom line, the wheels of justice are turning too slowly for us to have a religious and a California civil marriage next summer. But as I told Kerry, today reminded me just how much I want to marry her.

(photo from flickr user deltamike under a cc license)