We’ve taken the holiday season to reinvest in our lives at home in Seattle. We’ve seen friends, put up and taken down a Christmas tree, rearranged our house for a crawling–and now cruising–Frances, found work (Ami) and pursued employment diligently (me). We still have a trailer parked in our driveway, which I’m sure the neighbors celebrate. We still own a V-8 Jeep, not the ideal commuter car. But our darling puppy, Esmerelda, put her unique mark on our vehicle by chewing through the back seat upholstery and severing the wires to the rear window defroster coils. How to sell such a vehicle? We are still working on that dilemma.

This year could be historic for marriage equality. I have been following the Prop 8 trial on the Courage Campaign’s Prop 8 Trial Tracker (in-depth and immediate coverage) and at Pam’s House Blend (summary coverage). So far only the plaintiff’s (our side’s) witnesses have been called, and so far it’s going well. When I say going well, I mean that our witnesses have made a very good case for why the plaintiff’s constitutional rights have been violated and have not faltered from their positions on cross-examination.

I’ve done some research as to what will happen if Judge Walker, the federal judge on the case, decides in favor of the plaintiff. It will undoubtedly be appealed, in which case it will go to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. When that case is decided, in all likelihood the loser will appeal to the Supreme Court. (Strangely, I had a hard time finding out how many levels there were between this court and the Supreme Court. If my information is faulty, lease let me know so I may correct the information.)

Central to this case are the possible categorization of gays and lesbians as a “suspect class” and the violation of our “fundamental rights.” I didn’t know what these legal terms meant before this trial, so bear with me while I display my legal non-expertise in describing them. In the interest of (vain hope of?) concision, I will describe suspect class today and fundamental rights next time.

Interestingly, the idea of a suspect class originated from a discriminatory ruling on the part of the Supreme Court in 1944, Korematsu v. the United States. Ironically speaking for the majority, which upheld the legality of the internment of Japanese immigrants on the West Coast, Justice Hugo Black wrote:

all legal restrictions which curtail the Civil Rights of a single group are immediately suspect. That is not to say that all such restrictions are unconstitutional. It is to say that courts must subject them to the most rigid scrutiny. Pressing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions; racial antagonism never can.

This ruling created the concept of the suspect class and of strict scrutiny. It relates specifically to the interpretation by the courts of matters related to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This clause of this amendment is the one that is violated by Proposition 8:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 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. [Emphasis mine.]

There are three levels of scrutiny that can be applied to reviewing laws that may or may not violate the Fourteenth Amendment; strict is the highest. When strict scrutiny is applied, the law is assumed to be unconstitutional, and the court must prove the law is constitutional in order for the law to be upheld. To be constitutional in this circumstance, the law must be necessary to achieve a compelling state interest, and the law must be narrowly written so as to only achieve this result. So far strict scrutiny has only been used to interpret cases concerning discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin, alienage, the rights to travel and vote, and the right to privacy.

Contrast this with the lowest form of scrutiny, the rational basis test, in which it must be proven that the legislature made an arbitrary or irrational decision in forming the law in question. This is the default basis for deciding if a law is constitutional. Between the two is the intermediate level of scrutiny, which is used for the “quasi-suspect” class (essentially women), and for questions of legitimacy.

There are four indications for determining a group a suspect class. The state supreme courts in Iowa, Connecticut, and California have found gays and lesbians to be a suspect class. The quasi-suspect class fulfills some, but not all, of these qualifications.

1. The group must have a history of purposeful discrimination
2. They must be politically powerless
3. The trait the class shares must be immutable
4. The group must be a discrete and insular minority; i.e. that group is distinct from other groups and the rest of society

Still with me? I know, that was a lot. But it’s all at least marginally interesting in relationship to this case (to me, anyway). There’s an analysis of whether gays and lesbians can be a suspect class at the Prop 8 Trial Tracker.

And here’s some irony: After calling us child molesters, stating that just knowing we get married is something children need protection from, accusing us of taking down the institution of marriage just by joining it, lying to voters that their churches would lose their tax exemptions if we are allowed to get married, and implying that the claim that the best situation for a child is parents who are one male and one female is valid, now the Prop 8 side’s argument is that we are accepted members of society, not in any way a suspect class. How absurd is that? Prior to this we were like pedophiles and bigamists, the lowest of the low. Now we’re just like anyone else, and certainly deserving of no special consideration because of a history of discrimination.

Sometimes I just can’t handle the hypocrisy.

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Welcome to Oregon

Greetings from Portland. The other Portland. We’re precariously parked in a lot nearby–I say precariously because we paid for one spot, though technically our rig barely squeezes into two. Also, the spot we chose was the only one in the lot that had two spots lined up so the car and trailer would fit, and happened to be where two parts of the lot joined in a raised asphalt scar. Whether we’ll get out without bumping the trailer jacks as we roll over the hump remains to be seen.

We knew we needed to stop, though, lest you think we’d abandoned the blog. The Bay Area was full of good friends and lots to do. And last night and the night before we were promised WiFi at our destinations, but it didn’t work.

Yesterday morning, back at the Lakeshore Villa RV Park in Lakehead, CA, Ami and I hugged, both to ward off the morning chill and to enjoy our last moments as a married couple–at least for this trip. We return to Seattle today, though our journey is far from over. For one thing, there’s a backlog of states that we still need to report on. Another: there is still more to say about our marriage, legal and not, and our legal everything-but-marriage once we get home. Still another: there are still, as we end this trip, 44 states that do not consider us married.

Until each one of them acknowledges the legal reality of our union, this site will remain. Next year, we’ll visit New Hampshire (likely by plane, and likely in conjunction with a visit to New York that we would have made anyway). We passed through New Hampshire this trip, but it wasn’t yet one of the good states.

Who knows what state will be next on our travel agenda. We welcome unlikelies like Alaska and Alabama. We would be thrilled to visit Wisconsin and Wyoming to say “we did.” Someday we’ll have them all, and this trip and the need for it will be just a matter of history.

History, hurry it up, will you?

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Cheese Store of Silverlake

We left the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles in the afternoon, in the last hour of pink-sienna-magenta sky before twilight. I’d sampled amazing Italian olive oil at The Cheese Store of Silver Lake, taken a delightful turn through the ReForm School, and eaten the best gelato of my life (Market plum! Chocolate covered raisin! Salty chocolate!) at Pazzo Gelato.

We were sad to leave L.A., but I was even sadder that we were leaving for Fresno.

Fresno: n., The place that you struggled to leave physically many years ago, but still struggle to leave mentally. A place you don’t like to visit, because as soon as you’re back it seems like nothing ever got better at all.

You know what, though? I’m married in Fresno. And I have my family with me. So maybe there’s only one coffee shop (Thanks for the WiFi, guys!) downtown, only one or two gay bars (Glad to see you still bustling, Veni Vidi Vici.). Maybe it freezes at night and you can’t stand to be in the sun after 11 a.m. So what if the public transportation consists of your cousin’s tattered 10-speed and FART, the Fresno Area Rapid Transit?

Fresno has a PFLAG chapter, a Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in its 20th year, and a Gay Fresno website.

After a less-than-perfect morning with my mother, who is an active Mormon, Ruby reached out to the local PFLAG chapter. They were empathetic, and invited Mom to a meeting, even offering to meet with her beforehand to talk. But ultimately it would be up to her to contact them, and only then would she be able to access the literature she desperately needs to begin to understand us. The likelihood that she would do so seemed, well, slim. So the search continued.

I can’t believe I’m writing this, but we found a group of Mormons for Marriage.  As in our marriage.

I cried. At first, when Ruby said, “There must be Mormons out there that support their gay family members,” I didn’t even respond. I thought, Ya, like there must be a Protestant Pope. I’m sure he has a website, too. But lo and behold: “Mormons for Marriage supports marriage equality for all, and stands in respectful opposition to California Proposition 8.” There’s even The Feminist Mormon Housewives, and the Family Fellowship–a volunteer service organization, “a diverse collection of Mormon families engaged in the cause of strengthening families with homosexual members.”

Ruby wrote an e-mail to Mormons for Marriage, and a woman named Laura immediately wrote back. She attached four documents written by Mormons who are LGBT or support LGBT people. She copied another woman who she thought may know some people in Fresno. They even mentioned a book: No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones.

Maybe Mom won’t read the book when we buy it for her. Maybe she will and even then still say things like, “I’m sad in my heart [about the fact that your aunts outed you to your grandmother], but your grandma and your aunts love you, no matter what choices you make.” Maybe my wife will still cry in the living room once Mom has left for work, feeling like she was that ill-advised “choice.”

But today, in sunny, oppressive Fresno where I once learned internalized homophobia, I found just a little hope for our family. Our whole family.

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This wasn’t the easiest picture to get. Yesterday afternoon we drove into California and, not finding a welcome sign at which to document our entry, back to Yuma, Arizona.

“You’re in California. Nobody cares.” I said.

When we drove back across the one-lane bridge, there was no sign saying we were welcome in Arizona, either. We took a different road, and there was this sign. But no shoulder to pull off onto. So we turned around again and parked the entire rig right next to the I-10 on-ramp. We put on the hazards and made our way across the four-lane road to get to the sign.

This was the last time we’d be entering a state in which we were married–it was important.

We took several pictures, rejecting each one. My teeth looked too large. Frances wasn’t looking at the camera. Ami wasn’t smiling. Then the camera lens retracted and the display said, “Battery exhausted.” That was it. We had to go with what we had.

So here it is, folks, our final return to our legal marriage.

We became legally married when we entered Iowa from Minnesota. Then unmarried when we got to Illinois.

We remained unmarried until we made it to Washington, D.C. Entering Delaware, we left our marriage at the border. Picked it back up on the George Washington Bridge entering New York. We stayed married through Vermont and Massachusetts until we got to New Hampshire–in which state, had we taken this trip after January 1 2010, we would have remained married.

Back in Massachusetts we were again bride and bride, stayed that way through Connecticut and New York, and again lost our legal standing at the border to New Jersey. From Maryland to D.C. we became married again, and later that day, entering Virginia, we were again “roommates.”

Through eleven states we traveled. Girlfriends in North Carolina. Partners in Louisiana. Just friends in Arizona. And yesterday we returned to California for the first time since we left last August, legal, binding marriage certificate in hand.

Yesterday we found ourselves married again. Yesterday we got recognized. Yesterday we once again occupied the same physical location as our marriage.

We have been married all along.

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My Love Matters

There was a political uproar in Seattle immediately following the passage of Prop 8 in California. The evening Obama was elected was a night of great joy, but also heartbreaking disappointment: the state of California repealed the right for gays to marry.

I was crushed–I didn’t know whether I was  still “married” or not. After feeling married for over two years, even if only one of our weddings was legal, I felt like something had been taken from me.  It was like Ellen had gone back in the closet, or Sir John Elton admitted that he’d lip synched his whole career.

As soon as it was announced, I knew that we had to go to the march on November 15–to be around others who were outraged and hurt so none of us would feel alone. Ruby took this photo of me in front of the amphitheater at Volunteer Park, holding my sign. (Yes, that is a broom handle.) She was pregnant with Frances at the time.

I thought about what it was that could be taken from me, and what couldn’t, what it was that made the difference between being girlfriends and being wives, even if our legal marriage resided in a different state than we did.

Things changed after we had our first wedding ceremony. We shared so much joy with all our friends, chosen family, and family that I knew if we had rough times, 200 people would be there to root for the union. I think we both felt like there was a third entity in our relationship now;  the marriage was a new element to which we each had a relationship. I felt a protective urge that I’d never had before–she was my family now.

At our second, legal marriage, we had a different experience. I had an uncanny sense of history the day we were legally married. I thought of scenarios where our great great grandchildren would be looking for us on ancestry.com one day (ha ha), and would pull from a government archive database a copy of our marriage license. Both of our names, legally bound.

Hey, remember those old Great Aunts, the ones who “kept up with the same woman” for over 50 years? That couple who in the midst of  an otherwise totally dysfunctional family, managed to cohabitate longer than anyone else?

Well, that’s nice, but we’re not your weird Aunties anymore. We’re married. Went to the court. See photo.

At the Beverly Hills courthouse for our marriage license

(Speaking of Ellen Degeneres, just moments after this shot was taken outside the Beverly Hills Municipal Courthouse, I heard a reporter asking a counter clerk whether or not she’d happened to have helped Ellen or Portia DeRossi that day. In full I’m-busy-right-now voice, the clerk says: “No. Haven’t.” The reporter continues, “Oh, cause it’s real hushhush, but they’ll be in one office today, cause the word is the wedding’s on.” Let the record show that we are marriage buddies with Ellen and Portia, having gotten married on the very same day! Congratulations Ellen and Portia, and happy recent second anniversary!)

The clerk didn’t even glance at us when we handed her two female driver’s licenses from out of State. She handed us the clipboard with the “sign here. initial here, sign here” tour, and just as curtly and officially as to anyone else in that lobby said, “Come back when you’re done signing. You don’t have to wait in line again.”

I’d never been so overjoyed to be ‘a part of the system’ before. I hadn’t known it was missing, but it was the first time that I felt recognized as an adult by my government. Sure, I’d gotten a driver’s license at 16 and could drink at 21, but before this, there was no rite of passage into adulthood for a queer like me.

For months our status as a legally married couple in California hung in limbo. After two wedding ceremonies, we didn’t know if we were married. Or where.

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