I was working and living in Northampton, Mass., when I was introduced to Diane. She was about 10 years older than I, and already her story had preceded her, setting her apart from the rest of us still ensconced in college and graduate school. In some ways, we were all alike: young, living in or near Noho, and all very excited about our new sexual independence. But, unlike anyone in my small crowd, Katie was married, a married lesbian. She had married her longtime best friend, a gay man whose health and ability to work had deteriorated because he had contracted HIV/AIDS. Diane was a police officer, and this was her life: She had health insurance, and – by extension of their legal (paper) relationship – so did her gay so-called husband. In the years to come she became, as I was told, his partial caregiver.
This was 1995, one year before President Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act. That bill denied same-sex couples federal marriage benefits – Medicare, Social Security or any other program depended upon by traditionally married couples – and allowed states to deny recognition of gay marriages performed in other states. Of course, this was before the 2003 Massachusetts high court ruling legalizing gay marriage. But thanks to DOMA, those couples have no rights beyond Massachusetts' borders.
Diane, however, was protected. As the Schiavo case has reminded us, a spouse in a "traditional" marriage has rights.
If Diane and her friend had been two gay men or two lesbians, it would have been another story. And if Terri and Michael had been Terri and Michelle, there would have been no story at all. The Schindlers could have taken over Terri's care, ignored the wishes of her spouse – indeed, even the very existence of the marriage – and it would all have been perfectly legal.
During the last 10 years, I can think of many political moments that have made me cringe. Disingenuous tax breaks. Policies that have plunged the U.S. $6 trillion into debt. That moment during the 2004 debates when the two vice-presidential candidates fatuously chewed over their acceptance of Mary Cheney's lesbianism, even as the two men (including her own father) refused to consider her right to marry.
And then came the Terri Schiavo case. Like so many others, I struggled to make sense of the maelstrom that surrounded her illness and death. It was the first time I'd seen both the state and federal legislature care so deeply about a single person's life. I tried to imagine the scenario of President Bush leaping from his bed to sign into law a measure intended to trump a husband's status as legal guardian and interpreter of his wife's final wishes. Essentially, the president's hope, and that of the legislature, was to transfer the husband's legal power to the federal courts, to better align with the wishes of the wife's parents. But the federal judiciary wasn't having any part of it; no less than 19 state judges had already ruled on Terri's condition, recognized as a "persistent vegetative state."
What Americans saw in the Schiavo case was a new phenomenon. Two great behemoths of the right – the institution of marriage, and the "culture of life" – went at it, with the legislature asked to take sides. At a moment's notice, the politicians threw themselves headlong at the parents' feet, championing the cause of the ever-elusive life – apparently disregarding the sanctity of marriage, which they'd been holding up as endangered throughout the 2004 election.
Most voters, it turned out, were not pleased. Legal rights matter – and that's something gays have long known.
If only Terri had been a lesbian.
Cast Michael Schiavo as a female, and all the problems of the legislature go away. Without legal ties, Michael – or Michelle – has no wherewithal to honor Terri's possible end-of-life wishes, let alone to combat the intrusion of Terri's family and Congress. Verbal requests and formal end-of-life documents could both be readily challenged. Michael Shelton, chairman of Sarasota Equality Project, explains it this way. "Any wild argument can be thrown up in court to make it difficult."
The Schiavo case casts an ironic new light on that old shibboleth, the "gay agenda." It's a very simple agenda, really. Gays and lesbians who are fighting for the right to marry want only what Michael Schiavo had: a relationship that's protected by the rule of law.
allyson.gonzalez@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Apr 13-19, 2005.