Evolving on marriage

Sandy married Greg in 1986, several years into their relationship. I didn't know her then, and I have plenty of evidence that she's an unreliable narrator, but she always told me that she hadn't really wanted to get married. She thought they were fine the way they were, but Greg wanted to marry and it pleased her family, and so, okay, she went along. In December of 1989, Greg asked for a divorce.

When we got together in December 1995, Sandy didn't even want to live with a lover, let alone marry one. And I'd never wanted to marry. I was well-versed in the history of marriage laws that regarded women as chattel, and I'd witnessed marriages in my own close family that were abusive and controlling. I also worried that marriage would bring assimilation, and we'd lose the wonderful LGBT community I enjoyed.

But talk of marriage was rumbling in our community. In 1996, the Hawaii Supreme Court found it was unconstitutional to prohibit same-sex marriage. We celebrated the political victory, but affirmed with each other that we had no intention of marrying.

Just before she moved in, we had hardwood
floors put in and painted the bedroom. She's
posing here in front of our paint job (the
baseboard, installed later, covered the crappy
paint job at the bottom of the wall).

And then we started to evolve. In the summer of 1998, Sandy had been living with me for six months when we went to add her name to the deed of the house, just before refinancing together. We were shocked to have to pay $1100 in excise tax simply to add her name. There would have been no excise tax if we were related or married. That's when we started taking a harder look at what we were missing. We knew we were committed to each other (heck, I was risking my credit rating!), and we didn't feel the need for a ceremony, but it irked us that the state didn't recognize our relationship. And it irked us that we wanted the state's recognition.

A few months later, around the time of her 38th birthday in August, I asked Sandy if she wanted to start making any plans for her 40th birthday. We kept hearing about people who climbed mountains, dove out of airplanes, or did other remarkable things for the momentous milestone. She thought about it for only a minute, looked at me earnestly, and said, "I want to go to Hawaii and marry you."

The Hawaiian Supreme Court had stayed the 1996 decision, allowing the state to come up with more compelling reasons to deny same-sex couples the right to marry. So weddings weren't happening yet, but everyone assumed that Hawaii would soon be the destination spot for same-sex couples who wanted to tie the knot. The federal Defense of Marriage Act had passed quickly in 1996, in reaction to the Hawaii decision, so we knew the federal government wouldn't recognize our marriage, regardless. Our own state had passed a DOMA in 1998, so we knew a Hawaiian wedding wouldn't be recognized in Seattle. But flying to Hawaii to get married had a romantic, powerful feeling about it. I immediately agreed to go along with the plan.

That fall, Hawaiian voters passed a constitutional amendment that gave their legislature the right to define marriage however it liked. It was the first of the amendments in the country, and it's the only one that won't need to be overturned for marriages to start taking place in the state. All the Hawaiian legislature needs to do is to decide that marriage is legal between two adults, regardless of sex. But it hasn't happened yet, and it certainly hadn't happened by Sandy's 40th birthday.

That conversation in 1998 was the turning point, though. That was the day that we recognized that we would eventually marry. And, like many other same-sex couples, we've been riding the waves since then. Vermont's Supreme Court found it unconstitutional to deny same-sex couples the same rights, but didn't require they be called marriage: civil unions were born in 2000. In 2003, the highest Massachusetts court came to a similar conclusion, but declared that it must be full marriage. States have won marriage rights through legislatures and courts, only to lose them again through public votes.

Here in Seattle, Sandy and I were very confident that our state Supreme Court would find the state's DOMA unconstitutional, and we were heartbroken in 2006 when the court ruled against us. It didn't help that it was the same day we learned that Sandy's first surgery for breast cancer didn't have clean margins, and they'd need to go in again.

We could see that public opinion was changing, and we knew that someday we'd be able to marry here, at home, legally. So, regardless of the various advances and setbacks, we discussed plans. Not specific details, but general plans for how we'd do it.

We knew the ceremony would be outside, someplace pretty. Perhaps at the park that overlooks the lake at the end of our road, we thought. And then we learned about Kubota Garden, and that seemed the likeliest spot.

I wanted only the people who'd been supportive of us the entire time to attend, no one who'd ever uttered anything homophobic. Ideally, I wanted just our moms and our best friends. Sandy didn't think that sounded like much of a party, so over the years, she worked me up to a guest list of about 25 or 30. Still small, still intimate, but more of an audience for a Leo.

She had a beautiful piece of blue raw silk that she set aside for her wedding dress. My mother is a talented seamstress who used to make custom bridal gowns for a living, so the plan (which Mom agreed to) was to fly her up a month or so before the wedding to take measurements, figure out the pattern, and fetch the fabric. Then she'd come a few days before the wedding to make any necessary adjustments. We never figured out what I would wear. Left to my own devices, I would probably wear jeans and a silk shirt, but Sandy seemed to lean towards wanting me in a tux. I'd long since realized that the ceremony itself was hers, and I'd wear whatever she determined I should wear, as long as it didn't itch.

Sandy with her ring, and her babies, in 2005

Back when it became evident we wouldn't be flying to Hawaii to marry or getting married in our home state any time soon, we bought rings that we called our wedding rings. It was a great day, our anniversary; we walked down to Pike Place Market and found a vendor with some rings we really liked. They were identical, $15 each. It was important to us that they be locally made, hand-crafted, and inexpensive. Sandy told me that she'd lost her wedding ring from her first marriage when they were digging a ditch, and she was always paranoid about losing this one.

In fact, I was the one who lost mine. On a bike ride a few years later, at some point I took my bike glove off and the ring must have come with it. We searched the park for half an hour or more; I felt awful about losing it. But, again, we went to Pike Place Market, and we quickly found the same vendor. He didn't have exactly the same ring. My new one is the same shape but a bit thinner than the original. But it worked.

When Sandy started chemo in 2006, she moved her ring to her right hand, fearing swelling in her left. And then, a few years later, when she fell down some stairs and bent her finger at a right angle (I'll spare you the photo, as it makes me gag), they had to cut the ring off her. She put it in her box of odds and ends on the dresser, and there it remained until she died. I was always going to get it repaired for her, as a surprise, but I didn't get to it. Now it's on my right hand, still with its cut, but it fits my middle finger fine.

We'd planned to buy new rings when we married, additional rings, perhaps a little more expensive. More important was that we'd spend more time choosing them, making sure the design was meaningful to us. But Sandy remained nervous that she'd lose that one. So in the last couple of years, she'd started talking about having a ring tattoo instead. Even Sandy would have trouble losing a tattoo.

We were married in every way that counted, and our friends and family recognized that. She didn't get her wish, and that hurts. But if anyone had told her in 1995 that marriage would be her top priority as she was dying, she'd have snorted. Sandy had gone from insisting that she'd never marry again to making our legal marriage the only real item on her bucket list. That's a pretty impressive evolution.