by Robin Evans
Gay and lesbian couples face a dizzying array of often contradictory laws regarding the civil status of their partnership.
It's a patchwork that can affect everything from discounts on car rentals to hospital-visiting rights. It is, as the Wall Street Journal points out in a feature today, a patchwork that forces same-sex couples to navigate an often dizzying bureaucratic jungle for things that heterosexual couples take for granted.
But the patchwork of laws can sometimes have tragic results for families of gay and lesbian couples, as a lesbian couple from Washington discovered during a 2007 visit to Florida.
Janice Langbehn and Lisa Marie Pond traveled to Florida in 2007 with three of their four children. They were excited to take a winter cruise to celebrate the couple's 17th anniversary.
But Pond, a healthy 39-year-old, collapsed aboard the cruise ship before departure and was rushed to a Miami hospital where a family nightmare began.
Because they weren't "immediate family", the hospital refused to let Langbehn or their children visit Pond, who had suffered a massive stroke.
According to a lawsuit that Langebehn has filed against the hospital, a social worker at the Miami hospital told her, "You're in an anti-gay city and in an anti-gay state and you can expect to get no information about your partner and no access to your partner unless you get before a judge."
Even showing them a health care directive form and a power of attorney document giving Lengebehn the right to make medical decisions for Pond wasn't enough to convince hospital workers to let the family visit Pond until shortly before she died.
Washington now has a domestic partnership law that would have given Pond and Langebehn one more item of legal sanction for their relationship, but Langebehn's attorney, Beth Litrell, told seaQwa this summer that she doubts even that would have helped the family in Miami. "It couldn't hurt," she said about the wallet card that the state of Washington now gives to domestic partners, "but I doubt it would have made much of a difference there."
Retired small-business owners Shelly Bailes and Ellen Pontac told the Wall Street Journal that they pack powers of attorney, their domestic-partnership papers, and their marriage certificate when they travel.
But, as Lengebehn discovered to her horror, even that isn't always enough. Anti-gay prejudice of the kind demonstrated so tragically at the Miami hospital last year has been proclaimed as a matter of law in Florida and other states.
Although three states allow gay and lesbian couples to share the same right to marry that heterosexual couples enjoy, the right is under siege in California where Proposition 8, if it passes on Tuesday as some polls say it will, would strip that right by by adding a specifically discriminatory amendment to the state's constitution.
Voters in 27 states have already added similar discriminatory language to their state constitutions. In Arizona and in Florida, voters are also being asked this year to pass constitutional amendments that would restrict rights.
Most of those amendments passed with overwhelming majorities. In 2006, Arizona voters made it the only state where a constitutional amendment on the ballot in a general election has failed. The measure that failed in Arizona was a broadly written amendment that would have restricted virtually all forms of unions. It's similar to the draconian measure that Florida voters will vote on this year. But anti-gay activists in Arizona will try again this year with a narrowly written measure that would ban only equality in "marriage".
Despite the overwhelming voter support for anti-gay prejudice that is evident in the anti-gay amendments, a handful of states on the east and west coasts have recognized that gay couples deserve the same kinds of legal protections long afforded to heterosexual couples by civil marriage laws.
In addition to the three states that recognize full marriage equality -- Massachusetts, California, and Connecticut -- nine others, plus more than 70 cities, offer civil unions or domestic partnerships with varying rights.
In a feature on the tangle of partnership laws, Wall Street Journal today finds some evidence that the patchwork has forced at least some gay couples to "tie themselves in knots to tie the knot."
Several same-sex couples told the Journal that they currently need multiple unions to cover the nation's uneven legal patchwork.
The Journal's Phred Dvorak talks to a DC couple, Daniel McNeil and Patrick Canavan, who have been married four times to each other.
The serial ceremonies provoke ribbing, Canavan told Dvorak. "My straight siblings are like: You're pandering for gifts."
The couple was first married in a DC church service that was emotionally gratifying to the couple, but had no legal significance. They then entered a civil union in Vermont after that state became the first to recognize partial equality for same-sex couples. When the District of Columbia opened a domestic partnership registry for same-sex couples, McNeil and Canavan became the 16th couple to register.
They finally celebrated a wedding with close-to-full legal recognition this year after the California court decision that made it the first state that allowed out-of-state gay couples to get a marriage license. (Both Massachusetts and Connecticut now also allow out-of-state couples to get licenses.)
But DC doesn't recognize their California marriage, and they had to consult with a lawyer to figure out just where they stood with the multiple legal documents.
The lawyer identified a few gaps in their partnership rights, and told them they would need a separate document to pick up the partner's body after death.
It's is what WSJ calls a "patchwork" that looks like this, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures:
- Issues marriage licenses to same-sex couples: Massachusetts, California, Connecticut
- Recognizes same-sex marriages from other states: Rhode Island
- Allows civil unions, providing state-level spousal rights to same-sex couples: Vermont, New Jersey, New Hampshire
- Statewide law provides nearly all state-level spousal rights to unmarried couples (Domestic Partnerships): (California), Oregon
- Statewide law provides some state-level spousal rights to unmarried couples (Domestic Partnerships): Hawaii, Maine, District of Columbia, Washington, Maryland
Same-sex couples say they currently need multiple unions to cover the uneven legal patchwork. States such as Massachusetts and New York recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages but don't recognize domestic partnerships, Wall Street Journal reports.
The reverse is true in Washington and Oregon, according to the Journal. The northwest states recognize gay domestic partnerships but restrict marriage to a man and woman, says Jennifer Pizer, a senior counsel with Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a gay civil-rights organization.
Multiple marriages create more legal uncertainty. Karen Hong Yee, director of the San Francisco County clerk's office, told Wall Street Journal that she tells gay couples they can't marry more than once. But the lawyer for a couple who married in both Canada and California disagrees. The lawyer views California marriages as more likely to stand up in California than Canadian marriages will if Proposition 8 passes.
Ms. Pizer says she urges couples to obtain both a marriage and a domestic partnership. "We advise people to have a belt and suspenders, and then another pair of belt and suspenders," she quips.
Source: Why Just One Wedding Isn't Enough For Some Gay Couples | Wall Street Journal
Olympia woman sues Miami hospital that wouldn't let her visit her dying partner | seaQwa's Qnews
Same Sex Marriage, Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships | National Conference of State Legislatures