When Kate Sherwood considered the institution of marriage, it was the overworked and undervalued wives of her parents' generation who came to mind. She wanted a partnership of equals but felt that none existed in the traditional model of matrimony. Then she met Chris and Rich, a gay couple, unmarried but committed life partners. Through them, Sherwood says, she learned what makes a good marriage work. Compromise. Love. Equity.
So, during a basketball game in 1996, Sherwood proposed to her boyfriend, Jim DeLaHunt. He accepted. But DeLaHunt couldn't shake the fact that his fiancee's "role model couple" -- who had inspired her to propose in the first place -- couldn't legally marry. As an acknowledgment, he and Sherwood asked that, in lieu of wedding gifts, well-wishers make contributions to Marriage Project-Hawaii and the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund-Marriage Project, groups that had pioneered the legal fight for gay marriage in Hawaii in the early 1990s. Then they started marching in gay pride parades and joined Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). DeLaHunt eventually joined the board of Marriage Equality California, the group leading the charge for same-sex marriage here. And now he and Sherwood, both Palo Alto software engineers, lecture other straight couples on marriage -- an institution that Sherwood embraced only after she saw a long-term gay relationship up close.
Today, the issue of gay marriage is a major battlefront in the culture wars. After a decade of skirmishes, the actions of recent weeks have provoked a national debate, as Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage, San Francisco disobeyed state law and married more than 4,000 gay couples in 29 days, President Bush called for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages and the Massachusetts Legislature took on the state's high court with an amendment to do the same. The politics are personal, demanding that everyone, gay and straight, take a stand.
Never before, say gay activists, have "non-gay allies" like Sherwood and DeLaHunt been so vital. These straight people who come out in support of gay marriage identify their mission in capital letters as The Struggle or The Movement. They pepper their defense of gay marriage with references to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights demonstrations in Selma, Ala., the Holocaust and South Africa's apartheid.
And they use their own relationships as catalysts for debate. Some forgo marriage licenses -- and the legal protections and benefits they afford -- to protest the fact that gays can't legally marry. Others marry in Massachusetts, where the state high court's ruling that same-sex marriage is legal takes effect May 17. Instead of cookware and bed linens, newlyweds ask for contributions to groups such as Equal Marriage, Marriage Equality and Freedom to Marry. Still others organize discussions of the issue within their churches and synagogues. They write op-ed pieces and call talk radio shows. Straight ministers are showing support by refusing to sign marriage licenses for straight couples until same-sex couples can legally marry. And coalitions of clergy and rabbis are buying newspaper ads and holding news conferences to publicize their support.
"This is the great civil rights struggle of our generation," says DeLaHunt, 41. "This is my generation's great social justice struggle. We wanted to be able to tell our children and grandchildren that 50 years ago we were on the right side of history."
Their stand's high cost
Attorneys Kaethe Morris Hoffer and Matt Hoffer Morris married at a Quaker meeting in Hoffer's hometown of Ann Arbor, Mich., in 1999. They returned to Chicago. They set up house. But they deliberately refused a marriage license. It was their way of showing solidarity with their gay friends. And, as it turned out, an expensive protest.
They paid about $500 to legally change their names, adopting each other's surnames. They signed over medical powers of attorney to each other. They filed taxes separately and accepted that in old age, neither would be eligible for spousal Social Security or Medicare benefits. When Hoffer left her job to have a baby, she also left behind her health insurance. She couldn't get coverage on Morris' health plan because only gay couples qualified as domestic partners. As a result, they paid an extra $400 a month for health insurance for nearly two years.
Ultimately, they couldn't afford their political stand. So they donated the cost of one year of Hoffer's health insurance -- $5,000 -- to the gay rights organization Human Rights Campaign. Then they flew to Boston and got a marriage license. Their families filled their hotel room with flowers.
