The Personal is Political

It’s 2:30am and I can’t sleep.

I have to admit that I’m still learning about the kiwi political system and how Parliament here works, but today was a big day. In May of this year, Member of Parliament Louisa Wall (Labour- Manuwera) introduced legislation to legalise same-sex marriage in New Zealand. This evening, Laura and I sat glued to Parliament TV, watching the the first reading of the bill, and the arguments for and against, biting our nails waiting for the results of the conscience vote.

The bill passed its first reading with a vote of 80-40. Which is huge.

Admittedly, it’s just the beginning of the process. From here, the bill will be considered by a select committee, and then there will be two more votes before it can pass in to law.

To me the issue of marriage equality — and equality for the LGBTQ community generally– is an intensely personal one. It’s why I left my home country to create a new life abroad.

In the US, the inequality is tangible. Rights for LGBTQ people vary from state to state, but nowhere in the United States offers full equality and equal protection under the law for same sex relationships due to overarching federal laws that legislate discrimination.

Even states like Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Iowa, New Hampshire, and New York, which allow same-sex marriage still don’t offer full protection and equality under the law to same sex couples. There are 1,138 federal rights and protections granted to heterosexual married couples that don’t apply to legally performed same-sex marriages in those six states and the District of Columbia.

These rights and protections that all heterosexual married couples in the US are automatically eligible for include tax benefits, social security payments following the death of a spouse, employee benefits, healthcare, and immigration, just to name a few.

I’m grateful to live in a place where same-relationships are recognized by the government, and where for the most part– marriage excepted– I have equal protection under the law as any straight person would. Only 15 countries– Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Sweden and the United Kingdom– recognize lesbian and gay couples for the purposes of immigration. I feel fortunate beyond measure that I happened to fall in love with someone from one of those places, and my heart aches for so many friends and others out there who don’t have the ability to legally live in the same country as the person they love.

Every single day I am grateful to be here in New Zealand, and to wake up with my partner right here beside me.

For a long time, the issue of same-sex marriage wasn’t that important to me. Oh sure, I supported it, and went to rallies, and emailed my members of congress, and donated to the Human Rights Campaign. But marriage itself didn’t seem particularly appealing to me. I was in favour of civil unions and civil benefits that offered equal protection under the law. Marriage seemed too tied up in religion and heterosexual norms. I was proudly queer and going to carve out a different life for myself than what society dictated. Marriage, schmarriage. Not for me. No white dresses, over-the-top extravagant affairs or registering for sets of expensive china that no one actually needs.

And then, something began to change. Maybe it was finally meeting the right person, and knowing instinctively that I had met my soulmate and the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.  Maybe it was attending friends’ weddings, and seeing how joyful and beautiful and truly, truly special those occasions were.

Watching my lesbian friends marry– I saw how much respect there was for the word marriage, the institution of marriage, and gratitude for the simple ability to marry that most straight couples take for granted.

If you’re a religious institution that doesn’t support same-sex marriages, then don’t marry same-sex couples in your church/place of worship. Fair enough.

But there are heaps of churches and congregations that are open and affirming and that do support marriage equality (St. Andrews’ on the Terrace here in Wellington is just one example). So why should those churches be prevented from legally marrying members of their own congregations, just because other churches don’t want to?

Most people grow up assuming that they’ll meet someone and get married. It’s what people do. And it’s heartbreaking to have politicians and the government telling you that you can’t participate in one of the most meaningful events in life. You can make a commitment to each other and share a life, but you can’t marry. Sorry– didn’t you know? Equal rights are only for us straight people.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with getting a civil union. If you can’t or don’t want to get married, it’s a good option, and I think it’s awesome that in New Zealand, both heterosexual couples and same-sex couples have that option. But it’s not the same. There’s not a universal understanding of what a civil union is. If I called up my grandmother in Colorado and said, “Guess what, I’m getting Civil Unioned!” (or “CU-ed,” as a friend used to refer to it) she wouldn’t have the slightest idea what I was talking about. But if I said, “Guess what, I’m getting married!” that would be something that would immediately make sense to her.

And in terms of immigration, if Laura and I ever wanted to move back to the US (should the laws there change to make such things possible!) a domestic partnership or civil union from New Zealand would be meaningless. We would need a proper marriage.

I’m hopeful that the US government will end the Defense of Marriage Act and allow the federal recognition of thousands of legal marriages that already exist in the US, and allow same-sex couples in every state to marry and have their marriages recognized across state lines.

I’m hopeful that in the coming months, New Zealand will pass the legislation read tonight, allowing marriage to be an option to all New Zealanders.

And I’m hopeful that someday soon, I can legally marry the love of my life, and have that marriage be recognised in both of the countries that I call my home.

 

Visibility and Invisibility

A section of the "Slice of Heaven: 20th Century Aotearoa" exhibit at Te Papa, the National Museum of New Zealand.

I went to Te Papa again this week to continue looking at some the exhibits that I’d rushed right past on Friday when I went to the museum to meet the Springboks, South Africa’s national rugby team.  In the exhibit on 20th century life in New Zealand, it was particularly poignant to see documents and photographs from the not-so-distant apartheid era, when the Springboks coming to New Zealand sparked protests and outrage, rather than lines for autographs.

The exhibit also included a section on gay rights and equality movements in New Zealand in the 1970s and 80s. Which got me to thinking. The fact that I’m gay is really the reason why I’m in New Zealand. And I’m infinitely grateful for both of those things– being gay and being in New Zealand. But I’m also amazed by the number of times people ask me– and I think every single straight American I’ve met here has asked me this as well– “Oh, so Laura didn’t want to move to the US?”

If only it were that simple.

At least eighteen countries provide immigration benefits to same-sex couples, including Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. But the US does not.

Thus there really wasn’t a choice. If Laura and I wanted to be in the same place, I had to move to New Zealand. And being with the person I loved meant far more to me than my job in the US.

Laura and I in Northampton, Massachusetts, April 2011, during one of Laura’s trips to the US to visit me. Photo by Alison Marie Photography.

Because I was in the right age range, I decided to apply for a Working Holiday Visa, which allows Americans (and other nationals) between the ages of 18 and 30 to have a year of work eligibility in New Zealand. The application process was simple, and I was approved within one week of applying. After the year is up, Laura can sponsor me for a partnership visa.

Heterosexual Americans can sponsor a fiance or a spouse as a green card holder (permanent resident), though admittedly the process is highly bureaucratic and generally a pain in the ass, as a number of my good friends can attest! But still, heterosexual bi-national couples are automatically eligible.

Same-sex bi-national couples– like Laura and I– don’t have that option. Under the federal Defense of Marriage Act, DOMA, which was passed in 1996, lesbian and gay American citizens and lawful permanent residents are discriminated against and cannot sponsor their spouses or partners for immigration benefits. Even though there are individual states that permit same-sex marriages — Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Iowa, and New York, as well as Washington DC– the federal government which controls immigration does not recognize these marriages.

As a result, same-sex married couples in the United States are denied access to the 1,138 federal rights and protections associated with marriage.

Immigration rights is one of these.

The organization Immigration Equality estimates that there are approximately 40,000 bi-national same-sex couples living in the United States in which the non-American partner is facing deportation.

On July 26, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service denied the application for permanent residency of Anthony Makk, a citizen of Australia, who is legally married to Bradford Wells, an American citizen. The case received national attention because Makk, who owns a business in San Francisco, has been living and working in the US legally for over 20 years, but his petition for permanent residency and a green card was denied. Makk and Wells were married in Massachusetts in 2004, and Makk is the primary caregiver for his husband, who is battling AIDS. Jon Stewart and The Daily Show had a great clip about this, which sadly I am unable to embed properly in this post, but you can click here and watch it on Comedy Central’s website.

While there is more coverage of LGBT issues in the media now than there ever has been, there’s still so much that most people don’t know. And in many of the conversations I’ve had, both in New Zealand and in the US, it seems that people generally are surprised to learn about the discrimination that does exist.

One morning a couple of weeks back or so when it was raining and I was feeling a bit homesick, I went online and started watching old episodes of This Just Out with Liz Feldman, a short-lived, but generally hilarious online gay talk show. Liz Feldman is one of the writers for The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and in an episode of This Just Out, she was talking about being out and visibility and said something along the lines of, “Honestly, I don’t know how much more obvious I could make it.”

I’ve been attracted to women my whole life, but didn’t have an understanding and language for that until I was 19. While I’m no longer wearing the pride rings necklace I wore all the time in 1999, I’m just as out and open about my sexual orientation now over a decade later. It’s interesting though how moving someplace new makes you relive the coming out process. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve said, “I moved here because my partner is kiwi,” and the response I get is then a question about how my husband and I met. And then I’m left saying, “Well, actually my girlfriend, Laura…”

Kisses by the boathouse, Northampton, Massachusetts, April 2011. Photo by Alison Marie Photography.

The responses have been 100% positive to my revelations that my “partner” is a “girlfriend” instead of a “husband,” but still. In New Zealand, the term partner is commonly used for whomever you’re in a relationship with, whether gay, straight, married, not married, whatever. And that’s awesome. But if I’ve said “partner,” then I don’t mean “husband.” I mean “partner.” And like Liz Feldman, I’m still surprised every single time someone just assumes I’m straight. I mean, to me it seems so obvious! But I’ve realized that most people just don’t even think about it, or just assume somehow that everybody is like them.

As Anaïs Nin has said, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

Shortly before I left Connecticut, some friends from my yoga teacher training program and I decided to try out a class together at a new studio in the area. During the check-in at the beginning of class– which was all women– the teacher made a comment about how “as women, we’re constantly taking care of children and husbands, and so we need yoga all the more to have something that is solely for ourselves.” While there may be some truth in that statement for some people, the fact that she might have a queer student in the class was not even on her radar screen. And I was annoyed too that the straight women in the room were reduced to just roles of wife and mother, even though there were some who were most likely neither. There are so many reasons why women (and men) can benefit from a regular yoga practice regardless of their relationships to partners, children, or anyone else. To not see the differences among us is to potentially negate a part of someone’s identity and world experience. As yoga teachers, we need to let go of our assumptions in order to see ourselves and the world around us more clearly.

And on the small rectangle that is my yoga mat, I just want some space that is fully mine. And to offer that to my students as well.

Knee down crescent warrior. Photo by Alison Marie Photography.