A Giant Step for Humankind

“Ding Dong The Wicked Witch Is Dead”. This was the refrain that kept ringing through my head on the morning of July 26.

I woke up in my West Hollywood apartment, next to my Catalunyan girlfriend, Adriana Saavedra, visiting me from Barcelona on a holiday visa that expires every three months. I sleepily opened up my computer, coffee in hand, and commenced my morning ritual of logging on to CNN.com. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first – but the headlines sang out loud and clear…
DOMA (Section 3) was dead. The controversial, anti-gay, so-called Defense Of Marriage Act had been ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. Yesssss…
I was at once shocked – and thoroughly elated. We are so used to disappointing news that I didn’t think that the gay cookie would ever crumble this way. After years of progress towards equality, the American religious right had been fighting back effectively on the issue of marriage. Now the Supreme Court had decided definitively in our favour…

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
I am by no means an expert, but let me try to explain a few things about DOMA, and why it was so fundamentally discriminatory – and harmful to gays. To quote GLAD.org, (American spellings ‘n’ all):
- DOMA stated that for purposes of all federal laws and programs, the word “marriage” meant only the legal union of a man and a woman. Thus, DOMA excluded legally married same-sex couples (gay marriage is legal in several states) from any federal law or program in which marriage was a factor. It treated them as single individuals rather than married.
- DOMA prevented legally married same sex couples from filing their federal taxes jointly as married. Additionally, if you had a gay spouse who died and the other one inherited, they would have to pay taxes as though inheriting from a stranger (unlike other married couples).  
- DOMA prevented the spouses of gay military members and veterans access to health coverage, housing allowance, and all other benefits that military spouses receive. Most devastatingly, their spouses did not receive emergency notification in the event of the service member’s injury or death, and are not eligible for death benefits.
- DOMA hurt children. A parent who is not a legal resident cannot be sponsored for citizenship by their spouse and is forced to leave the country.
Clearly, there were huge financial implications for gay couples in the Defence of Marriage Act. But there was also the human dimension, with parents being separated from children and partners potentially being kept in the dark in crisis situations.
However, it was the case of a gay woman in her eighties which crystallised the starkly discriminatory nature of DOMA – and which led to its rejection by the Supreme Court.
“We have Edie Windsor to thank for the downfall of DOMA,” Glad.Org explains. “Edie is an adorable, elegant, 80-something woman who filed a lawsuit against the federal government for refusing to recognize her marriage to her wife Thea Spyer (who she shared her life with for 44 years) and whose marriage was recognized in New York. When Thea died, Edie got landed with an inheritance tax fee of $363,000 (which she would not have received had she been married to a man).”
Thus, it was Edie Windsor’s legal action that brought this particular edifice of discrimination crumbling down…

CELEBRATION RALLY
I am gay. An Irish citizen, I grew up in Dublin and moved to LA several years ago to pursue better weather and rock stardom. I’m still chipping away at the second goal, but the first goal was easily achieved!
I’m in a band called Saucy Monky and I have just applied for dual citizenship – having an American passport will make travelling back and forth between the USA and Ireland a lot easier. I live in the gayest place on earth (West Hollywood), and after years in the closet, I am now out and proud and comfortable in my skin and my sexuality.
I go home (I still call Dublin home) to visit my amazing and very accepting family about twice a year. Life is good, but the existence of DOMA cast a huge shadow over everything and threatened to make my life inordinately complicated…
I am in a somewhat new, but rather serious relationship with my Spanish lady. Under DOMA, unlike straight couples, gay American citizens who married non-nationals could not sponsor them for legal status in the USA. This was where DOMA got personal for me. There was a very real prospect that I’d have to leave the country (and my band) to live legally with her.
In the short term, she could potentially come every few months on a holiday visa. The expense is horrendous. But she’s an artist and works for herself, and so can at least take time off. However, this would mean months apart at a time – and in the long run, immigration would inevitably give her hell.
Gays had been adopting other strategies to circumvent DOMA. It was suggested to me, for example, that I might have her marry a dude here, in an “arranged” marriage, which would allow her to stay legally in the US – at which point she and I could live together. How crazy is that? Let’s break the law to be legal!! Now all of that is behind us, and while nothing is certain, at least our future is in our own hands.
So, you can understand why my heart was thumping furiously in my ribcage after I read the CNN report on July 26th. I woke up my girlfriend and told her (in so many words) that the wicked witch was dead. We had options, just like any other bi-national couple who may want to take their relationship to the next level.
That night we went to the celebration rally in West Hollywood, steps from the front door of my apartment. Everyone was so joyful, smiling, celebrating, waving flags. It was a moment to savour and I thought to myself: how on earth can people possibly want to stand in the way of the shared joy with which we were surrounded? Why, in truth, would anyone want to stand in the way of equality for all?
The next day on Twitter, conservative right wing Republican Mick Huckabee composed the following tweet: “My thoughts on the SCOTUS ruling that determined that same-sex marriage was OK… ‘Jesus Wept’ “
To which @IamJesusHChrist responded: “Those were tears of joy you fuckin’ nitwit”.
Exactly.

Saucy Monky, fronted by Dubliner Annmarie Cullen and Cynthia Catania, from New Jersey, have released three albums: Celebrity Trash (2003), Turbulence (2004) and Between The Bars (2008). They have just released the Trophy Girl Part 2 EP, in preparation for the release of their fourth album, later this year.