Having fought for marriage equality for years we are extremely concerned that should a Republican be elected President they will try to overturn the SCOTUS ruling on nationwide marriage equality. People tell us "don't worry it will never happen", but never say never! Trump has already said that he wants to elect new Supreme Court justices who would vote against marriage equality and Cruz has said his presidency would not endorse the Supreme Court's ruling that same-sex marriage is a Constitutional right.
What I don't understand is how my same-sex marriage affects anyone else's marriage? As a bi-national couple, I am British and my wife, Laurie, is American, it was really important to celebrate our weddings with our family and friends from both sides of the pond. We married in Massachusetts, USA, on July 29th 2006 and then a little over two weeks later on August 18th we had a civil partnership in West Sussex, England. Both weddings meant so much to us and they were both very different, in America we had a Hawaiian themed wedding, Laurie and I had leis sent fresh from Hawaii and I sang Both Sides Now. We had a close friend as our Justice of the Peace and exchanging our vows in front of our family and friends was so important to us. In England we had a more formal wedding, you could say "traditional" but there would be those who would disagree because they believe a "traditional" wedding is only between one man and one woman.
As with most weddings we celebrated with speeches, toasts, great food, great wine and dancing, even the maitre'D joined in the dancing, everyone enjoyed our special days both sides of the pond and we felt well and truly MARRIED. Not so many people have two weddings in two countries in two weeks but we pulled it off. What we didn't know then was that the federal government of the USA didn't care how many times we got married; it didn't recognize it one way or another! People wrongly assumed because our marriage was recognized in the state of Massachusetts that it was okay for us but it wasn't. Laurie couldn't sponsor me for a green card so every time I entered the US I had a very difficult time and would be sent down to border control for intense questioning.
So from July 2006 Laurie and I have been advocating for marriage equality, we've put ourselves out there at every opportunity in the hope of changing hearts and minds towards LGBT acceptance. Along the way we have been lucky enough to make some incredible friends and allies who have helped tell our story, we've also had to incur some hateful people too but that never swayed us from fighting for our civil rights.
Mainly Laurie and I would travel together whenever I had to leave the US in order to maintain my US visa so that helped, but after Laurie's father had a severe stroke she didn't want to leave him for long so when it came time for me to leave next she stayed home. On that occasion when I re-entered the US, after visiting my family in England, I had an extremely difficult time and had a lengthy interrogation at Border Control. I was doing everything right, I had a visitors visa which allowed me to stay for 6 months at a time and I never outstayed that, I had my own income, Laurie and owned a home together but despite all that I wasn't welcome. In fact I was told that the next time I left the country I might be forced to stay away for at least a year or more or face being banned for 10 years. After that we took legal advice from many different sources and made the decision that I was going to out stay my visa, having done absolutely everything right and by the book up until that point it was a very hard decision to make. Our story was even taken to the Judiciary Committee in support of the repeal of DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), I wasn't able to travel anywhere and we constantly worried about ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) arriving on our doorstep to drag me off. To say it was a stressful time is an understatement. So when, after agonizing years of worry and fighting for marriage equality the Supreme Court justices ruled that DOMA was un-constitutional we cried with relief.
Now as we head to our 10th wedding anniversary we don't feel we can sit back and not worry about what might be, we can't contemplate going backwards and our marriage not being recognized. Because not only is there the possibility of a president who is anti-gay but there is an army pushing for anti-gay discrimination bills state by state across the USA, Georgia being the most recent. Silence is not an option but peacefully telling our story is. You can see the trailer for our short docu-drama, Status Unknown, about our fight for equality below.
People have said to us there are more important things to worry about than our civil rights during this election year, yes are there other things to worry about but don't trivialize civil rights, especially if you've never had to fight for yours!