In 2008, my partner of 20 years, Brad, took his vows with me.  We became one of thousands of same-sex couples to be legally married in, and by, the State of California.  Our overwhelming joy from that moment was short-lived, however, when just a few months later Proposition 8 passed, denying the right to marry to millions of our fellow Californians. Though we remain married today, the legal rights of gay and lesbian couples remains in doubt as a challenge to Prop 8 winds its way slowly through the federal legal system.

We had always looked to our northern neighbor as a beacon of hope and integrity on the question of equal rights for LGBT persons.  Indeed, many Americans traveled to Canada to gain the right denied to them here at home.  So it is with dismay that I read that even those marriages were recently called into question. A lawyer for the Conservative government, apparently acting on his own, attempted to declare that marriages that were performed in Canada. but which are not recognized by the couple’s home countries, are invalid. This affects over 5,000 LGBT couples.  Here is a link to a news story on the controversy.  

The Prime Minister has issued a hasty statement that he does not want to “re-open” the issue of gay marriage, and this has calmed the firestorm, but it was still another case of “Now you’re married, now you’re not.”

When I was just 4 years old, another government in another time decided that rights guaranteed by the Constitution could be stripped away, and a whole race of people incarcerated in concentration camps without charge, simply because we looked like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor.  I am 74 years old now and married to the man I love, who has taken my name as his.  But even after 70 years, I once again see the shifting winds of politics ready to tear our rights from their very foundation.  No one should ever have to ask whether the law will treat them differently tomorrow, or whether their life, liberty or happiness will be subjected to a vote.

Until rights can be treated as real rights–unwavering, inalienable, and fundamental–we cannot have a truly equal society.  We must all share the same basic liberties, or none of us is truly free.

— GHT