Lots of Baggage Goes With No Gay Marriage

Being unable to marry places longtime committed couples such as Mary Bishop and Sharon Baldwin of Broken Arrow into a kind of legal limbo, with issues including taxes, health care, retirement benefits and inheritance.

“Sharon and I carry around with us in our luggage all of our legal documents that give each other rights that we would automatically have if we were married,” said Bishop.

Those include their living wills, health care proxies and durable powers of attorney.

If one of them is hurt somehow and cannot make decisions, “We want the other one to be that person who has that power,” Bishop said.

Being able to produce those documents would help preserve their sense of familial relationship during a time of crisis, she added.

Baldwin and Bishop have been together almost 12 years. They underwent a commitment ceremony in Florida in 2000.

Baldwin said having the documents drawn up to outline their legal wishes cost about $1,300, much more than a marriage license.

“There may be young gay couples out there who are just struggling to get by week to week, and they don’t have $1,300 to give a lawyer,” she said.

The benefits of legal marriage extend into other areas, Bishop said.

“The government provides financial benefits or incentives for people to get married,” she said, stressing that those are not the most important reasons. “It rewards people for that.”

As just one example, she said, when one partner in a marriage dies, the surviving spouse can receive Social Security benefits in retirement.

“Then there’s the issue that we’re not even allowed to choose whether we want to file our income taxes separately or jointly, like married couples have the right to do,” Bishop said.

You can read more on this at journalrecord.com.