Legal Commentary

Our beautiful city?s light is dimmed this week, for loss of a wonderful citizen. We have lost Del Martin, who passed away this week at the age of 87, leaving behind her wife and partner of fifty-five years, Phyllis Lyon (image source: New York Times), as well as family and friends.

The NYT piece provides a good overview of Martin?s amazing life, the many organizations she formed and contributed to (such as the pioneering Daughters of Bilitis), her crucial contributions to the demedicalization of homosexuality, and her important work on aging. In fact, her lifetime involvement in GLBT activism virtually offers an overview of organizations, goals, and agendas the movement has had since the early 1950s. Anyone seeking more information about the history of GLBT organizations can find a great account in Elizabeth Armstrong?s excellent Forging Gay Identities. My take on this, however, focuses more on the personal than on the public; namely, on Martin's long-term relationship with Lyon, including their marriage in 2004 and, again, in 2008.

The marriage equality struggle has generated so much scholarly and online chatter that it?s difficult to find a fresh angle, so what I have to say may not be as polished and original as one would hope. My point is, mainly, that a relationship that spans fifty-five years seems somehow to trump any of the ordinary pros and cons about the debate.

In a modern reality in which sharing your life with someone for a few years counts as an achievement, managing fifty or sixty years of unwavering commitment, support, intimacy and camaraderie with someone is not just remarkable; it?s nearly unheard of.

I would like to think that Martin and Lyon?s beautiful photograph above, sharing a slice of birthday cake, would not trigger a response of hatred, or pity, or whatever it is that same-sex marriage opponents feel. I would like to believe that any visceral reaction someone might have, based on religious dogma or personal experiences, against ?the gay?, surely would melt away in the presence of such wonder; people who have managed to stick together through thick and thin for so many years. I would like to hope that, regardless of one?s attitudes toward Proposition 8, designed to undo the CA Supreme Court decision, one would not be able to read the New York Times piece without being deeply moved about these two women, who have managed to be there for each other for the real long run.

These are clichés, but they are worth mentioning: Long term commitments are not always about desire, and regulating them is not always about mimicking straight relationships. Long term commitments to others are not always about giggling in bed and sharing vacations and attending gala events. Long term commitments are a lot of work. They require putting up with a lot, and having patience, and going through weeks, sometimes months and years, of problems, and standing by your loved one through unemployment and grumpiness and health problems and depression and house renovations. In my book, relationships that last for decades are in their own special category. Not just those between partners or spouses, but between any set of people who voluntarily take on genuinely heavy responsibilities toward others, regardless of who the parties are.

My grandparents' marriage is not unlike Martin and Lyon's. They met at the "ripe" age of nineteen and today, at 81, they are still together. They have raised children together, worked hard, hosted events, dealt with each other's health problems, helped each other to transition into retirement and thrive after it, and stood by each other through any calamity in their way. That, to me, is much more than a marriage or a relationship. Which is why, to me, Martin and Lyon's birthday cake speaks volumes and transcends the ceremony mania that engulfed our city in 2004 and in 2008. The danger of our current marriage glee is that the ceremony will take the focus away from the hopefully long shared life that succeeds it. Really, beyond any (valid) HRC rationale for marriage or any (valid) Butlerian argument against it, the legal power to make the promise, and the big hoopla to celebrate it, is really not a big deal. It?s keeping these promises for so long that really counts.

Surely, if in this world of shaky, inconstant, conditional relationships, someone has been there for someone else ? truly, wholly, honestly, unfailingly ? for so long, it has to count for something, even in the mind of the most rigid religious extremist. Surely we would wish on everyone, including those we most vehemently disagree with, this blessing. It doesn't have to be a husband or a wife, or a natural child. It could be a good friend, or a grandchild, or any other person whom we deeply care about, and who deeply cares about us, and any relationship for which we're willing not just to talk and proclaim, but to walk the walk.

Many condolences to Phyllis Lyon and the family. May you be consoled in the memories of this remarkable and loving person, and in her remarkable and loving place in your lives. And may we all have familes, of origin or of choice, by our sides.