The Fall of DOMA (the defense of marriage act) in 2013
this is the backstory you didn’t know
It was a Wednesday. I was sitting in an oversized county pickup truck at work, parked on a busy downtown Seattle city street, my ears glued to the radio for news. Yes, I was ignoring work. Yes, my heart was in my throat. My life was hanging in the balance, my pulse racing. Every few minutes of hearing nothing I sent another text message to my girlfriend. She would send a nervous text back.
Everything in our world was in the hands of nine justices, nine people who had never met me or seen my name anywhere. Nine individuals who would determine my family’s fate.
Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer lived together as a married couple in New York for over forty years, their marriage codified in Canada in 2007. Thea passed away in 2009 and left her estate to her wife. But the US federal government did not recognize Edie’s marriage to Thea and taxed her inheritance as though they were unrelated strangers. Edie decided to say something about it, and so began a three-year legal saga that eventually landed in the hands of the US Supreme Court.
When my wife and I met, it was a flurry of hours long phone calls, learning to video chat online, jet lagged kisses, bus tours and train tours and road trips. Three years flew by in our long-distance romance. She finished her undergrad studies in Ireland, we bought our first house together not far from here, and we started a life together. It wasn’t obvious, we didn’t talk about it much, but the only thing keeping us together was her student visa, allowing her to get her PhD through a local university.
Life is funny like that. You know it’s delicate, that it’s just this tiny thread holding everything together, and even when there’s an end date you should focus on, you still end up building a beautiful life together in those brief margins.
And maybe it was from how blinded we both were to get to spend so many strings of days together. After all, we had started out more than 5000 miles apart, and every day in the same country felt like a gift.
After so many years together, dogs and houses and cars and jobs, we figured we were stable and ready to start a family. It wasn’t easy. We focused on the technical side of things and deftly avoided legalities, all of those road blocks waiting for us around the next bend, because conceiving and bringing a child into the world is more than enough work for a couple to tend to. But those problems in the margins didn’t dissolve. They waited for us.
I do recall with great clarity the anxiety I felt when my girlfriend said she was writing her thesis. It would only be a matter of time before she was done with it and ready to defend her PhD. Five years flew by in a blink, and suddenly I wasn’t ready at all.
Because she would have to go home, and home wasn’t the place she had built with me.
She was just in my country on a student visa, and it had an expiration date.
Our first son was born in late 2012, and she was nearly done writing at that stage. We balanced an infant and full-time work with her in the chemistry lab for long hours, writing on the bus to and from, in bed with the laptop, on the table during meals. Of all the things tying us together, having a baby suddenly felt delicate and fragile. It was terrifying.
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
We had that conversation regularly.
By January of 2013 we knew we needed help. The clock was ticking, her defense was scheduled for May, and she would be asked to depart the United States in November. If she stayed longer than that, she would be considered an illegal immigrant.
And yes, we talked about whether we could make that work. Because we had to consider every option.
Midmorning on a Tuesday, we cautiously opened the door to the tiny office a block off the main street just outside of downtown traffic. Small, cramped, poorly furnished, we sat in the two chairs opposite the immigration attorney. You hear stories about lawyers and all their money, and this guy didn’t fit that bill. It turns out there are lawyers out there who work for less because they do what they love, and it barely pays the bills. And this man, in his wrinkled shirt and disheveled tie, was offering to keep our family together for a very reasonable fee.
We listened to his list of things we would need, one hand gently rocking our sleeping infant in his car seat on the floor, and we shared the odd glance in worry that our plan wouldn’t work.
You’re not sitting next to me to see the fear in my eyes even now as I recount this story to you, but please hear it in my voice and read it in my words. My family, this tiny family with a new baby and all the hope in the world was going to be torn apart by my girlfriend’s deportation, and I was utterly terrified at what that meant for us. I did not want to be a single parent. I did not want to raise that child without her by my side, and I did not know how to keep her there with us. I could not bear the thought of her not hearing her son say his first words or seeing him learn to walk. We had risked everything to become parents, and just when things were finally looking good, we faced losing all of it.
It was January 2013, and there was no law allowing me to sponsor my girlfriend so that she could get a green card.
If you know your recent Washington State history, you might be aware that same sex marriage was allowed here before it became federal law, but even that was no relief for us. In fact, if we had tried that, she could have been deported for abandoning her student visa. After all, it came with the condition that she fully intended to return to her home country once her education was complete, and federal immigration doesn’t care one bit about state law.
And so we waited with breath held high in our chests, the tension immeasurable as each day passed.
Many of you think that gay marriage is all about same sex couples getting to marry one another, and it is. But it’s more than that. It’s the recognition of families. It’s immigration rights. It’s knowing that I can visit my partner in the hospital when they declare it for family members only. It’s inheritance law. It is guardianship of children.
It is everything.
And we did not have it.
We left the attorney’s office on a mission to have all of our paperwork ready to go the moment the Supreme Court ruling was announced, and we knew there was a chance it could go against us. We had no plan for that.1 So we ignored that fear and set to work collecting every piece of paper in the world that proved we were in a real relationship and meant to stay that way.
We gathered tax documents.
We collected bank statements.
We made copies of bills.
We showed that we bought a house together.
We even had a car in both names.
There were pictures of us on vacation.
We provided proof that we decided to become parents together.
We asked friends to write statements about us, and we hoped they had nice things to say.
They did.
We filled out forms.
We filled out more forms.
We filled out extra forms.
And once it was all collected, the stack was more than an inch thick of paperwork signifying that we were a real couple with a real life and real accounts with real names and a real baby between us. For real.
And then? We waited.
We went to barbecues where people asked how we were, and we lied. “We’re cool,” one of us would say. Coworkers asked how life was with a new baby, and I never said a word about the terror lurking in the background. Family checked on us, and some of them had no idea what we were even going through. How do you talk about something like that? How do you get people to understand what it’s like to know that the government could rip you apart with no concern for the welfare of your family?
And if you’re not in the know, let me bring you up to speed. Discussing immigration in the United States isn’t always a good idea. People have *feelings* about such things, and they don’t often hold their tongues, even if your future wife is sitting there listening.
My girlfriend finished college and successfully defended, and still we waited. The celebration felt hollow. It was the end of our only remaining protection, and everything else was a gamble. We did not even know if the Supreme Court would issue a ruling in time to save us.
We silently counted the months and days to the end of that year, the dread mounting as the summer weather came on.
And then, finally.
On June 26th, 2013, the United States Supreme Court ruled section three of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was unconstitutional, thereby removing the barrier for same-sex couples to be lawfully married.
I sat in that truck in the middle of a bustling city that had no idea how many emotions were running through me, and I cried. I’m pretty sure my girlfriend couldn’t even understand my blubbering words when I got her on the phone, but it was all joy. It was pure joy.
We went to city hall for a marriage license that very afternoon. We stood at the counter and waited for the paperwork to slide across to us, nervous that the woman handing it over might give us a disapproving look. She didn’t. Washington State makes you wait a minimum of three days before you can file it (because three days is all you really need to decide if that’s the person you want to marry). We walked out holding that precious paper in sweaty hands, realizing that it was over. The wait was over, and the next phase could begin.
We signed our marriage certificate on June 30, 2013, and we had a real wedding a year later on our first anniversary. Cuz, you know, we were pretty rushed for the initial paperwork, and nobody could arrange flights and a cake that quick.
Within three months we sat before an officer of the United States Immigration Authority and swore under oath that we were representing ourselves truthfully and openly. I sponsored the woman beside me as my legally married wife, and our son filled his diaper as he bounced on my knee.
Pride is so much more than it appears on its face. It is holding our breath and waiting for a chance to be just like every other couple. It is holding hands as a family in the same country. It is citizenship. It is togetherness. June 30, 2023, is our ten-year wedding anniversary, but don’t let that fool you. We’ve been fighting for this for so much longer than you know.
Happy Pride, y’all.
Happy anniversary, my love.
Your trans friend,
Robin
Well. That’s not entirely true. We did have a plan, but it was awful, and I’m so glad I’m here to tell you about the much better plan we got to use.
Thank you for this. Also, relatable as someone who met their person while I was living in London and they in the States and then they in Sydney and me in London and then me in Canada while they were still in Australia and three years of long-distance and all the immigration paperwork and having to explain to people that the narrative about marriage being "easy" for getting immigrant visas is a lie because it is a loooooong and expensive process and that was for us, two (mostly) white English-speaking people trying to sponsor each other to live in our colonialist countries. Can't even imagine how much more difficult it is with kids, with English as a second or third or fourth language, with brown skin, with a faith way too many people equate with terrorism etc. etc.
The thing about queer marriage is knowing the things it makes available to you, like being able to be in the hospital with your partner during a health crisis, being able to live in the same country legally, being able to share health insurance.
Gahhhhh all the feelz, friend. I had no idea DOMA was overturned the day my daughter was born. 💖