This iReport is part of an assignment:
Same-sex marriage hearings: Your thoughts
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- Posted December 10, 2012 by
- swesterfield Follow
Location
Newport Coast, California
Newport Coast, California
Assignment
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Ed and my life together
- Jareen, CNN iReport producer
I was moved by your "Being LGBT: Then and now" report on aging to add our story to your archives. My husband, Ed Miskevich, and I were legally married under California law during the brief window in the summer and Fall of 2008 when same sex marriage was possible. Although "legal" for a little over 4 years, we met during our senior year at Brown University in 1978 and have been together just over 34 years.
We are fortunate to have led relatively discrimination-free lives with our families welcoming both of us into their respective clans. In fact, even though we are among the middle-to-youngest in our respective families, we have the most stable and long-lived relationship out of a cohort of 11 siblings and have been able to financially and emotionally help our parents and those members of our families who have not been as fortunate as we.
We have enjoyed successful professional careers in public television and commercial finance, respectively, and have been actively involved leading and participating in LGBT civil rights and other non-profit organizations.
Like other LGBT people, however, we have had to incur the additional expense and headaches of hiring attorneys, creating trusts, etc. to approximate the legal status and benefits that accrue to heterosexual couples upon becoming married.
We are among the lucky, relatively few who can bear such expenses as a minor inconvenience. However, we hope that the legal battles now playing out in the Supreme Court and elsewhere will finally lower the arbitrary legal discriminations that prevent us from having the same rights as other citizens.
We are fortunate to have led relatively discrimination-free lives with our families welcoming both of us into their respective clans. In fact, even though we are among the middle-to-youngest in our respective families, we have the most stable and long-lived relationship out of a cohort of 11 siblings and have been able to financially and emotionally help our parents and those members of our families who have not been as fortunate as we.
We have enjoyed successful professional careers in public television and commercial finance, respectively, and have been actively involved leading and participating in LGBT civil rights and other non-profit organizations.
Like other LGBT people, however, we have had to incur the additional expense and headaches of hiring attorneys, creating trusts, etc. to approximate the legal status and benefits that accrue to heterosexual couples upon becoming married.
We are among the lucky, relatively few who can bear such expenses as a minor inconvenience. However, we hope that the legal battles now playing out in the Supreme Court and elsewhere will finally lower the arbitrary legal discriminations that prevent us from having the same rights as other citizens.
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