When Bad Things Happen to Gay People

Have you ever seen the HBO movie If These Walls Could Talk, 2? Even though it was filmed in 2000, it is as timely as ever.

The film follows three lesbian stories in three different time periods and is set in the same house.

In the first story, the home is occupied by an elderly couple played by Vanessa Redgrave (Edith), and Marian Seldes as her life-partner (Abby). The film makes it obvious that these two have lived together in the house for most of their adult lives. Yet, when Abby becomes ill, Edith is denied the right to visit her in the hospital. And worse, after Abby dies, Edith loses her home and everything in it to a distant relative who inherits the house and contents -- by law.

Although the segment was set in 1961 - except for rare exceptions like California, Massachusetts and Vermont – state and federal laws have NOT changed. Gay and lesbian partners are STILL at risk of losing our property today.

Do you and/or your partner own your own home? Are both of your names on the deed? Do you have “rights of survivorship” so that when one of you dies the other will still own the house?

Do you have a Living Revocable Trust or Last Will and Testament that names your partner to inherit your property when you die?

Have you signed a Living Will and Medical Power of Attorney that gives your partner the right to make medical decisions for you and visit you in the hospital?

Just like the movie, for most of us, when our partner dies without a Will or Trust, our property will pass – by law -- to our nearest living relatives and not to our partner who is considered – by law – as a stranger!

That means, no matter how long we’ve been together – no matter how many ups and downs we’ve shared – our partner will have NO right to inherit anything we own.

In order to protect our partner, we need to put our wishes in writing. It’s easier and far less expensive than you might imagine:

Rainbow Law creates free and affordable legal document packages for single people and partners, with or without children. In addition, there are do-it-yourself software programs and other (non-gay) legal document preparation websites. And, some attorneys will work on a sliding scale.

Because we are denied equal marriage rights, as we grow older – and trust me, unless you die young, you are going to get old -- LGBTQ couples face a much greater risk of spending the end of our lives in poverty:

“Gay, lesbian and bisexual seniors also are at significant risk of losing their home when an elderly partner enters a nursing home. This is because federal Medicaid law permits a married spouse to remain in the couple's home when a husband or wife enters a nursing home — but it does not grant unmarried couples the same right.“

If a gay or lesbian partner is forced to use Medicaid – the state often places a lien on the home in order to recoup their losses. In fact, the Federal government encourages such liens – at the same time that they deny us the protections of legal marriage.

Even when we own our home jointly with rights of survivorship, a state has the right to place a lien on the one-half interest belonging to the partner who required nursing home assistance in the first place.

You can do more to protect your home from a Medicaid lien by sheltering it in an Irrevocable Trust. This may seem a bit complicated but it definitely beats homelessness!

When you put your home into an Irrevocable Trust, you are still able to live in it and benefit from it just as you do now. And time is “of the essence” if you want to use this method of home protection.

Medicaid has a “look back” period of 5 years. This means you must place your home into the Trust 5 years before applying for Medicaid or entering a nursing home!

Sadly, even when we obtain all of the legal documents necessary to protect our partner’s rights, other obstacles continue to adversely impact our lives:

• Laws such as the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and Amendments to State Constitutions ban equal access to federal and state marriage rights and protections;

• And we remain ineligible for a host of state and federal protections like Social Security survivor benefits and estate tax exemptions.
  

• Even couples who have lived together for decades are often barred from sharing a room in a nursing home or an assisted living facility because there are no protections form discrimination based on sexual orientation.
  

We have seen breathtaking changes in our lifetime but clearly, it is not enough. It is one thing to kvetch about marriage equality. It is quite another to take the steps necessary to protect one another while we wait for lawmakers to stop catering to the wing-nuts.

Since protecting your partner is your greatest responsibility, will you take a few minutes to do it today?

Fighting Hate in Our Community

Yesterday we read a news report about Megan Williams, a 20 year old African American woman who was kidnapped, raped and tortured in Southern West Virginia by six White men and women for over one week.

The details are nauseating:

“[Megan’s] captors forced her to eat rat droppings, choked her with a cable cord and stabbed her in the leg while calling her a racial slur... [t]hey also poured hot water over her, made her drink from a toilet, and beat and sexually assaulted her during a span of about a week.”

And yet, shockingly, Megan's attackers will not be charged with a hate crime.

This is a sad day for West Virginia and for the entire country.

In West Virginia, hate-based violence has become a daily occurrence and is rapidly increasing across the country as elected officials, courts, law enforcement officers, religious “leaders” and the news media perpetuate a “them against us” dynamic.

Someone somewhere must be benefiting from creating a climate of fear of “the other” because there is plenty of it going around.

Ask yourself, who benefits and why?

As out and open West Virginia lesbians, we are keenly aware that some of our neighbors are told in church each week that we are despicable sinners.

We know that every time our President calls for an amendment to the Constitution to “protect traditional marriage” he provides cover for these homophobic gay bashers.

When Lou Dobbs rails against illegal immigration and treats lies as news, he perpetuates violence and misunderstanding against people of color.

When the Supreme Court virtually overturns laws prohibiting segregation based on race, they are rewarding White supremacists who’ve been offended since 1954 when they were forced to sit, eat and attend school with those they feel are inferior to them.

As we go about our daily lives, we have the choice to shake our heads with disbelief about Megan’s story or do something constructive about it while the iron is hot.

Perhaps violence motivated by hate is more difficult for us to ignore because we, too, are vulnerable. However, as history has shown, violence and cruelty based on "difference" is indiscriminate. We are all unique in some way or another and eventually the person who is different may be -- you.

Remember the poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller during Hitler’s reign?

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

We for one will not stand silently by and allow acts of violence and hatred to occur in our state, in our community.

We know that people – even those who are outraged – often fail to act because they feel isolated, hopeless and helpless. How can they, as individuals make any difference or say anything to change the hearts and minds of those who hate?

That is why we need to stand together, People of Color, Native Americans, the poor, the young and old, gay and straight, Muslim, Christian, Jew and Hindu -- all of us need to understand that alone we are vulnerable but together we are strong.

Other communities have responded to hate crimes by using the incident to teach tolerance and acceptance. Resources are available to assist activists, educators and law enforcement officers to fight hate in their local community.

Today we are going to contact others in our local community to see whether we can work together to organize a rally or forum to educate around what happened to Megan.

What will you do?

Rights, Rites and Whites

Today marks the 87th anniversary of the ratification of the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote. Furthermore, August 6^th was the 43^rd anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act, which Congress passed in order to enforce the then 95 year old 15^th Amendment giving Blacks the right to vote.

So happy anniversary to all of you who – not so long ago -- had to beg powerful white men to bequeath upon you rights that were already (according to the original Constitution) yours!

You would think – given the circumstances – that the greatest ally of the LGBTQ Community’s struggle for equality would be women and Blacks.

For who could better understand our cause than those people who only recently (historically speaking) were forced to organize, petition, picket, lecture, write, march, lobby, and practice civil disobedience to achieve rights that should have been theirs by virtue of their U.S. citizenship?

Unfortunately, some women and some Blacks make it their life’s work to deny full citizenship rights to us and our families.

But if we have learned anything at all over the last 7 years it is to be skeptical about simple, sloganeering-style explanations for complex issues:

• Why DO groups like Concerned Women for America and some Black churches resist equal marriage rights?
• Who benefits when disenfranchised minorities are pitted against one another?
• Who has a motive for causing fractures where there need not be any?
• Who needs to cause a distraction away from real issues of economic and social injustice?

Dig a little deeper into the issue and you will discover that equal marriage rights are fraught with racial politics.

For example, did you know that the anti-marriage crusade carried out by opposition groups (and churches) are -- in large part -- being financially backed by various right-wing Christian groups like the Christian Coalition and Family Research Council?

And also, were you aware that both of these groups have histories and overlapping staff ties to white supremacist/anti-feminist organizations?

And surely you are aware that even as they play up Christian allegiances regarding the equal marriage issue, these so-called “Christian” groups solidly oppose affirmative action, a woman’s right to choose, pay equity and more?

Since the Christian Right has loads of money and lots of access to corporate media, they help to set the racial/sexual paradigm that much of America gets in the equal marriage rights debate.

And their message to the Black community is simple: queers, fags and homos are rich, white sinners who want their dysfunctional sexual activity to be normalized, accepted and taught to children… oh, and, we do not need special rights, unlike Black people and heterosexual women, who are, (at least in this one little narrow case), morally superior, with the right kind of “family values.”

We haven’t even touched on the issue of “illegal immigration” or on the misinformation campaign on “Islamofascists.” These are just two more examples of ways in which we are made to be and feel afraid of each other, keeping us separate and apart and unable to organize a collaborative effort to overcome the stranglehold of our white, wealthy and mostly male oppressors.

Suffice it to say that there are multiple networks of right-wing organizations and “conservative” funders – some with altruistic agendas and others with missions that are intended to oppress one group and elevate another -- who support each other ideologically and financially. They have created a bizarre coalition of differing and sometimes competing agendas.

Why can't we -- their ultimate targets -- do the same?

Despite having the right to vote, only 79% of American’s who are eligible to vote are actually registered – and of those 79% of registered voters, only 55% actually DO vote!

Even when you factor in all of the problems with voting machines and ballots, voter suppression efforts, etc., can you imagine the power we could have if we could somehow cut through the smokescreen and organize together?

The lesson to be learned from the struggles of other groups who have “won” their rights (yet still await their deliverance) is that we need each other.

As the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. so wisely said “Justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Until all oppressed minorities recognize our common (if not equal) oppressions, we are doomed to continue to unwittingly do the work of the powerful elite by oppressing one another on their behalf – leaving them with lots of time and money to continue to rape and pillage our communities and families.