When Susan Heroux was diagnosed with congestive heart failure last February, she and her partner, Stacey, had to worry about more than her health. The couple had to consider whether it would be worth it for Stacey to take time off work and risk losing her job if Susan's condition worsened.
The two married in Massachusetts last year but live in Rhode Island, where same-sex married couples lack most of the rights granted to heterosexual married couples - including the right to take a leave of absence to care for an ailing spouse. "Right now, domestic partners have a limited set of rights," says Jenn Steinfeld, director of Marriage Equality RI, a group that supports equal marriage rights for same-sex couples, including the legalization of same-sex marriage.
"Many of those (rights) have been contested in court," Steinfeld says. She adds that even individuals who formally allow their same-sex partners to make health care decisions for them have been denied their rights and haven't been able to make medical decisions for their partners.
The ability to take time off from work to be with a loved one who is sick is "something most people take for granted," Heroux says. "It's about fairness."
The right to divorce
The Herouxs and couples like them have publicized their situations and garnered media attention for an issue that is increasingly on the public radar. But a new marriage rights issue has recently come to the fore.
Last December, Margaret Chambers and Cassandra Ormiston, a Rhode Island couple who married in Massachusetts in 2004, were denied a petition for divorce in a case that made it to the Rhode Island Supreme Court. The ruling, on a 3-2 vote, said that to grant the divorce, the Family Court would have to first recognize the marriage, but the state may not recognize "the marriage of two persons of the same sex who were purportedly married in another state." The Court also argued that the meaning of the word "marriage" voids the couple's petition for divorce.
The ruling sparked outrage among marriage-rights advocates in Rhode Island and drew a heated dissent from state Justice Paul Suttell, who called it "incongruous" that a Rhode Island same-sex couple married outside of the state cannot get divorced, but a resident in an "incestuous or bigamous marriage ... is entitled to divorce." But Gov. Donald Carcieri '65 lauded the decision.
"It has always been clear to me that Rhode Island law was designed to permit marriage - and therefore divorce - only between a man and a woman," he said in the statement released on the same day of the ruling.
Massachusetts is the only U.S. state where same-sex couples can legally get married. Between May 17, 2004, when same-sex marriage was legalized in the state, and August 2007, 10,400 same-sex couples were married, making up about 8 percent of the total marriages in the state in that time period, according to the state's Department of Public Health.
In 2006, Rhode Island same-sex couples were granted the right to get married in Massachusetts.
New legislation
Now, marriage-rights advocates are boosting their efforts to obtain equal rights for same-sex couples in Rhode Island.
At a Feb. 13 press conference, Marriage Equality RI introduced its 2008 platform, which includes the Compassion for All Families Act, proposing legislation that aims to obtain "protection for domestic partners."
If the legislation is passed, same-sex couples in Rhode Island would be granted the right to "unpaid medical leave from work if a partner becomes ill, visiting in a nursing home ... and funeral planning," Steinfeld says.
There are "over 430 state rights that relate to marriage," Steinfeld says, but same-sex couples are granted few.
In response to the December Supreme Court decision, MERI also publicized the "equal divorce bill," which would allow divorces like the one denied to Chambers and Ormiston. The bill is supported by the American Civil Liberties Union.
"It's a pretty obvious bill," Susan Heroux says.
On Tuesday, four state senators introduced such a bill. If passed, it would allow a family court to have jurisdiction on same-sex divorce cases.
This legislation is part of the effort to "amend a few state laws to make sure domestic partners are treated the same way as married couples," Steven Brown, director of the Rhode Island affiliate of the ACLU, says, though he adds that the state is still years away from legalizing same-sex marriage.
The state needs to give same-sex couples "some of the safeguards that are currently available to the majority," Susan Heroux says. "It's about taking some of the laws that are available to married couples and making sure they're available to domestic partners."
The group "certainly (doesn't) have the support in the governor's office to pass a marriage bill this year," Steinfeld says, explaining that Carcieri is adamantly opposed to same-sex marriage rights. Instead, Steinfield says, MERI is pushing "to win marriage in 2011."
The Carcieri roadblock
It has been an uphill battle for equal marriage rights. A bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in Rhode Island has been introduced every year since 1996, Steinfeld says, and there isn't much hope of getting it passed until a new governor is in office.
"I don't know why anyone would want to prohibit people who are validly married from getting divorced," Brown says.
"I don't think (Carcieri is) looking at the fact that this opposition is not just about an idea," Susan Heroux says. "It's about real people's lives."
Only a small minority of couples are affected by the December court decision, but "for those who are," Brown says, "it really is a devastating decision where they're left in legal limbo."
The Supreme Court showed some sensitivity to how its decision could affect Rhode Islanders. "We know that sometimes our decisions result in palpable hardship to the persons affected by them," the Court's opinion reads. "It is, however, a fundamental principle of jurisprudence that a court has no power to grant relief in the absence of jurisdiction."
"When two people love each other they should be entitled to get the benefits that a state-sanctioned marriage provides," Brown says. It's a "matter of basic fairness."
