By Alec Clayton
These couples want to be married at last.
Equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians is about financial security, visitation rights, ability to inherit and collect Social Security benefits and thousands of other rights that heterosexual married couples take for granted. But mostly it’s about love and acceptance, which is why Lynn and Lisa, Tina and Teresa, and Jeff and David want to get married. Legally. In Washington State. Even though each of these couples is already married by other jurisdictions.
Lynn and Lisa
Lynn Grotsky, a counselor in private practice, and Lisa Brodoff, a lawyer and member of the popular band The Righteous Mothers, have raised two children — Evan, 25 and Micha, 21 — in their home in Lacey. Neither had come out as lesbian when they first met in Seattle 1980.
Lynn had just moved to Seattle to start graduate school, and Lisa was just starting her career. Holly Near was coming to town to do a concert and a friend invited Lynn to a potluck before the concert. The dinner was at Lisa’s house. Lynn showed up on her moped, and the two women discovered that they liked each other, but not romantically.
Not long after, Lisa says, “I got this message. Lynn Near called.” At least that was what the friend taking the message heard. It was from Lynn and she referenced the Holly Near concert. She invited Lisa to a Halloween party. At the party Lynn told Lisa she was “giving up on men.” Lisa’s response was, “Oh my sister is lesbian.” There were mixed signals all around. Neither of the two had quite come to recognize their own orientation at the time and we’re certainly not ready to be out publically. Lynn, not wanting to scare Lisa away, insisted they were “just friends.”
Lynn now says she realized that, although she had been with a woman before Lisa, it wasn’t a serious relationship. She knew if she began a relationship with Lisa it would be a true commitment and that would mean coming to terms with being a lesbian. “Coming out as a lesbian was huge.” She said it meant risking the love and support of her family. Early on she did come out to her family. Her mother especially had a very difficult time accepting the relationship.
Lynn and Lisa moved in together after dating for two years. By then Lisa had moved to Olympia and Lynn had finished graduate school and a year working at Hospice in Seattle. They agreed that they wanted to have children, but they also agreed that they wanted to give themselves a couple of years to prepare. They started reading everything they could find on child rearing. They even got a dog in order to get used to being responsible for another living creature. When they were finally ready, they decided to have a child through artificial insemination. Lisa was to be the birth mother, and they were very particular about the sperm donor. He had to be Jewish, love music, and a whole list of other qualifications. They finally found the perfect donor who was already a friend.
Lisa got pregnant but miscarried. They didn’t give up, and a year later their daughter, Evan, was born. Then they were faced with the dilemma of what if something happened to Lisa. Lynn had no legal right of guardianship. They had to adopt their own baby. Could that even be done? They had been told it was not legal, but Lisa, being a lawyer, studied the laws on adoption in Washington State, and according to her reading of the law was convinced that there was nothing preventing it. So they went forth and ended up with a major legal battle on their hands. When Evan was two years old, a judge finally ruled that Washington State Law does allow lesbian couples to adopt and Evan could legally have two moms.
Micha was born shortly after that. By then gay parents adopting their own children had become rather routine. They became a kind of poster family and were even featured in Life magazine in 1999. Micha, now a college student, says, “I don’t have anything to compare it to (growing up with two moms). I don’t know what it’s like to have a mom and a dad, but I can’t imagine it could be more supportive.”
Lynn and Lisa had a Civil Union in Vermont and then became Registered Domestic Partners in Washington, but they vowed not to get married until it is legal in their own state of Washington. They plan to as soon as it is allowed.
Tina and Teresa
Teresa Guajardo and Tina Roose have been married and domestic partnered so many times they decided to create a “Magical Marriage Tour” T-shirt to document their journey. Now they plan to get married in the state where they live.
They met at a PFLAG-Olympia picnic in Yauger Park. PFLAG is a support group for gays and lesbians and their friends and family. It was Tina’s first time at a PFLAG event. She had recently moved to Olympia from Chicago. “I was a greeter,” Teresa said. “It was my birthday. Tina came up to me and said, ‘I really like you.’ We started dating a year later.” Tina announced at a PFLAG meeting that she had broken up with her partner, and Teresa says, “The lights went on above my head.” She invited Tina out for coffee. As she later recalled, “I didn’t really know it was a date.” They continued to see each other, took long walks together in Priest Point Park, and fell in love.
They moved in together 12 years ago. They continued to be active in PFLAG. When in 1999 the LGBT support organization invited then city council member Curt Pavola to register partners with the City of Olympia at a PFLAG meeting, Tina and Teresa became registered domestic partners, not exactly a wedding but as close to it as was possible at the time.
Five years later the state of Oregon legalized marriage for same sex couples and they drove to Portland to get married. It was International Women’s Day. They stood in line with hundreds of gay and lesbian couples who wanted to get a marriage license at the Multnomah County Building. “The line went around the block,” Tina says. “There was a black woman behind the counter wearing a shirt with the letters WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?). I asked her about it and she said, ‘Jesus would do exactly what I’m doing.’”
There were so many couples wanting to get married that there were multiple officiants performing ceremonies wherever they could set up. Tina and Teresa got married in a parking lot, and a hotel in Portland gave them a special deal on a room. They were married at last, but their marriage was not recognized by the state of Washington, and even in Oregon the marriage law was challenged and nullified, so they were unmarried again.
Next came a commitment ceremony with a huge turnout of family and friends on hand to wish them well. It took place on the deck of their home on the west side of Olympia. And then the state of Washington finally approved a domestic partnership law and once again they stood in line to register. This time Lynn Grotsky and Lisa Brodoff were ahead of them in line. So that makes four times they’ve been hitched. Teresa says, “We’ve had our wedding. Now we just want to get married.”
David and Jeff
David McDonald and Jeff Gruenewald first met in high school in British Columbia. David was 15 and Jeff 16. They were in the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat together. Neither one was out as gay at the time, but they knew they liked each other. They eventually went their separate ways. David got married and moved to the East Coast. He was married for 10 years.
One day he was listening to an interview with Chastity Bono. It was when Chastity first came out as lesbian, before realizing he was transsexual and becoming Chaz. Listening to Chastity convinced David to come out, which he did. His marriage broke up and he moved to Olympia. He was working for the state in the Department of Information Services.
He remembered his old friend Jeff and had tried unsuccessfully to contact him a couple of times. On one of those occasions Jeff got the message that “someone” had called for him. He says he immediately thought of David, but he didn’t have enough information to follow up and make the connection. It was as if they had been trying to reconnect for years, and finally they did, through a mutual friend, on April 7, 1998. “He invited me to dinner. I came to dinner and basically never left,” Jeff says.
They moved in together in a house in Olympia and later bought a house on Sunwood Lake in Lacey. They had a commitment ceremony at home outdoors overlooking the lake with 184 friends and family members in attendance. It was Sept. 8, 2001. They combined parts of their last names to become Jeff and David Walddon. They planned on a European honeymoon, but when all flights were cancelled on September 11th, they never got to take their European honeymoon.
Jeff and David wanted to have children. They searched for a baby to adopt, which was not easy. Jeff says they had 42 referrals before they finally got their son, Matthew. Some of them were not the right fit, others fell through because a relative adoption came up. David says some were because they were a new family and one of the first gay male couples that had gone through this process.
Putting together the paperwork for the adoption was horrible, they say. It took 18 months. Matthew was born at 25 weeks and weighed 1 pound, 10 ounces. He was 7 ½ weeks old when he came to them. He’s now 9 years old. They adopted their daughter, Elise, when she was 2 weeks old, and she’s now 6. Both Matthew and Elise are bright and happy kids who call their parents Daddy and Poppa.
Natives of Canada, David and Jeff finally decided to get married there in 2005. They had registered as domestic partners with the city of Olympia, but not with the state of Washington. They got their marriage license in a car insurance company located in a bank in Vancouver and were married at a crafts fair on Dec. 8, 2011. They will not have to get married again in Washington when it becomes legal since their marital status will automatically be accepted by the state because they were legally married in Canada.
Marriage equality also means financial equality for devoted partners. “We are harmed financially because we can’t get married,” Tina says. “We have to combine our incomes and file separately. Unmarried partners often pay more taxes than marrieds, depending on the benefit and cannot inherit access to any part of a deceased partner’s Social Security benefits. Additionally, Social Security survivor benefits for children could only be based on whether the deceased was the legal parent. Even if we get marriage in Washington, there are still over 1,000 federal benefits we won’t have access to under federal law.”
Even though Washington passed the so-called “everything but marriage” law, their rights are not accepted outside the state or by the federal government. This year, the Washington State legislature passed a marriage equality law which was signed by Gov. Gregoire. While the law may be challenged on the general ballot in November, there is much to celebrate during the Capital City Pride Festival.
