Benefits for gay couples a matter of fairness

By Allison Hantschel



At a dramatic moment in the documentary film "Freeheld," police officers pack a county government hearing, holding up signs that say, "Don't let Lt. Laurel Hester die like this. Have compassion."

The film deals with the late Lt. Laurel Hester's fight to will her police pension to her longtime partner, Stacie Andree. The freeholders, or officials, of Ocean County, N.J., at first denied Hester's request, made when she found out she was dying of cancer. They had the power through state law to leave a pension to a "non-spouse" but refused because Hester was homosexual.

"I am her wife," Andree says, simply and sweetly, to the camera. "I am her caretaker. She is everything to me."

"It was Lt. Laurel Hester's dying wish that her fight against discrimination would make a difference for all the same-sex couples across the country that face discrimination every day," said filmmaker Cynthia Wade, accepting the Academy Award for best documentary short subject Sunday night. "Discrimination that I don't face as a married woman." Wade's colleague, Vanessa Roth, called Andree "my hero in life."

The story they told in the film was one more reminder that however much the opponents of extending marital benefits to gay couples want to make this issue about who doesn't like what kind of sex, at the end of the day, fundamental questions of fairness are at stake.

But leaving the legal arguments aside, no one on the other side of the "debate" over marriage equality has yet been able to explain to me how it would harm my marriage, nay, affect it at all, if people like Hester and Andree had been able to count on getting the same health and civic benefits as my husband and I do.

Without a doubt, should a Democratic candidate lose in November, plenty of his or her constituents will blame those who pushed for equal justice for all, and say they made the rest of the party look bad to "Middle America" or "the Heartland" or whatever imaginary place is deemed too backward for fairness to be understood.

Should that happen, I can only hope someone will remind people of Laurel Hester and Stacie Andree and how they didn't know or care one bit about my marriage or yours. They cared about their own, and all they wanted was to be able to care for each other.

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