So once again a civil unions bill has died in Colorado’s legislature. Through political game play and acts of cowardice — which would be humorous if they weren’t despicable. It was tossed around like a rainbow-striped football before being shot down. It’s no more nor less than I really expected from the Republican leadership in our current House of Representatives.
I am a faithful Christian and a lay minister in the Episcopal church, ironically a “family minister,” called to and charged with the care and education of our children, youth and families. And I never fail to be shocked at the widespread belief that one group’s religious beliefs has any place in our civil rights. By the way, our church community stands ready to bless our union and our family.
And here’s the main source of my bitterness: I’ve been married. “Traditionally” married. Legally married, and blessed by my church with the full rights and responsibilities that come with that allegedly most blessed of unions between a man and a woman.
I spent four years being emotionally controlled and abused. Four years losing my self respect to my husband’s anger and domination. Four years trying desperately to protect my stepdaughter who received the physical abuse he barely managed to withhold from me. I left him once; my church referred us to counseling and turned a blind eye when his daughter showed up at youth group with a large and swollen bruise on her mouth.
Four years with all the legal protections of traditional marriage, which my husband exploited to the point where he drunkenly trashed our home and discharged a gun about 5 feet away from me. I finally left him that night. I took my stepdaughter, the dog and the clothes on my back, which didn’t include shoes.
He went to detox, then to jail, and finally to rehab, where he conveniently thrust all of his issues into a nice big box labelled “alcoholic,” and then he expected me to come back to him once he was sober. Our priest insisted that the only Christian thing to do was to give him another chance now that he was sober. The problem is that alcoholism was a Band-Aid, which could never cover the gaping wound that was his addiction to anger.
So, yeah, I’ve been married.
Then, having escaped him, I was shocked to find myself in love with my best friend. Who happens to be a woman. Over time, we built a life together. A life with a mortgage, some credit cards, two paychecks, a rescue dog, a shared love of books and movies, and some great travel. We pledged to stand by and love my partner’s teenagers from her marriage.
Then we began to add to our family. We lost twins to an ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage. We found the child of our dreams languishing in our county’s foster care system and brought him home. I resigned my teaching position to stay home with him; we lost a paycheck. We added a puppy. We added a large car loan to finance one child’s college education. We found the best doctors and therapists and schools to help deal with our beautiful boy’s challenges — a cerebral palsy diagnosis and post-traumatic stress disorder from the multiple moves he experienced in foster care in his first year.
In the meantime we laughed and cried and cleaned up puppy mistakes and fixed things that broke in our house and shoveled snow and paid the mortgage and celebrated Christmas and had dinners with friends and all that other stuff that all couples do.
Then we brought home another beautiful boy and celebrated and got up in the middle of the night and bought baby gear and changed diapers and taught them to run through the sprinklers and continued to pay the mortgage and celebrate Christmas and hire babysitters so we can have a few hours together and see a movie that isn’t animated. Yeah, all that stuff that couples with kids do.
And then my beloved had cancer, and we spent a few terrifying months praying it wouldn’t all come to a crashing end. We held hands and kissed before she went into surgery. Our priest and friend sat with me while I shook and cried in fear and exhaustion. Doctors and nurses at the Catholic hospital saw two people who loved each other deeply and who didn’t want to even think about the possibility of losing each other.
They met our boys, eventually, and saw us as parents who are loved and needed. Our families stood by us and prayed and hoped with us and worried for and with us. The oncologist and oncology nurses who saw us for chemo every two weeks got to know us, heard about our kids and our life and our experiences. We learned about them and at the end of a grueling six months they stood around us and sang “Hit the Road, Jack” just the same as they did for the hetero cancer patients. And none of these people ever thought for a second, “Well, it’s not like they were a straight couple. They’re the same gender so this isn’t really all that big a deal.”
And now I’ve gone back to work, and our older child is in day treatment for the early traumas he endured. Our youngest is strong and healthy because he didn’t have to go through all of that. And we do our absolute best every day to give them both what they need.
This means shuttling one to a special school half way across town and open enrolling the other in a school for gifted and talented kids. It means picking up one and taking him several counties away for equine therapy while the other one falls asleep in the car. It means bringing home a third dog two years ago because we needed a therapy dog. It still means hiring a sitter when we can and heading out for a meal that doesn’t include fries and a movie with actual people in it.
How is it possible that what we’re doing here, day in and day out, could be a “threat” to the sanctity of traditional marriage. We are as married as it gets, people! This is not glamorous. Sometimes it’s a bit grubby, if you want to know the truth. We’ve been tired since 2005.
We laugh and we cry and we pay the mortgage and the bills and we have two paychecks that barely cover it and there is dog hair on literally every single thing we own.
Our kids bicker and fight and sometimes in a moment of absolute grace they get along and giggle together. We go on vacations and make memories and take pictures and post them on Facebook for our friends and relations.
And every day, every minute, I’ve got Karen’s back and she’s got mine. We value, love, trust and support each other.
How is this not marriage? And how can this be a threat to anyone else’s marriage? To marriage as an institution?
So, yeah, I’m a little bitter that when I did get married — you know, legally, to a guy — when that marriage was in reality more of a threat. In fact it was an absolute insult to the sanctity of marriage, and it came to a fiery crash of an ending where someone might literally have been killed.
And now, after 11 years, 4 kids, 3 dogs, cancer, and all the challenges and delights of family life in America in 2012, my family is somehow undeserving of equal consideration because my love and I happen to be the same gender.
What a shame. As in shame on those who killed Colorado’s civil unions bill in an act of cowardice and political pandering. For Shame.
Christina Clark is the family minister at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Denver and the author of a novel, “Little Gods on Earth.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
