Gay Couples Celebrate New Status
By TRACY GORDON FOX
Published: October 16, 2008
BETH KERRIGAN and Jody Mock returned from their twins’ first overnight Boy Scout camping trip last Sunday afternoon with loads of laundry and everyone tired and hungry. They ordered in Chinese food, threw some clothes in the washing machine and read to the boys before bed.
They have always considered themselves to be really no different from any other Connecticut family, balancing work with the children’s activities and adorning the walls of their comfortable suburban home with children’s drawings and photographs.
Only now, they will be allowed to put a name to their living arrangement that is routine to many Connecticut couples: Marriage.
The Oct. 10 State Supreme Court decision that legalizedsame-sex marriage — making Connecticut the third state in the nation to do so — will change little else about day-to-day life in the Kerrigan-Mock household. They will still go to their jobs in the insurance industry every day. Their lives will still be centered on their 6-year-old twins, Carlos and Fernando, adopted from Guatemala, and they will continue to worry about how they will pay for their college.
But on another level, the historic court decision on a lawsuit that named them as the lead plaintiffs will deeply alter the lives of the two middle-aged women, who have been together for nearly 15 years.
“For me, it’s never been about the wedding,” Ms. Kerrigan said. “You live your life feeling different.”
When the decision was announced on that Friday morning, she said, “I felt whole, like somehow I became equal.”
They filed the lawsuit four years ago after being denied a marriage license, and were thrust into the spotlight of a hot-button political issue that continues to reverberate in Connecticut and across the nation.
The goal for the couple and other plaintiffs all along was to have access to something other couples take for granted.
“Marriage is so commonplace, so ordinary. And to have that withheld from you as an adult is painful,” Ms. Kerrigan said. “Now when they say yes, you can, it is reason to celebrate. Now we are part of the fold.”
Although the high court’s decision cannot be appealed, it may have given more fuel to an effort to pass a state constitutional ban on gay marriage.
Voters in Connecticut will decide on Nov. 4 whether the state should hold a constitutional convention. Opponents of gay marriage are calling for a yes vote, hoping that will clear the way for a voter referendum on the issue.
“In a way, if we do get a yes vote, we have the State Supreme Court to thank,” said Peter Wolfgang, the director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, which has been leading the fight against same-sex marriage.
“Our phones have been ringing off the hook, asking for lawn signs,” Mr. Wolfgang said.
But that process could take years, even if voters say yes next month.
State Representative Michael P. Lawlor, an East Haven Democrat, predicted that the convention idea would be voted down and that the Legislature would pass a new law conforming to the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing gay marriage. “I believe we have the votes to pass a marriage equality bill,” said Mr. Lawlor, who is co-chairman of the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee and is openly gay.
But an opponent of same-sex marriage, the State House minority leader, Lawrence F. Cafero Jr. of Norwalk, isn’t so sure. He pointed out that while a clear majority of lawmakers approved civil unions for gays in 2005, a bill offered two years later to legalize gay marriage didn’t have enough support and was withdrawn.
He still believes the legislature will eventually have to do something to respond to the court’s ruling that having a separate civil union law for gays and lesbians was discriminatory, he said. “Many, including myself, may not agree with the Supreme Court, but that’s the law now,” he said.
Like many gay couples, Ms. Kerrigan and Ms. Mock are likely to obtain a marriage license as soon as they can after Oct. 28, the first day same-sex marriages will be allowed, and have a celebration at a later date.
“The battle is in no way over,” Ms. Kerrigan conceded. “It’s never won with just one ruling.”
On the day they learned the decision had come down in their favor, the two women proposed marriage to each other in the living room of their home, even as news video cameras rolled, “because you actually could now, and it meant something,” Ms. Mock said.
“We have been married for years,” Ms. Mock said, referring to living together and raising a family. “It’s a matter of saying that we can be. We are no longer a separate category that defines us as somehow different. It makes the family official to at least the state government.”
The country’s ambivalence with the idea of same-sex marriage is reflected in their own families. Ms. Kerrigan said that when she was 33, her mother wrote her a letter saying Ms. Kerrigan needed to seek counseling and that she would disown her if Ms. Kerrigan did not end her relationship with a woman.
Years later, the mother and daughter have reconciled, and they celebrate holidays and birthdays together at the parents’ home on Long Island.
And yet when she called her devout Irish Catholic parents, now in their 80s, to tell them of the court decision, there was a stony silence on the other end, Ms. Kerrigan said. She said she hopes they will have a more positive reaction when she visits.
Ms. Mock said her family has always been supportive.
The two women met in 1993 when Ms. Kerrigan was moving from Massachusetts to Connecticut for a job in insurance, and went into a bookstore to look for a place to rent. She found a posting by Ms. Mock, who was looking for a roommate.
The two shared a home for five months before becoming a couple. In 2002, they adopted Carlos and Fernando when the boys were 7 months old.
From the time they moved to West Hartford, Ms. Kerrigan, 53, and Ms. Mock, 54, were warmly accepted into their eclectic neighborhood, where neighbors were more surprised that they were adopting small children at such a late age rather than that they were a gay couple.
“They are very typical of any of us on our street. They are two regular people living together, raising their family, and have the typical problems that we all have in a relationship,” said Ronda Guberman, a neighbor, who held a shower for the couple when they adopted their twins.
Carlos and Fernando, rambunctious boys who wrestle on the couch and love to watch movies about race cars, are excited about the wedding, wavering between wearing their suits and ties or their superhero costumes.
They call Ms. Kerrigan “Mommy,” and Ms. Mock “Mamu,” different names for their two mothers.
Their mothers explained to them on the day of the decision that state leaders had changed their minds and said boys could marry boys and girls could marry girls.
Carlos looked puzzled about why that hadn’t always been allowed, and asked his mothers: “Does that mean they were wrong yesterday?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/nyregion/connecticut/19gayct.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0
Structure of the Lead:
WHO-Beth Kerrigan and Jody Mock
WHEN-last Sunday afternoon
WHAT-legalized same-sex marriage
WHY-not given
WHERE-Connecticut
HOW-not given
Keywords:
1.adorn 裝飾
2.suburban 郊區的
3.arrangement 安排
4.constitutional 基本的
5.ambivalence 矛盾心理
6.eclectic 折衷的
