Love Is Love

Well over ten years ago I met the woman that would become my future wife. Like most love stories, I guess, it was out of the blue and unplanned. I was visiting friends in New Jersey, who had to work one of the weekends I was there and suggested I fly south to visit with my friends in North Carolina. I did, and after that initial meeting, over the course of the following summer, my life changed.

The phrase that has been adopted through the battles for marriage equality — Love is Love — has always had a home in my heart, because it was a chance meeting in the hallway of what is now my home that put it there. She was going one way, I was coming the other, and we met… and no, it wasn’t the cliched love at first sight, because… well… it wasn’t first sight. We’d seen each other before then and I think to begin with we weren’t sure about each other, but in that meeting, as we stood there for an awkward second, a heart’s-thought occurred to me. ‘I could love this woman.’

It was a strange feeling, because at that time, if you had asked me to name my sexual orientation, I would have told you ‘I’m straight.’ I knew she was not, none of that mattered to our friendship, but I ‘listened’ and I ‘felt’ and over the course of the months that followed the friendship grew, the love became a big part of our lives, and we became a couple; a couple in a distance relationship, one separated by thousands of miles — 3388 miles, the route map on the planes always used to tell me, as they took off.

Our family life became a series of very late nights/early mornings, computers, Skype and expensive flights taken once every roughly six to eight weeks — what other options did we have, if we wanted to be together — and we did. And we began a decade long struggle to be allowed to stay together, legally. Being from the UK I wasn’t eligible for the ‘Green Card Lottery,’ and though I’m a teacher, employment based immigration wasn’t working out. Life became a series of difficult decisions, and inabilities to be with one another, when either of us was sick or in need of each other, became a painful reality. I was faced, over and over, with growing despondency and comments such as, “It’s never going to happen.” and through it all, from somewhere found the strength to say, “It will… have faith.” and to mean it. Yet, every six to eight weeks, after one, or two, or in the summer time six glorious weeks together, we always found ourselves saying goodbye.

Then came the discrimination.

The first time it happened was terrifying. I didn’t know what was happening, and neither did my wife, because — me being a bit of a stickler for the rules when it says I can’t use my phone, I don’t use my phone. I arrived for a visit, and a new immigration officer — one I hadn’t seen before — sent me ‘downstairs’ for secondary processing. Yes. I was detained. In order to be allowed to enter the country, I was expected to prove I had employment in the UK. How do you do that when the school you work for doesn’t mandate wearing ID badges — and even if they had, who brings their ID card on vacation with them?

Meanwhile outside, in arrivals, my now-wife was frantic with worry; asking airport staff where I was, because she knew I was on the plane, I’d messaged her when they were closing the airplane door, before switching off my phone. Still they tried to tell her that I must not have taken the flight. In the end after hours of worry, and the intervention of a second immigration officer who made it possible for me to access my online bank account in order to be able to show them six months worth of salary deposits, I was allowed into the country and reunited with my wife. A second passenger came out moments before me — a man that was being picked up by his, obviously, romantic partner… also a man.

I was detained once more after that, ironically when I was travelling /with/ my wife, so at least she knew what was going on that time. And in all of this, worrying, while I was standing in the long line at the customs and border patrol area that it was going to happen again, and that maybe this time they wouldn’t let me come through, I still kept flying back and forth and back and forth and back… to the UK.

We were ‘married’ in September of 2010, and when I say married, I mean that we engaged the services of a minister, booked a venue and had a ceremony that we considered to be our wedding before family and friends. However, the State of North Carolina did not, at that time, allow same sex marriages and so at best we had made absolutely no progress toward our eventual goal of living together as a family. Imagine marrying and then having to separate after a few weeks, after our honeymoon? That was our reality.

We returned to the same back and forth, distance relationship we somehow ‘managed.’ We did not give in. It would have — could have been so easy, at times, to say… enough is enough. Except it wasn’t easy and it was never an option. Love is love and we were then as now, in love — deeply.

In June of 2013 the US Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). I was on Tenterhooks, sitting at my computer watching the SCOTUS blog for the ruling as it came in. My wife was at work and had told me, “Text me when you know anything.” I watch and I waited, and then suddenly there it was… DOMA had been struck down. There was now no barrier to our being reunited in the country of our choice, to live together as a couple, so long as we were legally married, which of course, because of state laws, we were not. Still it was a victory — I wept and shook as I sent the text, it took me so long to type it, I thought that someone else would tell her before I had the chance to get it to her. It’s hard, even now, to put into words, the feelings we shared that day, even though we were 3388 (and then some) miles from each other. You’ll hear people say that hope is the hardest emotion to deal with, but when the hope you’ve carried, and the faith you’ve held for so long becomes vindicated, it is so cathartic it’s almost too much to bear. I still weep now when I think about that day, because the feelings are still overwhelming — though in the best of ways.

We made our plans, and having been told it could take up to a year for all the paperwork to be completed and the visa granted, during which time I wouldn’t be able to even visit — and my wife having suffered an injury needing back surgery in the year before, which restricted her mobility somewhat, we decided that I would visit in the summer of 2013, adjust things around the house so that a year apart would be managable if it came to it, and that we would make the application for a fiancee visa after I returned to the UK, then when all was done I would move to be with her in the US. It didn’t turn out that way. Life wasn’t done throwing us curve balls.

A little over two weeks after I arrived in the summer, we were turning left at an intersection, the road junction was controlled by a stop light that had a turn lane and dedicated turn arrow. As we were turning, a driver coming in the opposite direction failed to stop at his red light, and his car slammed into the passenger side of our vehicle, where I was sitting. Luckily, the only injury I sustained was from the deployment of the SIPS side and curtain airbags, (thank you Ford), but it scared us. It terrified us. What if it hadn’t been an injury free accident? What if we had been apart? What if something happened to either of us in a different way and we were separated for good? There is no fear like the fear of losing someone you love, even if that fear is irrational and unfounded, which ours was not. We contacted the lawyer handling our immigration case, to ask if there was a way we could go through the process without me having to leave the country.

Thankfully there was, we took that route, and in September of 2013 — three years and nine days after the date that we consider our wedding — we went to New York City and were legally married in Manhattan. The immigration paperwork was filed and in June of 2014, I became a permanent resident, at last able to reside with my wife.

The story doesn’t end there though, because at that time, in the state of North Carolina, same sex marriage was neither permitted nor recognized, and even though I now had the legal right to live with my wife, we were still in the exact same position should anything have happened to either of us that we were before. The worries didn’t go away, they were just a little bit easier to deal with, because we could actually and physically hold each other through them. That changed for us in October of 2014, when our state recognized same sex marriage, but through our own struggles we were painfully aware that this was not the case for thousands of other couples around the country. We could have been content — had an ‘I’m all right, Jack,’ kind of attitude, but that is not who we are. We continued to support, to share, to be vocal about the need for marriage equality everywhere in the US.

Today, was with a strange echo to the one in June of 2013. I was home, sitting at my computer waiting for the Supreme Court Ruling. My wife had said to me, “Send me a message when you know anything.” and gone off to work. The Ruling came, and I quickly found, through eyes blurred with fresh new tears, a breaking news article which I sent to her through Messenger. We were finally legal everywhere in the country in which we made our home. Those thousands of others can be legally recognized as bound in marriage no matter in what state they live, and while I understand and respect that there are still people uncomfortable with the idea of marriage equality, who for whatever personal reasons feel in opposition to recogniton that members of the same gender have entered into matrimony, just for today, I am unapologetic in my happiness, and in the relief that this ruling has brought to my family, to many other families, and to those wanting to be families, elsehwere around the country.

Marriage is finally to be equally provided and recognized throughout all 50 states. Today truly is a good day… and yes, I did — as I had said I would — kiss my wife when she came home for lunch.