6 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

February 13, 2009 www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com

letterstotheeditors

President Obama: Remember me?

To the Editors:

President Obama: I am still relevant. I cannot be ignored nor will I. I enter people's lives in times of love, in times when they're looking for love in "the wrong places." Or have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I've been here over 20 years now. At first, I received the attention of the world and I was glad of it. Now, I'm a fly on the collective shoulder of man. A dark fly that many have pushed into the bottomless shadows. I will not be ignored.

I'm still here, though. I'm not going away and it's getting more and more expensive to house me. I now have billions of homes. I am Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Hindi, Buddhist, Catholic, Protestant, Pagan, Evangelical.

I haven't any political/religious affiliation or agenda other than what flaw-filled mankind has thrust upon me. I am everywhere in the United States of America. Other houses of mine are well-known around the

speakout

world. I ruin all houses I enter emotionally, physically and metaphorically.

I am AIDS.

I am your neighbor, brother, sister, mother and father. I am now your legacy, President Obama. Will you end the Age of AIDS that has gripped Washington, D.C., your neighborhood, where you and First Lady Michelle Obama want to make a difference?

You have been re-given the chance for America to lead in the fight against AIDS. I challenge you: Mandate syringe exchange and drug-treatment. Encourage the new surgeon general in HIV/AIDS reeducation for everyone. Encourage parent/child dialogue about HIV/AIDS. Promote age-appropriate sex education together with abstinence.

I'm a 20+ year survivor and I believe you can make a difference in this world and this country. I voted for change and hope. This is the hope for which I voted. End AIDS now!

Robert Toth Cleveland

Family is not an Etch-a-Sketch

To the Editors:

I read the article about the Siobhan LaPiana/ Rita Goodman situation [Mom wants ban used to keep ex from kids, January 30].

It was disturbing for two reasons. First, because LaPiana audaciously feels as if she can shake up and erase the past like an Etcha-Sketch, undoing a family she created with Goodman involving two children and legal documents drawn up to protect that family.

Second, because LaPiana wants to use the Ohio's marriage ban amendment-which she obviously wouldn't have agreed with when drawing up those protective documents-to aid in her misguided efforts to remove Goodman from the lives of their two children. The situation is one of vindictiveness and flippancy on the part of LaPiana. Hopefully——— per the Ohio Supreme Court ruling in the 2002 case of In re Bonfield that said parenting and custody agreements between same-sex parents are constitutional and enforceablethe rights of Rita Goodman will not be denied.

Guytano Parks Lakewood, Ohio

For Valentine, marriage was a justice issue

by Rev. Margaret R. Hawk

It's Valentine's Day in all the stores, and has been for weeks. It will be for a several days to come, even as they switch gears and put up St. Patrick's Day goodies. It's the season for love, young and old. The jewelers are selling both engagement rings and "love's journey" pendants; other vendors have heart-shaped goods in every conceivable material from chocolate to paper to lace and beyond. Valentine cards for friends, family, co-workers, and secret or not-so-secret-loves can be had from the grocery to the drugstore to the specialty shop.

Love is in the air, and it can be quite heady, even for the brokenhearted who yearn to love again. It really is better to "have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." I was reminded about that truism in a most unlikely place a year ago the lawyer's office.

Last Valentine's Day, I was six months on from the death of my partner of 22 years, who had breast cancer. Not wanting to wander, ignorant and alone, in the caverns of probate court, I engaged a lawyer. He's a grandfatherly looking fellow, who judging by the photos on his office walls probably is a grandfather. We both reside in Union County, a hotbed of Republican conservatism, and I expected no sympathy as a lesbian trying to defend my place in my deceased beloved's life.

But I found that loves lost to cancer can bond people, even a 40-something lesbian and a 60-something lawyer. His wife succumbed to ovarian cancer about two and a half years ago, and in his kindly eyes I saw a look of pained understanding. Despite our differences, he knew the path I was beginning to tread, and he genuinely met me with an open heart. I pray that this Valentine's Day will be easier for him than the last.

I also found this lawyer a surprising ally in another way. As we discussed my partner's

GayPeoplesChronicle.com

debts and what was required of her estate, he told me that if there aren't enough funds in her estate, proper, I am not legally responsible to assume her debts. (In other words, I don't have to pay her bills if there are more of them than there is cash in her bank account.)

After a meaningful pause he looked up at me and said, “You probably should be but you aren't." I smiled at him. In Union County, Ohio, I had found someone who thought that after 22 years together; after buying a home together; after raising two children together; after living, loving, laughing and crying together for 22 years, I should be considered a spouse with all the rights and responsibilities that go with such a commitment. Well, how about that?

As Valentine's Day comes and goes this year, we might all do well to consider one strain of Valentine's Day lore the one about the priest jailed for continuing to marry people even after it had been declared illegal. Toward the end of the Roman Empire, as chaos began to reign in the overextended realm, Claudius II needed more and more troops to try to hold on to land and power.

Since married men were distracted by thoughts of home and family, the tradition says Claudius declared marriage illegal so he'd have plenty of single men to draft into the military. Valentine, variously described as either priest or bishop, saw the pain the edict caused young lovers and continued to meet with couples in secret to marry them anyway. Once married, the men were safe from conscription. Found out and arrested,

Valentine was eventually executed.

For St. Valentine, love became a justice issue. For several years now, love has also been a justice issue in the United States and in the state of Ohio. Twenty-two years ago, I could not legally married my beloved. If heaven blesses me with another love in the second half of my life, it looks like I still won't be able to get legally married.

The pastor who presided over my Holy Union doesn't stand in jeopardy of being arrested, and neither do I as I perform the same pastoral office. But it remains our duty to remind others that if any two people are willing to take on the responsibilities of being a couple, they should be able to take on all the rights and all the responsibilities, not just some.

If I want the right to be married, I must be prepared to be responsible for my partner's debts. If I want the right to be present in the hospital room as she dies, I need to be willing to pay the doctor's bills, and I am. Many of our neighbors, friends and family members are also ready to take on all these rights and responsibilities for the sake of the love they

feel.

How many more Valentine's Days will come and go before all of us can say, "Will you be mine?" and be able to back it with a trip to the marriage license bureau, justice

of the peace or clergy of our choice? ♡

Rev. Margaret R. Hawk is pastor of New Creation Metropolitan Community Church in Columbus.

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