For 60 years, waiting for the freedom to marry

I ghostwrote the following piece published in Street Roots newspaper on behalf of the Oregon United for Marriage campaign. A few short weeks later, Eugene passed away. May he rest in peace. Theirs is a beautiful love story, and it highlights the inequalities LGBTQ couples face.

by Eugene Woodworth | 26 Dec 2013

For 60 years, waiting for the freedom to marry

 

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Eugene (left) and his partner, Eric, have been together for six decades, waiting for the state of Oregon to allow them to marry.

Photo by Natalie Henry Bennon

Eugene Woodworth passed away Dec. 21. He was 85 years old. Before he died, he wrote this piece for Street Roots about his dream of marriage equality in Oregon.

When I first met Eric, I got cold all over and couldn’t move. It felt like destiny: I’d just met the person I was going to spend the rest of my life with. We both knew we were gay, even though we didn’t have a word for it, and we both knew, deep down, that we were OK with our identities.
That was 60 years ago, and we’ve been a couple ever since. Now in our 80s, we’re still waiting to have the freedom to marry in Oregon, but our time is running short. I have congestive heart failure. In the last four months, my energy has plummeted. My doctor estimates I have 12 months to live.
We’d like to marry before I die, but travelling to Washington is an onerous journey for someone who can barely walk a block. Nobody should be told it is illegal to marry the person they love, and it saddens me that Oregon is the last state on the West Coast that doesn’t allow same-sex couples to marry. I’m doing my best to change that, and I hope you will get involved with Oregon United for Marriage as well.

My relationship with Eric has a long history. That first day we met, we went to a friend’s party, and then went out afterward. The waitress in the restaurant said, “Are you twins?” “Yes,” we said. We used that cover for decades. It was an intuitive thing. In hindsight, it was also an affirmation. Everyone would ask us, “Are you twins?” or “Are you brothers?” It was like they knew there was something deeper between us. They knew we were family. At the time, the safest way to refer to each other in public was as brothers. It protected us, while also affirming our love, commitment and sense of family.

Coming to Portland also felt like destiny. We were riding the train down from Seattle. When we passed Longview and crossed into Oregon, we started feeling at home. Within a few minutes, we were thinking, “we really like this place. And we weren’t even in Portland yet. When we did get off the train, we just felt at home. That was 1955. Portland was much more conservative then, but it was safer than Chicago.

Everybody lives in a closet. And you’ve got to discern what that closet is and get out of it so you can live a full life, rather than one of partial secrecy. We didn’t come out of the closet until 1977. Eric was Catholic. He had even spent several years in a monastery before we met. I converted. And a rogue Franciscan friar married us right here in our living room, with friends looking on. There was even an article in The Oregonian. It felt like an enormous step, to come out, to admit that this man was not my brother but my husband, and to stop leaving him at home the night of the office holiday party. It wasn’t a marriage sanctioned by church or state, but it mattered to us.

In 1993, we were married again. We had both converted to Buddhism, and we were married at the Dharma Rain Center in southeast Portland. Ten years later, we publicly renewed our vows again. And each time we got up in front of our loving friends to publicly state our love and commitment to each other, it mattered. But it also mattered that they were not legally recognized weddings.

Being married says something to others about our aspirations in relation to another human being. Marriage says “family” in a way no other word does. That social recognition is extraordinarily powerful, and marriage would help Eric and me to have the protections and responsibilities we need to take care of each other.

I never get tired of waking up next to Eric, listening to him, watching him or feeling his hand squeeze my shoulder as he passes by. I felt when I met him that it was the first day of the rest of my life. I hope that some day soon, all Oregonians will have the freedom to marry.

To get involved with Oregon United for Marriage, go to www.OregonUnitedForMarriage.org.

My laptop's connection to war

Have you ever wondered what the world would be like now if the Cold War had never happened?

As World War II spurred U.S. military funding for aviation, the Cold War spurred military funding for computers. The military and military contractors developed computer graphics, virtual images, word processing, cutting and pasting, the use of separate windows, hypertext, computer conferencing, and even the mouse -- and, of course, the first Internet. The U.S. military was the first to embrace computers as communication devices rather than simply complex calculators. And that has made all the difference. That alone has completely shaped my and your daily experiences.

No cell phones. No laptops. No sensors in my washing machine to know when to stop adding water. No bluetooth in my car. And if you work in a hospital, imagine all the computerized equipment you would have to do without.

Without the Cold War, I don't think you'd be reading this right now. I love these advances. But the fact that our modern lifestyle is so intrinsically tied to war blows my mind a little. Does it blow yours? What else would we be different now?