We like to garden and bake and dance and laugh. We take in mail for neighbors on vacation and send birthday cards to their kids.
You see, we're like you.
And like you, we want our marriage - our commitment of 30 years - to be honored in our home state. So long as marriage is permitted to some and denied to others, we to whom it is denied are second-class citizens, separated from the fully accepted, less than equal.
There are other, more practical protections of marriage too, for example:
* Eligibility for health benefits (without taxation) through a spouse's employer;
* Ability to inherit jointly owned property without incurring tax penalties;
* Ability to take leave to care for a sick spouse under the Family and Medical Leave Act;
* Right to file joint income taxes;
* Entitlement to inherit Social Security and disability benefits upon the death of a spouse;
* Right to inherit a spouse's pension;
* Access to "family" memberships;
* Community property ownership protections.
If Maryland honors the legal marriages of same-sex couples from other jurisdictions, it won't deliver all of these benefits. But it will help with many of them and provide further momentum for repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by Congress in 1996, which denies legally married same-sex couples more than 1,000 federal protections.
Heterosexual convicted murderers have the right to marry. Heterosexual people who have racked up a dozen divorces have the right to marry. Heterosexual couples who have known each other for only a few days have the right to marry. Heterosexual movie stars doing it for publicity have the right to marry.
But we don't. Though a case might easily be made that the marriages of these others pose a threat to the sanctity of the institution, they are nevertheless legal.
We hope with all our hearts that Attorney General Doug Gansler and Gov. Martin O'Malley will offer us a belated wedding present of security, peace and governmental protection by finding the legal grounds to honor our Canadian marriage.
Patricia Montley (pat_mon tley@msn.com) and Sally Wall ( snwall4@msn.com) live in Lutherville.
