Gay marriage rights inequalities in America | Nadine Smith | TEDxTampaBay

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.

In this talk, Nadine Smith highlights legal inequalities concerning same sex couples in the U.S.

She has been executive director of Equality Florida since its inception in 1997, and was executive director of its predecessor, the Human Rights Task Force of Florida, prior to that. She joined the organization in 1993, after serving as one of four national cochairs on the 1993 March on Washington and taking part in the historic, first-ever meeting between LGBT leaders and a sitting U.S. President, Clinton, in the White House.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

You know, it's tax time,

and so, I've been thinking a lot
about my wedding day.

It was just two years ago, in August,

and we were in Burlington,

on what was the most beautiful day.

Our wedding was
at the Quaker Meeting House,

and the flowers were in bloom,
and the weather was perfect.

And as my father walked me down the aisle,

we were surrounded
by my closest friends, my family.

My niece was the flower girl,
my nephew was the ring bearer.

It was a gorgeous, gorgeous day.

My mother-in-law, when we had told her

six months earlier
that we were going to get married,

she sprung into action, she was fantastic.

I don't think a wedding
has ever been planned as swiftly,

cake, caterer, location.

And even though my fiancée
and I were head over heels,

we said, "You know what?
We're going to be reasonable people.

We're not going to, you know,
lose our minds."

I didn't want to be a "bridezilla."

So, we said, "We're going
to keep this thing affordable,

it'll be an intimate gathering."

And we both made that commitment.

So, I'm not sure how we got
from that modest assessment

of what our wedding would be like

to deciding, "Yes, we actually do need
to rent the top deck

of the Spirit of Ethan Allen
for the sunshine cruise of Lake Champlain.

(Laughter)

But I'm very glad that we did,
because it really was

just an absolutely perfect way

to end the best day of my life.

And of the hundreds of pictures
that were taken that day,

the one that really, for me,
captures the joy and the excitement

of entering this new married chapter
of my life with my wife Andrea

is this one -

- that I can't get.

(Laughter)

So, I'll tell you about it.

Here we were, emerging from the clearing,

right after the wedding ceremony.

And we were just so thrilled.

And I love to say "my wife Andrea."
I love to say it.

I love to say it because, as a gay person,

the nomenclature's always
been a challenge.

You know, "girlfriend"
sounds too juvenile, right?

What are the others?
"Life partner" sounds very formal.

"Significant other" sounds clinical.
(Laughter)

Right? And then, you've got "lover,"
that just sounds too much, too -

(Laughter)

- too European.
(Laughter)

But one "wife," "spouse," and "husband,"

these words have
pretty near a universal meaning.

When you hear somebody
introduce their spouse,

you know right away
that this is the person who is most dear,

this is the person who has
that special, permanent place

in your heart and in your life.

And yet, where and when
I declare Andrea as my wife

places me in jeopardy.

Now, I'm not talking about
physical jeopardy,

even though gay people more
often experience

hate crimes.

And when hate crimes are inflicted,
they're usually the most violent category.

I'm not talking about that; I'm not even
talking about economic discrimination,

because it's significant.

As a matter of fact, The New York Times
did a study that calculated essentially

that, compared to their
hetorosexual counterparts,

gay couples could expect
to basically be docked

more than 450,000 dollars
in their lifetime

in taxes, benefits that we do not get.

So, it's significant,
but I'm not actually talking about that.

I'm talking about actual legal jeopardy.

So, it's tax time and I'm thinking
about my wedding

because the form that the government
provides us to fill out at tax time

requires, under penalty of perjury,
that we identify our marital status,

but if I check that box as "married," -

and this is my wedding certificate,
my marriage certificate -

if I check that box and say,
"Yes, I am married,"

the federal government says that I can
face penalties, criminal penalties,

financial penalties, for stating
what is simply true about my life.

It's a circumstance that tens of thousands

of legally married gay people
face every tax season.

You know, Massachusetts became the first
state where gay people could marry,

but since then, all across our country
and all across the world,

gay people have been marrying
in jurisdictions and countries,

and what it presents is a choice
that you have to make

between telling the truth
or following the law.

And it's even more complicated than that.

There was recently a report
on a campaign that we launched,

called "Refuse to Lie,"
because what we realized

was there were lots of people
in the same situation

that Andrea and I were facing.

For the very first time,
as a legally married couple,

we were facing that document and trying
to decide what we were going to do.

And, thinking back on that amazing day,

we could not conclude that we would
take an action that would erase it,

that would call that day a lie.

And this is a conversation that we've been
having with people across the country,

and increasingly, people are making
that same decision,

because it is a lie to say
that I'm not married.

And the reason the government
wants to compel me to mark "single"

is because the government
wants to discriminate

without getting its hands dirty.

The Congress passed a law
called Defense of Marriage Act,

and basically, the Defense of Marriage Act
says that while I may be legally married -

in Vermont, in Massachusetts, in Iowa,
in South Africa, in Canada, in Mexico,

in Argentina, in The Netherlands,
in Belgium, all across the country,

I actually have to check
my longitude and latitude

to know which rights I have
at any given moment -

but the government says,
"We aren't going to recognize you.

So you have to erase your spouse.
You have to make your family invisible."

And often times when we talk
about the marriage issue,

there's a number that comes up.
It's called 1,138.

It's the number of rights
that automatically accrue

when people get married.

Now, most of us, most people in here
who are married,

couldn't probably recite
those 1,138 rights.

If you can, then raise you hand.
Let me know. (Laughter)

But you don't have to think about it.

There is power in the word "marriage",
because it is a commonly understood way

of telling who somebody is to you.

And with that word comes a kind of power.

If you rush to the emergency room and say,
"My significant other's in there,"

you might get in;

"my wife," people don't say,
"Wait, wait a second.

Let me see your marriage certificate,
your power of attorney,

let me see these documents
that give you authorization."

It's a universally understood way
of communicating

the urgency of you being there,
by their bedside, holding their hand,

at the most desperate hour.

That's why the word matters.

The rights are important,
but in Burlington,

on that August day, in summer,
I wasn't thinking about 1,138 rights.

I was thinking about this person,
this amazing person,

who has agreed to take
this journey with me, this life with me,

and we made this vow
that we would care for each other

in sickness and in health,
in good times and bad,

if we're richer
and definitely if we're poor.

That's why we got married.

And it is one thing to deny

those 1,138 legal protections

that make it harder for me
to take care of my loved one,

to take care of my family,

but it's another to add insult
to that injury,

and to tell me I have to erase her,
I have to sign a document,

swear that it's the truth
and put my name on it.

So, across the country, the tens
of thousands of legally married gay people

are saying, "We're not willing
to do this anymore."

Now, it's not something
that everyone is going to do.

The reality is that we don't know
what the legal ramifications will be.

If you go to a tax preparer -
we've actually heard of tax preparers

firing their gay clients because the laws
are too Byzantine and unfathomable.

And The New York Times actually
contacted the IRS

to ask them to explain more clearly

what would happen
to gay couples who did this,

and they said, "We can't tell you, really.
And we're not going to clarify."

So, I liken it to being blindfolded
and put on a tightrope,

and you don't know whether it's
4 inches off the ground or 400 feet.

But I do know that there are
more and more people

willing to risk
whatever that risk might be.

We are refusing to lie.

And that's the name of the campaign
that a small network of grassroots people

just launched, "refusetolie.org,"

and we think of it in part
[as] a call to action,

but we realized that there are
a lot of people who can't do this.

A good friend of mine,
Kate Kendall, and her wife

are going to actually pay
5,000 dollars more

for the ability to mark the box
correctly as married.

It's not about money,
it's not about those rights.

It's about the self-respect
of being able to say those words,

and never violate those vows.

So, "refusetolie.org" has become a place
where people can share their stories,

and the amazing thing to me is not only
the people who tell their stories and say,

"You know what? I've had enough.

I'm not going to mark a box
that erases my family."

It's also the people who say,
"You know what?

I wish a could,
but I'm not ready to take that step,

but I'm not going to ignore any longer
the knife in the gut

that comes to me
when I face those choices."

Now, tax day is an obvious one,
but there are other places.

I know of a gay couple
that went on their honey moon.

Anyone who's been through customs,

if you're a family,
you have to fill out one form;

if not, you have to fill out
separate forms

and go up individually.

And this couple,
returning from their honey moon,

filled with all of the joys
that you would expect

newly married people returning
from a great time away would feel.

And to be hit with the indignity
of being told, "You are not family.

You must fill out separate forms.
You cannot approach this podium together.

You cannot claim your spouse
at this moment."

You know, there's a famous quote.

I can't tell you what it is word for word,
but the essence of it is this,

that when great injustices rise before us,

it is a shared experience
and we rise together to fight it,

but when these daily indignities,
this death by a thousand cuts, occur,

individually they don't provoke
that same kind of outrage,

and we begin to accommodate them,

and we begin to accept them
and to numb ourselves to offense of them.

I grew up in a part of Florida called -
well, it's Panama City.

It's affectionately known
as the Redneck Riviera, (Laughter)

a badge of honor,
by folks who live there.

And, when I played basketball
in high school,

our bus would roll
through a particular neighborhood.

And we, the black students on the bus,
were told to slide down in our chairs,

in our seats,
because in this part of town,

a black face in the window
might actually get shot at.

Now, I remember thinking, "Why do we
have to accommodate their prejudice?

You know, shouldn't we have police escort?
Shouldn't something be done about it?"

And I could talk to my family,
and I could talk to other players,

and I could talk to African American
teachers. I had a network of support.

But when those same kinds of things
happened about gay people,

when anti-gay slurs
were hurled in my school,

they were as likely to come
from a teacher as from a student,

and there was no place to turn.

Those messages get internalized in ways

that allow us to just begin to think,

"Well, this isn't ideal,
but I can live with it."

My wife and I had dinner
in downtown Saint Petersburg,

and we were leaving a restaurant,
holding hands. It was a great night.

And we were window-shopping
at a little art store downtown,

and we heard a sort of boisterous noise
of young men making their way,

perhaps drunkenly, up the sidewalk.

And I remember Andrea stopped holding my
hand to point to something in the window,

and when she brought her hand
back down, she didn't take mine.

And I remember thinking,
"This happens a lot,

and I'm noticing it
for the first time right now."

And the other thing I thought was, "I'm so
relieved she wouldn't take my hand."

Because what it meant was I didn't have
to confront what was happening,

what was happening psychologically for us,

which was this beautiful night
was suddenly a night of fear.

We are disproportionately
the target of hate violence,

and when we are the target,

it is disproportionately
in the most violent category.

But we numb ourselves to it.

I don't know how many times
we've been in that same situation

where we just don't take
each other's hand again.

We quietly calculate the safety,
or lack of safety.

So, "Refuse to Lie"
is not just about taxes,

and it's not just about customs agents.

It's about remembering

to open our eyes
to those daily indignities;

to not become numb to them;

even in that moment
where we were fearful,

to say it out loud;

to not make it OK.

And so, my wife right now is in Vermont.

We are expecting a baby boy -

(Applause)

- any minute now.

So, it's amazing.

One of the things it does is make
you think about what kind of messages

you want to deliver to your child,
what kind of role model you want to be.

And as we prepare to fill out
our first tax form as a married couple,

these are the thoughts
that infuse our thinking.

And I want to teach my son honesty,
I want to teach him integrity,

I want teach him to stand up for himself,

I want to teach him
that he never has to accept

anything less than full equality,

and I want to show him, by our actions,

that it's important to refuse to lie,

even when it's your government
compelling you to do so.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)