E-Mail This Article to a Friend MARRIAGE Straights for gays BY KRISTEN LOMBARDI

Last week, syndicated sex-advice columnist Dan Savage pondered a "simple idea" put forth by a faithful reader of his "Savage Love" column: why don’t all engaged straight couples who support gay rights tie the knot in the Bay State in an act of solidarity with their gay brethren? Savage was skeptical about the idea. "Find me two people about to be married — gay or straight — who can, even for an instant, think of anyone other than themselves," he wrote. "If that couple exists, and if that couple is straight, and if that straight couple is oddly passionate about gay rights, then maybe one straight couple will opt to marry in Massachusetts."

Well, Savage, meet Kaethe Morris Hoffer and Matt Hoffer Morris (they have adopted each other’s surnames as middle names). Hoffer and Morris are a straight couple from Evanston, Illinois, who fit the "oddly passionate about gay rights" bill. So much so that when the two got hitched in 1999, they opted not to make their union legal. Although they had a big, beautiful church wedding, they never applied for an actual marriage license because they object to what they call the "discriminatory application of the laws." They liken the existing ban on gay marriage to the anti-miscegenation laws that prohibited interracial marriage decades ago. And they won’t support a law that treats gay and straight people differently.

"By discriminating against gay men and lesbians," says Hoffer, a lawyer by training, "the law undermines its own integrity."

But last Friday, she and her husband finally made their marriage legal — in Boston. When the state Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry last November, Hoffer and Morris thought about flying to Massachusetts to get a marriage license as a show of support. When the SJC affirmed its original ruling in an advisory opinion last month, they booked the plane tickets.

On February 27, Hoffer and Morris showed up first thing in the morning at Boston City Hall, where they filled out an application for a marriage license. After petitioning a municipal judge to waive the state’s three-day waiting period for the license, they found themselves in the office of City Clerk Rosaria Salerno by mid afternoon. Dressed in casual khaki pants and holding their 18-month-old son, Noah, the two stood before a wall-size bookcase as Salerno officiated. Rings were exchanged and vows were repeated. Within minutes, the clerk had declared, "By the power invested in me as a justice of the peace of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I wed you." About the only thing that looked like a "wedding" was the bountiful bouquet of orange daisies and yellow roses that Hoffer held during the 10-minute ceremony.

"This was really a technicality," Hoffer told the Phoenix in an interview afterward. Except that it wasn’t. Without a marriage license, they’ve had to endure many of the same hardships that gay and lesbian couples now face. They’ve gone to attorneys to draft reams of documentation to protect their relationship. Health-care proxies. Powers of attorney. Rights to remains. When they went to court to change their names, they even had to pay $500 — a fee normally waived for newlyweds.

But the biggest burden of all came when Hoffer left her job to stay at home and care for their young son. Because the couple’s marriage wasn’t recognized by the state, Hoffer was not eligible for coverage under Morris’s employer’s health plan. The family had to budget as much as $5000 a year just for her health insurance.

Today, Hoffer and Morris say they’re thrilled the Massachusetts high court has ordered that gay men and lesbians can marry "on an equal footing with straight couples." But the situation still seems bittersweet to them. After all, they can get married here without any worry that their marriage will be recognized by the State of Illinois — a reality that won’t exist for those gay and lesbian couples who are sure to come here from across the country to marry beginning in May. "To me," Morris says, "there’s a bit of remorse in that fact. It’s still clear that we’re availing ourselves of a straight privilege."

To further the cause, however, he and his wife plan to donate part of the $5000 that they’ll now save on health-care costs to Freedom To Marry, the New York–based advocacy organization leading the gay-marriage charge. Which is exactly what Savage, in his February 26 "Savage Love" column, declared was the best way for straight couples to stand in solidarity with gay men and lesbians.

Hoffer and Morris say they hope other betrothed straight couples will read about their City Hall wedding and think about their own plans to marry. As Hoffer says, "We’re just a straight couple who really cares about this issue, but we think there’s a lot of us out there across the country."