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To have and to hold (continued)

BY KRISTEN LOMBARDI


The un-sentimentalists

Ed Balmelli and Michael Horgan will tell you that they’re not at all sentimental. They don’t remember the meal they ate together on their first date, in 1994. They don’t remember the song that played as they slow-danced together for the first time. Even when they crossed the border into Vermont, in October 2000, to tie the proverbial knot civil-union-style, the two declined to write their own vows. As Horgan, 44, a project planner at Honeywell, matter-of-factly puts it, "We’re computer geeks. We’re not into the emotional stuff."

This is not to say that marriage has no meaning for the couple, who live in Jamaica Plain. Horgan and Balmelli, a 43-year-old engineer at Lucent Technologies, realized the value of civil marriage — and the legal protections that come with it — after watching a nightmare unfold for two close friends. The gay couple, who had been together for years, cemented their union with a commitment ceremony, bought a house, even distributed family portraits. They led their lives as any married couple would — until one of them died suddenly at home. The coroner refused to transport the corpse to the morgue because, says Balmelli, "the papers had to be signed by the next of kin." So the surviving partner, grieving, feeling alienated, had to wait for action by his loved one’s relatives before he could do anything.

It was a horrifying incident, one that prompted Balmelli and Horgan to do whatever they could to protect their own union. They have since drawn up health-care proxies in order to have access to each other in medical emergencies and to make medical decisions for each other. In case of incapacitation, they’ve drawn up powers of attorney to acquire authority over each other’s finances. In case of death, they’ve drawn up the "right as to remains" in order to will their bodies to each other. None of these legal documents has made them feel more secure, however. "Sooner or later," Balmelli explains, "there will be some piece of paper that we discover we don’t have."

Unless, of course, they could get married.

For Balmelli and Horgan — both of whom are products of small-town Massachusetts and large Catholic families — the two years they’ve spent as plaintiffs in the landmark same-sex-marriage lawsuit have been eye-opening. The Catholic Church’s ardent opposition to granting gay men and lesbians the right to civil marriage — just last month, the state’s four bishops ordered parish priests to read an anti-gay-marriage statement from the pulpit — is disappointing for them, to say the least. Yet they’re heartened by the fact that so many Catholics disregard the Church’s teachings on homosexuality — as many also do on matters of birth control, premarital sex, and divorce.

But Balmelli and Horgan are especially heartened by the unflagging support of their families, who have undergone what Balmelli calls "a coming-out experience" since the suit was filed in April 2001. After all, it’s one thing for the two men to slow dance, cheek-to-cheek, at a family function. It’s quite another for them to make headlines in the newspapers of their hometowns — Milford and Ayer, respectively. Indeed, Balmelli’s and Horgan’s family members have heard opinions about whether gay people should be allowed to marry uttered by everyone from the butcher and the baker to the candlestick maker. And while family members feared the worst from all the publicity, Horgan says, "they have found that most people aren’t nearly as homophobic as you might think."

Balmelli and Horgan have made the same discovery. As they wait for the Supreme Judicial Court to hand down its decision, they look back on these two years with pleasure and surprise. They cannot recount one negative encounter the entire time — no hostility, no tension, nothing. If people have felt ill will toward the couple, they’ve never voiced it. "Maybe," Horgan concludes, "that’s a sign of the times," a sign of things to come for gay people.

Balmelli agrees: "It may be easy [for people] to hate gays and lesbians in general. But it’s not so easy to hate Ed and Mike."

Two American men

You might say that David Wilson and Robert Compton are carbon copies of each other. Both men came of age in the early 1960s. Both strove to be model American sons — indeed, they went to college, married school sweethearts, and had children. Years later, both came to grips with the same realization: they didn’t want to be like other men, they wanted to be with other men. After 15 years of living the straight life, Wilson came out of the closet to his wife and three children. Compton did the same with his wife and two children after 22 years of marriage.

"I thought my attraction to men was something I could block out," says Compton, now 51 and a dentist with Delta Dental Plan of Massachusetts. "But I realized it was innate to my being, and I couldn’t deny it any longer."

Wilson, now 59 and a real-estate magnate, puts it more succinctly: "I realized that my feelings for men were very real."

Such similar life experiences naturally drew Wilson and Compton together. The couple met in 1997 at a support group known as Gay Fathers of Greater Boston. Their connection seemed immediate. Within five minutes of being introduced, they were chatting about life as fathers, as former straight men. Says Wilson, "There was an instant understanding of where we had come from. All those pieces just fit."

Just three years later, in October 2000, the two made their union official: they held a commitment ceremony at the Arlington Church, in Boston. It was a festive affair, with dozens of relatives, friends, and co-workers in attendance. As well-wishers offered congratulations to the couple, however, it soon became apparent that most guests assumed that Wilson and Compton had just been wed legally. No one understood that, as a gay couple, they were not entitled to the same benefits and protections as other married couples are. "No one," Wilson explains, "understood the best this could be was a commitment ceremony."

Then came Compton’s medical problems. One day several years ago, Compton felt a bolt of pain in his stomach so excruciating that he doubled over and collapsed. Wilson rushed him to the hospital, where Compton was whisked into an examining room. Compton doesn’t remember much about the episode, a flare-up of chronic colon and kidney conditions that have landed him in the ER five times in a two-year span. He was sweating profusely. Nurses hovered around him as they asked him about his medical history and shoved forms in his face. He recalls, "All I kept wondering was, ‘Where is David?’" At that point, Wilson had been delayed in the lobby. Although the couple had executed a health-care proxy, Wilson says he found himself "disconnected" from his partner anyway. Upon arriving at the ER, he presented the health-care proxy to hospital staff, who called a supervisor to review the document. For what seemed like forever, Wilson argued back and forth with administrators about the fine print. "Rob is in pain, and I was sitting at a desk answering questions about our health-care proxy," he recounts. Finally, the staff let him into the back room.

Over time, as Compton has suffered further medical emergencies, Wilson has become more and more aggressive about his right to be with his partner. At the same time, though, he has resented having to fight for this right — a right that he and Compton had enjoyed as straight, married men. Now, it seems, Wilson and Compton are acutely aware of just how much they lack because they cannot get married.

Compton describes the sentiment best: "It’s all these little things that married people take for granted — but not us. At least, not anymore."

 

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Issue Date: July 18 - 24, 2003
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