Same-sex marriage: One year later

10:49 AM EDT on Sunday, May 15, 2005

BY KAREN LEE ZINER
Journal Staff Writer

An eerie glow fills a sonogram room at Women & Infants' pre-natal center, where Cynthia Corbett lies on an examining table, a white blanket partly covering her abdomen.

Cynthia, 37, and her spouse, Patti Corbett, 39, admit to the anxiety any parents-to-be might feel before learning the results of a fetal ultrasound. Is it a boy or a girl? Will the baby be healthy?

Cynthia gazes up at Patti while a technician moves a wand over Cynthia's slicked belly like a metal detector roaming over beach sand. The instrument translates sound into wavy, grainy images on a monitor that Patti jokes is "like looking through a car wash."

Suddenly, the next addition to the Corbett family registers in curled miniature. Toes the size of polka dots. A hand, measurable in millimeters that waves like a kitten paw in its ghostly bath of amniotic fluid, and a visibly pulsing heart.

"Oh! Look here!" the technician says. "It's a girl."

"A girl!" Patti echoes. "Another girl! Oh she's beautiful," says Patti, then leans down and kisses Cynthia's forehead.

Cynthia and Patti Corbett were legally married May 20, 2004, three days after the landmark ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legalizing same-sex marriage took effect.

In a quiet corner of Southeastern Massachusetts, the couple are raising a spritely child named Katie, who forms the center of their universe. Their second child -- the girl visible on the ultrasound -- is due in July.

Love, marriage and family. That's what the Corbetts want.

But not everyone wants it for them.

Around the country, states are adopting measures to outlaw same-sex marriages, leaving New England an increasingly isolated enclave for same-sex marriages and civil unions.

Opponents from the Christian right are concentrating efforts in Massachusetts and nine other states, pushing for state constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage. And President Bush is reiterating his call for a U.S. constitutional amendment to ban such marriages nationwide.

Meanwhile, the Corbetts look to a different future.

"Just like all the other civil-rights movements, maybe someday we'll look back and say, why was that such a problem?" says Cynthia. "And I hope that happens soon enough in our daughters' lifetime."

ON MAY 17, 2004, the first day of legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, supporters in Provincetown handed out wedding cake with buttercream frosting and flower-bud dollops. In Boston, the mayor held a reception for newly married couples. And throughout the commonwealth, a media crush captured happy tears at town and city halls. More than 1,000 people obtained marriage licenses; at least 77 couples were married that day.

People who had never heard of Somerville, Mass., rushed there from around the country when they learned that officials there were conducting same-sex marriage ceremonies for nonresidents.

And Patti and Cynthia rushed to Seekonk Town Hall for a license.

The two social workers (Patti directs a foster-care program at Family Resources Community Action in Woonsocket; Cynthia provides clinical assessments of juveniles who have had contact with the Fall River courts) had held their own private church wedding in Providence in 1999.

But they believed a marriage certificate would provide many of the same legal rights as heterosexual married couples -- rights that their church wedding could not bestow.

The right to employment benefits available to any married employee in the public or private sector, and to file a joint state tax return. The right to own property together as tenants by the entirety -- a form of ownership available only to married couples. Access to state-based family medical leave. Hospital visitation rights. Protection against property liens if a spouse has to enter longterm nursing care. Potential health care coverage under a spouse's health insurance plan, unless it is federally regulated. And, same-sex spouses each other's automatic health-care proxies, without having to fill out a form.

On May 20, the women appeared before Seekonk Town Clerk Janet Parker, who came up with a ceremony that substituted "spouse" for bride and groom, and a marriage certificate that refers to "Party A" and "Party B."

"I think the hardest part was calling it 'marriage,' " says Parker. "It got thrown at us so quickly. . . . But when you're in a public job, you can't let your personal views interfere . . . ." Parker adds that the Corbetts "were a very nice couple, and they love their little girl."

Within days, Cynthia Gatlin changed her last name to Corbett -- at the Social Security Office, on her driver's license, on her paychecks and at the bank.

"I just decided we would have a family name," she says, "and we would all have the same name."

ON A MORNING in mid-March, a female cardinal visits the bird feeder outside the Corbetts' colonial. At the kitchen table, Katie plays with her cereal, tapping her spoon on top of the Rice Krispies.

Katherine Elizabeth Corbett, whose mothers call her "Katie," "Peach," and -- Patti's favorite -- "Zoom," is a slip of a child who loves to wear her blue satin Cinderella dress and white princess shoes.

She has a slight gap between her front teeth and an upturned nose, just like Patti. She calls Patti "Mommy."

"Come on, Zoom," Patti says. Time for Katie's annual checkup with Dr. Staci Resnick at Pediatric Associates, in Fall River.

Katie abandons the cereal, lets Mommy help her slip into a pink snowjacket and purple boots, then climbs into her car seat in their late-model Saturn.

A half-hour later, a nurse positions Katie on a scale. She's 30 pounds, 4 ounces, nearly 3 feet tall -- the 90th percentile for her age.

Resnick checks on Katie's neurological and emotional health.

"We have a baby sister coming, and she just went into a big-girl bed," Patti tells the doctor.

"Is she still on a bottle?"

"Twice a day."

"Is she using a sippy cup as well?"

"Yes."

Is she sleeping well? Does she have two-word phrases? Does she pretend play? Can you try and wean her from the bottle?

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

Katie survives needle pokes without tears, accepts Band-Aids to cover the needle-poke sites, and a lollipop for good behavior.

"It's amazing. I never really thought I'd be a parent," says Patti as she drives back over the Braga Bridge. "If it weren't for Cynthia, I wouldn't have had children. I'm always amazed at how vulnerable you feel with kids. It fills your world with 'What ifs' "

At home, they find Cynthia sitting on the back steps, enjoying a rare burst of March sunshine.

"Mamma!" Katie says. She runs to Cynthia and curls into her lap.

LOVE BROUGHT quietude to Patti, who had long fought what she knew in her soul. She was attracted to women, and women only.

"It was always this feeling of self-loathing. When I was a freshman, I pledged this sorority. . . . And one of my pledge sisters said, 'You know, the whole sorority is lesbians and, I was like, 'Oh no! Gross!' "

But what Patti tried to hide or deny was apparent to others.

Where some girls were soft or curvy, she was football-husky. "Guys would go by in their cars and yell, 'Dyke!' out the window." In high school, "nobody was ever stupid enough to say, 'Are you going to the prom?' "

A pastor told her, "If you can pray, you can make this go away." Forget that, she says.

That year, Patti's mother, sensing that something was up, called Patti at college and put the question to her. Was Patti a lesbian?

Acknowledgement brought relief -- and fear. She dulled the fear with alcohol and see-sawed between bravado and anxiety.

Fear was based on actual incidents, and the general notion that she was outside the mainstream.

A landlord kicked out Patti's former girlfriend when he realized that the women were sexually involved. She believes her sexual preferences cost her a job, when her bosses intimated they did not want a lesbian working with children. So she left.

Patti was always looking over her shoulder.

But in October 1993, while working at a Massachusetts group home, Patti was teamed with Cynthia Gatlin, a tall brunette with hazel eyes, who grew up in South Providence. Patti was already a licensed social worker; Cynthia was in a master's program to get her social-work license.

For three years, they were just friends.

CYNTHIA HAD never before been involved with a woman.

But as she got to know Patti through work, and on a social basis, Cynthia grew enamored.

"She's very sincere. I enjoy her sense of humor. She's a very caring and compassionate person. I knew that some people might not understand, but I just chose not to ignore the feelings that I had, and just went on from there.

"It was just a gradual kind of process, and then it was like, OK, maybe we're more than friends," Cynthia says. "I guess you could say the dam broke, or the floodgates opened. Once we recognized that we were ready to be involved, it was clearly love. It wasn't anything less than that."

During a weekend camping trip with another colleague, Cynthia told Patti she was attracted toward her. The statement took Patti by surprise.

Patti anguished. "I remember talking to my sister, Ruth. I was like, 'Oh my God, I don't know what to do.' "

She and Cynthia spent more time together, going in-line skating, out for drinks, and visiting family. One day at Purgatory Chasm in Blackstone, Mass., it turned romantic. "We were inseparable after that," Patti says.

Nine days later, in the kitchen of Patti's Fall River apartment, "I asked her to marry me," says Patti. "I remember being really scared."

Patti gave Cynthia a pinkie ring for Christmas that year -- 1996. They moved in together the next spring.

Two years later, they invited family and friends to a celebration of love at the First Unitarian Church on Benefit Street, in Providence.

A videotape created a permanent, if inaudible record, of the wedding.

There's Cynthia in a white dress with a chiffon sash, and a flower wreath over her brown curls. There's Patti in her slacks, and a formal vest.

There are Cynthia and Patti, lighting candles, kissing after the minister pronounces them life partners, and doing the Macarena at their reception.

Says Patti, "We had the most beautiful day, ever."

THE BIOLOGICAL father of Katie and the baby-to-be has blue eyes, blond hair and loves Buffalo wings. The Corbetts keep details of his physical characteristics, health and job information in a locked box in their home.

Patti and Cynthia selected the donor from a pile of hand-written profiles at a California sperm bank. If and when Katie or her sister ask, "we will give age-appropriate information," says Cynthia.

The first attempt at pregnancy was fraught with difficulty. Because Cynthia wanted to carry the baby, she started artificial insemination, but soon learned she was infertile.

They tried a new approach. Doctors retrieved eggs from Patti's ovaries, fertilized them in vitro with the donor sperm, then implanted a fertilized egg within Cynthia's uterus. That worked, producing Katie. The same method resulted in Cynthia's current pregnancy.

Because Katie's birth preceded the Massachusetts legalization of same-sex marriage, the couple had to get a pre-birth court order that directed Charlton Memorial Hospital, in Fall River -- where Katie was born -- to put both names on the birth certificate.

Cynthia had hoped to deliver their second child at Women & Infants Hospital's Alternative Birthing Center. But Patti says the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office told her they could not list both women as parents on the birth certificate.

"I called there and said we were a married couple," says Patti. "But they told me Rhode Island law had not changed. And I said, 'Right, but you're not recognizing Massachusetts law.' And they said I'd have to adopt her, even if it's my biological child."

That made no sense to the Corbetts. Says Patti, "It's my egg, in her uterus. We're both the biological parents."

(Robert Marshall, assistant health department director, says that a pre-birth court order is now an option in Rhode Island.)

Cynthia plans to deliver their second child at Charlton Memorial, in July.

THE MARRIAGE certificate helps, and then again, it doesn't.

As a married couple, the Corbetts were able to file a joint state income tax return and declare Katie as a dependent. Not so with the federal income tax, on which they were forced to check off "single."

The certificate allowed them to get health-care proxies for one another.

They did not need a marriage certificate to buy a house together. Patti's employer acknowledges her married partner under her UnitedHealthcare policy.

But in many cases, federal law trumps state law, potentially nullifying benefits such as joint health-care coverage or other employer-optional choices.

Joyce Kauffman, a Cambridge, Mass., lawyer who helped Patti and Cynthia obtain the pre-birth order for Katie, says married same-sex couples "don't gain any of the federal benefits. You gain state benefits, which are considerably fewer."

"I think the reality is, that people who get married in Massachusetts are married in Massachusetts, and precious few other places," says Kauffman.

Nonetheless, she calls same-sex marriage in Massachusetts a giant step.

"There's something about getting the sanction of the society you live in -- to get married is very special to people. Thirty years ago, you were in danger for your life if you just said you were gay. Now we can get married and have our own children. It's not everything, but it's something."

AS THE NUMBER of same-sex marriages edges past 6,100 in Massachusetts -- nearly two-thirds of which are between women, according to The New York Times -- and their families continue to grow, Ron Crews is among those who are crusading against same-sex marriage.

Five years ago, Crews became director of the Marriage Institute, a Massachusetts nonprofit organization "dedicated to strengthening the family."

The institute is the vanguard of "The Coalition for Marriage," comprising 15 national and local groups opposed to equal rights for same-sex couples in Massachusetts, and trying to "inoculate" other states against recognizing Massachusetts' same-sex marriages.

An evangelical minister, Crews is a former three-term Georgia legislator who sponsored that state's 1996 Defense-of-Marriage Act and pushed unsuccessfully for the teaching of creationism in the classroom.

Inside the institute headquarters in Newton, Crews' computer screensaver says "Jesus is Lord." He keeps a Bible on his desk and cites the Scriptures as the foundation for his belief that homosexuality is repulsive. ("That's not what I think -- that's what the Scriptures say," he says).

Crews considers the Massachusetts ruling "deeply disappointing," and he worries "for the history of this state -- the future of this state."

The institute's Web site (www.mafamily.org) predicts homosexual marriage could erode the institution of marriage; promote homosexuality in public and private schools "via homosexual curricula, re-education programs and hate speech regulations, and taxpayer-funded homosexual activism," and lead to "persecution of faith-based charities which receive public funding."

The coalition's current goal is to amend the state Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. Crews says, "We're still trying to decide where we are right now after the SJC decision."

He says the question is whether to support a proposed constitutional amendment in 2006 that defines marriage as between a man and a woman, but also creates civil unions, or support in 2008 "a clean constitutional amendment to protect marriage that does not include the possibility of civil unions."

Crews has also been active in "TeenPact," a national effort that teaches young people "to change America for Christ." During the 2003 legislative debates on same-sex marriage, 50 TeenPact students from around the country worked the phone banks in Boston and lobbied legislators.

ONE DAY LAST MONTH, Katie plays in the dining room, hiding behind the curtains, and toying with her stuffed animals. She steps into Cynthia's Mexican huaraches and scuffs around in circles while her mother watches, bemused.

The Corbetts are cleaning out an upstairs room in preparation for the new addition to their family.

"We're finding a home for all the non-nursery stuff. I'm not going to change the wallpaper at this point -- just clean it up, and call it a nursery," Cynthia says, laughing.

The Corbetts are trying to prepare Katie by telling her she's going to be "the big sister," and by reading her books on the subject.

Meanwhile, the Corbetts are wrestling over what to call the baby.

Keira or Lauren are the front-runners.

Spring is filled with family. A barbecue at Patti's brother's house honors a visit from Patti's mother, Joanne, and brother Bill, 30, from South Carolina.

In the backyard, Katie joins a few of her cousins on a trampoline, while her aunts and uncles relax on the lawn.

As Katie springs up and down, her fine blond hair stands on end from the electricity in the air, and both of her mothers laugh.

Reporter Karen Lee Ziner can be reached at (401) 277-7375, or kziner [at] projo.com.

Photographer Kathy Borchers can be reached at kborcher [at] projo.com

Digital Extra: View more photos of the life of the Corbett family, at:

http://projo.com/nothinglessthanlove