Karen and Charlie Morgan in Manhattan
Charlie Morgan is on a mission. It isn't her first, she toured Kuwait for the US Army in 2010.
But this one's personal. Charlie has been diagnosed with incurable stage-four breast cancer. She doesn't know how much time she has left. She just took Grammy to see Wicked on Broadway. It was, in her words, an item on her "bucket list." And now she'd added another task to the list: "Take down the Defense of Marriage Act."
Karen and Charlie Morgan are two of the plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit advocacy group Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) has filed challenging the Constitutionality of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act. This case is unique in that the 16 plaintiffs consist only of legally married same-sex couples. At least one of the members of the couples are an active duty or retired military servicemember. Charlie Morgan serves as a Chief Warrant Officer 2 of New Hampshire National Guard. The lawsuit is asking that the Department of Defense recognize servicemembers' marriages and provide equitable benefits that other married couples receive.
As SLDN believes none of the facts are in dispute and has asked for a summary judgement on the basis that DOMA violates the Fifth Amendment's Due Process clause and fails to meet a rational review standard. SLDN has posted the filing to their site (PDF).
The United States Department of Justice has until February to respond. As with other pending DOMA Constitutional challenges, it is expected the DOJ will decline to defend the statute, at which time it is also likely the case will pass to the House of Representatives to exercise an option to defend.
I got the chance to sit down and talk with Charlie and Karen Morgan last week. We talked about life for a gay military family, before and after "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal, their daughter Casey Elena, LGBT family life in Kentucky and New Hampshire. And of course, her battle with cancer.
We also talked about why they've taken on this DOMA battle. Charlie has very immediate and pressing concerns about her own family, the future and security of her wife Karen who she's been with for 14 years and their four-year-old daughter Casey Elena. But she is also fighting for all the other LGBT families just like hers, who struggle with legal discrimination on top of all the other challenges life presents.
On her family's quest to kill end DOMA, Charlie says:
"We don't have the luxury of waiting down the line. We have to address this now."
My conversation with Charlie and Karen Morgan after the fold.
"Ebullient" is rarely an adjective one associates with a cancer patient, but it's the first word that comes to mind to describe Charlie Morgan. Charlie's infectious smile and ready laugh give no hint to the grave circumstances her family is facing. And the gentle lilt of her Kentucky accent serves to enhance her natural storytelling ability.
Q: Tell us where the case stands, please.
Charlie: Right now, basically our attorneys have asked the courts to rule on the case in favor, based on the facts as they are.
Q: A summary judgement?
Yes, basically a summary. Now, we're just waiting on that.
Q: Have you appeared in Court yet?
Charlie: No.
SLDN press conference announcing the lawsuit
Q: Have you met the other defendants?
Charlie: Oh yes, we met them. SLDN actually had us all come together for the press conference, so we had the opportunity to meet, and converse and share our stories. Very similar stories and experiences.
Karen: That was amazing to me. Because I have felt so isolated since Charlie's rejoined the Guard. I mean, I don't know anybody else in the military, or I have very casual acquaintances, in passing. Of course I was never able to speak about our relationship, and of course, she couldn't let anyone know about me, or about our relationship.
Q: So, Charlie, you were entirely closeted before the repeal of DADT?
Charlie: I was in a sense, a few close friends knew, but in my general workplace, yes.
Q: How has that changed since DADT ended?
Charlie: [Lights up.] It's wonderful! I'm actually myself, and people say I'm much more relaxed.
Karen: She's more like this. [Points at Charlie's beaming face.]
Charlie: It's been great. It's been really great. And I've had a lot of folks come up to me and say they've seen me in an interview and they've seen this or that, and they're very proud of what we're doing. So, it's been amazing.
Q: And have you met her colleagues at this point now, Karen?
Karen: I have, I have. I had met some of them earlier and they were like, "Yeah, we kinda knew," but just to be able go and attend events and be who we are, and speak freely about our past, our relationship, the things we've done. You know, we've been together for 14 years total, so that was all history, that we really couldn't talk about. And it was really isolating. So just to have this group of people who are very proud of Charlie on a professional level, and now I can know that and share it, it's wonderful, it really is. It's a different experience.
Generals told us: "You guys need to take this further. You need to fight for these rights because this is just flat out wrong."
Charlie Morgan re-enlisted into the National Guard
Q: And you feel warmly-welcomed at military events?
Karen: I did, I did.
We had a little go-around at the Yellow Ribbon Event in New Hampshire, but you know the end result of that I was greeted by the generals, I was made to feel welcome by generals. Not only that, they're like, "You guys need to take this further. You need to fight for these rights because this is just flat-out wrong. This is wrong."
Q: The generals told you this?
Karen: Yeah. They encouraged us to go further, and I was so proud. I was like, "Wow! This is important."
Q: You have a five-year-old, Casey?
Charlie: Four and a half, Casey Elena!
Q: Do you have a joint-parent adoption? Does New Hampshire allow that? [Some states forbid children from legally having more than a single mother or father, a significant legal hurdle for some LGBT parents' custody rights.]
Charlie: Actually yes. We're doing that now. We're doing the second parent adoption now. We couldn't. We couldn't do that because of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Because it's public record, so moving from Kentucky to New Hampshire, basically I was the parent. But now, since the repeal, we have filed paperwork, as we speak, for the second parent adoption. We've converted our civil union to marriage, so we've done that, and now we're doing the second parent adoption now.
Q: Now, this is a recurrence of cancer you're dealing with?
Charlie: Yes. In 2008 I was diagnosed with breast cancer and I went through a double mastectomy. I had chemotherapy, I was really sick, lost my hair, then I went through radiation, and all through that, Karen was my support. She actually quit work, so she could take care of me through the whole illness. Our daughter was one at the time, so it was really hard on Karen, but she took care of me and our daughter, while still being in the shadows, no one being able to know that she was my spouse.
Q: Were you getting care through a VA facility?
Charlie: No, I was getting care through a local hospital, I didn't have health insurance like I do now, being full-time. Actually, I was offered a job and one of the reasons we moved from Kentucky to New Hampshire, was I had gotten a full-time job offer with the military. I was a public school teacher in Kentucky, but we wanted to raise our daughter in New Hampshire. We made a conscious decision we wanted to raise our daughter in New Hampshire, more progressive, so I took a job. I was hired actually, a full-time guardsperson. When I got to New Hampshire, Karen had already moved, her and Casey, we'd sold our farm, she'd already moved to New Hampshire. They were waiting on me to finish out the school year, and it was after I accepted the job, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, so, I had my surgeries, and I went to report for work, And when I went in, they actually processed me in a day, and the next day they called me back and said, "We are so sorry, but according to National Guard regulations you have to be cancer-free for six months before you can work for us." So they took the job away. So, I was left with no job, no insurance.
Karen: It was a mess.
Charlie: It was very devastating to go through that.
Karen: It was a nightmare. At that time I was working very part-time for a local newspaper, I had a friend who was a circulation manager there, so it was things I could literally take the baby with me to do. We lived on that for a few months.
Charlie: We lived on our savings from selling the farm. I cashed in my 401K from the school system, we were living with Karen's parents. It was hard.
Q: Your parents are in New Hampshire?
Karen: They are. That's were I grew up.
Q: Are you physically near them now?
Karen: Yeah, we're about 40 minutes away.
Q: And they help with Casey Elena?
Karen: They do. They help with Casey, and we see them every week.
Q: And this one? (Charlie) They like her?
Karen: [Laughs] Oh yeah. That was one of the nice things, right from the beginning of our relationship. My parents are, my mom's more open than my dad, but it was nice. Even my dad was very welcoming.
"I need my country now to protect and take care of my family."
Charlie: So from all that, I was cleared, actually technically in remission. I was cleared to be a full-time Guards member. So I was able to get a full-time job with the Guard.
After all my treatment my oncologist sent a letter saying, "As of right now, she is cancer-free. She is deployable." So I was able to come back with a full-time job with the Guard, and because of that I was able to deploy, which is how I ended up deploying to Kuwait last year.
Q: So, when did your cancer recur?
Charlie: Well, in April I came home on leave, and I actually had a six-month check-up and I was fine then. So, every six months we have follow up exams. After I came back from deployment in late August, I'd already had an appointment scheduled for Sept. 1. I went in expecting everything to be fine, but I had noticed a little pain in my chest here, and there was a little bit of lump. My oncologist ordered an ultrasound, and they saw something suspicious. Sept. 20 [DADT repeal certification day] I was on MSNBC, I came out, but I was scheduled for surgery a week later, so I didn't even know then that it was cancer. But a week later on Sept 28, I had the biopsy, they took it out, and that's when they told me, "Oh my gosh, you've got a recurrence of cancer. It's spread."
Q: Into the lymph nodes?
Charlie: Yes. Right now, it's in my lymph nodes and my chest, metastatic, but they're calling it basically incurable. And so my treatment plan will consist of chemotherapy from here on out. Nine weeks of chemotherapy, we'll do another PET scan and see if there are any changes and just go from there. So, it's basically just living day to day.
The Morgan Family
That's why we're here. That's how important it is. I have to look out for my family. As of right now, Karen does not have survivor benefits. If I was to pass tomorrow—and God forbid, I hope I don't—but if I do, these are the real issues right now. Karen is not entitled to survivor benefits as other people's spouse would be, she would not get that. And I worry about her.
And I feel like I have proven myself, I defended my country. Obviously, I am willing to die for my country, I came back from a deployment in Kuwait proving that. I need my country now to protect and take care of my family.
Q: Would you say the cancer is a driving force behind your participating in the case?
Charlie: It is. It's two-fold, because time is of the essence here. And I feel that. I feel like that we don't have the luxury of waiting down the line. We have to address this now. And again, it's not just us, it's other families that may be going through this situation too.
"Being a military wife was definitely not on my radar."
Q: How are you feeling?
Charlie: I feel optimistic actually. That's me, personally. But at the same time, I'm a realist. I'm optimistic that I'm a fighter, so I'm gonna fight this every step of the way, but, knowing that, at the same time and make sure Karen's protected.
And it's not just us. There are other families that are going through the same thing. So we're trying to speak up for everybody who has to go through this.
Q: You are optimistic.
Karen: She absolutely is.
Charlie: Part of that is, you choose that. You choose how you're going to handle that. And for me, you just choose to enjoy every day. And that's part of why we came to New York last weekend. It's part of my bucket list, I wanted to take Grammy to Broadway. We brought Grammy to Broadway. We saw Wicked. I'm doing those things that I want to do and I'm enjoying it. I feel like we're doing good work.
Karen: You build that bank of good memories and good actions that make you feel like your life is on the right track.
Q: Seems like Charlie is a source of strength for you too, Karen?
Karen: Yeah, I was really floored, because it was the last thing that I expected. She had just come home from deployment. She was re-integrating, we were getting our lives back on track, all these great things, and looking forward to all that. And we still are, but there's this big chunk of news to deal with. So, I think we support each other, we always have, that's been a cornerstone of our relationship, we've taken turns supporting each other. And basically I feel like I'm here to be a member of this family and we do what we gotta do.
Q: Did you ever think you'd be a military wife?
Karen: [Laughs.] Never. That definitely was not on my radar.
Charlie: Well, I'd been out of the service for 12 years, and I was not in the military when we got together. I'd been out. It wasn't until 2004 I was at a teaching conference and a military person was speaking, I just said casually to the person next to me, "I used to be in the military," and he said, "Really? I still am, I'm a colonel in the National Guard. Why don't you come back in?" And, you know, 9/11 had happened, and that was really resonating with people, and I said, "I would loved to come back in, but I don't think they'd take me, I'm been out for 12 years." He said, "You'd be surprised."
So, after that conference, I went home and I called up a recruiter, and I said, "I've been out for 12 years, is it possible I could come back in?" And I told him how much time I had in, and some other stuff, and he said, "How old are you now?" And I said, "39," and he says, "When will you be 40?" I said, "In 10 days." He said, "Yes, we can do that now. Now."
Karen: She brought that home and we talked about it at the dinner table. So, you think you want to go back into the military?
Charlie: But that meant things were going to change. Because as a teacher, I was out. I was out, even teaching in rural Kentucky, I was out. So, that would mean going back into the closet, at least part time, because it was just going to be one weekend a month. Part-time. I was still going to teach.
Karen: But still, it was a big decision.
Charlie: I wanted to do my part, based on 9/11. I was feeling very patriotic, I wanted to contribute.
So that weekend I ended up doing the physical, taking the test, everything in one day and swore in. But we talked about it, because things were gonna change for us.
Karen: Because we were very open. We were open just in the community. And that was something that was really very important to us.
Q: In Louisville, KY?
Karen: Actually we were in the boonies. It was out there, north country.
Q: How did you come to meet with SLDN?
Charlie: After coming out on Thomas Robert's show on MSNBC, I had been working with OutServe. And after doing that, we were speaking to a friend of ours, and we were talking about the ramifications of DADT repeal. And she asked, "Can Karen get an [military spouse's] ID card?" And we knew she couldn't, and our friend said, "You know you really should pursue that, legally. You really should."
So I was at home, and I was thinking, "OK, should I call the ACLU? And I remembered seeing SLDN from OutServe, and I just Googled them, and I called and spoke to Danny Hernandez, and I just said, "Listen, I'd like to know the options for filing a lawsuit. I want my spouse to have benefits." And he said, "Are you aware of anything we're doing right now? We're actually doing something just like that." And I said, "Well, is it something I can be part of?" So, I actually just cold-called them.
[SLDN already had a number of plaintiffs who had approached them about the same issue. Charlie and Karen turned out to be a great fit to the existing class of plaintiffs.]
"Mom! Casey's got two moms! Can I have another mom?"
Charlie and daughter Casey Elena
Q: Tell me about Casey:
Charlie: Casey Elena! Well, she's very outgoing.
Q: What does she call the two of you?
Charlie: I'm momma.
Karen: And I'm mommy.
Q: It's the Kentucky roots that make you momma, Charlie?
Charlie: It is. I tell her she's momma's baby girl. And she tells me, "I'm not a baby, momma." And I tell her you'll always be momma's baby girl.
Charlie: She's very outgoing, she attends Montessori School, so her communications skills are very high, and she's very aware. One of the cool things at school is, people know she's got two moms, and one day as Karen was picking her up at school and Casey said to her friend, "This is my other mom," and her friend said to her own mom, "Mom! Casey's got two moms! Can I have another mom?"
Karen: It was great. It was priceless.
Charlie: She's very outgoing, she's amazing. And she's been my source of strength. Because when you think about fighting an illness like that, you think about your family and the hardest part is, and what makes me sad is, I want to see her grow up. You think about losing that opportunity to watch your daughter grow up. That is very hard. That is the hardest thing for me.
Karen: And that's hard for me too. I see that has probably the hardest thing for all of us to deal with, is just that loss.
We moved up north, even though I'm from New Hampshire, I lived in Kentucky for 17 years, I went down there for school and stayed. I liked the Lexington/Louisville area very much.
Charlie: We met in Kentucky.
Karen: Yeah, we met there. And when Casey was born, was when we decided we needed to come back up north, because New Hampshire's just more progressive. We could be who we were openly without as much censorship, you know. Without as much judgement. So that was when we moved back up, she was just a little less than a year old.
Q: Do you have health insurance at this time, Karen?
Karen: I don't. I have in the past had some temporary policies and again, we didn't know what would happen with the end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and we hoped that would mean I could get an ID card and then that issue would be settled. And obviously, unfortunately, that was not the case. It would cost between five and eight hundred dollars a month to get something that would be comparable to Tricare coverage. So, a temporary policy with high deductible is only thing that we've been able to fit in.
The Morgan family poises to take Manhattan
Q: I assume your daughter would be covered by survivor benefits?
Charlie: Yes, our daughter is covered through Tricare as well, because she's listed as my dependent, Karen is not, unfortunately. So, since Casey is, Casey has health insurance. I have life insurance, and through that, I am able to designate whoever, so I have Karen and Casey on that policy. But aside from that when you're talking survivor benefits, we're talking VA, Social Security, we're talking about all those federal benefits that exist way beyond the present, like, for years. Casey would be eligible until she is 18, or 24 if she's going to school. Karen too, if we were heterosexual, she would also get survivor benefits, a monthly stipend, and health insurance, and even now, even in the current situation, she's still not entitled to the same benefits as our heterosexual counterparts.
She doesn't get to shop at the commissary, she doesn't get an ID card, she can't fly Space A with me. We couldn't take advantage of those military benefits because she can't do those things with me.
Q: What is Space A?
Charlie: Space A [Space available] is where you can fly basically for free, or for very cheap, if you're an active military member, anywhere the military flies on military planes. We can't even do that.
We have a commissary five miles from our home and she can't shop there!
She cried a little bit and she said, "I'm so sorry I couldn't do this for you, and it's just not right."
Karen: Tell him the story about trying to get the ID card.
[Karen and Charlie attempted to obtain a spousal ID card for Karen, a necessary formality to show cause for the lawsuit.]
Charlie: Oh, that poor lady!
Karen: It was sad. Go ahead, tell the story.
Charlie: Well, we go down to the Air Force base to get an ID card. And the lady there was amazing. And she said, "Okay," and we handed her our marriage certificate. We had just gotten married, we'd converted our civil union to a marriage, we had a brand new marriage certificate. We gave it to her, she took it.
Q: This was after DADT repeal?
Charlie: Yeah. After repeal.
Q: But you got married when?
Charlie: Oct. 24.
We'd already been in a civil union for 11 years. We'd done that already, we did that in 2000.
Q: So you did that before you went back into the service? So you went in as a "civilly-unioned" lesbian? There actually was actually a public record of you being gay?
Charlie: There was. It was in Vermont. Had it been in New Hampshire, it might have been a problem. But when they did security clearance they only checked Kentucky and New Hampshire records.
Karen: So this poor lady, she'd already had a rough day, and we show up, and right at the end of the day. And she sits down and she inputs everything, like all of our information, and it's like a 20 minute process, blah, blah, blah. And she hits the button and she gets this big red box that says, "Rejected." And there's a box at the bottom that says, "Sponsor and spouse gender cannot match."
And she was like—you could just see her—she just sat there staring at the screen for, like, almost a minute, without moving. And she turned around slowly to me and said, "I am sorry, I'm gonna have to refer this up, this is above my pay grade." So, she called her superiors, and they referred her again to their superiors, up the line. And at the end of the line she couldn't get any further. And she was just getting voicemails. And that was it, we got shut down.
At at the very end, when she realized she couldn't do this for us, she cried a little bit and she said, "I'm so sorry I couldn't do this for you, and it's just not right."
And at that point she just said, "That's it, I'm done for the day!"
Q: I'm sure you knew that would be how it would end, but you didn't expect it to a nice experience?
Karen: Yeah, we though we'd get shut down right away. We figured as soon as we walked in they'd be like, "Sorry, no way!"
Q: Tell me about the time you met?
Charlie: I had a friend who was rooming with me, and she went to college with Karen and she was always talking about Karen, but I never knew what she looked like. At the time Karen was going to school and she was driving horse-drawn carriages in downtown Lexington, she was an equestrian.
So, I kept hearing about this Karen from my friend, so one day she actually invited her over, and I was like, "Okay, I finally get to meet this Karen," and she was this horse person and I don't know what kind of image I had of her, but as soon as I came home and she was there, I remember looking at her and going, "THAT'S Karen?! Oh my gosh!" I was immediately drawn to her. Like, "Oh my gosh!" For me it was like, "Wow!"
Q: Had you heard about Charlie, Karen?
Karen: I had. My friend was working for her at the time in the newspaper industry, so I'd heard about Charlie's openess and she had a rainbow pride poster, and I thought, "That's kinda cool." So it was pretty neat, and we did know about each other indirectly for quite a while, I would say a few months. But we did meet and we found we had a lot of things in common, a lot of things we liked to do.
Q: Were you as lovestruck as she was?
Karen: It took me longer. But I thought she was pretty cute. She was very persistent. Definitely very personable. So yeah, she won me over. It didn't take too long, though.
Q: What was your first date? Did you have an official first date?
Both: We did!
Charlie: It was amazing. I invited her to a Lilith fair concert in Cincinnati. It was the first year.
Q: Well, that's not stereotypical at all.
Karen: [Laughs] No!
Charlie: Well, it wasn't really a date, we were going as friends, but at the concert we'd been drinking some wine, and our friend was there, and I think she was becoming a little uncomfortable because we were actually flirting with each other. And I remember my friend says, "You know, you're really flirting with Karen and just be really careful, because I'm not sure she feels that way." I said, "Really? I'm gonna find out." So, I go over there and I think I hugged you or something.
Karen: Yeah.
Charlie: She turns around and kisses me, and I go "Ooh!"
Q: You didn't hold out very long. First base before you even got to the end of the first date.
Karen: Yeah, she didn't really have to try.
Q: Anything else you'd like to add?
Charlie: I think it's really important for people to really stop and think what would they would they do if they were in our situation? What would they do if they were told, it's possible they have a terminal illness. Wouldn't they want their family taken care of? All we're doing is trying to take care of our family. It's that simple. It's a family issue. I'd like folks to really think about that, and reflect on that and maybe personalize that.
Karen: Because the ultimate message is we made a commitment to each other a long time ago, based on the same things that heterosexual couples make commitment for; it was love, respect and we were going to take care of each other, as a family, whatever that constituted in the long term. And I think if people can think of those commonalities, then maybe they can see past the same-gender issue.