Marriage Equality Isn't Equal wrote blogger S.E. Smith. I forget what other disability topic I was researching when I found that article instead. For good or ill, it's usually my own life that brings me KosAbility material and I am as far from thinking about marriage as I am thinking about tax shelters for my vast fortune or the most supportive running shoe. Personally, it's never come up. Most of the time, I've decided I don't "believe" in marriage, as if the institution is some dark Tinkerbell I can kill with my lack of faith. I am, however, pro-choice and against the kinds of austere and outdated assumptions that can slash someone's life-giving benefits before the last note dies away from "At Last". Follow me below the fold and learn by reading as I did.
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I found out, from digging around and from Jordan Gwendolyn Davis' excellent Why I Still Can't Marry My Girlfriend, that someone like me, disabled before 22 and receiving SSDI since my father's retirement last year, would lose that benefit immediately upon my marriage. Possibly, we could live without the thousand and change a month I now receive (although even that seems like adding more dependency to a relationship that would already be burdened with a lot of social and cultural expectations. No matter how much I joke that whether I meet Mr. or Ms. Right I still would want a "gay" marriage, in terms of rewriting scripts, challenging assumptions, and whatnot). However much the thinking about marriage and what makes a family is evolving, (and that is exciting) a lot of the rules of government programs haven't kept pace with that or the longer and fuller life-spans of people with disabilities today. When a person with a disability marries, especially to a non-disabled partner, benefit programs, such as Social Security, long-term care and SNAP cease paying benefits and shift the financial burden onto the non-disabled partner. This creates an untenable situation for most families, particularly given the extra costs brought on by disability such as extra equipment, medication and the like.
Even after my hypothetical beloved and I would accept the headlong leap into the "for poorer" portion of the program, the hits would keep on coming.
Being cut off financially, as awful as that is, could be only the beginning of the struggle some couples face. In another piece of excellent reporting, Smith writes of a couple with intellectual disabilities that not only had to get permission from their guardians to wed, they had to sue to get anyone to find a state placement where they could live together as a couple. Both partners' group home placements argued they lacked "psychological fitness" for the day-to-day challenges of living together as a couple, which, if you turn on daytime television on any day, is clearly not a standard applied to every couple. Even though they live together now, it's clear the thinking is antiquated on this issue. The judge ruled that they had no grounds for a discrimination lawsuit, as the complication arose not from their disability status, but in their status as a married couple. Huh?
No SSDI would mean no funding for my attendants. It would likely put stress on the new marriage to have my mother helping me shower three times a week, but at least, Mom would help out for free when nobody else would. Most likely, though, one of them would have to work more hours and I would have to fit my stuff around that. Romantic, eh? This is a grim note for sure, but even just typing this as a hypothetical situation, I can almost understand why the abuse statistics for disabled women with partners are so much higher than the already bleak and depressing averages. Without the help of an attendant, I literally cannot get out of bed in the morning, and unless I married Christian Grey, my spouse probably wouldn't make enough for three salaries.
As for real solutions, I'm going to leave that to Gwen Davis and marriage advocate Dominick Evans:
The best solution to this issue, as I see it, would be for the federal government to establish single-payer healthcare (to obviate the need for Medicaid) and a basic living income for seniors and those with disabilities, regardless of work history or marital status and not tested on the basis of means or assets (to reduce the need for food stamps and other means-tested programs).
There are other solutions being discussed online, in such places as the Marriage Equality for People With Disabilities Facebook page. Leading trans and disabled activist and filmmaker Dominick Evans has created an informative video of him speaking on these issues at a Cincinnati marriage equality rally. As he puts it:
"When we get marriage equality, some people in our community will not be able to get married anyway — and that's people with disabilities. While people with disabilities can technically get married, we really don't have a choice because there are so many barriers placed in front of us that keep us from marrying the people we love. Gay or straight, people with disabilities are fighting the same battle."
Other resources:
Marriage Equality for People with Disabilities Face Book page:
https://www.facebook.com/...
Dominick Evan's blog page:
http://www.dominickevans.com/...
chicating is flattered to be included, but sometimes struggles to stay amused that, after devoting herself to writing for years, the piece that really excites her friends and family is a reader quote in Oprah magazine that took her five minutes to write. Someday that will be a very funny story, she has decided. In between wondering if getting retweeted by character actors on “The Wire” counts as street cred (probably not, though still cool enough to mention in this bio), she writes and does occasional activism, despite the twin challenges of cerebral palsy (CP) and living on the surface of the sun for over thirty years.
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