What a day.

This morning at work I had someone yell at me for 35 minutes because I tried to help them.  Later I held a woman's hand for an hour while she battled against the voices in her head that were telling her to kill herself.  While I deal with unhappy family members and psychotic patients on a regular basis, today was a special kind of challenge.

I still feel somewhat on edge about the whole thing, but when I finally got to sit down and relax, I was heartened that I see so much in the way of visual support throughout my Facebook feed. 

For those who don't know yet, this symbol represents marriage equality, and the reason it's such a big deal right now is that the Supreme Court is deciding whether families like mine will be legitimate in the eyes of the California (by repealing Prop 8) and the Federal Government (by repealing DOMA).  These two historic marriage equality cases are being heard today and tomorrow, and though they will not actually reach a ruling until summer, but this is big. 

While the Wife and I are legally married where we live, we are not a legitimate family in the eyes of the Federal Government.  We think twice about going on vacation and have had to hire a lawyer to ensure that we have visitation rights in the hospital for each other or Mozart. We also have drawn up papers to ensure that the Wife will get custody of Mozart should I die.  We have a supportive family, and I wouldn't foresee any problems in this area, but better safe than sorry.  There are some areas, though, that we cannot fix by going to a lawyer. The organization I work for does not acknowledge my family, and while I can get benefits for Mozart, I cannot do so for my wife. We could not benefit from veterans benefits that I should have been able to use that would have helped us tremendously in buying and refinancing our house.  If either of us died before the other, the survivor could not collect Social Security that any heterosexelly-married widow would receive. 

I could go on and on and on about the 1138 federal marriage rights that the Wife and I don't have in the eyes of our government even thought we are legally married in our state.  Here is a link to a list of just 35 of those rights.  It's something to ponder if you haven't already.