For gay couples in DC, political reality meets real life

It took eight years to travel from a poetry night at the Black Cat to the point when Tina Hodges and Rebecca Phares began dressing up their home-office walls with stickers of little cartoon caterpillars wearing red and black berets. Now, there are two big steps to come.

They plan to walk into D.C Superior Court on Wednesday to apply for a marriage license in the city where they were born, joining the first group of gay and lesbian couples to exercise that legal right as the nation's capital puts its civic and symbolic weight behind same-sex marriage. And on July 4, they are expecting a baby boy.

These are days of great political significance and history following years of debate and public struggle, but they are also simply two more days of love for two women who keep staring at each other and smiling as they remember what brought them here. As couples consider this first chance in the District to get licenses and, after a three-day waiting period, get married, many are trying to figure out how official recognition might fit with their years or decades of personal commitment.

Many are focused on the ritual and ceremony, or rushing relatives into town, or the legal fine print. Some are thinking about how to make it in and out of the courthouse with dignity but without drawing klieg lights to their careers. Others are balking, pulled between the pride they might feel and frustration with their employers in the federal government who, by law, would continue to withhold crucial federal health and retirement benefits to their partners even after they were legally married.

Or, as is the case of Northeast residents Hodges and Phares, they are thinking about their family and future and how much fun the next few days will be.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/02/AR2010030203985.html