[Article] What threat to marriage ?

damien

What threat to marriage?
By BILL HETLAND
http://www.jsonline.com/news/editorials/aug04/249418.asp

As I gave my paralyzed life partner, Phil Anderson, a urinary tract flush on a recent Monday night, his catheter failed. Following two unsuccessful attempts to replace the catheter and a phone call to an emergency room nurse at the Zablocki VA Medical Center in Milwaukee, we were able to correct his problem on the third try. I got to bed at 1 a.m. and was up at 4 a.m.

The following Wednesday night after I returned to our Kenosha home from making a work-related presentation at a courthouse in Waukegan, Ill., Phil had a temperature of 105 degrees. I slept on a couch so I could get up and put cold compresses on his head. He sleeps in a hospital bed in our sunroom because he has no access to the two bedrooms on our second floor. I had about two hours of sleep that night.

So, when I read columns and letters about gays wanting to get married so rice can be thrown at the ceremony and that loving couples like us are a threat to the "sanctity of marriage," I get angry. It isn't so much about having the same rights as straight couples - although that would be nice. Rather, I'm angry with those who demonize gays and think that loving gay couples like us somehow threaten that sanctity. We have been together for almost 16 years and have survived incredible challenges during the past three and one-half years.

Phil was paralyzed from the waist down in a February 2001 auto accident and has since been hospitalized for femur reconstruction, lung surgery, a stroke, gallbladder surgery, multiple seizures, chronic pain and numerous other health problems. Last September, during a celebration of our 15 years together, I presented Phil with a framed "Certificate of Survival" in recognition of his incredible courage.

I'm 60 and Phil will be 49 on Nov. 23. Yet somehow, loving gay couples like us are a threat.

We are fortunate that Phil, a Marine vet, received life-saving surgery at Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital and that he gets good ongoing care from the spinal cord injury unit at the VA hospital. The medical staff, social workers, psychologists, therapists and other employees have been quick to respond to our needs. As far as I know, they don't consider loving gay couples like us as a threat to marriage's sanctity.

We are also grateful for the support and understanding of many friends - most of them straight. Those friends include my colleagues at the addictions prevention and treatment agency I work for in Illinois. And both Phil and I have been blessed to have members of the Anderson and Hetland families in our corner. Phil's brother-in-law and a brother, for example, directed the construction of a wheelchair ramp so that Phil could have easy access to our home. Before the ramp was built, I had to pull Phil up and down the front steps in his wheelchair.

Having the support of our families means a lot because there are too many smug and sanctimonious zealots out there who seem to think that loving gay couples like us are not only a threat to the sanctity of marriage, but also to the sanctity of the family structure.

Good heavens, we love our families. Phil has received some real morale-boosters by attending family events like the high school graduation of a niece last year in the Upper Peninsula and the wedding of another niece this June in Brown Deer.

Yet, despite our strong belief in the value of the family structure, there are still far too many individuals out there who perceive loving couples like us as a threat to society.

Like Phil, I'm a veteran, having served in Vietnam. We have both served our country honorably and have been honorable in our commitment to each other. Yet there are still folks who see gay couples like us as a threat to the sanctity of marriage.

Are we a threat to that sanctity? We are not.


Bill Hetland is communications coordinator and gambling outreach coordinator for Nicasa, an addictions prevention and treatment agency in Lake County, Ill.