Get Used to It: Ep. 88, "Taking Care of Our Families"

what's up [Music] so [Music] hi welcome to get used to it i'm sheila cuell your every time you see this show host and uh today we continue our discussion and exploration about the treatment of gay and lesbian families in the united states the good treatment the bad treatment and the ugly treatment one would say with a sort of special focus today i'm very very happy to welcome as my guests for this discussion jenny piser who is the senior staff attorney at lambda legal defense and education fund in los angeles welcome jenny it's great to be here and my special guest i would say keith bredkowski whose partner jeff coleman was a flight attendant on the first american airlines a flight that crashed on on september 11th and keith is going to share his story with us and really sort of the context of it keith i'm very glad you're here thank you thank you for inviting me and our third guest eric ostacon who is the legislative advocate for the california alliance for pride and equality cape which is our california lobbying arm in sacramento for our community similar to those in many other states welcome eric thank you for having me um jenny let's start talking to you to sort of set the context a little bit here there are a number of ways in which our families are or are not mostly recognized in the united states and one of these really i think manifests itself most um clearly when we have a tragedy such as keith and jeff's can you tell me a little bit about your involvement and what lambda is doing and kind of your take on this yes um well the events of september 11th i think gave our whole country a lesson in the fact that death can happen to any of us with absolutely no warning and without discrimination just based on where you happen to be this can happen and statistics have shown for a long time that most americans more than 50 percent at any given moment don't have a will prepared it's something every person can do but we procrastinate we don't do it and unfortunately lesbians and gay men are no different from other americans in this respect like so many other respects so um lambda legal found itself in the position of trying to help quite a few people who are affected by that tragedy our offices in fact are only a couple blocks from where world trade was and we were shut down for weeks and my colleagues there have been offering help to a couple of dozen people who have come forward gay men and lesbians who whose partners were on the planes um or uh or on the ground or in the buildings and i think the situation has given the whole country a lesson common tragedy exactly the same tragic events that hit everybody and yet as gay men and lesbians who aren't allowed to marry in any state our legal position is different and we've been dealing with that so what is the circumstance then for these folks for uh people who lost partners uh either on the planes or in the uh in the building and how the state of new york has said they've got a fund the red cross and half of everybody in america raised money off of this tragedy and said oh we're going to help the families certainly american airlines had and took some responsibility about families and finally i think the federal government's doing something can you let us all know including all the people watching here kind of where those things stand yeah well you very nicely illustrated the range of types of resources that have been offered to people and families and i think many of us believed and expected as americans that that term meant american families and the full diversity that we are private charities have ranged in their behavior some have helped everybody who needed help based on need others have had restrictive definitions saying they were only going to help legal families spouses people with a legal relationship the american red cross interestingly started by only helping legally recognized families and with some public pressure changed their policies and said very clearly and instructed their personnel that all families including unmarried surviving partners lesbian and gay straight you know if your relationship was that of a of a surviving partner or family member you would get help as far as government the states have varied new york state has tried to do as much as it could to help unmarried partners was hampered somewhat by the state of its law but its its leadership in albany and in new york state in new york city have have tried to provide support the federal government uh is an interesting complicated picture the the fund that congress set up in this unprecedented gesture of of desire to provide humane help uh billions of dollars to be made available to people in the situation needed to have rules written to to implement that law special master ken feinberg who was appointed to set up those rules um issued interim regulations in the fall that are that are sort of a mixed bag now lambda and many of the other national gay lesbian advocacy groups um gave him some suggestions of how to do that basically saying recognize the essence of the relationship here's law from the highest court in new york state the place where this happened that we'll show you how to do that and and there was not a marriage license required for a person to lose their life there should not be a marriage license required to provide the humane help that congress intended he didn't do that what he did instead was set up a national program that looks to state law now if he had set up national rules he could have just said if you're a family member show us that we'll help you and that's basically what he did for families of workers who were here without legal status he said come forward show who you are and you needn't fear deportation we want to help you we don't want anybody not coming forward because they they their immigration status is uncertain so they suspended federal law to provide for families in need they didn't do that for gay and lesbian americans what they said is we're going to look to state law that means they're going to be inconsistent and unjust results people who lived in vermont and were in a civil union can be confident that they will be treated as equals people who lived in california and this is jeff coleman lived in california has some good strong legal tools to work with thanks to people like you and your colleagues in sacramento who passed the first and only domestic partner law in the country that was enacted without litigation pushing for it that leadership in sacramento is making a really tangible important difference to keith bradkowski but and hawaii people who live in hawaii have an opportunity under state law to have protection 47 other states exclude gay men and lesbians no matter how long a couple has been together no matter how interdependent they are they are absolutely excluded from state law and special master ken feinberg has adopted that those discriminatory systems as the ones to be used by the federal government and that's a shame because it means that compensation support humane comfort will not be given on a non-discriminatory basis to people who are all suffering equally well it always seemed to me and i i i've made the point and i hope that we'll be able to discuss this as we uh go along in the show that there are certain things done purposefully you know people say well why should they expect to have their partnerships recognized legally when they never have been well they never have been i think for a reason you single out a group of people to privilege in some ways for a reason it's a very very powerful tool it seems to me of of discrimination and certainly one as i i was talking to eric and i think we'll get into this when i uh talk to you eric about uh it's been historically used and not just for our community i mean it's a great thing to be able to deny people recognition of their families but you must have seen um the sort of the tragedy that it that it has caused in not recognizing our families i mean it really sort of comes out what kind of people we are at this point and how the country is uh kind of showing its colors um because you were talking to me really about this and as a matter of fact i think you wrote an article in in this larger context say a little more about that well i i think that in 96 when the whole country had a national discussion about why lesbians and gay men should or shouldn't be allowed to marry in many ways it was an abstract discussion this is a concrete discussion and i think there's been an unprecedented shift in public understanding of what we're talking about when we talk about the need to protect a family in a way that's comprehensive that that shift in attitude we see it in the press interest we see it in the outpouring of support that keith has received from total strangers who understand what he's going through and light bulbs are going off for people that this is not about it's not about religion it's not about theory it's about whether a surviving partner can stay in the home whether the whether the surviving partner has access to the retirement fund are there social security benefits for people i mean it's very concrete it's a time when private business that is offered domestic partner benefit plans for example thinking of it as a a narrow one particular right realizes that the workforce understood that as a promise that they won't face discrimination and and at the time of most urgent need for support employees expect to be respected and that promise of equal treatment will be applied when they need it not when they don't need it but when they need it now every american person of legal age has the right to and the ability to empower themselves in a critical way that i have to highlight here and that's by writing a will because one thing that that special master feinberg did in addition to relying on state law was to say that he would respect whoever had been named in a will and federal law has never done that before you can't do it for your social security benefits and you can't do it for your tax form um or any of the other 1049 federal rights that go with marriage and so he has said he's going to respect individual choice if people wrote a will every one of us has an ability to control that in our lives and to protect the person that's most dear to us by taking that simple step i mean you can give a box of chocolates you can give roses on valentine's day if you sit down and write the will you're doing something really tangible that the law has to respect in every single state that's that's an important step that he took he didn't do what we wanted him to do and again gay or straight alike more than half of the people at any given time don't have a will but for those who did it for those who got off the couch and didn't procrastinate ken feinberg said he would respect their wishes if there was ever a wake-up call to each and every one of us to take the first step toward our own liberation and our own equality that's the message you know do that for the person that you love still i don't want to let anybody off the hook on this and i want to talk to you keith about this issue that jenny brought up and of course your own case so exemplifies it of the employer and the employer's responsibility to employees where they believe the employer believes there's one little narrow thing that they have for their employees but their employees believe that it really means recognition in a way that in your case has not really extended tell us a little about jeff and a little about what you've gone through since uh he was lost to us well jeff jeff and i were together for 11 years a very committed and loving relationship jeff loved people he loved children in fact on flights he would he would buy crayons and coloring books to give to children to color on what during their flights a very very caring loving individual and losing him has been the single most tragedy in my entire life and it is only through the support of people through the throughout the country who i've received hundreds of letters of people conveying their support and in the support of of lambda who i i turned to because i had nowhere else to turn to at the time it has given me great strength and knowing what jeff would want it's i feel very strongly now that i need to be an advocate for the fair and equal treatment of gay and lesbian couples well what happened what happened was after losing jeff there was a flurry of activity the first three weeks i i was in in total shock going to various services and so forth and receiving tremendous support from from hundreds of flight attendants from american who have been incredibly wonderful to me what happened was when american announced that they were going to be paying twenty five thousand dollars to every person that died on the plane including the crew members uh jeff's flight a friend jeff's flight attendant friends encouraged me to call and find out about this because they believed very strongly that i was jeff's family there was no question in anyone's mind so i had to go through quite a few hurdles to try to contact people and people wouldn't return my calls and finally i um what i've what i found out was that there was massive confusion during this this time of uh terrible tragedy in terms of how did how was the airlines going to take care of domestic partners that were registered in their program for instance i was on jeff's health insurance and his dental insurance i was his named beneficiary on his uh life insurance checking account and so forth however when when all of this happened i think the airline pretty much followed you know uh wills following wills and and jeff was a flight attendant he didn't earn a lot of money and we we when we signed our domestic partnership in california it was our belief that in the event something were to happen we would be we would be protected and i was terribly wrong but but i'm still very thankful that we signed that domestic partnership because it helped legitimize our relationship um and and i'm just happy that we did that what did americans do i'm assuming that they didn't recognize you they did not recognize me they they recognized jeff's divorced uh and distant parents that in in giving this award to it and uh so it is it is my sincere hope that you know in in working with jenny and lambda that they are they're doing a great job in protecting me but it's my sincere hope that we can get to get things resolved with american airlines and most importantly for american airlines to recognize that they're when they have domestic partner benefits what does that mean and what does it mean to people especially in times of crisis you know it's this is not for you to say because i know that not only are you hoping that all of this can be worked out but you're a terribly polite man i know and a grieving man still but it really pisses me off that this airline company has gotten so many awards from our community that has set up this outreach to gay people to try to make certain that we know how gay friendly they are that has a domestic partner policy when you know push comes to shove and there ain't no more push and shove than this particular situation that they would act so badly and essentially still be intractable about it as far as i can tell i mean this show is being filmed now in april of 2002 and this still remains unresolved and it's you know i don't go around bashing companies that have been good to the community i love those companies but this is such an irony to me um have you um i'm assuming now that because you're working with lambda that you no longer would you know call and have direct contact with them but you said you were the beneficiary on on his life insurance was there any problem with any other areas no because the life insurance although the the premiums were paid by the airline the the the insurance was paid directly directly to me by the insurance company so it wasn't that that uh that that the airline had to issue a check other than uh his checking in uh savings account with americans federal credit union they issued the check for that i think what's so ironic about everything is is jeff so dearly loved american airlines he wouldn't let me fly on any other airlines and what's so sad is that in a way this really dishonors his memory because they are not appreciating and recognizing who jeff identified as his family and that's very painful and you know i i have to say that the people who make american airlines great the flight attendants and pilots and all the service crew they have been incredibly wonderful and supportive to me and i and it's my it's my hope that we can get the corporate level to have a greater appreciation of domestic partners and are you equally recognized with other families that have law that lost people september 11th here in california i mean has a that's an interesting point because i i've spoke with a number of people uh not not just in our state but in other states and i am so thankful that jeff and i were residents of california i i cannot tell you when i when i talk to other people or i go to other states how um how for granted we take many of our of our liberties and freedoms here and although we our domestic partnership registration program is still in its infancy stages it means a lot especially when you go into another state where they have absolutely no protections for people and when i received a handwritten letter from governor davis it was incredibly moving for me very caring and compassionate individual that he was to do that and and i'm i'm thankful that i'm a california resident well it's interesting too because i know one of the members of our community mark bingham was on the plane uh you know that we celebrate now there are movies about it in terms of the passengers getting together to make sure that they engaged the hijackers made sure that the plane crashed before it got to the capitol or wherever it was going and there's been some recognition certainly the governor uh recognized his partner when we had our kind of memorial service in sacramento but these stories are not really that well known right i think to people just as jenny said well i'm really really grateful that you're here to talk to us about that and i want to pitch it to you eric because something that keith said i think is something that you and i also have a great concern about here in california and i would guess in a lot of other states here we've got this fabulous domestic partner registry you can go register what do you get not much but more than you've ever gotten and more than you get in other states so it's sort of like the good news and the bad news but this issue of the expectation and understanding of the people who register around issues related to illness and especially loss of a partner can you talk a little bit about kind of what we've got what we don't got well we we've come a long way but we still have definitely a very long ways to go and uh we joked about it a lot jenny and i i guess i'm not leaving this uh job until we get marriage um god when would that be but here in california with the domestic partnership registry and the passage of ab25 last year that assemblymember carol migdon and you have authored we have established some basic legal protections for gay and lesbian couples um jenny mentioned 1049 legal incidents of marriage that the federal government bestow to opposite sex couples once they get that marriage license there are about close to 400 legal rights and obligations under state law the way we're going if we're doing about 13 a year it's going to take us 60 years to get there i hope not but dealing with the death and dying issue issues i mean we have managed to include in the basic legal protections when our partner becomes ill to be able to take your sick leave to care for an ill partner or the child of your domestic partner be able to take if your partner is disabled you should be able to file for disability insurance on behalf of your partner if your partner is incapacitated in the hospital you can make medical decision making authority or be appointed as a conservator for your partner if your partner is incapacitated the caveat is you have to be registered as domestic partners but there are so many holes and the september 11 tragedies underscore the lack of the laws that we have under our state law and federal law including the right to inherit your partner's state when there's no will can you tell us though a little bit about just the regular law about this because i don't think a lot of people know what happens if you don't have a will i mean i know some people still think that the state takes all your property if you don't have a will which is not the case and the reason why there's a distinction between the married couple or the parent and child and us is really not very clear to people so could you kind of give us a kind of a basic 101 explanation of intestacy well what happens in a family if one of the spouses died without a will our state law recognized a surviving spouse as eligible to inherit the property of the deceased spouse just automatically just automatically they're you know um and we have a community properties that's another issue we have to deal with but in terms of just you know if if if your spouse owns the house and it's not under your name if your spouse dies the surviving spouse gets the house if there are no children or no other surviving family members but if there are other family members then they are divided as stated in the law but if there's family members and a domestic partner and no will the family members get it not the family member and the domestic the surviving unless you've got some other arrangement in terms of co-ownership exactly if you if both of you are co-owners of the house and i think that's one situ that's the situation that keith is going through jeff died without a will and now keith is involved in that kind of situation there are other things involved even just minute things like the death certificate the partner is not even recognized under our state law the right to make um you know funeral arrangements for your partner or to make organ donations or you know to authorize the corner to perform autopsy i mean things like that the people do not really think of because i mean i don't know whether it's because of the morbid you know the morbid thoughts of death and dying issues they don't want to deal with it but they're real and like what you said tragedies strike us in so many different ways and unless you prepare yourself and hopefully the call is now upon us to fulfill to make sure that we take care of you know of our state well but you know in the in the old days before we had the old days and a few years ago before we had domestic partnership in california um it we used to give lectures uh in you know in classes about you have one piece of paper you'd say you know here's what a heterosexual couple needs here's a marriage license and out of that flows as you said 400 or more than a thousand 400 state rights more than a thousand federal rights here's what we need and we would reach under the you know podium and pull out a stack of papers yay high all of which we had to sign things that said you could make decisions in the hospital things that said you can make decisions about property things that you know a million legal pieces of paper and the problem really is i guess it's fine to say you need a will you must have a will and the reason you must have a will it's true for everybody i mean you want to say what happens to your stuff but our concern has to always be for our community members who don't have a will how can we protect them how can we make sure you know that the state will allow them to do the things they need to do in recognition of their family status and the answer is in california because everything's written down in california we have no common law you write it into the law and as you said we've been doing it about it's not 13 rights a year it's about 13 every other year i think it's true isn't it so it's six a year actually yeah it's been i think a total of 18 if you include what what was uh part of ab26 and with ab25 is about approximately 18. it's under 20. that's how i can so if it's six every year 60 years now eric when i was talking before about sort of the larger question at least to me about kind of people say to me now why you know why don't they want us to be families why don't they recognize that we're good and loving parents that we're you know that we care for each other for years and years and years why don't they want us to marry i i mean there are so many different reasons i think that people don't want to give us the complete or the true form of equality they're willing to give us the anti-discrimination protections and employment and now and believe me it's still difficult to be openly gay or openly lesbian at work or even when you're trying to uh rent an apartment or or buy a home but i think when it comes to families because families provide so much of what it is to be human i mean the safety and the security and all of the other attributes that you get from families and governor davis mentioned this when he signed ab25 last year in situations like what happened with jeff it's the family that provide you comfort that that gives you the strength you need that extra um to keep yourself going and for for the opponents of anything that would advance the cause of equality for the lgbt community they want to keep us not feeling safe i think in some ways if we get the security of the families we become we become more confident you know we we show them said look we are not going to take this from you we are here we have we deserve the same basic legal protections that anybody else in this world have and i think that's what to me why some of the opponents of domestic partnership or the civil union or even marriage for same-sex couples they don't want they want to continue to dehumanize us well and it's not the first time that any community suffered from that i mean i i guess we all kind of know our history but i was um amazed and i'll throw this out and then anybody else that you know can help but of course slaves were not allowed to marry it was a privilege that they were not given they were not recognized as human beings and then of course every state in the union had laws against interracial marriage which only rolled back the last one in the 60s yes i mean california was ahead of the supreme court 1948 is when california banned the prohibition on interracial marriage and the supreme court took them what close to 20 years 1967 right but i think that is one way for those in power to continue holding on to that power to give that privilege to them and keep people groups of people whether it's african-american filipinos chinese lesbians and gay americans to be outside of the system so that you were telling me about what the filipino community had experienced i i was just looking at a book that i saw at the library where i saw this picture that says no dogs or filipinos allowed that's how filipinos were considered back in you know as as uh as late as the 50s well i remember when we were having the debate about the gay student bill in california phil eisenberg who was an assembly member from sacramento who was married to an asian woman stood up in favor of the bill and he's a very quiet spoken man very well respected who just said you know a few years before i got married i wouldn't have been allowed to marry marilyn and people had not taken it in that context before but eric talked about this feeling of not sort of safety in the family and not having that acknowledged did you experience these feelings i mean it must be hard for you if american airlines that jeff loved so much says well never mind keith we don't you know we don't recognize you right it was painful in that respect because especially when he he loved that company so much um i just i it's um it's it's been a real interesting uh experience for me um you know even applying for certain funds just as you had mentioned earlier something as simple as if you had a marriage certificate you could submit that for for assistance and i i've had to i've had to uh include as many as 10 different items to prove that we were jeff and i were in a committed relationship so that's difficult i as i said earlier i i've never ever really been politically active before because i've taken rights for granted and if chess life has inspired me to do anything it's it's to go out there and to educate and if i can get one person to get out there and sign a will and that's a good thing but but it doesn't it doesn't stop us from having to move our agenda forward in demanding that we have equal and fair treatment and and you know we can really be doing the big picture and the specific detail at the same time you know our our brains can handle more than one idea at once and so one thing i want to say is um that not only is keith talking about um what marriage can mean in a tangible way and the importance of us not fearing to talk about that and why we are worthy of that um and and why that's you know it's it's a way of that's that's the word that connotes family under law and in saying we want to do that we want to bring ourselves within the law and be responsible and protected at the same time we're saying you know it it's fine for the law to protect us when we're at work doing things just like everyone else so allow us to be equal when we're like you okay when we talk about our families and the need for us to be included within family law through marriage we're saying respect us and protect us also when in some respect we're different from you we're still equal we don't have to be the same in order to have equality i can say that as a legal concept but i think all of us get it as a human concept too people that have blue eyes and brown eyes in our society can have equality people who are female and that are male can have equality and so um and at least the law says we're entitled to that if we have to work every day to make that true that's our job but the law promises it so and at the same time we'll deal with the particular details one of which is that assembly member keeley one of your colleagues in sacramento has introduced a bill to add some partial inheritance rights to the state domestic partner law that's something that if it had been in place when the tragedy happened keith's legal situation would be significantly clearer and better um and so so it's a tremendous thing that that he's done stepping forward to to put this idea on the table and there will be a hearing this month at which keith will share some of his personal story to help members of the legislature understand that it's it's very concrete and tangible uh to people who are going through the most hideous experience it's in that moment of personal loss that law and society you know law as an expression of society a need to embrace people and allow things like i mean all the other things that eric was naming and things about property um shouldn't be hard keith's um situation in terms of the federal fund i sometimes describe it as um a sadistic law school exam question because every question leads to another question absolutely you know and we have to take a moment to appreciate governor davis again in this because california law has some inconsistencies and confusions about the legal status of domestic partners right now and and he stepped forward and prepared an executive order um directing the the california victims compensation and government claims board to provide some expert advice and information to special master feinberg to understand that california law protects somebody in keith's position he's received support and compensation from california in some ways that have been tremendously helpful both emotionally and in other ways financially as well and to the extent that that the special master wants to rely on has said he wants to rely on state law the point is well you might be confused special master feinberg as you look at california law but um but let us help you with that confusion and that's what the executive order does and it was a tremendously thoughtful and and appropriate thing for for the governor to do and it also highlights where we need to go and why the keeley bill is helpful and you know other other bills that will come will be helpful each of us really has a duty to try to grapple with the confusion and it's it's part of what lambda legal tries to do it's what cape does so excellently in sacramento because registered nurses provide tremendous service to society and it's other people's job to to to work on the law and and when keith tells his story then that helps people understand what the law needs to do and then it's up to other people including experts like yourself to to know how to to get the law to where it can be to accomplish what he needs but i'll go ahead if i could if i could just jump in here i think what's been what's made this thing all this very very difficult for me is before i went into administration i worked in in trauma as a trauma nurse and what's interesting is that as a nurse you never discriminate when a patient comes in to see you i've treated gunshot wound victims police officers firemen drug addicts and you don't i never discriminated because everybody needed care and so when this has all come about with september 11th and and i finally see that that yes there are discriminatory practices it is just really shocking for me and this has also opened many many hearts throughout the country of people who who really didn't know a lot about gay relationships and commitments and i think i think a lot of people have made some major changes in how they view things but i can tell you that from this experience i am committed to getting more and more of our rights secured if i have to knock on every person's door in the assembly in the in the senate well i you could skip my door not because i don't want to see you but because i am convinced although something jenny said kind of interested me i want to explore it for a minute you said um about where many people are reluctant to push for marriage um i want you to say more about that because i certainly know that but why do you think that is maybe an obvious answer to an obvious question but why not just go right for it well i mean i think that it can be painful to ask for something we don't think will get many of us especially folks who have been involved for a number of years or people who have grown up in really hostile places we know what it's like to have society say no you can't have that you don't deserve that and sometimes we deal with that by saying well i didn't want that anyway i really like my life and i wouldn't want that anyway so i think that's part of it you have to really feel that you're worthy of it to feel comfortable putting yourself out there at the risk of being told no especially when you're inviting other people in a sense to express their opinion about your humanness and it takes a lot to do that and and i think that's why it can be so helpful in a sense it sets a standard it has for me that keith is putting himself out at a time that's so challenging to to say why it matters and if he can do that well good heavens you know i can do something too and i i hope people watching the show feel that uh feeling too i can do something about it too and when we articulate you know well what what's the good reason to leave us as a as a community outside what's the good reason you know the government doesn't have a good reason that's what the trial in hawaii showed when we won the trial in hawaii it was because the state did not have any good reason and that will happen again in litigation yes and also in conversations around living rooms because there is no good reason and and so we will win the question is how long is it going to take and how many people have to go through unspeakably painful experiences like keith has until we get the law to be what it should be how long is it going to take well i remember watching guess who's coming to dinner you know in the middle of a real strong debate and it was pretty much at the end of uh right before or right after i don't even remember the law was going to be overturned in loving versus virginia about interracial marriage how painful it was you know for that family um and and i it was very realistic people are they go through pain about this you know you come out to your parents and you can see they go through some pain about it and yet how dare the state tell me that they're going to treat me differently than my parents did in accepting my partner you know i mean it was a difficult thing but when we saw in california that the voters said we don't want those marriages recognized if they happen to ever happen anywhere in the universe which they're not happening now that was also i think a part of what you mean jen in saying it hurts it just hurts people have said to us we don't want these marriages and so to to push for something that you know your the people of the state have told you they at the moment don't want or think they don't want or what they're afraid of you know i bet if we took a vote today in the deep south um 60 percent of people would vote for segregation um you know well that's why i think we're i mean that's why eric does the work that he does because the the notion is in in our lifetime we say to the law just a little bit more this way please just a little bit more this way please and it does but it really takes the examples um but it's always been interesting to me that the family and i think you really started to get at some of the feeling about it the area of family has been the place there's another area too which is not the topic of this show which is specific health issues in minority communities that there's always one in the native american community in terms of health needs uh in the latino latino community in the african-american community in our community different health issues to which the health establishment has said we never heard of that we're not going to do research on that you know that's only a few people and actually they don't say who cares but they sort of mean who cares haven't even begun until recently counting us as a disparate part of sort of health studies with family you don't have a kind of a national clearinghouse about family issues in a way like you do with health that you can even appeal to you know where do we go and it's all state law so we go state by state by state what do we do with people who live in other states i mean are they just out of luck well lambda is is doing our best to do creative thinking and advocacy i mean people people who lived in virginia where there was no will where the loss is is really the same as it would have been for somebody who had a will or or lived um for example in california um and so we do our best legal advocacy for people we we appeal to special master feinberg to use his discretion and in that sense it's the same as the work we do day day in and day out to protect people who are vulnerable because they're outside the law and and we invite those who feel able to to share their story because the stories are really what will what is changing the country the fact that it's a human face it's a real life person but you know the federal government's the biggest employer in the country and gay and lesbian employees of the federal government should have health benefits um and and we should be talking about that there's no you know social security we all pay our taxes we pay into that government program our partners uh won't get those survivor benefits if one of us goes first so i think each person can illustrate an issue and by doing it together and by by making it urgent um we do we do move it forward and with all the resistance and we also take turns i i really think that that the issue of marriage or some you know legal record you know the full legal recognition of gay and lesbian families will happen i mean the younger generation and i'm i'm very very thrilled to see the this you know the pollings that have been done whether it's by hamilton college or the ucla american freshman survey close to 60 of the of the freshmen entering last year believe that gay and lesbian couples should have the right to marry it's going to happen and the examples and and the stories like what keith is going through um your relationship with dorina of so many years what i'm going through where i can't even do anything with our domestic partnership i mean this would illustrate the things that doesn't really you know that doesn't separate us i mean what affects our families affects every other families out there we may be of different configuration but it still affects us the same way we bleed the same way we have to deal with our mortgage we have to pay our insurance rates and i think when people recognize and and when they know how hard it is to maintain a family you know they would see why and and hopefully that would change their minds and their hearts to see the hardships and the inequities that gay and lesbian families go through well and especially at this time where i know keith was trying to deal with his grief and you know the issue of being treated fairly i have a friend who was in a relationship with another woman for 35 years and when that woman passed away they they held the house jointly but the surviving partner now has to pay taxes on a much higher basis of the house because one of the privileges is if you're married you inherit the house at the same basis there's no reassessment if you don't you get a reassessment and boom you're paying spending three times as much in property taxes people get taxed out and they've done everything they could do on paper yeah sometimes people have to move out of the home because they can't afford the reassessment taxes if they're on a fixed income they may have lived there for decades but don't have the the ability to pay taxes that that go through the roof well remember that tv show with vanessa redgrave if these walls could talk in the first um episode of it or the first part of that movie very poignant i thought were these women who'd been a older couple and therefore pretty much in the closet been together for you know a million years and when her partner dies she can't grieve in public because nobody knew the family inherits the house and she's got to leave and the kids are kind of embarrassed about this and just hope she'll go away and here's a woman who's lived in the house you know for 40 years that's her home and she wasn't even informed that her partner passed away right until she asked right yeah i mean i actually had a case um somewhat like that here in california a couple that was living in san diego and uh the surviving member of the of the couple in her mid-seventies was evicted by the relatives who lived in live in missouri and she she was born in spain hadn't lived in spain for almost 40 years but that's where she had to go back she was a naturalized u.s citizen intended to spend the remaining days that she has in that home that the couple built together and that that was their intention and their their plan um but but she was evicted and didn't have the resources to stay in the country um can't couldn't afford you know what what it would require and and so she had to go back to to a place that she hadn't been for decades um so it's very real i i think one um one sort of positive side of this and things that we can do is try to make sure that our relatives our families of origin know as much as possible about the families we create so that there aren't uh so that we do as much as we can to lessen the discomfort and to convey our expectations during our lifetime if our relatives aren't behaving well when we're alive we can be sure they're not going to do better once we're gone and and in that in that um vein i mean let me share a story as as as eric was alluding to i've been in a relationship for um for going on 20 years and my partner is chinese-american and some of these laws about interracial marriage are very real i feel like you know a few years ago we wouldn't have been able to marry because of that rule and now we just have to get rid of this this next rule but we have tried over the years to bring our families together and recently had a dinner of of her family and my family together over an amazing meal of chinese food and part of the point was that both sets of parents are elderly and having health problems and we may not get the chance to do that again they met many years ago when we first were getting to know each other and it seemed important to bring them together so they could see the commonalities and so that we could share some of that while we still can and that was also about communicating to all of them together at the same place what what we intend and how we see them all so that my parents could witness the way i interact with her parents and vice versa those are things that we can do too that are not about laws they're they're about family really i think full caps you know family and it helps them know how they're supposed to behave one of the travesties about how american airlines has treated keith in my view is that it gave us a signal to relatives as to how they should behave that they may well not have done had they not been given that invitation and i think they're not unique in making that mistake it's why they need to make sure their actions comply with the promises and the expectations that they invite when they say to their employees we will treat you equally they need to honor those expectations and not send the wrong signals because when when people are invited to misbehave sometimes they do you know it's true if you're dealing with school children it's true if you people are in tragedy and so the signals need to be clear about what's expected so i i guess when you say an invitation to misbehave you mean that american having recognized jeff's estranged parents as his legitimate family was an invitation to them to say thanks for the money you know take it and run i mean in a way i suppose you can't blame them um but there are a lot of families and i think jenny i was thinking about how the comfort level of your two sets of parents which may or may not be very high but and a recognition when we do this kind of thing that it's not easy for them either but that doesn't matter you have to do it anyway um and people talking uh maybe you're thinking about this uh the women woman in her 70s saying well why didn't they have this piece of paper you know why did she bring this on herself and to always remember that she didn't bring this on herself that others take for granted that their rights will be protected um you know the the sudden activism if if i may be excused for you know referring to it that way is not an unfamiliar concept to me keith uh remember when we were fighting for equality at work that many people who got fired because they were gay were just stunned can they do that people say can they do that and then suddenly of course they would want to fight for other people's rights and i appreciate that you know that you've joined all this big team uh unfortunate as it was how you had to choose to do it so what do we do now what can we all do now you've certainly said everybody get a will get a will and what else and maybe uh call uh fax or email folks in sacramento in support of fred keeley's bill ab221 california people need to get involved they may not have the time to write that letter but support the organizations that are pushing for this whether it's cape whether it's lambda whether it's other organizations local organizations out there educate yourself know what's going on i mean one phone call you can find some information about what's pending in the legislature call your office your constituents can call your district office to find out what's happening in the capital can people in dc do anything i mean i or about what's happening in terms of the federal law well i think it's it's a little late to to expect the rules for the federal fund to change but i think it's always useful for for members of the public to communicate to their elected representatives what they expect um probably wouldn't hurt to make phone calls to to ken feinberg's office but the regs really are what they are i think our our eyes need to be on making sure that everybody in washington dc understands that the gay and lesbian community is paying attention we're watching what they do and that the times really are changing because we're speaking up that does mean calling your your elected representatives and writing letters if you have an opinion express it do it in your local community too i mean there's a there's always opportunities to write a letter to the local paper um and and also there's there's the opportunities to as eric said support the organizations that are working for you because the more that people participate the more we can do uh and and all of the organizations are tiny compared to the fact that there's there are millions of us in this country you know and just think how much more we could do if if every person who needs better protection and better advocacy helped make that possible i couldn't have found a better closing myself and unfortunately i know everyone would have something more to say but we're down to about 45 seconds see i told you the hour was going to go really fast thank you so much eric thank you jenny thank you keith especially um thank you all for being with us as well i think this has been a thoughtful discussion i hope that you enjoyed it i hope that you are moved to do something i hope that you will become a sudden activist if you haven't already and that in terms of what you do in your life to make something happen i hope you'll get used to it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you