Carol Ness
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
Thursday, April 27, 1995
Ninia and Genora want to get married.
Their happily married straight friends say it's a good idea. "The ones who've had divorces say, "You don't really want to do this,' " said Ninia Baehr with a laugh over lunch Wednesday at San Francisco's Abigail Hotel.
But Baehr and Genora Dancel have known since the day they met -- set up by Baehr's mother -- that they wanted to spend their lives together. Together five years, they might as well be married: the dark, handsome Dancel and the delicate Baehr, in a flowered two-piece dress, finish each others sentences and radiate the intimacy of lives truly entwined.
When the couple applied for a marriage license in 1990, the state of Hawaii refused to grant it because the two are women. Since then, the lesbians, along with two gay couples, have devoted their lives to forging a legal right to marriage for gays.
Where many saw their effort as a lost cause from the start, a waste of time for gays with other fires to fight, they won an astonishing decision from the Hawaii Supreme Court. It ruled in 1993 that prohibiting gays and lesbians from marrying appeared to violate the state constitution's equal protection guarantee.
In a trial set for September, Hawaii must prove it has a "compelling" state interest for such discrimination. Dancel and Baehr -- as well as gay legal strategists -- are hopeful. The final outcome is two years off.
In the meantime, the pair travel to cities like San Francisco as part of the gay movement's campaign to sell the public on the idea of gay marriage -- to thwart their many opponents and to pave the way in other states, should the couple win in Hawaii.
They were the star attractions at a fund-raiser Wednesday night at the War Memorial Building for the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, a gay rights group whose attorneys are helping on their case.
People need to understand that keeping gays from tying the knot "hurts real-life people in real-life ways," said Evan Wolfson, Lambda attorney and co-counsel in the Hawaii case.
"The denial of marriage rights puts gay people in an excruciating Catch-22," Wolfson said. "In all sorts of situations -- government benefits, parenting rights, immigration, health care -- gay people are told you can't have this right or this benefit unless you're married. Then they're told you can't get married."
Among the benefits are many that straight couples take for granted: the right to visit a sick spouse or child in the hospital, to file joint tax returns, to qualify for pensions and Medicare, to inherit automatically if there isn't a will. For Dancel and Baehr, both 34, it's simpler. They fell in love right away after Baehr's mother sent her daughter to the Honolulu PBS station where Dancel worked for her.
"It was 11:15 on June 20, and I was wearing my orange dress," Baehr recalled, who at the time was working in the women's center at the University of Hawaii. Dancel, in flannel shirt, was closeted and backed away. But she called Baehr that night, and kissed her for the first time 10 days later -- when her braces came off.
They call their courtship traditional. They built a life together, and one day Dancel proposed. Baehr's mother fretted that it was too soon when they applied for a marriage license six months later.
Baehr wears a ruby and diamond engagement ring on her left hand; on her right is the gold ring of two women's hands, clasped, that she hopes one day will join it.
"For me it's an emotional decision," Baehr said. "I had wanted a relationship for a long time, one that would last a long time. So when it finally happened, I wanted recognition of that.
"It hurt my feelings and made me angry that I didn't get the same recognition straight people get."
The benefits were secondary. They wanted to put each other on their insurance policies and do the other routine things newly married couples do when combining lives. Gay and civil rights groups helped out, but they found their own attorney, Dan Foley, a straight man who will be the best man at their wedding, if there ever is one.
Making their relationship their cause carried dangers: Dancel's family and everyone else in Honolulu found out she is a lesbian when they saw her on TV. Baehr's mother thought it was a worthy cause, but one too heavy for their new love.
But they've stayed with it, and grown stronger, they say. They moved to Baltimore last year to escape their local celebrity. Dancel is a premed at Johns Hopkins; Baehr seeks grants for a nonprofit. They hope to move back, someday -- and get married.
If they prevail in Hawaii, other states will be forced to deal with the marriage question as legally married gays move there. Similarly, if gays win legal marriage, tax and Medicare questions, among others, will ultimately force the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the meantime, the Hawaii legislature passed a law explicitly banning same-sex marriage, and other states are trying to follow suit. Wolfson said Hawaii's law would fall off the books if its courts allowed gay marriage.
In California, marriage law is silent about gender. Wolfson said several tries to get the issue before California courts had failed. And he doesn't expect any full-fledged cases soon.
04/27/95 12:08 PST
© Thursday, April 27, 1995 San Francisco Examiner, All Rights Reserved, Unauthorized Duplication Prohibited.