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Beth and Joanne's Civil Union
By Luke Visconti
February 22, 2007
My wife and I were
guests at Beth Asaro and Joanne Schailey's civil union at 12:01 this morning. They were the first
couple to be joined in civil union under the recently passed law in
New
Jersey.
We've known Beth and Joanne for
about five years. We met at a local Friends with Families from
China social event. They have an
adopted Asian daughter who is the same age as our oldest adopted Chinese
daughter, and we all hit it off immediately.
Over the years, our families have
become very close. The girls are very good friends and we have dinner at each
other's homes all the time. We're part of their circle of parents, siblings and
friends—which for my family is good, as our own family is dispersed.
I can't think of a more loving
couple and family unit. Beth is a senior administrator at AT&T and Joanne
just became a registered nurse. We share the same family values about raising
children and working with the adoption triangle. They're beautiful,
hard-working, wonderful people—the best family unit I've ever seen. I love
them.
Just after the law was passed, we
were sitting in their living room and we had to ask: "Are you going to 'union?'"
They obviously were waiting to tell us—they were bursting with happiness when
they told us they were approached by the mayor of Lambertville to be the first
couple to be joined under the new law.
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Over the years, it was clear to me
that the challenge of having a family unit without the protection of the law was
always under the surface. It really hit home for me on a day I'll never forget.
Beth and I took our daughters to the zoo when we both had the same day off (and
our respective partners were busy). We stopped at a Vietnamese restaurant to get
lunch and the waiter assumed we were husband and wife. It amused us, but there
was a sense of poignancy. We legally could be husband and wife—but we wouldn't
be, because we weren't compatible in the sexual sense of marriage. I married my
wife, but Beth couldn't marry her partner. If one of them was in the hospital,
the other would have no legal rights. Their daughter is less protected under the
law than our daughters are. Why?
The ceremony was beautiful. About
100 family and friends—and eight news video-camera crews and a dozen other
journalists—documented history being made. It was the ultimate culmination of a
20-year relationship, a couple making a legal and socially binding commitment
(as old as recorded history). The mayor of Lambertville, David DelVecchio, was
clearly proud and joyous to uphold the spirit and letter of the law and show
leadership by officiating at the first civil union in the state, in the
Lambertville
Justice Center. He signed their civil-union
certificate with the same pen our great governor, Jon Corzine, used to sign the
act into law. After the ceremony, I saw DelVecchio and the borough council
president pat each other on the back in the way people do when they know they're
on the right side of history.
I had a lot of emotions running
through my mind—happiness for Beth, Joanne and little Kate, pride in their quiet
bravery, dignity and bearing, and wonderment at seeing history made. I was
disappointed to know that the battle was far from over—that the rights accorded
to them by the state of New
Jersey would not be respected across the
country.
As we were leaving, Joanne framed
this for me very well. She was born to be a nurse: pragmatic, loving, kind,
empathetic and analytical. After we shared our joy, she told me that she felt
humbled by knowing that she and Beth stood on the shoulders of many people
before them, people who were burned at the stake, stoned to death, shunned, spit
on, discriminated against, used as pawns by men (yes, almost always men) of
authority to aggregate political and religious power. She took sustenance in
their sacrifices and drew strength from the gain in civil rights that she and
her partner represent.
Today is a good day to pull the
LGBT people in your life aside and tell them how much you care for them. Put a
rainbow flag in your office. It's a good day to be alive.
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