Ref-71

We knew that this next time our opportunity would likely be fleeting.  We knew full well that any license issued would be the subject of controversy and injunctions.  Still, we had our orders_, our love for each other and a strong commitment to the cause.

Ryan and I had been together since 1995. She has chosen her new name at this time and I helped her choose her new last name “Blackhawke”. It was edgy and androgynous and I was forever explaining to people that my partner Ryan was a “she”. In 2004 we had been together for almost nine years, almost as long as I had been together with my previous wife.  I had been married to a woman before, with great celebration and fanfare, at the tender age of 22, to a 20 year old girl I had known little more than a year. I remained faithfully and happily married to her for over 10 years.  By contrast it was absurd that as a mature woman of 47, knowing far better what marriage really meant,  now I could not get married to the person I loved, with whom I had spent many years and with whom I had so much already invested.

Way back, in 1992, when I claimed my birthright to live as a woman, to live true to my essence and identity, I knew full well that I was up for a fight; a fight for my rights, my dignity, my job, possibly my life.  I knew that I would lose some things in the process.  Some I wanted to lose, others I knew I might lose despite my wishes.  In the end I lost the relationship I so dearly cherished with my wife.  We started a new relationship and still continuing relationship as friends and co-parents but it was not the same and I felt keenly the loss of it.  I lost what I had of my relationship with my family and some friends.  These are hard losses but there is no court that you can go to for recompense for such losses of the heart. 

My rights, my dignity however, are not negotiable and I never felt that I should need to take a step down on any social ladder as a result of my choice to live as I wished.  Such a thought was and is deeply sexist, heterosexist, anti-feminist, anti-humanist and anti-democratic.  My life is, in a sense, a laboratory test case for equality.  Keep everything else the same: same person, same affectional orientation (toward women), same knowledge, same skills, same personality and judgment, just change a letter on my ID, (ok my first name too), change the door I go through to pee and maybe a little refresh of my wardrobe and see what happens...

The personal, social, emotional, physical, financial, romantic and yes, legal implications of my decision and subsequent transition from male to female were numerous and dramatic.  One thing that stayed the same for me however was my attraction to women.  Upon my coming out I discovered not only a vibrant and supportive Transgender community in Seattle through Ingersoll Gender Center but also the wonderful and generally supportive lesbian community.  Dykes quickly became my role models of how a woman can be powerful and self possessed. 

So, I immediately dived right in and found great satisfaction and sense of community working on the issues of the day for Lesbian, Gay, Bi and of course Transgender people.  First, through Ingersoll, it was to help nuture that first existential spark, to know that you are not alone and you are not insane and that you are among friends and family.  Next with Q-Patrol, it was the simple right to be safe and feel safe on the streets of our own community.  Later with Freedom Day Committee producing Seattle’s Pride events, the cause was visibility, solidarity, including solidarity between the LGB and T communities and defining the ethics and boundaries of our community.  At the time, our equal rights in the workplace and accommodations seemed to be tenuous even within our progressive state.  My own contributions were miniscule compared to those of so many others who are my heroes and mentors but my sense of investment in my community grew with each engagement.  In what was for me "the early years" of the early 1990s we were fighting for the most basic of employment and civil rights. The cause of same-sex marriage seemed quixotic at best and irrelevant or retrograde and hetero-normative at worst and its activists were often regarded as political crackpots, cranks or crypto-conservatives.

By 2004, it seemed the clouds were clearing. We were less than two years from passing our Trans-inclusive Washington State “Gay rights” law and the Andersen case was challenging Washington state’s “Defense of Marriage Act”. Our eyes were on the next prize.