Woo Hoo! Pennsylvania Says We Can Keep Our Wedding Anniversary!

Brian and I filed joint taxes as a married couple in 2013. It would have been a nightmare to go back and re-file. Plus, we popped some champagne this past August 10 to celebrate our second anniversary. It is too late to un-pop and un-celebrate now.
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In 2013, Pennsylvania's state ban on same-sex marriage was in effect. Montgomery County register of wills, D. Bruce Haines, defied the law starting in July of that year. His office issued marriage licenses to gay couples for a short time. My now-husband and I were one of 174 pairs who got hitched before a court ordered his office to stop. Our wedding anniversary is August 10, 2013.

Or so we thought.

This week, Brian (my husband) said to me, "Did you hear that the state is allowing us to keep our wedding anniversary?"

"What do you mean?" I responded. I had not thought about the legality of our marriage license in well over a year.

"Let's look it up. I heard something about it on the radio but I don't know the specifics," he said.

We did a search online and, sure enough, a little article on a local site informed us that the Pennsylvania Department of Health had been opposing the validity of our wedding date. They wanted to force all 174 couples to use May 20, 2014 as their wedding anniversary. This is the date that the federal court ruled the ban unconstitutional.

But, unbeknownst to us, Mr. Haines was again fighting for our rights, declaring that "the valid date [for a 2013 marriage license to a Pennsylvania same-sex couple] would be the date that the marriage ceremony occurred." The Department of Health decided not to pursue the matter any further. The challenge was dropped. As a result, 174 couples can resume celebrating their wedding anniversaries on the dates they were married.

Whew! What a relief! Brian and I filed joint taxes as a married couple in 2013. It would have been a nightmare to go back and re-file. Plus, we popped some champagne this past August 10 to celebrate our second anniversary. It is too late to un-pop and un-celebrate now.

Will Pennsylvania's Department of Health allow us to celebrate Christmas on December 25th? It would be a big disappointment to wake up on Christmas morning only to discover that we have to wait until May 20th to celebrate. Our Christmas decorations are currently up all over the house. We could keep them up until May 20th, but the tree will most certainly dry out sometime in January. Pine needles will be all over the floor in the new year. Having a dead tree sitting in the middle of the living room for five more months would be, well, depressing.

And what about Valentine's Day? Can we celebrate that on the traditional date in February? Or will Pennsylvania rule that same-sex couples must delay their love until a date that the Department of Health deems more appropriately health-y?

I am starting to question everything we did in 2013. Our four dogs got dog licenses back in 2013. Does the law affect the pets of gay people, or just the gay people themselves? We also renewed our drivers' licenses. Maybe we shouldn't have been gay driving?

I hope that in 2016, we will see no disruption to the legality of our union. But you never know. Some presidential candidates are vowing to overturn the Supreme Court decision. This past week, Ted Cruz said that the decision was "one of the greatest threats to our democracy we had seen in modern times." He called the decision illegitimate and lawless and, if elected, plans to promote a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Marco Rubio recently said that the decision "is not settled law," and that he aspires "to fix it because we think it's wrong."

If we elect one of these Republican candidates and our marriage is deemed invalid, then what? Do we have to give back our gifts? How is that possible? We have used the coffee maker and the serving utensils. How could we give them back now?

The election is not until November, so at the very least, we will be able to celebrate our third wedding anniversary on August 10th. We may feel guilty that our wedding was the greatest threat to democracy in modern times, but another bottle of champagne should numb the pain.

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