Waiting for the state to say ‘I do’

They finish each other's sentences. They love literature and fawning over their new wirehaired fox terrier, Ruby. They never run out of things to talk about, and Tuesday they celebrated their 27th anniversary.

But at the exact time English professors Martha Nell Smith and Marilee Lindemann sat across from each other yesterday telling the tale of their relationship, gold bands securely around their ring fingers, state legislators sat in their chamber debating whether to recognize their union as legally equal to a heterosexual marriage.

For the past week, the state House of Delegates has been reviewing a bill that would allow same-sex couples to marry; a final vote is expected tomorrow, and if the bill is passed, Gov. Martin O'Malley will likely sign it into law.

The Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act's passage would signal the end of the battle for domestic partnership benefits at the university that Smith and Lindemann have sought for decades.

Every day, the pair monitors new developments in the bill's progress and discusses them over their morning coffee — but not because they're rushing to walk down the aisle. They haven't yet made that decision, they said, adding that marriage itself is not what's most important to them.

"The point is that we should have the same right every other citizen has to make that decision for ourselves," Lindemann said.

"We may not choose to marry," Smith added. "But that should be our decision, not the decision of others."

Because both women are university employees, they already receive health care and other benefits individually, so their advocacy isn't founded in self-interest, they said. Instead, they said they're driven by the plight many of their gay colleagues face when navigating the complicated process of extending benefits to their partners.

Through their work on the President's Commission on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues, an advisory board on LGBT-related matters, Lindemann and Smith have pushed hard for domestic partnership benefits and equal marriage benefits, including health care and tuition remission.

Though same-sex couples are granted many of the same health-care rights as married couples, Lindemann said the primary inequity is that domestic partners must pay taxes on those benefits while heterosexual married couples do not.

"It's like a tax on being gay," she said.

Smith, who studies and teaches issues of sexuality and gender in literature, and Lindemann, who is the director of the LGBT studies program, have long embodied the spirit of the LGBT movement. But when Smith and Lindemann met as graduate students at Rutgers University in the early 1980s, neither particularly cared that same-sex couples couldn't get married.

They had reservations about the economic role of marriage in society and, like others who identified as LGBT, weren't sure they wanted any part of it.

"[Same-sex marriage] wasn't really a priority for us until the past few years when it became clear that conservatives were determined to use it as a way to guarantee that non-heterosexual people would be second-class citizens," Lindemann said. "I was proud of the fact that Martha and I had built a strong partnership outside of marriage."

The two Ph.D. hopefuls first cultivated a relationship based on a shared interest in American literature and feminist theory. Their passion for their fields strengthened their bond as individuals and as a pair, they said, and later, when a handful of U.S. Supreme Court cases cleared the first hurdles to same-sex marriage, both women began to take an interest in the cause.

"For me, it wasn't until the Supreme Court decriminalized sodomy in its decision in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) that I realized ... at that point, no one who cared about LGBT civil rights could ignore the issue," Lindemann said.

O'Malley has indicated he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk, but the issue could still end up being subjected to a referendum vote, and in a state as politically divided as Maryland, the outcome is hard to predict.

"Why should our rights be voted upon?" Smith said. "How would our straight, white, heterosexual governor feel if his rights were put to a referendum?"

"I think it's wrong to subject the rights of minority groups to popular votes," Lindemann added.

Smith also criticized several Democratic delegates who are "hemming and hawing" over which way to vote, particularly several who have attributed their ambivalence to conflicting constituent demands.

"I want leaders who see what is the right thing to do and take a stand for that," she said, "not ones who cower behind ‘I'm just representing my constituency.'"

"It's hard not to feel emotional when you feel that people are debating your worth as a citizen," Lindemann added. "I want to walk up to every single member of the legislature who opposes this bill and say ... ‘How dare you hide behind the Bible or your constituents as a way to justify what is clearly and simply discrimination against me and my partner of 27 years? Shame on you.'"

As they await the final verdict from Annapolis, the pair of professors said they'll stay mindful of the progress the LGBT community has made in the more than 40 years since the Stonewall riots in New York — what many call the catalyst of the modern LGBT equality movement.

"Do I think [the bill] will pass? I don't know," Lindemann said. "But I'm certain that in the fullness of time ... we will get there and history will record who was on the right side of the issue when the battle was being fought."

gulin at umdbk dot com