1 ADAMS/ SULLIVAN SAME SEX MARRIAGE 1975 Much miss-information has been distributed concerning Richard Adam’s and my legal marriage performed in Colorado in 1975. Enjoying anonymity and being reclusive I have let this slide because it did not ‘seem, at the time, all that important to me. What was of importance to me was that the issue of Lesbian & Gay bi-national couples and Marriage Equality progress to a successful conclusion. Of late I have become aware that there is much erroneous information concerning the Adams/ Sullivan Marriage. As a result 1 feel compelled to correct the record. It is one thing to be bypassed by history which does not cause a tremendous problem for me but it is another to have an incorrect history constructed. 38 years ago on Cinquo De Mayo (May 5th) 1971 Richard Adams and I met in a bar called "The Closet". After spending a couple of months together we decided that we would like to spend more time with each other. I made inquiries at the Australian consulate in Los Angeles (I am an Australian) for Richard to be granted a visa to move there. When I mentioned that he was bor in the Philippines I was asked if he was racially Filipino. When I answered that he was half Filipino I was told that he need not apply because he would be tumed down. The person with whom I spoke was very anti- Filipino When I met Richard I was on an around the world trip with my next stop being London. While I was in England Richard and I decided that I should return to the United States. At that time Gay and Lesbian people were defined under U.S. immigration regulations as having psychopathic personalities and were mental defectives, Members of my community, if they were revealed, could not enter the U.S As tourists, could not become Resident Aliens and if they had been naturalized could be stripped of their citizenship and deported. After living together for a couple of years Richard and I realized that I was in danger of becoming an Undocumented Foreign National. So in 1974 married a woman friend in a Marriage of Convenience in order to qualify for Copyright 2009. A Corbett Sulivan2 documentation. At my immigration interview we were asked when had we last consummated our marriage (had sex). Evidently this was a requirement in such circumstances and that a Marriage of Convenience is not acceptable for immigration purposes and is considered to be an Act of Fraud which can result in the jailing of the U.S. Citizen. I had always been a homosexual, I had not had sexual experiences with members of the opposite sex and I had no desire to do so. The question about consummation shocked and offended me, Not wanting my woman friend to the legally vulnerable I began steps to have the marriage annulled. Richard and I discussed the injustice of the situation concluding "Someone has to do something about this!" Eventually we arrived at that point where we had to acknowledge to ourselves that we were in the situation, we saw the injustice, and we believed that it had to be changed. Did this not mean that we should take a stand? Wasn't there something wrong in waiting around for someone else to do so? Being sensible and not wanting to rush in mindlessly we let the thought incubate for a few months. Summoning up, from I know not where, gut- churning courage we decided to take a stand. Our first step was to approach. the Rev. Troy D. Perry of the Metropolitan Community Church. In Pre- Stonewall 1968 Troy performed Gay and Lesbian marriages. Not having standing in law they were called "Holy Unions". He and the couples involved were courageous. (Prior to this there had been a pioneering couple in Minnesota, Richard John Baker and James Michael McConnell, who went to court over the issuance of a license for them to get married. In 1971 The Supreme Court of Minnesota decided against them.) We told Troy what it was we wanted to do. Get married in his church and then invoking the same concepts that had been used by native Americans conceming the religious use of peyote, go to the to the Immigration and Naturalization Service and apply for me to be granted status on the basis of the Holy Union and the religious commitment made While wo were preparing to do this Marriage Licenses were being issued to Gay and Lesbian couples by the Boulder, Colorado County Clerk. this went on for several weeks and so in good faith belief in their validity in April 1975 we flew to Colorado accompanied by two persons one of whom was Rev Copyright 2009. A Corbett SullivanZz Perry's assistant, (Frank Zerilli who has been a good and constant friend) and applied as Mr. Sullivan and Mr, Adams for a license. There was no deception. We both had natural beards. We were married, (I think that we were the 5" of six couples) The necessary paper was handed back to the County Clerk’s office where it was duly registered with the state. If you go to the Colorado Marriage records you will find the registration with Richard listed as the groom and my name in the space reserved for the traditional bride. Because the marriage received a tremendous amount of publicity over the next ten years I am sure that if the state was certain the marriage was invalid it would not have remained in the records for the last 34 years. I mention this because one of the pontificators on the issue of legal Gay and Lesbian marriages persists in stating that all the Colorado marriages were invalidated by the state, In fact there are legal experts who are of the opinion that Richard’s and my marriage is still legal. One couple did approach the state and requested dissolution of their marriage which was granted. A few days after our marriage because of all the publicity the attomey General of Colorado gave an unofficial non-legally binding opinion in response to a question by the Speaker of the House that he thought the marriages were probably invalid. The Attomey General has since stated that he had no idea if they were valid or not. Colorado did feel that they had to change the wording of their marriage statute so as to close the door on future Lesbian and Gay marriages in their state. A short time later California felt that wording of their marriage statute needed to be changed for the same reason. The Gay activist community of the time, not understanding the significance of the denial of Rights and the dispensing of Favors and Benefits brought about by the institution of Legal marriage, made no protest of these actions. When we returned to California Richard petitioned the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to grant me Resident Alien Status as the spouse of an USS. Citizen. As previously noted it was a requirement that a marriage be consummated to qualify for such a classification so we publicly announced to the press that it was consummated. This was an acknowledgement of performing a gay sex act while there were anti-sodomy laws on the books in California, It was not that we were being exhibitionistic or stupid. It was that we were determined to force the society to have to deal with the issue. Seven months after Richard had filed his petition the Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service issued its decision on government stationery. They stated that Richard's petition was denied because we had; Copyright 2009, A Corbett Sullivan% “failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two faggots" (They really did.) This caused a significant reaction. The day after we received the document, a Sunday, 500 people marched in protest outside Los Angeles’ Federal Building, Politicians, Federal Senators and congresspersons, State and City officials issued statements and wrote letters of Protest to the INS. ‘The INS withdrew "The Faggot Letter" and issued a new decision in its place which concluded with; “One of the Parties to this union may function as a female in other relationships and situations, but cannot function as a wife by assuming female duties and obligations inherent in the marital relationship. A union of this sort was never intended by Congress to form a basis of a visa petition.” We call this the “Anti-Woman Letter.” I remember taking this decision to two feminists who were in leadership positions in "NOW" "National Organization for Women" of which I was a member, on occasion representing the Hollywood chapter at conferences. The two women agreed that this decision was offensive to women but that they did not wish to issue a statement because that might cause the public to think they were Lesbians. They were Lesbians. At this time I had many meetings with the ACLU "American Civil Liberties Union". Actually I harassed them. Eventually they located a volunteer attomey, David M, Brown, who was prepared represent us “Pro Bono“. He was the attomey who had successfully argued the concept of Palimony before the California Supreme Court in what is known as the Marvin Decision. ‘We challenged the INS decision in The United States District Court. In one of their briefs the INS included the following; “Appellants... are not being discriminated against because they are males. They happen to be discriminated against because they are homosexual" Copyright 2009. A Corben Sullivans The judge in issuing a decision against us, a decision that he had made before the hearing, stated the following: "Now counsel, the time may come far in the future when contracts between persons of the same sex who abide together will be recognized and enfozced with respect to property and even with respect to a mutual obligation of support. But that time is not here yet. And if the prevailing mores come to the point of recognizing and enforcing such contracts there may even be a broadened concept of marriage to include plaintiffs of this type before the court now. And if that happens, that then might be recognized as marriage and creating a spousal relationship for immigration law purposes. But that factual predicate that change of established mores and that Tecognition which I mentioned are not here now and may be decades or even generations away." We appealed this decision to the Federal Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. ‘The Court of Appeals decided against us. They chose not to make a decision as to whether or not our marriage was valid. They put emphasis on the Immigration Act which was clearly intended to exclude Homosexuals, they concluded; "We think it unlikely that Congress intended to give homosexual spouses preferential admission treatment". They also said that Foreign Nationals could be treated in a manner that was both unacceptable and unconstitutional if applied to U.S citizens. They completely ignored the fact that Richard, the Plaintiff in the case was a U.S. citizen, While all this was taking place I was very active in the local Gay and Lesbian community. 1 was involved in much of the decision-making. Even though I was a colleague, many of the "Leaders" of the Gay and Lesbian movement were opposed to the issue of marriage that Richard and I represented "My dear you know you'll never gets support. Relationships are not Copyright 2009. a CocbettSativan6. what this revolution is about." At a Gay and Lesbian conference in Denver Colorado, in the very room where Richard and I had been married the male Co-chair of what was then known as “The National Gay Task Force “came up to me and said; “We want you to lose your case.” ‘That hurt. I found the opposition of those who were in leadership positions quite puzzling. It was not as if we were validating legal marriage. What we were saying was; if it existed as an institution that dispensed Rights Favors and Benefits to the Non-Gay and Non-Lesbian community then we as a community must have equal access to it. (I personally believe that legal marriage should be scrapped, that marriage should be left as a sacrament in the churches. Let us have a legal accommodation of the needs of relationships that is called anything else but marriage and let it be available to all, homosexual and heterosexual.) By the way the average person of both communities was on the whole supportive of us. In our community Lesbians were far more supportive than Gay men. We decided to appeal the Ninth Circuit Court's decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, It was at this time the ACLU broke free from the case. Somewhere in my files is a copy of a letter from the organizations national head to the Southern California affiliate in which he refers to the opposition to what we were doing, told to him by the chair of “Lambda Legal Defense Fund. Neither they, The National Gay Task Force or any similar group had ever contacted Richard or I to discuss what we were doing or why we were doing it, even though we would have welcomed such inquiry. They just interfered without consultation. The United States Supreme Court chose not to hear our case. They were more hearings before the board of immigration appeals. If you've been in U.S. a certain number of years and you can prove a form of hardship created for you or a U.S. Citizen by your leaving the country you may be permitted to remain, When it was put forward that there would be hardship by separating us the Board of Immigration Appeals BIA stated in a decision against us Copyright 2009. A Corbett Sullivan4 ” We do not find that the respondent's separation from his "life partner” will cause him hardship, emotional or otherwise, sufficient to rise to the level of extreme hardship contemplated under the Act.” our appeal was dismissed. This was after we had been together for fourteen years! We again went back to the Court of Appeals for the 9th circuit. . During the Proceeding the attomney for the INS, soon to be a judge, stated; "Mr. Sullivan can go back to Australia and start another of those relationships." Do people like her ever consider the immorality of what they suggest? We lost the appeal. The decision against us was written by Judge Anthony Kennedy soon to become a Supreme Court judge. A dissenting opinion was written by Judge Harry Pregeson, His opinion reminded me that there are good intelligent judges. He gave us a good argument that maybe we could have taken to the Supreme Court. At this time our attomey told us that there was no further legal avenue for us to take that we might as well accept that 1 had to leave. It wasn’t the correct advice but David had fought a long battle on our behalf. He was obviously worn out. What we did not know at the time was that he was in the early stages of AIDS. Even though we did not know about his illness he had done so much for us that we could not ask him for more. On November 23rd 1985, the eve of the 10th anniversary of the writing of the “Faggot Letter” we left the U.S. A secret agreement had been made with Australia that we could go there after three months. Promises were made by the Australian Minister for Immigration that Richard could then enter the country and would be given documentation. We were to enter the country separately and we to give no interviews to the media anytime after leaving The United States. The Australian Gay and Lesbian Immigration Task Force acted as the minister’s go-between. They told me that if I did not make this agreement the fate of bi-national couples already in Australia would be effected negatively. While I think that I did not manifest it, this blackmail achieved its desired effect. I certainly did not want Copyright 2009, A Corbett Sultivane. to make things difficult for people who found themselves in the same situation in Australia as Richard and I had endured in America. I had not wanted to make this agreement but our attomey said that if Richard and I wanted to stay together we had no alternative. He organized the final arrangement with the Australian Immigration Consul in Los Angeles. I did not feel good about any of this but as David had said we had no alternative. Richard and 1, surviving on funds made available to us by people, some of them strangers, who supported us, wandered around Europe for three months during what was being called the coldest winter of the Century. Then we went to Australia. Feeling uncomfortable and not placing my trust in the “secret” agreement we decided Richard should enter the country first and 1 would Temain in Singapore until he until he contacted me and told me he was there Once he was in Australia I flew there and joined him Richard did not get his documentation as promised. Every time we tried to do somethiag about this we were given the runabout. Then we came across evidence that we had been conned. We also discovered that the Australian Gay & Lesbian Immigration activists had worked against us. Ic seems they feared the Minister of Immigration something { found tragic and surprising (I have documentation of these events). So rather than continue with the charade we left Australia. One of the sad effects of this is that I have found that it has damaged my relationship with Australia. I always will love the earth of the land where I was bom, where my family has lived for many generations, but the relationship is damaged. I had thought better of Australians as a people. Giving up Australia for the fourteen years that Richard and I had lived and fought for equality in the U.S. had for me been the greatest sacrifice I made for our relationship. At this time Australia is not my home. Eventually we ended up in Ireland, a country which more than once has been a place of recovery for me. I am an Irish Celt and in that I find dignity. It seems that all my ancestors sprang from the land of the green, It is my spiritual homeland, a place that gives me succor. I don't think of myself as a toe tapping Irishman who does the Jig. I have trouble keeping to a beat. 1 feel Lam the kindred spirit of poets, farmers and freedom loving revolutionaries. I cannot play the harp but J can wax lyrical about the land A gay male couple in Los Angeles was aware of our plight. ‘They owned an almost abandoned house in Carlingford nine miles or so south of the Northen Copyright 2009. A Corbett Sullivan9. Irish border. They said that we could have use of the house if we needed it. We took them up on their offer. We limped into town two strangers who obviously had a history. We were made welcome. About us no one pried, though | think they were happy to discover that I was no fan of Margaret Thatcher. They knew we were gay and contrary to Gay Dubliner’s fears we were not in danger of being kneecapped. Carlingford is very special place in a setting of many famous Irish legends. Richard and I were there for about three quarters of a year. We found peace there. We healed there. There was one problem. For Richard it was not home. His home was in Los Angeles where his parents and siblings lived. My home was where Richard lived. One day we were sitting in the Kitchen, down to very little money when one of us said; “Damm it! They had no right to do what they did to us. We are going home!” For the last 2241/2 years we have lived together in a country where one of us is undocumented. This means that one of us is forced to lie, which is something I hate. This is the plight of ten of thousands, probably more, Lesbian and Gay couples across this world. They must be liberated from the shadows. Keep them in mind when fighting for marriage equality. When a member of our community falls in love with a person in another country and as a couple they take the plunge to be together and one of them becomes undocumented "IMlegal” the foreign national often has to sacrifice their past, their blood family not knowing if they will see them again because they fear to visit from whence they came in case they cannot return to their present life with their love. {n November of 1985 on the last day before we were due to depart from the U.S. we were scheduled to be on television on the Phil Donahue Show, a forerunner to the Oprah Winfrey show. When we reached the place where it was being televised Donahue told us that one of the people in a landmark sodomy case had been scheduled to share the time with us but that he had pulled out at the last minute. Donahue said that his attomey had shown up and he was wondering if it would be alright if she was on with us. Her name was Abbey Rubenfeld. She was with “Lambda Legal Defense". After a pregnant pause, Richard and I said that we would like to meet with her before coming to a decision. When we met with her I was honest that I was not of Kindly inclination towards Lambda as that organization had gone behind our Copyright 2009. A Corbett Sullivan10. backs and caused us to lose the support of the ACLU. She understood this. Richard and I decided that as we and she were all fighting the same fight, Gay and Lesbian Liberation we should all go on the show together. She seemed to be a very nice woman and she definitely was an asset, At the very end of the show Donahue remarked that it was an important show. History has proven him right! Later on I was to lear that Lambda had received more communication about the marriage issue than it had on any other issue up to that time. A few months later, after we had left the country Lambda took up the cause of Marriage Equality or Same-sex Marriage as it was then called. Richard and had done our bit. Now the show was on the road in the hands of others A concluding thought. It is an interesting world that we live in. It i10s truly global, Three lands can lay a claim on me, Australia where I was born and grew to Adulthood, The United States where I married and loved and Ireland the home that more than once revived my soul. Copyright 2009. A Corbet Sullivan