All but married

Civil unions, a milestone on the road to equal rights

CIVIL RIGHTS | Rachel Wells

As Susan Frain and Susan Faupel sit next to each other discussing civil unions, civil rights and the basic notions of partnership and commitment, they laugh, they listen and they remember the other’s part in past dialogues played out over the course of their 23-year relationship.

Intellectual equals with similar liberal notions and anti-establishment ideals, the lesbian couple tells of their 8-yearold adopted daughter’s fascination with the institution of marriage. After serving as a flower girl in her cousin’s wedding when she was about 3 years old, Virginia again and again reenacted the ceremony and began asking her two mothers if they were married. “For her, the idea of us being married has been sort of important for her,” Faupel says. “It gives her a sense of security.”

The self-described “staunch feminists,” who generally oppose institutions, are not married, but since Illinois approved civil unions for same-sex couples Frain and Faupel are starting to see things Virginia’s way. Though perhaps not the traditional family, they are a family in all the ways that matter.

The two mothers are both committed to their daughter and to each other. “I’ve invested my life in this relationship and in my family and I want to protect it in any and every way I can, and this is one step toward protecting this relationship and my family,” Faupel says. She adds that she wants Virginia to see her parents’ relationship as “legitimate.”

Frain and Faupel, legally partnered only as adoptive parents and through joint accounts and ownerships, say they’ll likely enter into a civil union after the new Illinois Religious

Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act goes into effect this June. The law provides the opportunity for both same-sex and oppositesex couples to have their partnerships legally recognized by the state, meaning they’re allowed, or subject to, all of the same state-level rights, benefits, protections and responsibilities as married couples. Those protections include hospital visitation rights, medical and financial decision-making power, inheritance rights and access to a spouse’s health insurance and retirement benefits.

Though overjoyed with Illinois’ progress, many members and supporters of Springfield’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community can’t help but point out that Illinois’ civil union law only begins to address the second-class status of same-sex relationships. The federal government, as long as the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is in place, doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage – meaning same-sex couples can’t file joint taxes and can’t access each other’s Social Security or federal pensions, among about 1,000 other rights and protections.

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