The Political Voices of Women

 Here is a guest post by community member Deb Della Piana from Turn Left.

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Although the story I’m about to tell you is personal and happened to me and my family, it’s not just my story. It still happens everywhere, everyday. It’s a story of what it’s truly like to be gay in America. I don’t speak much about this these days, but I’m telling it to you today because I fear the country we face under John McCain and Sarah Palin. Under their virulently right-wing rule, this type of disenfranchisement and gutter treatment could spread exponentially throughout this nation.

I once worked for what I believed was one of the best Fortune 500 companies, a company that I had been loyal to since joining them in 1974 and I expected some type of loyalty in return. I was naïve back then. What I have learned is that companies expect loyalty, but they absolutely do not return it at the same level. No company name will be given, but let’s just say that with the advent of some new management came some discrimination. In this case, it was based on my sexual orientation (which, by the way, had not been an issue prior to management change). In 1997, after several ugly encounters between myself and my boss, I was roundly fired.

The circumstances are not important. The fact is that I signed an agreement not to sue (I was stupid, in retrospect) in exchange for a severance package. At the time, I had a small child under a year and a very sick partner, who had contracted pre-eclampsia during the final twenty weeks of the pregnancy and was saddled with a diagnosis of perinatal cardiomyopathy post-pregnancy. I saw no other way to survive and keep them both healthy and safe. One decision I had made, however, was that I would never again give my all to a corporation.

My new career begins

One of the benefits I received was the opportunity to get up every day for nine months and go to work at an outplacement center. Here, I got help with my resume and use of the phones to find a new job. What I really did, however, was take the time to start my own small advertising agency. For several years, it went gangbusters, but it had to. By then, I was paying over $1,000 a month for health insurance. Because my family was gay and not recognized, each of us had to carry an individual policy. Now, in my previous company, I had domestic partner benefits and Bill Clinton had worked on passing a law so that we could continue that type of coverage. However, actually getting that benefit from any insurance company at the time was a joke. The insurance company I used made damned sure that any kind of family health insurance for gays was off the charts. It was more cost-effective for each of us to carry our own.

In three years, my partner’s cardiomyopathy had remitted. She worked really hard at it and I was very proud of her. Things were going well, and we had always discussed having two children. I was nervous about her trying again, but she wanted our daughter, Thalia, who was then about two-and-a-half, to have a sibling. She was willing to take the risk and I made a conscious decision to support her. That’s what couples do, whether gay or straight.

The detail isn’t important here, so what I will just tell you is that the second time around, fertility was an issue. It took nearly two years and more than 1,000 shots of fertility meds to make this happen. The second time around, there was no pre-eclampsia or cardiomyopathy. However, my partner did get hyperemesis (24/7 morning sickness), and we had to pay for several rounds of inseminations out of pocket because my partner was over 40 during this time and insurance would only cover so many. Finally, on March 13, 2001, our son, Aaron, was born six weeks early. Thalia had turned four the previous November. During the delivery process, however, we had several problems with a prominent Boston hospital. My partner’s water broke early and she went in but could not advance the dilation. The plan was to put her in ante-partum. During this time, I had to leave the room to call and make arrangements for the evening for Thalia. There was no other way. In the time I was gone, my partner had gone into “back” labor and all hell had broken loose. The nurse would not allow me back into the room, in spite of the fact that we had medical powers of attorney. This was the worst of all possible situations for my partner as she had suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for years from her father’s physical abuse. She had a break that evening and things would not be the same for many, many years. I lost my business six months later, and this is where the story gets really ugly.

The bottom falls out of my business

With a six-month-old little boy and a little girl just over four, we were living in Beverly, Massachusetts. My partner had completely fallen apart and had been hospitalized, and we were looking at having to move since the woman who owned our building wanted to sell and move south with her husband. I started looking around and we found a place closer to Boston, since most of my clients were on the south shore. My business was doing well when we moved (2002). I had lost some smaller businesses, but I had also gained two new fairly active clients.

We were living in Winchester, Massachusetts, when the bottom fell out of my business. I had $52,000 in billings outstanding when one of my start-up biopharm clients fired their entire marketing staff. They then refused to pay the bills and, in fact, wiped out all evidence that I’d done any work. This issue has never been resolved to this date. Let me tell you, in this America, the companies get the benefit of the doubt, not the freelancers. About one month later, I had another client go under and cancel all of the work I had just started. In desperation, I took work from somebody out of state after taking a down payment from him, which cleared my bank easily and helped me keep afloat. This included paying the rent. I was in the desperation zone at this point and I had a partner who could not emotionally function.

I then went ahead and did more work for this client to the tune of about $110,000. I sent an invoice at $45,000, and waited nearly six months for payment. The check bounced. I then called the client and told him what happened and told him I needed all $110,000 in bank check form. I received that one week later. By now, I had been unable to pay the rent at all and was facing eviction.

At this point, my partner was unresponsive. I had two children under the age of five. I went to court to hold off eviction. I managed to do this for eight months. Then, a check for $110,000 arrived and I immediately went to the bank. The looked it over and said it looked fine. They gave me an advance to cover my rent and my business expenses. I immediately brought a bank check to my landlord, and we agreed together that we would sign a new lease. I felt great. I paid my electric and phone bills, and had my car repaired. The bank deposited the check. Two days later, I went to make a new withdrawal to cover some more expenses and they met me at the door. The check was counterfeit. I was questioned by the bank and the FBI, thinking that I was in collusion with whomever had given me a check. I turned all my files over, but they never located the person who had scammed me. The bank let me off the hook, knowing I was not involved.

Unfortunately, the landlady sat on the check and never cashed it. Eviction was a reality now. There was no avoiding it.

Welcome to the system

We got as much of our personal stuff out as we could before being evicted, but we essentially had to sell everything we had anyway. We moved to an Extended Stay America hotel until I could figure out how to get myself into the welfare system. We had about $3,500. It didn’t take us far. We had about two or three months of safety, all four of us living in one room with two cats. The kids had lost everything; we refused to get rid of their pets. After the money ran out, my partner’s mom helped to keep us afloat at the hotel.

We immediately went to get food stamps and welfare money. They gave us food stamps and cash for three of us. I would not be included. Just the children and the birth mother. Gay people just did not fit into the system. It did not matter that my partner and I had made a commitment in 1992, that we had the children together on my company’s domestic partner insurance, and that we had a civil union in the state of Vermont. We were not a real family because we were a gay family. They told my partner that “if you get rid of her” (those exact words, by the way) they would place her and the children in a group shelter. If they had put my partner in a shelter like that, with just our two children, she would never survive and the children would become wards of the state. I knew that. I called a free legal service specializing in such things. They told me what would happen: We would be denied placement in Malden, Massachusetts and we would immediately appeal to Boston. That would get us placed. Prior to the placement, I pulled out all the stops on my partner’s mental health, worked with her therapists, and got a dispensation so that we would not be put in a group shelter with shared baths. At this point, she needed her privacy. She was having panic attacks with vomiting and a shared bath just would not be a good situation for her. They placed us in a hotel on the north shore of Boston, where we stayed for eight months in one room. There were so many homeless people at this hotel, that they had welfare and DSS (Department of Social Services) staff on-site.

When you are in this system, your life is not your own. They walk into your room unannounced at any time for inspection. They watch every single thing you do. They treat with you with great disrespect and make you feel less than human. Why? Because they can. Mitt Romney was our Governor at the time and the 2004 Democratic National Convention was coming to Boston. He wanted everyone out of hotels. I came home one day, just after my son had been diagnosed with autism, to find a message that we needed to be ready to move the very next day. That is the way the system works. There is no compassion. There is no support. It’s just you and them. And they run the show.

Because my partner could not be placed in a group center, they moved us to what is called a “scattered site,” or an apartment. Most of these apartments are in a town named Lynn, Massachusetts. When we arrived, there were two rats waiting for us on the porch. Their friends were all in the back yard. There were cockroaches everywhere. The water was leaking under the sink. The bathroom was lopsided and didn’t even have a door. It was disgusting and inhuman; nobody should have to live under those conditions. My car, which had long been sold, would have been cleaner and safer. And all around us, drug deals were going on. The building next door had a guy who drove a Mercedes come in and out every night. There was gunfire. I appealed the placement. In three weeks, we were moved to another apartment in Lynn. It was definitely cleaner and the rats were at least confined to the outside of the building (mostly near the trash), but the place was freezing and we all slept in donated down coats during the winter. Within the first two months of arriving, two men were shot to death two doors down because of a busted drug deal. My children were not allowed outside. We spent two years there.

My partner (now my wife in Massachusetts) and I got out of homelessness on our own just three months shy of our benefits running out. We moved up to Amesbury, Massachusetts. Our children are now eleven (Thalia) and seven (Aaron), and happy. I’m not sure that Aaron remembers much of this, but I know Thalia does. It’s amazing to me how resilient children can be. My partner has now recovered somewhat. She is functional, having decided to take herself off most of her medication, and is working on it. However, I must tell you that, in retrospect, it was good that she was medicated the way she was given what was going on. It insured her survival.

Let me tell you why this is not okay

At the height of my family’s problem, I was a parent who learned what I had to learn to make sure that my family stayed safe. I made sure that I completed a second parent adoption and ensured that my children would stay part of the family by sealing it with a permanent legal guardianship (my partner actually came up with the idea to ensure we’d stay together). I learned about the McKinney-Vento Act, which guaranteed that my children could be bused back to Winchester to stay in a familiar school. My son was diagnosed with autism and my daughter diagnosed as legally blind in one eye while we were homeless. I made sure that they got the care they needed without fail. I met faithfully with welfare and DSS and completed all assignments as asked. I made sure my partner was kept separated and safe from the abuses of the system because I knew she would never survive any other way.

This is not okay because this is America and it should be a government for all the people, black, white, Hispanic, gay and straight. When my partner and I were doing well, I was working for a Fortune 500 company and paid anywhere between $5,200 and $7,300 per month in taxes over a 15-year period. The government had absolutely no problem taking my gay money. Yet, when the chips were down, I did not exist and my family was not real. Do you think this is an aberration? Do not put your heads in the sand anymore. It is not an aberration. It happens every day somewhere in this country. This is something that I never talk about if I can avoid it. It’s personal and it’s painful. I am doing it because I believe myself to be extremely politically astute and I pay attention. I have heard the rhetoric and firmly believe that a John McCain-Sarah Palin regime would disenfranchise and oppress everyone who doesn’t fit the approved mold. He will be the de facto president, but I have heard her speak and I hear what she is saying. The whole prospect of their election should be terrifying to anyone who believes in democracy and freedom for everyone. I am here to tell you from personal experience that it is a sham.

[Read more by Deb Della Piana  at Turn Left]