Equality at last

The following is from the The News Tribune, Tacoma WA

54 YEARS LATER …
John McCluskey knows the exact date when he met his partner, Rudy Henry: Dec. 31, 1958.

Now, almost 54 years after that New Year’s Eve party in San Francisco, the pair soon will be able to get legally married.

It has been a long time coming for the Tacoma couple.

"I would have wanted to get married by the end of 1959," said McCluskey, 76, as he reflected on what life would have been like had same-sex marriage been legal in those days. But, “after we had been together 35 or 40 years we pretty much felt married."

McCluskey and Henry, 78, will get married Dec. 15, but they don’t know any of the details. The wedding for the couple, well-known and much respected in the gay, bisexual, lesbian, transgender community, is being put on by volunteers within that community.

Henry is recovering from a stroke and complications after a surgery and requires almost full-time care from McCluskey and others.

McCluskey is looking forward to no longer having to show his domestic partnership card to doctors and nurses and other health care providers when he takes Henry to a medical appointment.

"Almost without exception, we’ve had to explain what that means," he said

Read more at The effects of R-74 on Washington

We sometimes take things for granted

"In his last blog entry, activist Sattar Beheshti wrote that Iranian authorities had given him an ultimatum: Either stop posting his 'big mouth' attacks against the ruling system or tell his mother that she will soon be in mourning.

"'We will tear down your cruel cage,' Beheshti typed on Oct. 29 before signing off.

"A day later he was arrested. Within a week, his family had collected his body. They began calls for an investigation that have been echoed by Washington, European allies and rights groups."

Full story at CBC.ca