Helen Thornton always pictured a simple wedding. She and her partner, Marge Brown, would go down to the courthouse accompanied by their son, Asa, who is now 36. After a brief ceremony in which they exchange vows and sign a legal document, Thornton thought they might “have a little party afterward” with family and close friends.
“We wouldn’t have been about having some big blowout, fancy wedding,” she told them. “That wasn’t really us. For us, it was about the relationship.”
The couple never got that chance: In 2006, Brown died of ovarian cancer at the age of 50. Brown’s death came 27 years after they went on their first date to a live performance by a women’s music group at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where Brown taught animation. It’s been such a long time that Thornton can’t remember the name of the band, but she recalled that they “didn’t actually get to sit together.” Brown was working as a sound engineer that night.
At the time of Brown’s passing, it wasn’t legal for them to get married in their home state: The Washington State Legislature wouldn’t pass a marriage equality bill for another six years. Because the couple couldn’t formally tie the knot before they died, Thornton was ineligible to collect survivor’s benefits from Social Security after the Supreme Court finally made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 U.S. states in 2015.
“We had a child together,” Thornton said. “We owned a house together. We shared all our finances. I got to know her family. She got to know my family, but we weren’t allowed to get married.”
But Thornton didn’t give up fighting for the recognition in death that the couple never got in life. After being denied by the Social Security Administration (SSA) three times, her brother, Rob, encouraged her to reach out to the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Lambda Legal in 2018 to file a lawsuit on her behalf.
After a nearly five-year battle, Thornton finally won. On Friday, Judge James Robart of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington ruled that the Trump administration couldn’t use “an unconstitutional law that discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation” to deny spousal benefits to surviving same-sex spouses. Robart also recommended a nationwide order extending benefits to other LGBTQ+ people who weren’t able to marry their late partners.
Although the federal government is extremely likely to appeal, the decision could allow for resolution in a similar lawsuit in North Carolina. Frederick Colosimo sued after he was denied surviving spousal benefits because he and his husband, Harvey Lucas, were only legally wed for seven months when Lucas died in 2014, despite having been in a relationship for 43 years.
Yet another nearly identical case was decided in favor of the plaintiff earlier this year.
Even though Thornton doesn’t get to share the victory with Brown, she said she is glad it will impact other same-sex couples who experienced the “kick in the teeth” of being treated differently by their own government.
“Margie and I could never file federal taxes together every year because we were seen as single,” she said. “Just from a financial point, lesbian and gay couples were disenfranchised financially by not having the option of getting married. It’s just a feeling that you’re second-class citizens.”
In addition to the symbolic importance of knowing that their relationship is now fully equal in the eyes of the law, last week’s ruling serves a practical purpose for Thornton, who has survived for years off a retiree’s fixed income of $900 a month. She has been making extra money by working as a dog sitter, but available gigs have largely dried up since people began cancelling their vacations and camping trips at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.
It’s unclear when Thornton will begin receiving spousal benefits, but when she does, it will amount to an extra $700 every month. Given that such an amount is nearly twice her current budget, she predicted it will “make a huge difference.”
Thornton couldn’t celebrate last week because of both the ongoing pandemic and the forest fires which have swept the West Coast, blanketing eastern Washington under a fog of toxic, impenetrable air. But if she could, she wishes that she could mark the end of this years-long fight in a way befitting the couple’s no-frills relationship: by simply telling Brown that she loves her and misses her.
“I would say that I’m so happy that we were together and that we had this great son,” she said. “We built a great life together.”
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