R.I. couple’s fight for gay marriage is deeply personal
Pat Baker of Johnston, left, who has lung cancer, with her wife, Deborah Tevyaw.
The Providence Journal / Connie Grosch
JOHNSTON –– Pat Baker has lung cancer and believes she has little time left. But twice this week, Baker dragged herself, her oxygen tank and a few extra pain pills to the State House, where she hoped to persuade lawmakers to vote for same-sex marriage.
On Thursday night, accompanied by her wife, Deborah Tevyaw, whom she married in Massachusetts, Baker testified at a Senate hearing.
“Every American is entitled to their civil rights under our Constitution. And it’s Rhode Island’s time to do the right thing,” Baker said. “I don’t feel any Rhode Islander wants to see another deprived of their civil rights. I hope I live to see this dream come true.”
Baker, a 51-year-old correctional officer, was never a gay-rights activist. But after doctors diagnosed her with incurable lung cancer in December, she got an added jolt. The federal Defense of Marriage Act [currently under legal challenge] precludes Tevyaw from collecting the Social Security benefits Baker earned for a surviving spouse.
Legalizing same-sex marriage in Rhode Island will not change that for now.
Nonetheless, the discovery stunned Baker, leading her to embark on what may well be her first and last act of bravery in the name of marriage equality.
“I worked for those benefits. And when I say worked, I worked hard. You name it, it’s happened. I’ve found inmates hanging; I’ve found inmates dead from suicide. I’ve been traumatized mentally and physically, only to get to this point in my life when I’m terminally ill … and I find out my wife is being begrudged $1,861 a month,” Baker said.
“I’m going to fight until my last breath,” Baker said in an interview at home this week. “Give ’em hell.” She added, “This kind of bigotry has to be rectified.”
A week or so ago, Baker addressed fellow correctional officers at 7 a.m. roll calls at the Adult Correctional Institutions. First, Baker told them, “Smoking kills. I’m living proof.” Then, noting that the issue is one of “fairness, equality and human rights,” she asked them to sign petitions. She said, “Ninety-eight percent of them signed it.”
Baker and Tevyaw said state Sen. Frank Lombardo III, and Rep. Deborah A. Fellella, whom they voted for, were less receptive, and raised religious issues when they spoke with them earlier this week at the State House.
Baker said politicians who cannot separate church and state “should find another career.” She added, “He [Lombardo] didn’t ask us if we were gay or straight when he was knocking on doors, looking for our vote.”
A justice of the peace married the couple in Provincetown, Mass., on Aug. 4, 2005. It was Baker’s first marriage. Tevyaw was previously married: this is her first marriage to a woman.
Married life drew Baker into a close-knit family that cherishes holidays and frequent get-togethers. Baker is also close with Tevyaw’s two children and two grandchildren.
But in a chair a few feet from a picture of those grandchildren, Baker sits and writes letters, as small-cell lung cancer shoots pain through her chest and steals her breath.
Tevyaw said, “My problem is that I watch her struggle every day. She sleeps three or four hours a night, and she’s on this computer, writing letters to senators and this one and that one, and she isn’t getting to live any dream that she had, because she’s fighting for what’s hers. And there’s not enough quality time for me and her to do things, go places …
“I feel she’s going to wind up dying behind that computer, and fighting and never getting to enjoy whatever she had. Other people out there, husbands and wives, I should say, they don’t have to do any of this.”
Karen Loewy, senior staff attorney with GLAD (Gay and Lesbian Advocates & Defenders), said Baker and Tevyaw are facing, at the worst possible moment, the fact that same-sex marriages obtained in other states are “inconsistently recognized” by public and private entities in Rhode Island. They are not entitled to the full scope of protections with regard to “end-of-life issues, disposition of remains, who is considered next of kin, who gets to make decisions of medical care, organ donations,” and more.
Noting that the couple has spent “thousands of extra dollars” trying to put in place such protections, Loewy said, “I hope it’s a reminder to the legislators that this is not an abstract. This is a really tragic illustration of how these vulnerable situations are made so much more difficult because these same-sex couples are not treated like everybody else.”
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