A Real Threat to Marriage Equality Looms Over Alaska
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed in 2011. At that time, I was studying to be a physician assistant and racking up enormous student debt.
The option of joining the military to pay off my $170,000 in loans was suddenly on the table. I followed through and joined the Army National Guard.Although my husband and I had signed domestic partnership papers before I was commissioned, the military would only honor a federally recognized marriage as a qualification for spousal benefits.
So, in 2015 when the Supreme Court released its Obergefell v. Hodges decision guaranteeing marriage equality, we married. This meant that while I was deployed with the Army to Kosovo in 2019, my husband and son, whom we had just adopted from the foster system, received all the family benefits they were entitled to.That could soon change.When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v.