The Story of “The DOMA Diaries”
On June 26, 2013, the Supreme Court finally struck down “The Defense of Marriage Act” (or DOMA). It was a unique moment for me. A major event in American history had made a direct impact on my personal life.
As a gay couple, my partner and I have often been subjected to all kinds of discrimination, both socially and personally. But the worst one of all was DOMA. My life partner (now husband) is a foreigner. And although we were legally married in Massachusetts, DOMA prevented me from sponsoring him for a green card. For years, we lived in fear that he might have to leave the US, and we would be split apart forever.
A quick primer: DOMA was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. The law came in response to a lawsuit that was filed in Hawaii. A gay couple had applied for a marriage license, and when they were refused, they sued. The judge ruled in the couples’ favor, saying that barring gay people from marrying was a violation of the state’s constitution. He nevertheless stayed his own ruling, as he expected to be reversed on appeal, and did not want the couple to have to suffer in a chronic legal limbo.
(Hawaii later amended its state constitution to restrict same-sex marriage, and the lawsuit was declared moot. Years later, in 2013, the Hawaii state legislature passed a law making same sex marriage legal.)
Congress became worried that other “activist judges” might suddenly make gay marriage legal in other states. And so DOMA was born. It basically boils down to two major components:
1. States do not have to recognize same sex marriages performed in other states. (As such, if we moved to, for example, Texas, our marriage performed in Massachusetts would not be recognized there. )
2. Federal benefits that extend to married straight couples will not apply to same-sex married couples.
Although my partner and I were understandably offended at how the law was treating us, our suffering was still relatively mild when compared to other gay couples. The horror stories made us shocked and angry.
A gay person would die, and their partner of many decades would be hit with inheritance taxes so crippling that they would have to file for bankruptcy. (A straight married couple in the same circumstances would pay nothing.) Children would be torn from the only home they had ever known, because the law didn’t recognize a same sex partner as the child’s parent. A gay person would be denied hospital visitation rights, even when their partner was on their deathbed! And after they died, cemeteries would refuse to bury them in a joint plot. There were over one thousand marriage rights that were denied to gay married couples.
We were both horrified by the suffering we saw going on in our community. And we wanted to do something to help. I decided that, as a playwright, I could contribute to the cause by writing a play, one that would help people understand the unfair suffering that DOMA caused to ordinary gay Americans. I wanted to give a voice to those victims, and to dramatize their struggles, their hopes, their setbacks, their dreams and, ultimately, their victories.
So I got to work, channeling my frustration through my writing. “The DOMA Diaries” is the story of three gay couples and the ways in which they struggle to overcome the obstacles that DOMA creates in their lives. The play captures the grand sweep of American history through the lives of ordinary gay Americans. Along with two fictional (though fact-based) stories, I added a third plotline, this one based on my own personal experiences with DOMA, as one half of a bi-national couple.
AUDREY is an elderly lesbian widow and veteran. She wants to be buried in a military cemetery, next to her wife, who passed away the year before. When the military refuses her request, she enlists her brother, a lawyer, to help her sue the government.
JANICE and SOPHIE are a loving lesbian couple with two small children. When Janice is diagnosed with breast cancer, she and her partner learn some hard truths about gay life under DOMA. The government resources they had been counting on to help them are unavailable, because they are not considered technically married. Also, Janice’s father sues to adopt Janice’s son Davey, and take him away from the only home the boy has ever known. Things look hopeless, until Sophie comes up with a clever plan to solve their problems.
RED and OLIVER are a gay couple in their twenties. Red is a US citizen and Oliver is from England, living in the US under a work-based visa. The two men fall in love. And over the years that follow, they struggle to find legal ways to keep Oliver in the country. They want to spend the rest of their lives together in the US, but long-term stability seems impossible, given Oliver’s immigration status. When Oliver loses his job, he is forced to return to England. Will Red and Oliver ever get their happily ever after?
Although the play deals with serious issues, “The DOMA Diaries” is not just a list of complaints about unfair policies (or simple excerpts of real-life trial records and judges’ opinions). This is a “real” play, with complex characters and an engaging story. It captures the political “big picture” by showing how it affected ordinary people.
The play also has a good deal of humor in it. For example, the political history of DOMA is explained to the audience in a very fanciful manner, in the form of a children’s theatre piece. Another memorable scene involves a trip to “Mailboxes Etc.” Red and Oliver go there to get their domestic partnership application notarized, and they decide to turn the event into the equivalent of a wedding ceremony. The scene is funny and sweet (and was inspired by a real event that happened to my partner and me).
Along with its political content, another aspect of “The DOMA Diaries” that excites me as a writer is the way in which the story is told. Given that the play contains three different plots (and a fair amount of exposition), I knew that telling the story in an efficient and fluid manner was paramount. And so I decided to take a more expressionistic approach.
“The DOMA Diaries” is performed on a small, bare stage with a minimum cast of four (two men and two women). Props and costume pieces hang from hooks on the upstage wall, and actors grab what they need during the performance. Characters are often defined by a single costume item (a hat, a necktie, a pair of glasses). The children of Janice and Sophie are played by puppets. The entire play has a wild creative theatricality to it. This is not a movie-ish “fourth wall” story. This is a true stage play, one that uses the tools of theatre to tell its story, create moments and move an audience. It makes for a truly unique theatergoing experience.
Obviously, a critical aspect of “The DOMA Diaries” is that it’s a play about what is happening in America right now. Today. This play couldn’t possibly be more timely, and that gives the audience watching it an extra investment.
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