From Fredericknewspost.com

Their Love Is Here To Stay

Opinion: Joe Volz

December 9, 2005

The couple first met as Utah high school students but lost touch when they graduated a half-century ago. A decade later, they got in touch again and fell in love. They will celebrate their 40th anniversary together next month. It will not be a wedding anniversary, however. Frederick's Barbara Kenny and Tibby Middleton, both 67, are banned by Maryland law from getting married. Their crime? They are lesbians. The News-Post's Katie Leslie wrote of their dilemma on page A-1 on Wednesday.

Ms. Kenny, a retired psychotherapist, and Ms. Middleton, who was a Fairfax County high school teacher, are not rabble rousers. No, they made the best of it living as second-class citizens for years in Virginia.

That is, until last year when the state legislature passed a law prohibiting any contracts "purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage" between those of the same sex.

That was too much. The couple moved to Frederick County last spring, where discrimination because of sexual orientation is barred - provided that you aren't an uppity gay insisting on getting married.

And the women did something else. They made a movie about that homophobic Virginia law and how it affected two lives. It's called, "Barbara and Tibby: a love story in the face of hate."

It will have its Frederick debut tomorrow night at 6:30 at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 4880 Elmer Derr Road (phone 301-473-7680). The public is invited. There is no charge.

It's part of the church's "Welcoming Congregation Program."

The Unitarians don't know how to discriminate. It's not in their genes. They have ordained gay ministers and the local congregation also has both gay and lesbian couples as congregants.

Barbara and Tibby will be there, too, to talk about their lives.

They may find, though, that outside of the church, Maryland is no shining example of tolerance.

If Barbara and Tibby were, instead, Barbara and Thomas, and were convicted killers in prison, the state would allow them to get married. But in this state, and in every other state in this great union of ours except Massachusetts, gays and lesbians are denied that right.

After all, they are sinners, say those discriminating and devout people who oppose gay marriage. A Circuit Court decision is pending in Baltimore on whether gays should be allowed to marry.

Those who are passionate in their opposition say it is unnatural for two persons of the same sex to get married. There is something sick about being gay. Barbara and Tibby don't have to be homosexuals. They can change their lifestyle and be like the rest of us, the cognoscenti would have you believe.

Rev. Roberta Finkelstein, the church's interim minister, arrived in town last summer and had seen the documentary even before she discovered that Barbara and Tibby were members of her congregation. She decided to show it here.

Ms. Finkelstein, 53, a lifelong Unitarian whose father was raised Jewish and mother as an Episcopalian, is a pleasant, thoughtful woman. Definitely not a rabble rouser.

Her intention, in showing the movie, is not to inflame the county's gay bashers - in fact she abhors the word because she thinks it unfairly labels people.

But she also believes that many people may have the wrong impression about gays. She says the movie "is just trying to tell a story and put a human face on people."

Make no mistake, though, about what Ms. Finkelstein thinks about the ban on gay marriages.

"I am an advocate of marriage equality," she says. "Two people who vow to live together in a loving and faithful relationship should be afforded equal rights no matter what their sexual orientation is." Jvolz2003@adelphia.net