In the next year or so, Ethan Taylor and Mike Cavey will have to face a major decision that same-sex couples across Virginia will have to confront.
"Should we throw in the towel and move to Maryland or should we stay in Virginia?" Taylor asked at a public forum on gay rights issues at the Reston Unitarian Universalist Church Monday evening.
Taylor, who grew up in Northern Virginia, married Cavey in Canada recently, bought a house in Arlington and started the process of finding a surrogate mother in California for the family's first child.
Taylor and Cavey are starting a family in a state that is chipping away at rights for same-sex couples that opposite-sex couples take for granted. Last year, the General Assembly passed legislation, known as H.B. 751, that prohibits gay and lesbian couples from entering into contracts "purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage."
The new law could forbid gay couples from jointly owning their home, signing joint wills or granting each other power of attorney in medical decisions. It could also make it impossible for two people of the same sex to share custody of a child.
But until the state's courts cite the law when handing down their decisions, it will be impossible to know what effect it will have, said Tom Field, a lawyer and legislative director of the gay-rights group Equality Virginia, who spoke at the Reston meeting.
"Until the courts speak over the next five to 10 years, Virginia is a dangerous place in which to raise a family if you're a same-sex couple," he said.
NOW SAME-SEX advocates in Virginia are bracing for a series of constitutional amendment proposals that could write those prohibitions into the Virginia constitution, where they would be almost impossible to remove.
"There will be different versions [of the amendment] and some will be worse than others and the worst will be the ones that will constitutionalize H.B. 751," said Field.
The amendment proposals would all prohibit same-sex couples from marrying but some would authorize civil unions while others would attempt to prohibit all legal contracts between two people of the same sex in the way of last year's bill.
For constitutional amendments to become law, they have to be passed twice by the General Assembly with an intervening election before going to referendum. Field predicted some version of the marriage amendment would pass this year, then next year after the 2005 elections.
"It will go to the voters in the Fall of 2006 and it will be approved by approximately two thirds of the voters of Virginia," he said.
IF GAY AND lesbian couples are going to reverse the trend in Virginia, he said, they're going to have to stay in the state and show Virginians that same-sex families are not a threat.
"We are good people even though, or perhaps because, we are gay or lesbian," he said. "Unless we say that to people in a nonconfrontational but public way we're losing the most powerful political tool we have to change our neighbors."
But for some, the price may be too high.
"I lived in Maryland once before and my brain tells me we have to go to Maryland but my heart tells me to stay in Virginia," said Cavey.
Field told Cavey and Taylor to get all the legal agreements concerning their child to be drawn up outside Virginia.
"I hope that having done that you will come back and teach us by example and besides, we need every vote we can get," he said.