No wedding bells: why banning same-sex marriage spells disaster.

• Author: Davidoff, Judith

Ray Vahey and Richard Taylor met in Ohio in 1956. Taylor, a World War II veteran, was managing a toy warehouse in Cleveland. Vahey, just out of high school, was in town for the Labor Day weekend. They fell in love the evening they met.

"It was the height of the busy season and he had to work," Vahey recalls. "He taught me how to use a ticket pricer. It was an unusual honeymoon, but it was romantic to me."

The couple has been together ever since, moving around the country as Vahey climbed the corporate ladder. Their sprawling Victorian-style apartment in Milwaukee is stuffed with art and antiques, a shared passion that started when they lived in San Francisco. They've seen each other through major life events, including serious illnesses for them both.

But despite their fifty-year commitment, they still don't have access to the routine benefits accorded married couples.

"If one of us dies, the survivor has no right to the other's Social Security payments," Vahey says. "When I retired from my last firm, I could not take an option to cover Richard under my pension, as others could to cover their spouses." And Vahey has no claim to Taylor's veteran's benefits.

They estimate they've spent $10,000 in legal fees to care for each other in sickness and in health, and to make provisions in case of death. But they, and thousands of other gay and lesbian couples across the country, are worried that far-reaching constitutional bans on gay marriage and civil unions on the November ballot will nullify their stop-gap safeguards.

Since 1998, nineteen states have passed constitutional bans on same-sex marriage, though Nebraska's and Georgia's were struck down and are under appeal. Alabama became the most recent state to pass a ban, with more than 80 percent of voters approving a constitutional amendment in early June.

This fall, voters in Wisconsin and at least five other states will weigh in on whether to ban same-sex marriage within their borders. The amendments in Wisconsin, Virginia, South Dakota, South Carolina, and Idaho would either explicitly or implicitly ban civil unions and threaten benefits for domestic partners. A measure in Tennessee is narrower.

There are also efforts under way in Illinois, Colorado, and Arizona to get same-sex marriage bans on the November ballot, though the Illinois measure would only be advisory to its state legislature. (Colorado already has a fall ballot measure that would create a statewide registry for same-sex couples and give them many of the rights and benefits available to married couples, including health insurance, pension...