Idaho Bigots Won't Let Elderly Gay Veteran Be Buried With Her Wife
[There was a video here]
Madelynn Taylor, 74, served six years in the Navy. Madelynn Taylor grew up with the woman she would eventually marry in Oregon, in 1995. Madelynn Taylor is welcome to be buried in the veterans' cemetery in Idaho, where she now lives. But not with her now-deceased spouse, thanks to an anti-gay state law.
CBS's local affiliate in Boise explains the sadmaking, then angrymaking, situation in the video above. The problem is that Idaho won't recognize Taylor's marriage, even though it lasted longer than marriage bigots' tenuous hold on U.S. public opinion:
"I'm not surprised," Taylor told the station. "I've been discriminated against for 70 years, and they might as well discriminate against me in death as well as life."
The Division of Veterans Services says there is nothing they can do because they have to follow the Idaho Constitution, which says "a marriage between a man and a woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state."
Heterosexual veterans can be buried with a spouse. Taylor, 74, was hoping the cemetery would approve her request since their ashes would fit in one spot on the wall.
Taylor added, wistfully: "I don't see where the ashes of a couple of old lesbians is going to hurt anybody."