I try to stick with parenting stuff around here because I can’t write about everything, and others have general LGBT happenings covered better than I can. Sometimes something comes along, however, that is just so touching, I have to post about it. This time, it’s the marriage of Eric Marcoux and Eugene Woodworth, who “have been together since they the day they met in Chicago in 1953.”
Oregon Public Broadcasting has the full story. The couple lives in Oregon, but can’t legally marry there, so they popped over the border to Washington. While they wanted to wait until it becomes legal in their own state, Woodworth, 85, has been diagnosed with congestive heart failure and likely has only weeks to live. They married two days ago so that Marcoux, 83, “might be eligible to receive social security benefits as the surviving spouse,” OPB reports.
They’re not the only same-sex octogenarians to wed. Perhaps most famously, Del Martin, 87, and Phyllis Lyon, 83, were the first same-sex couple to marry legally in California, after more than five decades together. Martin passed away two months later, in August of 2008.
It is still an open question whether Marcoux will receive Woodworth’s Social Security benefits — but the Social Security Administration announced this week that they are processing some claims from same-sex couples, and that “If you are in, or are a surviving spouse of, a same-sex marriage or other legal same-sex relationship, even if you live in a state that prohibits same-sex marriage, we encourage you to apply right away.”
I am simultaneously happy for Marcoux and Woodworth, saddened that they will have such a short time as a married couple, and glad that they had so many wonderful years together no matter what the law says.