Disability Rights Florida Blog
Happy Valentine’s Day from Disability Rights Florida to you. Love is in the air – romantic love, familial love, friendship love -- all kinds of love! You may be planning to spend a day with your family members, celebrate a marriage or relationship milestone with your spouse or partner, or visit with friends.
But for some, Valentine’s Day isn’t so lovely and reminds us of the barriers we experience. That’s because many people with disabilities don’t have marriage equality, making this sweet holiday sour.
You may be thinking ‘What?! Marriage equality doesn’t exist for the disability community?!’ And unfortunately, it is true, but often not talked about. If you take a moment to Google the phrase ‘marriage equality,’ you won’t find information about the disability community very easily. But let’s bring awareness to this today and advocate for a disability-inclusive Valentine’s Day.
History of Marriage Equality in the United States
In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia made interracial marriage legal. The day of the landmark ruling, June 12th is now considered ‘Loving Day’, celebrating the coincidental name of the couple who won their case and legalized interracial marriage.
In the 1990s, there was pushback against the LGBTQ+ community having marriage rights. In 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act was signed into law, denying LGBTQ+ folks marriage equality. Over the next 20 years, there were wins and losses for LGBTQ+ marriage equality.
Within the past decade, we have made huge (and long overdue) strides for the LGBTQ+ community with marriage equality. In 2015, a court case called Obergefell v. Hodges ruled that same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry. This is the most recent major marriage equality win to happen for a marginalized community.
Why Don’t Disabled People Have Marriage Equality?
To answer this and understand disability marriage inequality, we need to consider some other additional factors – such as class or socioeconomic status.
Often people with disabilities utilize government supports such as Social Security Income (SSI), Medicaid, housing vouchers, and food stamps. These benefit programs are based on income, so if you fall into a certain low-income bracket, you can qualify for these services. People with disabilities need these programs to survive and get the disability-related care we need. However, using (and staying) on these services can keep disabled people in poverty. For disabled folks, if you were to have these services, but then get a job that pays too much (which ‘too much’ is ironic because it is not much money to live off of), you risk losing these government benefits.
So where does marriage equality come into play? Not only does this system make it really hard to keep these services as individual people, it gets more complicated when marriage comes into the equation. For people with disabilities who have a loved one they want to marry, they have to be incredibly mindful of more rules. To be considered for these programs as married couples, the government looks at your combined income.
If a disabled person utilizes these benefit programs and
- marries someone who doesn’t utilize them and has a qualifying significant income, they will likely lose their benefits.
- marries someone who also utilizes the services, they will both be on the benefits, but again, be limited in how much they can have in assets and thus experience poverty.
So, as it stands, this poses a very difficult choice for disabled people. On one hand, you have getting to marry your loved one and accessing the benefits that come with being married, and on the other hand, you have losing benefits crucial to your wellness as an individual with a disability.
For those who don’t have medical needs or need disability-related assistance, you may not be able to comprehend just how unfair a choice this is. The cost of living with a disability is not something to brush off or disregard.
You may have heard of the ‘pink tax’ which is the extra cost associated with women to access things they need, such as items that are simply more expensive for women than they are marketed for men.
For people with disabilities, there is something called the ‘crip tax’. This is the hidden cost that comes with living with a disability. The extra cost can be from more medical bills to things like paying more money for premade food or food delivery if you have limited mobility or energy, paying extra for transportation when there are no accessible bus stops or unreliable paratransit options, facing paywalls for podcast transcripts and other accessibility needs, having to pay more money for a newer apartment just because it’s the only one in town that has an accessible shower, and the list goes on and on. The crip tax also includes the amount of time needed to navigate all these barriers, which ultimately limits the time and energy folks with disabilities have to work and bring income in.
When it’s all said and done, people with disabilities experience about $17,000 in additional costs related to disability each year.
It’s More Than a Label and a Wedding Reception
The pain associated with not being able to marry your loved one goes way beyond just having them legally titled as your spouse. There are many social and financial benefits that marriage offers couples that disabled people can’t access.
One big example people with disabilities talk about is having their partner with them at a hospital. Because people with disabilities tend to experience more health conditions, they visit and stay in the hospital more. However, hospitals frequently deny disabled peoples' partners because they are not officially married. Even with paperwork such as a power of attorney or living will as an attempt to work around this, hospitals still deny a disabled person’s partner to visit or stay with them in the hospital.
Other examples of marriage benefits include employee leave benefits, tax deductions, getting immigration-related legal rights, applying for foster care, and visiting family in places that are strictly for immediate family (such as hospitals but also jails, assisted living facilities, inpatient health units, etc.). It also includes things that may seem trivial to some, but can be crucial to social and financial access, such as living in ‘families only’ neighborhoods or getting family rates and discounts for various consumer goods or community clubs.
The benefits of marriage are immense and denying disabled people the same right to marriage as nondisabled people is unfair and must change.
So, What Now?
Disabled people deserve to experience all of the benefits and enjoyment of marriage, the same as non-disabled folks. But we’re still fighting for that right. To help, you can disrupt conversations about universal marriage equality and educate folks about disability marriage inequality. You can learn more about disability asset limits and the crip tax to become a better advocate and ally for the disability community. You can also speak out against this. Consider contacting your legislators and share your story and/or opinion Your voice matters, and you should never underestimate how powerful your advocacy can be.
We hope that in the near future, Valentine’s Day can be sweet and lovely for all. But until then, we must center disabled folks and ensure that the right to marry is universal.
Thanks for reading our blog. We'd love to hear about your experiences and thoughts on this topic, so please leave us a comment below! Also, feel free to comment other topics and disability issues you'd like to see covered on our blog. We strive to bring content that is interesting and valuable to you, and we can do that best with feedback directly from you.
Blog written by Maddie Crowley
Maddie is Disability Rights Florida's Social Media and Content Specialist. They are a multiply disabled person who cares deeply for disabled issues and believes in the power of advocacy and awareness. They hope that readers can take something away from this blog and help advocate for disabled marriage equality.
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Comments
So accurate information! Also the cost of living causes us homelessness and if lucky to find a room to live, the rent depends on transportation facilities and if it has a bath eith shower or bathtub. Homelessnes causes the problem of dealing with othets who are not disabled but have a conduct that can cause you harm. They can steal the few things you have. Of living in your car you are exposed not only to vandals who knows that as a disabled person, you receive an amount betweenn the 1st and the 3rd of each month and worst, you can get carjacked. Imagine a disabled person left in parking lot whete his car was stolen by a gang surrounding him, no one cared to help, but oone of the gang members to distraugh the theft uses his phone to call police for the victim, person in a panic attack, police arrest for false causes that ar lately dropped, not before slamming and torturing the victim by sitting in his bulging fiscs back and introdicing hard a finger in his ear where he suffers tinnitus.but police believed the phone call and that the victim ead a drug addict homeless beggar. Or worse, when the car get stuck because of gas and police call a tow, or a petson selling a setvice gives you a lift, speed then when stopped by police, they search the car then find some controlled substance. You are the passenger in that car but you look more like the ownet of tje substance than the driver who showed a 3 years expired military ID. The disabled get profiled more often by police in Florida, but you don’t have the money for defense. Nor money for a bail thst udually is a steal too.
By Celina Navarro on Feb 14, 2023