Mar 17, 2006  |  By: KATHERINE VOLIN  | COMMENTS     

When lesbian activist Wanda Alston was murdered by a neighbor one year ago, her longtime friends planned a funeral service that emphasized her efforts fighting for gay civil rights.

At the funeral on March 21, 2005, however, no references to Alston’s sexual orientation or gay and lesbian activism were in the program.

"Her family insisted we remove that from the program," says Alston’s friend Sheila Alexander-Reid.

Alston’s partner, Stacey Long, did not sit with the family at the funeral.

"I believe that grief takes over at these times and people are not thinking straight and so for whatever reason, they choose to ignore the significance of their loved one’s partner or downplay the significance of their loved one’s partner," Alexander-Reid says.

Despite her family’s attempts to remove mention of Alston’s sexual orientation from the funeral, her role as director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Affairs could not be so easily ignored by the speakers and guests.

"I think after [Alston’s family] saw that huge church filled to capacity and the mayor speaking and the chairman of the City Council speaking and the former president of the National Organization for Women, Patricia Ireland, speaking, they got a sense that this was bigger than just a family burying a loved one," Alexander-Reid says. "It was a community honoring a loved one."

Alston’s family, who could not be reached for this article, regretted their actions afterward, according to Alexander-Reid.

"I spoke to the family at the funeral and they apologized," Alexander-Reid says. "They said it was because they didn’t know she was out. Hard to believe. They said they didn’t realize how important she was to the community. I do believe that."

Alston died without a will, so the directives for her funeral, burial and estate were left to the government and her family. Alexander-Reid, a former party promoter, has turned her formerly for-profit Women in the Life company into a non-profit company, and launched a program, Wanda’s Will, to carry out her legacy and ensure that other gays and lesbians avoid dying without wills. Wanda’s Will recently held its first workshop to discuss legal rights for gays. The workshop, which was free, was filled to capacity.

"What I’ve found out in the past year is that this happens all too often," Alexander-Reid says. "Families do not want to come out and say that their loved ones were gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. It’s not that they didn’t love us. It’s not that they didn’t know that we had a partner, it’s that it involves them coming out … so it’s much easier for them to erase this part of your life. If you have your wishes legally written out and executed, they cannot do that."

TRANSGENDER PEOPLE ALSO often find their wishes disregarded at funerals.

"I’ve certainly heard plenty of stories of it happening in the trans community," says Gwen Smith, a San Francisco-based transgender activist. "Where a family member didn’t approve of the person’s gender identity and just stripped all of that away."

Smith knows from personal experience. In 1994, a male-to-female transgender friend of Smith’s was buried as a male by the woman’s family.

"She had transitioned about four or five years prior to her passing and the family was the next of kin," Smith says. "They buried her under her male name. They had a closed funeral [and] didn’t publish anything so her friends couldn’t attend. It was a very unpleasant situation."

The funeral was a Catholic ceremony, despite the fact that the woman was Wiccan, Smith says. Smith and other friends held a separate service of their own.

"We still can’t find out where she was buried," Smith says.

Such experiences have made Smith more careful with preparations for her own funeral.

"Even though I don’t expect a problem, I don’t want to invite it either," Smith says. "That’s why I’ve been very careful with my own will."

FOR THOSE CONCERNED about their wishes being carried out at their funeral, legal protections are critical, experts say.

"The law in the United States doesn’t like us very much," says Michele Zavos, a lesbian attorney who specializes in family law. "We’ve come a long way … but there’s a long way to go. If you don’t proactively take care of yourself, the law as it is now, for the most part, is not going to take care of you."

Wills, while essential in determining how an ...