Aug 15, 2008  |  By: JOSHUA LYNSEN  | COMMENTS     

Kate Oliver forces back tears as she laments the laws that prevent her two dads from marrying.
Oliver, a married mother of two girls, said it’s wrong that Maryland won’t allow her biological father, Ken Travers, to wed his longtime partner, Robert Harris.

“I get a little emotional sometimes when I talk because it really hurts my heart to know that Bob’s the only person in my family that I’m not legally connected to,” she said. “I’m so emotionally connected to him.”

So driven is Oliver to see her two dads wed in Maryland that she, along with another grown child of gay parents, recently sought a meeting with Gov. Martin O’Malley to discuss the importance of marriage to their families.

He turned them down.

In letters last month to Oliver, who lives in Columbia, and Ryan LaLonde, who lives in Silver Spring, O’Malley said his “busy schedule at this point in time” would not allow him to take the meeting. He referred them to an aide.

LaLonde, a gay man raised by two lesbians, said he was surprised that O’Malley couldn’t find the time during legislative recess to take the meeting.

“We’re trying to meet when it’s the least hectic,” he said. “Maybe he’s got vacation. It is summer.”

No matter the circumstances, though, Oliver said she was disappointed.

“Because it’s just, that’s just the way things seem to go sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes politicians will say what they need to say to get elected and then forget about us and our families when it’s inconvenient.”

Rick Abbruzzese, an O’Malley spokesperson, said the redirect to legislative aide Joe Bryce was no slight, though, and simply part of “the process” that all such meeting requests face.

He told the Blade on Wednesday that the legislative office was reaching out to offer Oliver and LaLonde a meeting with Bryce in early September.

“From what I understand, we never actually said no,” Abbruzzese said. “We just never responded, quite frankly, because they hadn’t gotten to it in the legislative shop.”

But the handling of the meeting request is the latest act by O’Malley — a man once seen as unabashedly gay friendly — to upset gay rights activists.

As mayor of Baltimore, O’Malley joined Pride celebrations and signed laws barring discrimination against transgender workers and residents. He also courted gay votes during his campaign for governor.

But after moving to Annapolis, O’Malley last year greeted a court ruling upholding Maryland’s ban on same-sex marriages by noting the state shouldn’t tell “any faith how to define its sacraments.”

O’Malley also gave little public support this year to the many gay bills that lawmakers debated.
Carrie Evans, policy director at Equality Maryland, said the gay rights group believes O’Malley maintains “an open heart and an open mind” on gay issues.

LaLonde and Olive said the governor’s increasingly mixed record has left them wondering, though, whether they can consider him an ally.

“I think that there does need to be some upset feelings expressed — even outrage — because I feel kind of used,” Olive said. “I feel like our families have been used. I know many people through Equality Maryland that were really supporting O’Malley. And he gets into office, and you go, ‘oh yeah, we’re ready.’ And then you get this, ‘oh, maybe not so much’ feeling.”

LaLonde said it’s unfortunate that O’Malley couldn’t meet even briefly with two families directly affected by the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.

“I’m not a stranger to politics,” he said. “My partner has worked on numerous campaigns and we’ve seen behind the scenes. It’s probable that he wants the topic to die as quickly as possible.”

But the topic won’t die, LaLonde said, and O’Malley would do well to hear the perspectives of children that were reared by same-sex couples.

“It’s a societal issue,” he said. “When you go to school and people talk about their mom and their dad, it’s hard to talk about your moms without people questioning what’s going on.”