For better, for worse: LGBTQ+ couples are strengthening their marriages in the wake of Trump’s election

Featured photo: Cathryn Bennett and Ana de Leon in their home. (photo by Sayaka Matsuoka)

For better, for worse. For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health. To love and to cherish. ‘Till death do us part.

For many LGBTQ+ couples across the country, their wedding vows reflect acts of resistance in and of themselves. It wasn’t even a decade ago that same-sex marriage was legalized in this country when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of it in 2015. But in the wake of Trump’s re-election, many couples are strategizing ways to ensure that their marriages are secure.

According to some legal experts and LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations, same-sex marriage isn’t likely to be overturned anytime soon. The Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision struck down state bans on same-sex marriage and legalized it in all 50 states. The decision also required states to honor out-of-state same-sex marriage licenses. The National Center for Lesbian Rights argues that even if Obergefell were to be overturned, it wouldn’t invalidate existing marriages. But that hasn’t stopped queer couples from fearing the worst.

In the days after the election, couples took to the internet to research how to ensure their marriages were strong, looking up phrases like “power of attorney” and “living wills.” According to Google Trends, the search for the phrase “gay marriage” spiked on Nov. 6. Other trending searches around that time include questions like “Can gay marriage be overturned in the US?” and “What will happen to gay marriage?”

In the Triad, TCB spoke to three couples who are asking some of these same questions and looking at ways to protect their relationships as Trump prepares to take office once again.

“No one is going to steal my love, but I am also going to fight for it,” one spouse told TCB.

Ana de León, 42 and Cathryn Bennett, 38

Sweetness.

That’s what Ana de León wrote that she was looking for in her Tinder profile back in 2017 when she met her wife Cathryn Bennett on the app for the first time.

“It’s a really funny thing to write on a Tinder profile,” de León laughs as Bennett sits across from her at their dining room table.

But observing the couple interact with each other, it’s the perfect word to describe them. As Bennett sits bundled up in a yellow-and-grey plaid jacket, de León buzzes about, fixing her partner a cup of tea and making sure she’s comfortable. It’s cold in the house because their heater broke the other day and de León wants to make sure her wife is okay. Bennett, who sits by the window, smiles sweetly as her wife tends to her, something that she’s been doing more since she broke her leg a few months ago. 

“I have felt committed to Ana since Day 1,” Bennett says. “Formalizing that through a legal process was not something that was high on our priorities list.”

But a few years ago, when Bennett was on a work trip and passed by a Taco Bell — one of de León’s favorite places — she had the sudden urge to marry her partner of seven years. 

“I just missed her so much and when I got back to my hotel room, I called her and I asked, ‘Hey, do you want to get Taco Bell married to me?’”

And in July, the two got hitched in their backyard during their annual Fourth of July get-together. They surprised their guests and in a way, surprised each other.

“Being a curmudgeonly gay person, I’ve lived a ton of my life where gay marriage wasn’t legal,” de León explains. “So I used to think, Why do I need it now? It always felt like something I didn’t need.”

But then, Roe v. Wade was overturned.

“I never thought that would happen,” de León says. “And then I thought that gay marriage could be something that could be taken away.”

Now a married couple, the two are working to ensure that their union is as strong as it can be.

In the weeks since the election, Bennett and de León have met with an attorney to update their wills and draft up healthcare and financial power-of-attorney documents. 

According to NC law, if a person dies without a will, their assets, which can include vehicles, bank accounts, stocks and bonds, furniture and jewelry, get passed on to their surviving spouse and children, or the spouse and parents if there are no children. But if gay marriage is overturned or gets relegated to the state level like in the case of Roe v. Wade, couples’ rights could be in danger. 

“The more entangled we are from a legal perspective, the harder it would be for any legislative action to erase us,” Bennett says.

That’s why Bennett and de León recently got paperwork that says if one of them can’t make decisions for themselves because they are sick or incapacitated, then the other can do so on their behalf. Their next step is getting Bennett’s name onto the house deed.

For Bennett, whose family is “deeply conservative,” she says having de León be the primary decision maker for her makes sense.

“I know my family loves me,” Bennett says, “but they don’t seem to want to understand my queerness and that identity is central to who I am and how I navigate the world.”

Talking about difficult topics like this — death, injury, wills, inheritance — is something that queer couples are used to, de León says.

“There are safety realities and precautions you have to take to keep each other safe,” de León says.

For example, as a masculine-presenting person, de León says she has to be careful about what kind of places she stops at with Bennett as they are driving around the country. With a straight couple, that may not ever be the case.

“There are little things that are very practical that happen in queer relationships and queer life and queer existence,” de León says. “So we talk about hard things all the time.”

That’s why, in the aftermath of the election, de León wishes that some people who voted for Trump, understood the fear and anxieties that many queer people are feeling now.

“I empathize with people who made economic decisions; things are really hard right now,” de León says. “But it’s also hard when they can’t see that things are hard for queer folks. I hate that the issue became binarized. I’m mad that it became an either/or when we’re all struggling right now.”

For both of them, talking about their love, their relationship, their identities is the antidote, their way of resisting.

“Acts of queer resistance manifest more in just trying to live authentically,” Bennett says. 

And they see it every day. When Bennett injured herself, their friends were quick to ask if they could bring over meals for them. One couple made them homemade meals for six weeks.

“That’s the resistance,” Bennett says. “It’s showing up for each other. We might look a little different, but we’re just like you.”

Terrell Dungee, 34 and Ryan Smith, 39

The first time Terrell Dungee tried to convey his feelings to his husband Ryan Smith, he did it through song.

It was Christmas Eve in 2013, and they were singing karaoke together. He chose three songs: “Teenage Love Affair” by Alicia Keys, “Teenage Dream” by Katy Perry and “Young and Beautiful” by Lana del Rey. The only problem was that Dungee had stepped out to smoke for all three songs.

“It was just poor timing,” Dungee says.

But later that night — on Christmas Day — he was able to tell Smith how he felt.

A few years later, in 2016, the two got married. They snuck into the Greensboro Arboretum and did their ceremony under a gazebo surrounded by friends and family. 

But for Dungee, the concept of marriage was one that he hadn’t really considered before then.

“I wasn’t interested in marriage at all,” he says. “Just thinking of the history of marriage and the exchange of property.”

But 11 years later, he’s glad that they tied the knot, given the post-election circumstances.

“I’ve been thinking about those legal pieces,” Dungee says. “No one is going to steal my love, but I am also going to fight for it.”

While the two haven’t met with an attorney yet, they are planning on getting more information about powers of attorney. During the recent open-enrollment period for health insurance, Smith ensured that Dungee was a beneficiary on a lot of his policies. He’s also been looking into getting a living will and getting Dungee’s name on the house deed, which currently only lists his name.

For Smith, the overturning of Roe v. Wade represented a seismic shift in what was possible.

“It kind of felt like a slap in the face,” he says. “Like you work this hard, and we’ve made so many strides, but it can be taken away just like that. That to me was the scariest part.”

During the deliberations on whether or not to overturn Roe, Justice Clarence Thomas pointed to two clauses in the 14^th Amendment which relate to due process, and thus, the protection of contraception, same-sex marriage, and, previously, abortion.

“He said that things based on the 14^th Amendment needed to be reviewed,” Smith says. “That struck fear in me.”

The acts of resistance Dungee is focused on are community-oriented. He’s thinking about sanctuary cities for queer and trans people. He’s prioritizing fighting for this place he calls home, no matter how bad things get.

“White, well-to-do folks are like, ‘Well, we’ll just move,’” Dungee says. “The migrant mentality. But NC has been my home. It will be where I’m buried. I choose to fight for it. We deserve to be here, and we deserve to fight to belong.”

In addition to researching practical ways to protect their marriages, Smith says he’s noticed lots of queer people looking to the past for answers.

“People are educating themselves about queer history and things that have happened in the past like lavender marriages,” he says.

A marriage of convenience, lavender unions were ones in which two queer people — a man and a woman — got married to conceal their sexuality to protect themselves. These days, some young people have reclaimed the concept to lighten financial burdens.

But for marriages like theirs that are out, loud and proud, Dungee says he hopes they can be a model for others.

“I feel like our love breaks precedent,” he says. “I think our love is here to teach others compassion, grace and allow them more mirrors into themselves instead of the heteronormative ones they’re forced to look into. I think people congregate to the love that we have.”

That’s why for those who voted for Trump, the two have a strong message.

“I understand that you voted in your self interest and you thought this was the best thing for you,” Smith says through tears. “But I hope that one day, you don’t have to be afraid of someone telling you that you don’t matter.”

Smith says that living through another Trump term means leaning more into found family.

“This experience taught me who my family is,” he says.

And he and Dungee want other queer people to know that the community is here for them, that they don’t have to retreat back into their closets. They certainly won’t.

“Our love is something we have fought for, cultivated,” Dungee says. 

“And grown and changed,” Smith adds.

“And we can’t do that in a closet,” Dungee says. “We’re too big as people, physically and spiritually.”

Beth Kincaid, 65 and Gia Gaster, 55

Beth Kincaid and Gia Gaster are each other’s first and last same-sex relationship. Both of them were previously married to men and have children from their first marriages. But when they met each other, everything changed.

“I realized, Oh, that’s different than what I feel for my husband,” Gaster says. “I realized that I loved him sort of like a brother, and I’d never been in love before so I didn’t know what that was like. So Beth is really the first person I’ve ever fallen in love with.”

The two first met in the late ’90s when Kincaid was working as a caseworker within the Guilford County health system and Gaster was a school-bus driver. The latter had wanted to start an anti-bullying campaign within the schools and that’s how they met.

“It’s not that I ever really was thinking about looking for a woman,” Kincaid says. “I just happened to fall in love.”

These days the two describe themselves as bisexual, an identity that took some time to understand.

“I can be either way, but I kind of see it as more falling in love with the person,” Kincaid explains.

Gaster, who is 10 years younger, explains how she thought she might be bisexual much earlier in life but never acted on it. For her first marriage, she married her high school sweetheart, a man she considered her best friend.

In 2020, Gaster and Kincaid got married after being together for two decades.

“I think we publicly came out when Trump was president,” Gaster says. “We came out on Facebook.”

People in Kincaid’s private practice knew the two were together, and their kids knew too. But publicly, they had never really made an announcement until then.

It’s partially because they’ve been together for so long, Gaster explains. Since 1999, Gaster has been shopping in the men’s section for clothes and presenting as more masculine. When Trump was elected in 2016, she noticed that more people became emboldened. People tried to stop her from using the women’s dressing room. One person refused to hold the door open for her and called her a “dyke.” Now, with a second Trump presidency and the coinciding rise in anti-trans hate, she’s concerned that some of the backlash will be directed towards her too.

“I’m fearful that somebody may try to hurt me because they don’t understand what a transperson even is,” Gaster says.

Similar to the other couples, Gaster and Kincaid saw the overturning of Roe v. Wade as a pivotal moment that opened the floodgates for other potential attacks on civil rights. But with their combined professions as an attorney and licensed therapist, they’re trying to use their skills to stay grounded about what’s possible in one term.

“I tell my clients to not worry until something happens,” Kincaid says.

But the two are also cautious. They’re planning on having their trusts and powers-of-attorney documents done by the end of the year.

“We do need to watch and we need to be prepared,” Gaster says.

At her practice with Cheryl Davis, Gaster says she’s seen more same-sex couples come in for consultation than ever before. They’re asking what kinds of documents they need or what protections they should be putting in place. As an estate attorney, these aren’t typical processes that Gaster oversees, but says that the firm may start putting together packages for same-sex couples if they see a need for it.

“A lot of the rhetoric that’s going around is a little bit exaggerated,” Gaster says. “But I think the fear is real.”

Personally, Gaster says that they’ll be okay, but that they are frustrated by those who voted for Trump without considering the impact it would have on marginalized people. 

“That’s the hard thing,” Gaster says. “When people you love vote against you.”

And as they face the next four years, the two say that they’ll be able to resist because of their commitment to each other.

“If we focus on the love and the positivity, we can get through whatever,” Kincaid says. “It would be nice if everyone would come together and support everybody rather than the hate.”

And that’s the thing Gaster wants people to remember.

“It’s not even about politics,” she says. “When I talk about me being feared, about being attacked or me being masculine or my marriage being in jeopardy… that’s not politics, that’s my life.”