They lived as a gay couple in Mississippi for 20 years. The worst indignity came in death

[TexasTowelie]

They lived as a gay couple in Mississippi for 20 years. The worst indignity came in death, lawsuit says.

For most of the 52 years he was in a relationship with Robert Huskey, Jack Zawadski doesn’t remember much in the way of anti-gay discrimination.

Not while they were trying to grow apples on a farm in Wisconsin. Not during the decades they spent as special education teachers. Not even when they moved to Mississippi 20 years ago to retire someplace warmer and more lush, or after they married in 2015, when the Supreme Court declared that gay couples have as much of a right as heterosexuals to marry.

But in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Pearl River County, Miss., Zawadski said that prejudice finally reared its head when he was most vulnerable: last May, when Huskey died at age 86 after a long illness.

In a 14-page complaint, Zawadski, 82, said the funeral home that had been prearranged to pick up and cremate Huskey’s body refused at the last minute, telling the nursing home that they don’t “deal with their kind.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/05/02/they-lived-as-a-gay-couple-in-mississippi-for-20-years-the-worst-indignity-came-in-death-lawsuit-says/

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. How despicable.

Here's my small contribution.

Several years ago I was an an event where a man casually referred to his husband. Several hours later, at another event connected to the first one, a woman casually referred to her wife. I finally got it: If you're a man and you're married, you're a husband. If you're a woman and you're married you're a wife. Duh!

I was an airline employee starting in 1969. Many of the men I knew and worked with were gay. Many of them died from AIDS in those early years. I myself am a boring heterosexual, but I'm beyond glad that I knew those men and had a connection to the gay community. I only wish I knew more lesbians (where do you hide?) but I have (I'm glad to say) made friends with some gay men in my city.

The essential point is that we are all connected. I may be straight, you may be gay. We all have a lot to offer each other.

Alas, that is something the bigoted straight community does not understand.