Rev. Kathryn Cartledge and Elizabeth Eve: Participants in the WE DO Campaign who are requesting a marriage license at 12 PM on Monday, October 3, 2011.
We’ve been a couple – a family – for 30 years. We met as volunteers at the Open Door, a homeless soup kitchen in Atlanta, Georgia. For Kathryn, it was love at first sight. Elizabeth was a little more cautious. Our love has deepened and become richer of the years as we went through life events together – creating our family, supporting each other as our parents died, celebrating our children and grandchildren’s lives, supporting each others careers and accepting each other as we grew and changed. Now we’re old women and the old adage is true, we look alike! We still very much in love and we’re stuck like glue.
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We have worked hard at creating “home” for our daughters, Mary Hart and Bess, our four beloved grandchildren and our community. We live on a small farm in Asheville and are caretakers of 3 dogs, 2 cats, 2 llamas, 2 goats, 5 chickens, a goldfish and 2 pygmy turtles. We live a blessedly simple and ordinary life. Kathryn is an ordained UCC minister and Elizabeth is a massage therapist and co-owner of Ortho Dog, makers of canine orthopedic braces.
We both grew up in the Deep South in the 50’s and 60’s and we lived with the turmoil of discrimination. We learned early on that discrimination hurts those who are discriminated against as well as those holding to the tenants of hate. For us, having equality for the LBGT community is a human rights issue – plain and simple.
We’re involved the WE DO Campaign for a couple of reasons. One is a personal reason – as an older lesbian couple, we want to have the 1,200 legal rights afforded to straight couples (i.e. Social Security, health insurance, etc.). The other reason is that our spiritual belief is that ALL people in our beloved country should be treated equally and with respect.
We both have spent most of our adult lives working for social justice issues (integration, AIDS, homelessness and women’s rights) and legally having equality for the LBGT community is a human rights issue that we feel passionate about.
– Rev. Kathryn Cartledge and Elizabeth Eve
