This virtual quilt is an opportunity for you to speak out and voice support for marriage equality through video. We're simply providing a platform for your voice to be heard. All we ask is that you answer one question: why is marriage equality important to you? Remember, everyone matters in the fight for equal rights. It's up to you!

Without legal marriage rights, couples face challenges that are overwhelming.

• If you were unable to visit your spouse in the hospital
• Knowing your child’s doctor bills may not be covered
  
• Unable to share social security in your later years
  
• Spending thousands of extra dollars because you cannot claim joint deductions
  
• The possibility of losing your home if something tragic happened to your spouse
  
• Not having legal guardianship over the children you’ve helped raise for years
  
• Even after 20 years together, your spouse is called your “friend” at parties and family gatherings
  
• Even after 30 years together, you have to check "single" as your marital status on every single form you complete
  
  These are just a fraction of the challenges faced daily by same-sex couples
  
  

What About Domestic Partnership and Civil Union?

While some cities and states offer Domestic Partnership benefits and Vermont’s Civil Unions certainly guarantees more benefits than any other domestic partnership program to date, these systems still fall short of Civil Marriage. Only Civil Marriage can truly give gay and lesbian couples all the protections afforded by the Federal and individual state governments and ensure equality in the eyes of the law.

** Note: when same-sex partners win the right to marry in one state, federal benefits will not be automatic. We will have to overturn restrictions imposed by DOMA before couples achieve federal recognition.

Religious and Civil Marriage: The Difference

In the U.S., a marriage is only legal with the signing of a marriage license. That is why many couples can go to a judge or any other public officiant and need not go to a church, synagogue or mosque. However, our government has made the process simpler by allowing priests, ministers, rabbis and other religious folk, to perform a couple's desire for a religious ceremony AND act as an officiant. This convenience does not mean that a purely religious ceremony would be legal. Each religious cleric must sign the license before witnesses and the couple. In Europe, couples MUST go before a public official to marry. A religious ceremony is 'secondary' and only needed if the couple wishes to have a church ceremony.

Moreover, churches retain the right to decide for themselves whether to perform or recognize any marriage, just as they already do for every couple. No court decision or legislative enactment can change the basic tenets of religious faith. For example, some religions will not marry someone who has already been divorced, although the person is free to marry civilly.

Marriage Equality New York is an all-inclusive organization whose mission is to educate the public by raising awareness of the important right of all persons to enter into legally recognized gender neutral civil marriage with all the benefits and responsibilities that entails. Without marriage, committed same-sex couples are denied over 1,138 federal rights and obligations including social security, hospital visitation, co-parenting rights, estate tax, and immigration, just to name a few.