What today’s Supreme Court decision on gay marriage means to local residents

From a gay rights activist who’s been working toward this moment for more than two decades to a school principal who’s only just begun to publicly acknowledge her sexual orientation, the local LGBT community is celebrating today’s historic U.S. Supreme Court ruling that same-sex marriage is a constitutionally protected right.

“It’s an extraordinary day in a series of extraordinary events that have changed the landscape for the LGBT community,” said former Riverhead town attorney Adam Grossman. “But I’ve been predicting this would happen for over a dozen years. Fairness rules. Justice is served.”

Riverhead Middle School principal Andrea Pekar said she had not expected to be so overwhelmed by emotion when the court’s landmark decision was announced. But overwhelmed she was — with joy as well as relief.

Pekar heard of the court’s decision in a text message from a family member. “Everyone was excited and happy, even though it didn’t personally affect their own marriages.”

Pekar married her wife Diane Miller in March. When the country’s highest court announced it would hear the Obergefell v. Hodges case, Pekar admits, she was nervous. “I was thinking, it’s possible March may not mean anything after they vote.”

Today, joy and relief flowed in the form of tears.

Something you never talked about
“Growing up in Riverhead, being gay was something you never talked about. It never really existed, though of course it did. Riverhead’s an amazing place and I would never want to have been brought up anywhere else, but it was — like much of the world — very closed off.

“Kids didn’t know about things like Stonewall,” Pekar said, referring to the June 1969 riots credited with touching off the gay rights movement. “It was not like today, where thanks to the internet and social media, information about everything is at your fingertips.”

Being open about being gay “was not something that you did,” Pekar said. “You had to protect yourself. That held me back. I know people assumed that I was, but it was unspoken.”

Pekar doesn’t miss being stuck in the “don’t ask, don’t tell” lifestyle.

“I’m happy and I’m in love,” she said. “The people I work with know me. They know who I am. They know who she is to me. And it’s no big deal.

“It’s the new normal,” Pekar said.

She describes the “new normal” as safer and empowering. “It’s really just allowed more people to really just finally be themselves. I’m not any different from who I was, but now I can openly love and share my life, just like everyone else.”

Striving to provide kids with that sense of “normal” — of acceptance and empowerment — is what drove Riverhead Middle School Latin teacher Lorene Custer to establish a Gay-Straight Alliance group at the middle school.

Custer said she’s always had kids talking to her about sexual identity issues. “I think I’ve always just put forth a gay positive attitude,” she said. “It occurred to me I should be the one to do it,” Custer said, of forming the GSA in January 2014. A GSA group has since formed at the high school, too.

“It means a lot for the kids to have a safe space,” she said.

Recent Riverhead High School graduates agreed.

‘A fear about who I was’
Dylan Martinsen, RHS Class of 2008, said he would have been “much more confident” in his sexual orientation and identity if he had a GSA in school.

“For me, I was just kicking all of these thoughts around in my head,” Martinsen said. “I didn’t have anyone to talk to. I had no support. There was a fear inside of me of who I was.”

Now 25, Martinsen said he is really just beginning to start accepting himself for who he is. “Even though I came out at a young age, it was still a struggle. There was still a fear of being part of the LGBT community.”

His self-acceptance was aided by a trip back to Riverhead Middle School, where he spoke to Custer’s GSA group.

“I left with tears in my eyes,” Martinsen said.

He has signed on to produce a variety show fundraiser for the GSA this fall. The date and venue are yet to be determined, but the subject is certain: “All the pieces are going to be about love,” he said, “It will be an inquiry into what love is and what love means to us as humans.”

‘All that history flooded over me’
“It’s about people like Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer,” said Grossman, who knew the couple for more than 20 years. Grossman, a former board member and president of the East End Gay Organization, recalled how the couple, in their 70s and after more than 40 years together, went to Canada in 2007 to get married before Thea, who was terminally ill, passed away.

“When Thea died [in 2009] the U.S. wouldn’t recognize their marriage,” Grossman said. “Edie was forced to pay a huge amount of money — more than $380,000 — to the IRS because the federal government would not recognize their marriage due to the Defense of Marriage Act. She sued to get the money back and that case planted the seeds for today’s decision,” Grossman said.

Hearing about the court’s historic decision while in Greenwich Village today brought the history of the gay rights struggle home for John Fallot, 24, a 2009 Riverhead High School graduate.

“Today, all that history flooded over me,” Fallot said.

Today, Fallot was near the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar raided by police on June 28, 1969, sparking riots credited with giving birth to the gay rights movement.

“Being there at Stonewall today, the history of it all really hit me,” Fallot said. He said he remembers seeing “a documentary in health class about gays in the Act Up movement, protesting for AIDS research. It was kind of glossed over.”

The history of the movement and what gay people lived through is something young people need to work hard to be able to learn, he said. “It’s important to know the history.”

Grossman remembers a time when it was a crime just to live as a gay person. “And we’ve gone from that to having marriage equality,” he said.

“But there’s still a long way to go. We have marriage equality, but in many states you can still get fired for being gay. You can lose your job, you can lose your housing, just for being yourself. The federal civil rights act doesn’t extend to sexual orientation,” Grossman said.

“People are still targeted, assaulted and worse,” Grossman said. “And that’s a terrible thing that we still have to worry about and live with.”