Here we are at the launch for Torn Apart: United by Love, Divided by Law, in May, 2011. Lavi Soloway took this picture and we all love it. Karin had returned to California on February 19, 2011 after we were separated again because of her visa restriction. But today, a year later, we are still in California together, awaiting our legal process to unfold, and we love being together here. We love that she didn’t have to leave again in August, 2011.
The cost and the stress are issues, of course, but being together is what we want. Our downside now is that we can’t travel out of the country together. Karin could face denial of re-entry and we can’t risk that. So we have had to tell our family that we cannot come to Scotland in a few months to share the joy when son Michael weds his lovely bride Shirley. That hurts a lot! Imagine how you would feel. Rather than go by myself and leave Karin behind, we have invited Michael and Shirley to come to California after the wedding and they will! So we will all be together and we hope to see their wedding on Skype. Good old Skype helps so many of us feel like we are together when we are oceans apart.
If you missed my announcement earlier about filing for a marriage-based green card for my wife, here is the story on Stop the Deportations – The DOMA Project:
http://www.stopthedeportations.com/blog/2012/02/on-their-5th-anniversary-as-a-couple-judy-karin-file-for-a-green-card-based-on-their-marriage-and-challenge-doma.html
And here’s my blog about us and other couples one year after my book was released:
http://tornapart.findhornpress.com/?p=7904
Meanwhile, I hope people are finding information and comfort and allies with my book. I hope the same for the new United by Love, Divided by Law Portrait Project with photos of LGBT binational families by David W. Ross, whose film on our topic, “I Do: The Movie”, is in final production.
Here’s the site for that if you have not seen it yet. More portraits will be added, but here are the first few posted:
www.unitedbylovedividedbylaw.org
To all those who face our problem, we wish you love and strength and resilience. To all those who help us – our wonderful allies – we wish the same and BIG THANKS as well.
Please consider donating to the folks who work for us on this life-ruining problem’s solution: Immigration Equality at www.immigrationequality.org/ and Immigration Equality Action Fund at immigrationequalityactionfund.org/; Out4Immigration at www.out4immigration.org/; Stop the Deportations – The DOMA Project at www.stopthedeportations.com ; and/or Love Exiles Foundation at http://www.loveexiles.org/home.htm . We’ll be glad you did and you will too!
And I can’t let you go without my standard ending, which goes like this…
To follow Torn Apart: United by Love, Divided by Law, go to its Facebook page at:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Torn-Apart-United-by-Love-Divided-by-Law/116343758442046
Read an excerpt of my book at this link: http://bit.ly/eIyGxh
Order online from the publisher at this link:
http://www.findhornpress.com/relationships-43/torn-apart-392.html
Elizabeth Gilbert wrote the foreword to my book. She is an ally in our fight and has suffered from the immigration situation herself as part of a binational relationship. Though she and her boyfriend were able to marry, they know what the drill was and they advocate for LGBT binational families. We like that!
Remember, too, you can follow me and what I am doing and thinking and reading on twitter @tornapartbook
