ABSTRACT
The LGBTQIA community has evolved from desiring a few minor benefits to expecting domestic partner benefits and thereafter moving toward having the expectation of full-fledged marriage rights. This author was in the first registered domestic partner (male-male) relationship in Minneapolis for a period of 24 years: Domestic partnerships gave participants, as registrants, the right to visit a partner in the hospital (which actually became helpful when a local hospital volunteer tried to prevent the author from visiting his partner after his prostate surgery). The domestic partners’ movement went on to include a widening array of benefits, until people began to realize that they could actually aspire to marriage. After huge battles with the right-wing, the LGBTQIA movement began to win elections granting marriage (beginning with the state of Minnesota). The movement involved hundreds of thousands of single and coupled people throughout the country, and culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court victory in Obergefell v. Hodges. Couples continue to have enormous economic power in the LGBTQ community; have contributed greatly to community organizations in support of marriage; and have made their own lives decidedly happier. They are even now counted (by implication) in the U.S. Census. They have gotten what they set out to get and many of them are doing very well.
