Damien was born and raised in Bristol, United Kingdom, and I am from Groveland, MA. We met on Facebook, and after months of talking to each other through emails, instant messages, and over webcams, Damo finally came to the United States to stay with me while I finished my last year at Northeastern. Every ninety days, we would fly back to the United Kingdom to visit his family and renew his visa. It was not long before Damien proposed to me (while I was brushing my teeth on Valentine's Day) and we got legally married in Boston, MA.

Just as we were to go back to the United Kingdom in August, Damien became ill. Thinking they would not let him on the plane even if he felt up to the seven hour flight, we pushed back our travel dates by one week. We then went to and returned from UK with no problems. It wasn't until returning from our Christmas with his family that we had any issues. After I had made it through customs and collected our luggage Damien came up to me and I could tell he was upset. We then sat in the customs room for hours explaining that we were married, his mother sends him money that he needs, I worked outside of classes, we had a roommate so rent wasn't an issue. Nothing, however, could convince them that we had the means to get by here in Boston. This all happened because when we pushed back our flights in August, it meant Damien was staying 5 days too long in accordance with his visa.

The customs officer told us that all we needed to do was have Damien go home to the UK where he could apply for a greed card and return to the US. This was told to us by the head of the customs office! I knew that obtaining green cards was a difficult process but I had no idea at the time that Damien would not be allowed to even apply for one thanks to the D.O.M.A. which allows the federal government the choice to ignore our legal marriage.

As this was all going on in my personal life, I was heading into my final semester at Northeastern. As a graphic design major, I was required to take a class exploring any topic of my choice. Before Christmas, I thought I would look into the Academy Awards because I am a huge movie fan. After Christmas, and after my husband was taken away from me, I knew I had to do something. I explained the situation to the class (most of whom I had grown to know but many of whom did not know Damien wasn't in Boston any more). All of them were shocked when they found out that not all married couples in the United States have the right to apply for a green card (I also was when I read this). They all backed me up when I said I needed to create an informational project to educate people about gay history and gay rights.

By the end of the class, the flash portion of www.GayRightsSite.com is what I had accomplished (I got an A on the project and it was on view in Northeastern's 360 Gallery). Within the following month I had created the website so anyone not having the chance to view it in the 360 Gallery could see it and to get more exposure on the topic. When I heard how long it took to load the flash page from the web (until this point it had been running from my computer) I decided to add an HTML only version of the site. Although it isn't as flashy (oops no pun intended), it is still as informative as the Flash page.

When I saw that not as many people as I would hope were finding my page I placed an ad with google which helped a little. People were at least aware of its existence now. On the other hand there were still not as many people as I would have liked viewing it. I then decided to buckle down and learn how to make an iPhone app. This took a LOT of patience and a lot of tears to get through. After about two months of coding, and recoding, and then having to start over, my app was finally approved by Apple. The Gay History Project is my baby on the app store and if you had told me before Christmas that I was going to design an app about Gay History I would have laughed hard enough to make myself snort. But now I am even on Twitter and got over 100 followers on my first day! My website views have more than doubled thanks to the app and twitter, and my story is finally getting out to the public. I even had an Academy Award nominated producer tell me how interesting my story was (You can probably guess how exciting that was).

What I want most of all though is to be able to be with my husband again. It takes a lot of time and a lot of money to help us get to be together in the United Kingdom, but it is what I must do to keep my family together. Please help spread the word about us and think carfully in the future when voting on equality.