Paradise Lost

After years of hiding their love, Barbara Kenny and Tibby Middleton found a place where they felt comfortable being a couple -- until Virginia's lawmakers chased them across the Potomac

Barbara Kenny's eyes narrow as she cranks the faucet in a freshly painted bathroom of what will soon be her new home in Frederick. On, then off. On, then off. Barbara peers at the spout, unhappy. "The water pressure sucks," the lanky, 66-year-old clinical social worker snaps as she moves on to the next room, trailed by a perky real estate agent wielding a clipboard and Tibby Middleton, Barbara's partner of 40 years.

Barbara leads the trio down the newly carpeted stairs to the kitchen, where she clicks a stove knob and criticizes the burner for not going on quickly enough. The real estate agent jots down the problem as Barbara disappears into another room, grumbling about how the neighborhood is a "PUD," a not-so-complimentary acronym for a planned unit development. From the front windows of the three-story gray colonial, the mountains of Western Maryland are visible, along with rows and rows of neatly manicured, identical homes.

Tibby, a bubbly retired teacher, flashes a mildly apologetic look at the agent. In her 66 years,Tibby has learned to make the best of things, to put a happy face on dark times, to pretend. "We do have sidewalks, and that's a grand thing," she says.

But Barbara is already out of earshot and is not likely to be mollified by sidewalks, anyway. "This just makes me madder and madder," Barbara says, staring out the window at the bare February landscape. "I mean, this is a perfectly fine house, it's just not where we want to be."

Where they want to be is Virginia, in the little townhouse in downtown Fredericksburg they've owned for 17 years, in the community they've come to treasure. It took them three decades of isolation and living in the closet to find Fredericksburg, and come out as lesbians. And their townhouse there -- filled with their books, Barbara's landscape and abstract paintings, and the sunshine that pours in from skylights -- embodies everything they've finally managed to build together. Now that house has stacks of empty moving boxes in it, and, as senior citizens, Barbara and Tibby are about to take on the biggest mortgage of their lives.

Their pre-settlement walk-through is finished, and the door to the new house shuts behind them. Without a backward glance, Barbara and Tibby bundle into the car and head to their lawyer's office. A few hours later, they finish signing the settlement papers and their lender hands them a gift basket. They are officially Maryland homeowners.

"Any illusion I had before about changing my mind is over now," Barbara says. She points their car toward Fredericksburg, where moving vans will be pulling up in eight weeks to take the women away from the first place they found acceptance, the place they finally planted roots, the place where they expected to die. They don't want to leave, but they are convinced the state of Virginia has left them no choice.

Barbara and Tibby were watching television in their living room rocking chairs in the summer of 2004 when they heard the news they'd been dreading for months. A new law in Virginia had taken effect, called the Affirmation of Marriage Act. It declared that couples like them were not entitled to any of the benefits or protections that straight, married couples got.

They had been hearing about the law, part of a national backlash against gay marriages in California and Massachusetts, for several months. For Barbara and Tibby, the legal language it used was scary: A civil union, partnership contract or other arrangement between persons of the same sex purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage is prohibited and such an arrangement entered into in another state or jurisdiction is void in Virginia and any contractual rights created thereby are void and unenforceable.

Tibby initially refused to believe that the legislation was aimed at Barbara and her. They were law-abiding, low-key Virginians, people who ran their neighborhood homeowners association, called bingo nights at the firehouse and served on their church's board of trustees. "That's not meant to include us. It means people who come from other states," Tibby said with her typically earnest tone to Barbara, who responded with a typically skeptical look. They are partners and best friends, but often opposites when it comes to their gut instincts on human nature. Tibby believes the best of people; Barbara doesn't.

It wasn't new to either woman that they weren't entitled to all kinds of benefits that straight, married couples enjoyed: No leave from work to care for a sick partner. No access to a partner's Social Security payments when he or she dies. No right to live together in a nursing home.