Dalton: U.S. strands a gay couple in Canada

Bravo to President Barack Obama for backing gay marriage. But the support means little to me while discrimination remains at the federal level.

I'm a native New Yorker, but I now live 2,400 miles away in Vancouver, prevented from living in the United States with the man I love because he's from another country and we're both men.

Even though we've been together for nearly a decade and got married in Canada in 2008, I can't sponsor him to immigrate to the United States. The Defense of Marriage Act, passed by Congress in 1996, bans the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage for any federal purpose, including immigration. Even if we had married in Massachusetts, the only U.S. state where same-sex marriages were legal at the time, the federal government wouldn't recognize our relationship.

Five other states have now joined Massachusetts -- including New York, where marriage equality passed last summer, a few years late for us. Despite the lack of legal recognition, we celebrated our commitment to each other in front of 135 family members, friends and colleagues at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Huntington a month before our legal marriage in Canada. The minister said he wished he could say that, by the power vested in him by the state of New York, we were married. But, he said, his voice cracking, his eyes welling up, "In the eyes of this congregation, you are married." Attendees erupted in thunderous applause.

But our friends and family members lamented our next step. Instead of going on a honeymoon, we began packing boxes. While neither of us is a Canadian citizen -- my husband is from Colombia -- Canada recognized our relationship. We married on the Fourth of July in Victoria, British Columbia, and settled in Vancouver, pursuing liberty and happiness just 25 miles north of the border. Last fall, we applied for Canadian citizenship.

We're still yearning for the right to live in the United States as a couple. We want the benefits of the 1,138 federal laws that grant rights and privileges to married heterosexual couples. I want to sponsor my husband to immigrate, just as any American can sponsor an opposite-sex spouse.

I long to be back on Long Island with my mother, who has breast cancer that has spread to her bones. Four years ago, someone asked her about my impending departure to Vancouver. "It's far, but we'll get there," she said, through tears -- the first time I'd ever seen her cry. My mother hasn't made it here yet.

Recently, I've been waking up with a sense of anxiety. The angst is driven by not seeing my mother more than once or twice a year, by hearing from afar about her tumor markers going up or down but being unable to give her a hug or encouragement in person. Online connection via Skype helps, but it's a poor substitute. I should be there, on Long Island, with my mother and my husband. I shouldn't have to choose between the two.

Legal challenges, including one by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, may chip away at the Defense of Marriage Act. But repeal is what's really needed. As a candidate, President Barack Obama said he opposed the law. As president, he directed the Justice Department to stop defending the act in court. Now that Obama has stated his unambiguous support for same-sex marriage, he should push to dismantle the Defense of Marriage Act and to enact comprehensive immigration reform that includes immigration equality for all Americans.

One day, my husband and I would like to celebrate our anniversary, and equality, on U.S. soil.

Richard J. Dalton Jr., a former reporter and columnist for Newsday, lives in Vancouver, where he runs an SAT-tutoring service.