PROP 8 decision was to late for this couple, let's not let this happen again.

[William769]

One might logically conclude that the documentary Bridegroom is titled to describe half of a married couple. The irony is that had the couple in question, Shane Bitney Crone and the film’s namesake, Tom Bridegroom, actually been wed, there would be no documentary.

Marriage was not a legal option for Crone and Bridegroom, who were together for almost six years before Bridegroom’s 2011 fatal fall from a rooftop where he was photographing a friend. Had they been married, Crone would not have been denied access in the hospital. Had they been married, Bridegroom’s mother would not have been able to swoop into Los Angeles, seize her son’s body and possessions, and never communicate with Crone again. Had they been married, Crone would not have had to quietly creep into Indiana to visit his deceased partner’s grave.

Chances are good, this story sounds familiar to you. It should. It’s the subject of a 10-minute YouTube short that went viral, “It Could Happen to You,” which Crone posted on the one-year anniversary of Bridegroom’s death. To date, it has been watched over four milliontimes, including by writer/producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, best known as the creator of Designing Women and as a close friend (and later documentarian) of the Clinton family. Bloodworth-Thomason contacted Crone to express the need for this story had to be told as a feature-length film, and she was the one to tell it.

“When her mother died of AIDS,” says Crone, “she witnessed how all the gays in the hospital were treated. She overheard a nurse saying, ‘If there’s one thing going for this disease, it’s that it’s killing all the right people.'” That phrase became the title of a landmark first-season Designing Women episode, in which Tony Goldwyn played a man dying of AIDS. Crone knew, on hearing that, he believed in her—he could trust her to tell this story.

http://www.out.com/entertainment/movies/2013/07/09/must-watch-bridegroom-outfest

[dbackjon]

1. VEry sad story - and a powerful message as to why equality is needed NOW