Soldier’s last wish: Let DOMA die before I do

[DonViejo]

Posted by Andrea Stone on November 22, 2012 at 7:00 am

Charlie Morgan should have been dead by now.

“I was to have expired last month, in October,” said the 47-year-old career soldier who has battled Stage IV breast cancer for four years and was given less than six months to live when she voluntarily stopped chemotherapy in April. “But I’m still here.”

She hopes to live to see the United States Supreme Court do right by her and her family.
You see, as a chief warrant officer in the New Hampshire National Guard, Morgan is eligible for all the benefits a grateful nation can provide its military service members. But as a lesbian married to another woman, her wife will not receive the survivor benefits other military widows get and which she will need to help raise their daughter Casey, 5, after she is gone.

The federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) forbids it.

“I’m praying that they take it up soon,” Morgan said in a phone interview from her home in New Durham, N.H. “It’s my motivation for staying alive. I really need to be alive when they actually do overturn DOMA, otherwise Karen is not guaranteed anything.”

Complete article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2012/11/22/soldiers-last-wish-let-doma-die-before-i-do/?tid=ts_carousel