Fascinating story.

The other lesson to take from Charity and Sylvia is why the legalization of same-sex marriage is so important. They were able to create a publicly recognized marriage and gain the toleration of their community, many of their family, and many of their friends. But their relationship was always vulnerable, because it wasn’t a legal one. They secured it through selfless devotion to the interests of others throughout their entire lifetime. They secured it by giving everything they had to their kin, to their church, to their community. And always with the threat that at any moment, the sanction for their union could be stripped away.

An interview with the author, Rachel Hope Cleves from the Boston Globe