Photograph courtesy of the Missouri State Highway Patrol
You need not be a Christian, or even a religious person at all, to be moved by the Christmas Day tragedy of Cpl. Dennis Engelhard.
Engelhard—who usually spent Christmas morning opening presents with his fiancé, Kelly Glossip—was killed helping others on a treacherous stretch of snowbound Interstate 44 near Eureka. An SUV skidded out of control and struck him just as he finished assisting a motorist who’d had a minor accident.
Engelhard was working as a Missouri trooper, a job he held for nearly 10 years. He was the 28th member of the Missouri State Highway Patrol to die in the line of duty.
The details were heart-rending. The devastated fiancé spoke of how it had been on Christmas Day—precisely 12 years before the tragedy—that the couple had exchanged rings and made a lifelong commitment to one another.
This year, 2009, had been different because they had decided to exchange presents on Christmas Eve, rather than wait—as was their custom—for Christmas Day itself. It’s a mystery, Glossip says, that they happened to change the routine this year at the home they owned together.
Glossip spoke about holding Engelhard’s hand in the hospital, even after he had passed away, and about the devastation of losing a soul mate on such a special day. The fiancé reminisced about their faith and about the support received from the church they had attended weekly together.
Engelhard certainly didn’t die without recognition from the state he was serving.
Gov. Jay Nixon ordered flags across Missouri lowered to half-mast in his honor.
“Cpl. Engelhard embodied the very best of the Missouri State Highway Patrol—dedicated service to the people of Missouri,” says John Britt, director of the Missouri Department of Public Safety. “In addition to serving almost 10 years with the patrol, Dennis worked as a paramedic and as a flight paramedic. In all, he spent a quarter of a century bravely and selflessly helping to save lives and assisting those in need.”
A memorial service at the couple’s church, Christ Church Cathedral, drew hundreds of mourners. Engelhard left behind a wonderful legacy.
That, however, is hardly the end of the story. It has a footnote that would make this trooper’s death very different from the 27 that had preceded it.
The love of Dennis Engelhard’s life, his grieving fiancé, is another man. And that man, Kelly Glossip, is not entitled to the survivors’ benefits that would have gone to Engelhard’s spouse were he married to a woman.
Glossip, struggling to make payments on the house they jointly owned, has filed a lawsuit—with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)—claiming that he “simply seeks the same survivor benefit that the state has chosen to offer only different-sex, surviving partners of (Highway Patrol) employees.”
This, of course, is where the story stops being a Christmas tear-jerker. This is where it becomes just another dispatch from the culture war.
No doubt some will object to the characterization of Glossip as the “fiancé” of the late paramedic. But that is how Engelhard chose to describe his partner in 2000, when he named him the sole beneficiary of his deferred compensation plan at the highway patrol.
Engelhard designated Glossip as a 50 percent beneficiary of a life-insurance policy obtained through his state position. The two jointly owned the house, five cars, and two trucks, and shared responsibility for loans and insurance on them.
Glossip, self-described as bisexual, had a son from a previous marriage for whom he says Engelhard served as stepfather. Engelhard shared in making child-support payments.
The two spent a total of 15 years together. Whatever some might think of the morality or acceptability of their relationship, this much is irrefutable: It wasn’t casual. It wasn’t some short-run episode of promiscuity or a dating relationship or just a good friendship.
There seems little doubt that theirs was a love story. It’s simply one that cannot be recognized, in any respect, in the state of Missouri.
Neighboring Iowa is one of five states that have legalized gay marriage. Glossip has stated that he and Engelhard had discussed getting married there, but decided it would be pointless as long as it wasn’t accepted in Missouri.
Neighboring Illinois’ legislature recently passed a civil-union bill that would provide same-sex couples such as Engelhard and Glossip with some of the benefits that the fallen trooper would have wanted for his mate. But that law would have done nothing for a Missouri resident, either.
Missouri voters have been clear on the subject, overwhelmingly enacting a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in 2004.
Civil unions are also out of the question.
The same state that flew its flags at half-mast for Engelhard is fully committed to denying his life partner any form of the assistance that he would have wanted him to receive.
So the story of a hero is now the story of a lawsuit. And with the ACLU involved, it is one that no doubt has lost its warmth and fuzziness in the public eye.
(Full disclosure: I’m a past president of the ACLU’s Eastern Missouri affiliate. I have, however, resigned from the organization and do not represent it.)
Legally, it would seem that the ACLU and Glossip face an uphill battle. If Engelhard had left behind a female, heterosexual fiancée with whom he had maintained a 15-year relationship, shared ownership in a house, and all the rest, she would not have been entitled to survivor’s benefits as a spouse.
It’s hard to imagine that Missouri’s court system is going to side with Glossip in carving out an exception for him. It would be wonderful if Engelhard’s wishes could be honored in this case, but that would be a pretty amazing outcome.
In any event, it is a worthy constitutional challenge as to the meaning of equal protection under the law in Missouri. And the lawsuit does advance an interesting point of view: Engelhard and Glossip were as married as they could be in the state of Missouri, thus far into the 21st century.
“They intertwined their lives together emotionally, spiritually, and financially, and cared for each other in sickness and in health,” the lawsuit reads. “The loving, committed relationship was, in all relevant aspects, the functional equivalent of a spousal relationship.”
The only reason they weren’t married is that they weren’t allowed to marry.
It’s an interesting point, and one the public ought to consider. This should be, after all, about respecting the wishes of a fallen public servant.
The story puts a human face—a stereotype-smashing, heroic human face—on a subject that is too often depersonalized as a matter of agenda or lifestyle or political philosophy. This one breaks the mold.
Engelhard was a man who not only served the people for a decade as a state trooper, but whose life work as a paramedic was about saving others’ lives, often at great risk to himself. How many of us can say the same?
We’ll never know or care about the politics of the motorist who Engelhard was assisting on that fateful day, but the odds are that that person, if he or she voted in 2004, would have—like 71 percent of Missourians—voted against gay marriage.
Fine. But do you think that person today would have a problem with Engelhard’s wishes being carried out for the person he loved?
Imagine any of the accident scenes where men and women like Engelhard come to the rescue of people of all walks of life, all races and religions and sexual orientations, without prejudice. Do you really think that any of those who were saved, or had a friend or loved one saved, would ever want anything but the best in life for the hero of their story?
This is hardly to suggest that all gay people are heroes, no more than all of the rest of us are. But they can be.
Besides, it’s not Engelhard’s heroism that should have entitled him to have his wishes respected in death. It’s that he was someone who shared his life with another person who was so special to him. And they just wanted to be treated like anyone else.
You shouldn’t have to be a hero to get that.
There aren’t a lot of people as selfless as Engelhard. But there are plenty who have the same desire to be themselves, and to pursue their own lives and loves, yet are told by their government that it simply isn’t meant to be, because of who they are.
This is changing across America, but it will take a lot of time—and a few stories like the tragedy of Dennis Engelhard’s death—before the landscape really changes for gays and lesbians. And count on Missouri to be among the last holdouts for homophobia.
As long as that’s the case, people like Kelly Glossip are going to face a grim reality when tragedy strikes like it did for him on Christmas Day of 2009.
They don’t have a prayer.
SLM co-owner Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
