They lived as a gay couple in Mississippi for 20 years. The worst indignity came in death

[TexasTowelie]

They lived as a gay couple in Mississippi for 20 years. The worst indignity came in death, lawsuit says.

For most of the 52 years he was in a relationship with Robert Huskey, Jack Zawadski doesn’t remember much in the way of anti-gay discrimination.

Not while they were trying to grow apples on a farm in Wisconsin. Not during the decades they spent as special education teachers. Not even when they moved to Mississippi 20 years ago to retire someplace warmer and more lush, or after they married in 2015, when the Supreme Court declared that gay couples have as much of a right as heterosexuals to marry.

But in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Pearl River County, Miss., Zawadski said that prejudice finally reared its head when he was most vulnerable: last May, when Huskey died at age 86 after a long illness.

In a 14-page complaint, Zawadski, 82, said the funeral home that had been prearranged to pick up and cremate Huskey’s body refused at the last minute, telling the nursing home that they don’t “deal with their kind.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/05/02/they-lived-as-a-gay-couple-in-mississippi-for-20-years-the-worst-indignity-came-in-death-lawsuit-says/