“I’ve seen how the needs of the community have changed in my lifetime. The world changes and it is impossible to foresee what the most pressing needs of the LGBTQ+ community will be 10, 25, or 50 years from now. By giving to the Equality Fund, I can be certain my gift is addressing important issues both today and in the future.”

Dean Hara was witness to some of the most dramatic moments in the challenging and protracted struggle over the right for LGBTQ+ couples not only to marry, but to receive the benefits associated with that fundamental union. 

Hara was born and raised in Minneapolis to a father who worked in the post office and a mother who was a clerk. “In the neighborhood where I grew up, there wasn’t an expectation that you would go to college,” he says, “but my parents deeply valued education. So, I attended St. Mary’s University of Minnesota, majoring in political science. And, in the second semester of my senior year, I accepted an internship in Washington, D.C. at a nonprofit focused on private sector economic development in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

It was a move that would change the course of his life in profound ways both professionally and personally. He stayed in Washington and went on to earn an MBA from George Washington University and work in the nonprofit sector and in government.

In 1991, Hara re-met Massachusetts Congressman Gerry Studds in D.C.  The two had dated briefly a decade earlier, but this second meeting led to a close and committed relationship that would stand the test of time. In 1983, Studds became the first open LGBTQ member of Congress when he announced that he was a gay man during his censure by the House of Representatives for having consensual sex with a page a decade earlier. His constituents chose to focus on his record and he went on to be elected six more times after that. Studds became a pioneering champion for LGBTQ equal rights.

“I often told Gerry how proud I was that he came out in 1983. It was a brave thing to do,” says Hara. As their relationship developed, he and Studds began attending official events together. They broke barriers as a same-sex couple on Capitol Hill, attending congressional and White House events.

In 1996, Studds forcefully opposed the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). “I was in the Gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives when he testified against DOMA,” remembers Hara. “He referred to our relationship, making the point that for the last six years, he had been in a relationship as loving, as caring, and as committed as any—and that he had paid every single penny as much as every other member of the House for a pension. But if I, as his partner, should survive him, I wouldn’t be entitled to anything. By then, he and I had been accepted as a couple, so we put a human face on the issue, but, of course, DOMA passed.” 

The next year, Studds retired from public office and the couple moved full time to Massachusetts. Hara began working as a financial advisor. At the time, they had no way of knowing that on May 17, 2004, Massachusetts would become the first state in the country to legalize same-sex marriage. 

“One week after its passage, Gerry and I were married in Boston,” says Hara. “We were only married for about two and a half years when Gerry never returned home from walking our dog, Bonnie. He had collapsed on the street and died at Boston Medical Center on October 14, 2006.” It was sudden and devastating.

Hara was not eligible for any of the benefits that other widowers of a retired federal employee received, because of DOMA. That discrimination sparked a legal challenge: He was a plaintiff in a case to end DOMA that made its way to the Supreme Court. Finally in 2013, after six years of litigation, the act that Studds had so vehemently opposed was struck down.