Juneau couple who helped change LGBTQ+ rights in Alaska reflect on living openly and joyfully

It’s Pride Month and Juneau joins other communities nationwide in celebrating LGBTQ+ people. 

One couple in Juneau, Maureen Longworth and Lin Davis, have dedicated their lives to advocating for LGBTQ+ rights. They met on a late-night dog walk at the Oakland Rose Garden in California in 1987. That was nearly 40 years ago, though Longworth remembers it clear as day. 

“I had just gotten off work and was walking my dog, but it was like near midnight, I think, and bumped into Lin walking her dogs,” Longworth said.  

A lot has happened since that first walk. The pair moved to Juneau in 1992 and now live on Douglas Island, retired with their dog, Reilly Wryly Raven. It’s been more than two decades since the pair joined a lawsuit that would change LGBTQ+ rights for state and municipal workers in Alaska. 

It started because Longworth needed intensive dental work, and her employer wouldn’t cover it. Davis worked for the state’s Department of Labor and Workforce Development at the time, where straight married people could share employment benefits – like health insurance – with their partners. 

Davis was denied the same benefits for her partner.

“We had to pay for it out of pocket, but my coworkers out at the Department of Labor and Workforce Development, they would have automatically had their marriage partners covered,” she said. 

The women couldn’t legally get married in Alaska back then —  Alaska was actually the first state to ban gay marriage through a constitutional amendment in 1998. And, though they’d gotten married in other states and held a ceremony with friends and family, it wasn’t recognized by Alaska.

So, in 1999, they, alongside eight other gay and lesbian couples and the Alaska Civil Liberties Union, sued the state government and the Municipality of Anchorage.

The lawsuit demanded equal benefits for domestic partnerships. It was filed right after the state amended its constitution to define marriage as only between a man and a woman. 

Longworth said it felt necessary to take a stance. 

“There was no protection for people to take care of their families,” she said.  

In 2005 — six years later — they won. The Alaska Supreme Court ruled that denying spousal benefits for gay couples was an equal protection violation. It meant that local governments and the state were required to make employment benefits accessible to people in domestic partnerships. 

It was unbelievable. We started screaming, and I was screaming at work, and telling all my coworkers,” Davis said. 

“You called me, and I was in the library garage downtown, and I just started crying. We just couldn’t even believe it,” Longworth said. 

Since then, the pair have spent decades continuing to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights in Juneau and Alaska, even after Davis was diagnosed with leukemia a year and a half ago. They do that in part by unapologetically sharing their relationship with the world. 

“We come out to people like six times a day, just sharing what this is, as wife and wife, going through a pretty fatal diagnosis,” Davis said. 

Davis said fighting for LGBTQ+ rights opened the door for them to live their lives openly and joyfully.

“In Hamlet, there’s that line, ‘to thine own self be true.’ So that’s what we’re all about. To thine own self be true,” she said. “Go forward, be brave. You may have to be brave every day, but steady forward.”

“You can see why I married her. Isn’t that the kind of person you’d want to live with?” Longworth said, laughing. 

And they commend and appreciate the young LGBTQ+ people who are taking up the torch — to advocate for their community and live bravely.