20 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY JULY 27-AUGUST 2, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com When Lori Long and Mark Contreras met on match.com in 2015, she thought coffee would be the right approach for a first date. But Contreras could right away tell there was a connection. “I already know I want to spend time with you, and I want to take you to dinner,” Long remembers him saying. So they went big, with dinner at Tarpy’s Roadhouse. Long’s bubbly, positive approach to life aligned with Contreras’ more subdued, yet similarly positive attitude. They fell in love. And on Christmas of 2016, about a year after their first date, he proposed. She immediately said yes. Right away, they began planning a wedding. Their plan was to move quickly with a small, budget-conscious wedding. Long’s mother’s health was failing, and she wanted to be married with her mom there. But then Long learned about a bureaucratic complication that would come to derail those plans. As an adult with a disability she’s had since childhood, Long qualifies for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). It’s a benefit that some 1.1 million Americans receive. But there’s a catch: Adults with disabilities can keep their SSDI if they remain single, or if they get married to somebody else who has a disability. If they get married to somebody who is not on SSDI, the benefit goes away. “When the man I love asked me to marry him I said yes, I was unaware that the U.S. government allows the Social Security Administration to discriminate against people with disabilities by restricting whom we can marry,” Long says. Finding love is hard enough. Once you find it, you don’t expect it to put your health care at risk. Long, who is known as a DAC in Social Security parlance—Disabled Adult Child—began researching her options. Giving up her benefit of $1,224/month was not an option. Contreras works full time as an accountant and could add her to his insurance, but it would cost an additional $12,000 annually in premiums, more than the Salinas couple could afford. Long began asking everyone who might be able to do Lori Long and Mark Contreras just want to get married. But their engagement has turned into a national activist effort to reform outdated federal rules that restrict people with disabilities. Story and photos by Daniel Dreifuss MARRIAGE EQUALITY, THE FIGHT FOR CONTINUED
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