A disabled New Jersey couple’s fight for marriage equality finds voice in ‘Patrice: The Movie’

Patrice Jetter is a medal-winning ice skater, a model train set maker, a costume designer, a beloved crossing guard in Hamilton Township, N.J. — and now the star of the new Hulu documentary, Patrice: The Movie.

Jetter’s magnetic personality and flashy style shines as she invites the camera into her world. “Hi, my name is Patrice,” she says at the start of the film. “I am a totally cool person with a disability who could do most anything.”

But the film centers on the one thing Jetter can’t do, without repercussions: get married.

Jetter and her partner Garry Wickham, who is also disabled, want to wed and move in together, but if they do either, their essential benefits from Social Security and Medicaid will be slashed and they won’t be able to afford the life-sustaining care they need.

Jetter and disability rights activists call this limitation a marriage penalty on disabled people and the documentary describes this fight as “the next phase of marriage equality.”

Unlike documentaries about disabled people that focus solely on their medical conditions, Patrice stands out for its examination of the systemic challenges that Jetter and Wickham face when trying to secure basic necessities, from groceries to wheelchair-accessible cars. (Patrice intentionally does not specify Jetter’s disability.) The barrier to marriage is yet another disappointing reality.

“They punish you for feeling feelings that everybody feels, and it’s like ‘Oh you’re disabled, you’re not like everybody else,’” Wickham says in the film, later adding: “They can stop us from getting married, they can stop us from living together, but they’re never gonna stop us from loving each other.”

The draconian restrictions, the pair learn, originated in an era when disabled people were often institutionalized and stripped of any agency to live on their own, work, or fall in love. Today the measures are seen as cost-saving opportunities for the federal government, regardless of their negative impact on disabled communities. Some lawmakers and activists are pushing for change, and Patrice director and West Philadelphia resident Ted Passon says public awareness is instrumental in that effort.

“A lot of times when you see a story about a disabled person through the lens of a nondisabled person, it’s always their disability that they’re overcoming,” said Passon in a recent interview with The Inquirer. “It’s not the disability, it’s the inaccessible society that [they’re] trying to overcome. [They] would actually be able to do things if society was set up for [them].”

Passon first met Jetter through her niece, singer Kimya Dawson. (He directed a music video for her when he was fresh out of college.) After 20 years of friendship, Passon and Jetter began talking about a potential documentary around the same time that Wickham proposed to Jetter. They learned of the marriage penalty and that’s when the director found his angle.

He began work on Patrice just after he wrapped Philly D.A., his award-winning docuseries looking inside District Attorney Larry Krasner’s ambitious and difficult first term.

“Philly D.A. was such an intense project — I mean, you’re with people on the worst day of their lives, talking about the hardest things you can imagine,” Passon said. “What would I want to do to follow up with that? I was like, oh, hang out with Patrice. Sounds great.”

Jetter was already working on an autobiographical graphic novel with her own illustrations. Passon decided that her drawings could serve as set designs for flashback scenes about Jetter’s tumultuous childhood, which he arranged as school play-like sets at the Ukrainian Educational and Cultural Center in Jenkintown.

She narrates the abuse, detention, and discrimination she experienced as a disabled kid in the 1970s while acting it out with child actors who play all the adults, including her mom and her teachers. The result is touching and a bit silly at times, which Passon says reflects Jetter’s tone and her love for working with children.

“When Patrice tells you stories, she could tell you something really awful that happened to her, but she’ll always find a joke or a punchline to kind of keep it light. We wanted the film to do the same thing,” he said. “It also gave us a way to bring in a gut punch that you wouldn’t expect … hearing some of this stuff out of the mouths of kids is harsher, in a way, and it exposes the inhumanity of the system by juxtaposing it with the innocence of a child.”

Like Jetter, the film remains optimistic, despite all the hurdles she has conquered and the ones yet to come. She and Wickham still live separately, 20 minutes from each other in Mercer County, N.J., but they recently held a commitment ceremony with friends and family in lieu of a legal wedding. The pair also took their protest to Washington, D.C., where Jetter presided over a mass “wedding” ceremony to symbolically unite a group of disabled couples hoping to one day marry officially.

“Repeat after me. ‘We would like to get married and be able to go to the doctor. We would like to get married and be able to buy groceries and medicine,’” Jetter told the crowd. “‘We would like to get married and be able to pay rent and bills. And not end up living in a cardboard box.’ By the powers invested in me, I pronounce you all together!”

Jetter stood unwavering in front of the Capitol wearing a rainbow tulle mohawk and matching dress, ready to embrace the national spotlight.

‘Patrice: The Movie’ is available to stream on Hulu.