Tag: gay marriage

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CA: Judge rules DOMA unconstitutional

From The Advocate: A federal judge in California has ruled a section of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional in a case brought by a group of public employees whose same-sex spouses were denied long-term care insurance.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled late Thursday that Section 3 of DOMA, which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages, violates the equal protection rights of the couples who sued both the federal government and the state’s California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS).

In granting summary judgment to the public employees, Wilken ruled that DOMA and a provision in the federal tax code “are constitutionally invalid to the extent that they exclude Plaintiff same-sex spouses and registered domestic partners from enrollment in the CalPERS long-term care plan.”

Read more at The Advocate.

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CNN’s Brooke Baldwin asks Tony Perkins: “Why do homosexuals bother you so much?”

Brooke Baldwin asked Tony Perkins, of the certified hate group Family Research Council, to clarify what about same-sex couples deserved to be “less valued” by society. Perkins noted that he did not discount that there were loving same-sex couples raising children, just as there were loving single mothers doing the same. “If it were just two caregivers, three would be better!” he noted, but instead it was about a “fundamental role” a man and a woman had in a family.

Baldwin asked him whether his experience had corroborated that belief: “Have you ever been to the home of a same-sex couple?” Perkins answered in the negative, and refused to argue what he would tell that hypothetical couple to convince them their lifestyle was hurting society. “We don’t make public policy based on what is good for me… not anecdotes or what one couple likes.” As a society, Perkins asserted, “we have incurred a great harm.”

“I know you don’t want to answer the question,” Baldwin asked, patience wearing visibly thin, “but I’m going to try again: why do homosexuals bother you so much?” “They don’t bother me!” Perkins replied, asserting again that he was “not going to be silent while they try to redefine marriage in this country.”

You’ll note how many times Perkins says the phrase “social science has shown us” that kids do better with two, opposite sex parents. The fact is quite the opposite: children raised by lesbian parents fare as well as they would in heterosexual households, new research suggests.
(source)

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Gen. Colin Powell supports same-sex marriage

Gen. Colin Powell said Wednesday on CNN’s “The Situation Room” that he supports legal same-sex marriage, either at the state or federal level.

“I have no problem with it,” he said in the interview, which will air at 5 p.m. ET. “In terms of the legal matter of creating a contract between two people that’s called marriage, and allowing them to live together with the protection of law, it seems to me is the way we should be moving in this country. And so I support the president’s decision.”


President Barack Obama announced his support of same-sex marriage, a change in his position, in early May.

Powell’s statements on Wednesday also represented a turning point in his own public statements on the matter. The former secretary of state was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when the military “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” position was implemented.

“It was the Congress that imposed ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ it was certainly my position, my recommendation to get us out of an even worse outcome that could have occurred,” Powell told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, recalling former President Bill Clinton’s support of overturning a ban on military service for gay individuals. After public opposition, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” was seen as a compromise.

Powell said he is aware of religious objections to same-sex marriage, but spoke primarily about it as a matter of public policy.

“I respect the fact that many denominations have different points of view with respect to gay marriage and they can hold that in the sanctity in the place of their religion and not bless them or solemnize them,” he said.

He said he has “a lot of friends who are individually gay but are in partnerships with loved ones, and they are as stable a family as my family is and they raise children. And so I don’t see any reason not to say that they should be able to get married under the laws of their state or the laws of the country.”

In 2010, Powell said he favored a military repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and was in “full support” of Congressional action which resulted in the policy’s repeal.

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NAACP officially supports same-sex marriage

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, one of the nation’s oldest civil rights organizations, is officially supporting marriage for same-sex couples.

The 103-year-old organization’s resolution may help garner support for gay marriage among black voters, who according to polls have been less inclined than whites to support same-sex marriage.

At a meeting Saturday in Miami, the board of directors of the NAACP passed a resolution endorsing marriage equality.

“Civil marriage is a civil right and a matter of civil law,” NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous said in a statement. “The NAACP’s support for marriage equality is deeply rooted in the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and equal protection of all people.”
(source)

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Maryland’s highest court allows divorce of same sex marriages permitted in other states

Maryland’s highest court ruled Friday that same-sex couples can divorce in the state even though Maryland does not yet permit same-sex marriages.

The Court of Appeals ruled 7-0 that couples who have a valid marriage from another state can divorce in Maryland. The case involved two women who were married in California and denied a divorce in 2010 by a Maryland judge.

The Court of Appeals issued the ruling Friday that couples who have a valid marriage from another state can divorce in Maryland. The ruling says Maryland courts should withhold recognition of a valid foreign marriage only if that marriage is “repugnant” to state public policy. The court says the threshold is a high bar that has not been met in the case that it ruled on.

The case involved two women who were married in California and denied a divorce in 2010 by a Maryland judge. Lawyers for the women told the Court of Appeals that is would be unprecedented for the state not to recognize gay marriages performed elsewhere.

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Rapper Ice Cube is cool with gay marriage

Ice Cube agrees with Jay-Z: He’s cool with gay marriage.

“I’ve had people in my family, myself and a lot of my ancestors have been victims of discrimination. So I don’t want to discriminate on nobody,” the hip-hop star, actor and Coors Light pitchman told Ad Age today in a wide-ranging interview. “And I’m not worried about what people do in their bedrooms.”

“I’m cool with it. I’m already married, so I ain’t worried about too many other people, what they’re doing.”

The rapper’s comments come after Jay-Z earlier this week told CNN that he supported President Barack Obama’s decision to back same-sex marriage. “I’ve always thought it as something that was still, um, holding the country back,” Jay-Z told CNN. “What people do in their own home is their business, and you can choose to love whoever you love.”

More at Creativity Online