Tag: inequality

Posted on

From the UK marriage equality debate: “Separate but equal is a fraud”

One of the clearest and most direct speeches given yesterday during the debate shortly before the House of Commons approved marriage equality came from UK Labour MP David Lammy.

Excerpt from Lammy’s speech:

Let me speak frankly.

“Separate but equal” is a fraud. Separate but equal” is the language that tried to push Rosa Parks to the back of the bus. Separate but equal” is the motif that determined that black and white could not possibly drink from the same water fountain, eat at the same table or use the same toilets. “Separate but equal” are the words that justified sending black children to different schools from their white peers – schools that would fail them and condemn them to a life of poverty.

It is an excerpt from the phrasebook of the segregationists and the racists. It is the same statement, the same ideas and the same delusion that we borrowed in this country to say that women could vote – but not until they were 30. It is the same naivety that gave made my dad a citizen in 1956 but refused to condemn the landlords that proclaimed “no blacks, no Irish, no dogs”. It entrenched who we were, who our friends could be and what our lives could become.

This was not “Separate but equal” but “Separate AND discriminated”,

“Separate AND oppressed”.

“Separate AND browbeaten”.

“Separate AND subjugated”.

Separate is NOT equal, so let us be rid of it.

Because as long as there is one rule for us and another for them, we allow the barriers to acceptance to stand unchallenged. As long as our statute books suggest that the love between two men or two women is unworthy of being recognised through marriage, we allow the rot of homophobia to fester.

(via Towleroad)

Posted on

Boeing Corp will deny pension survivor benefits to same-sex married couples

The Boeing Corporation has told union negotiators that it will deny pension survivor benefits to same-sex married couples despite passage of a marriage equality law there, The Stranger reports:

Ray Goforth [executive director of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), IFPTE Local 2001] explains that his union has long sought equal pension benefits for same-sex domestic partners, to no avail. But since voters approved same sex marriage—establishing parity with married straight couples—Goforth re-framed the proposal to apply to his union’s gay Boeing employees who wed. “Their answer was that they had no intention of granting pension survivor benefits to legally married same-sex couples because they didn’t have to,” Goforth explains. Boeing representatives told him that pensions are governed by federal law, which doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage, thereby trumping the state law on the matter.

“We were profoundly disappointed to see that they would use a loophole to engage in institutionalized discrimination,” Goforth says.

Boeing issued a statement to its employees late yesterday saying the company “is taking a closer look at how R-74 might impact company policies once it takes effect in December” but Goforth insists that the company was “unequivocal” in its statement to union negotiators that it intends to withhold the benefits.

I am NOT amused.

Posted on

The costs of same-sex marriage bans

From TakePart.com: 70,000 gay couples in the U.S. are currently married, and 90,000 have entered civil unions or domestic partnerships.

But the cold hard truth is that throughout the U.S., gays and lesbians remain unable to enter into a legally recognized relationship with the person they love. And even in states that have legalized gay marriage, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed into law by President Clinton in 1996 prevents the federal government from recognizing those unions.

Click on the infographic above which shows exactly how same-sex marriage bans are bad for gay and lesbian couples — and the government.