- Originally printed in The Olympian, www.theolympian.com

Referendum 71 is all about fairness

I have been a lifetime Washingtonian. Though I have traveled the world, this is the state my family has called home since the 1850s.

I am a conservative. I work hard and believe everyone should work and earn their way. I have a strong belief in God and enjoy a country that provides freedom for our religious beliefs.

I believe in family as the most important part of our lives; we must be there for our children and their children. I have supported my country in good times and bad — spending more than a year in Iraq and supporting recovery here in the U.S. in time of floods and hurricanes. My partner is not covered while I am gone, and if something happens to me, I worry about my family.

I have been overjoyed by the few protections we have gotten in the past few years. I was humbled by the state’s expansion of the rights and sadden by those that see it as a threat to their families.

Please join me and my family in approving Referendum 71.

It shows the respect and love of all families that this great state has for everyone. It is the spirit of Washington. We don’t have to share the same beliefs, but we should all support the liberty that this great country provides to all and extend that fairness to all of Washington’s families.

Approve fairness to all — approve Referendum 71.

NOLA LEYDE, Yelm

By Geov Parrish
Columnist, North Seattle Herald Outlook

While a few court challenges linger, it now appears all but certain that Referendum 71 – fundamentalist Christian religious leaders’ attempt to overturn our state legislature’s “all but in name” bill giving legal rights equivalent to marriage to unmarried straight or gay couples – will be on the ballot this November. And my first, overwhelming reaction is: what a complete and utter waste of time and resources.

Not that this issue isn’t critically important. It is. Encoding equal rights for all into our state’s laws is always critically important. But we know, over the next generation, how this is going to turn out. One day, we’re going to look back and marvel at the time when discrimination against same-sex couples was legal, just as, today, Jim Crow or women’s inability to vote seems like a mystifying historical oddity. Campaigns like R.71 will be seen for exactly what they are: the last major spasms of a dying bigotry.

And I am so tired of having to respond every time one of these spasms rears its ugly, and in this case homophobic, head. There are so many better things we could be doing with the money that will go into this campaign. Feed the hungry. House the homeless! Hey! I know! Let’s give everyone access to adequate health care!

You get the idea.

In particular, I’m getting really tired of having to combat religious zealots whose particular version of the imaginary voices in their heads tells them not only how they should live, but how we should live, and how society should grant or deny us our basic rights as a result.

Funny thing how, when the most reactionary tendencies in society have no rational reasons left for their hatred, they always tend to fall back on religious beliefs. In their respective days, slavery, Jim Crow, denying women the vote and countless other manifestations of bigotry were vigorously defended long past their sell-by date by those twin pillars of institutionalized oppression, “We’ve always done it this way” and “It’s in the Bible!”

But these battles, sadly, are totally necessary. Changed laws are usually the last major step in granting long-overdue rights. One day, federal courts will throw out the federal and state DOMAs as embarrassing vestiges of bigotry analogous to our state’s onetime laws forbidding Asians from owning land.

But we’re not there yet – and so this campaign, irritating and historically superfluous as it is, remains critical.

And there’s another reason why even straight-laced heterosexuals should be passionate about defending our state against the backers of R.71. At its heart it’s more a conservative than a liberal argument: what we do in our homes, or our bedrooms, is none of the government’s business. And it’s certainly not the business of the sort of self-appointed moral guardians who, in the name of their particular religion, are pushing R.71.

It’s utterly preposterous that we’re subjecting anyone’s civil rights to a popular vote. And, using Pastor Niemoller’s famous formulation, “First they came for the gays, and I did not speak out, because I was not a gay….” It’s doubly disturbing that Referendum 71 is specifically about one faction of a religion – remember that very many Christians have been strong supporters of gay civil rights, too – trying to impose its beliefs on everybody else.

The default position of a legal code in a society with many conflicting moral and ethical mores is to honor the rights of all, so long as those rights don’t impinge on the equally important rights of others. My right to bond with whichever consenting adult I please trumps your less important right to be disgusted with my choice.

The legal contract of marriage is particularly tricky because it has long been conflated with the religious ceremony of marriage. They are two different things. I can get married (and have, twice) without the benefit of a church, or pastor; but the state recognizes as legally binding the same ceremony whether it’s done in a church or courthouse. Nobody is forcing a particular church to marry gay couples if they don’t want to – but they should not have the right to prevent the state, or another church, from conducting such marriages. And they certainly shouldn’t have the right to prevent the state from recognizing gay marriages, or from conferring on gay couples (or any other couples not legally married) the same contractual rights and responsibilities married couples enjoy. The latter question is what R.71 specifically addresses.

But Referendum 71 is also the flashpoint of a larger issue, and not just about gay rights. One of the tenets of modern fundamentalism (sic) is that there’s no such thing in our Constitution as the separation of church and state, that it’s a dangerous myth sent by Satan, and that the church – their church – can and should run our country as a theocracy.

No. Thanks. If they don’t want to sleep with someone of their own gender, then they shouldn’t do it. But keep their hands, and their archaic laws, off our bodies. And keep their perverted notions of faith out of our lives.

Get busy today: stop the backers of Referendum 71. Because if they’re not stopped, I promise you, they will keep going.

By Martin Finucane and Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff

A reluctant Justice Department is defending the federal Defense of Marriage Act in a Boston court, even though President Obama is opposed to the law.

“As the president has stated previously, this administration does not support DOMA as a matter of policy, believes that it is discriminatory, and supports its repeal,” the government said in a court filing today. “Consistent with the rule of law, however, the Department of Justice has long followed the practice of defending federal statutes as long as reasonable arguments can be made in support of their constitutionality, even if the department disagrees with a particular statute aas a policy matter, as it does here.”

The federal law defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Six same-sex couples and three men whose husbands have died — one of the deceased was retired congressman Gerry E. Studds — have filed a lawsuit claiming the law treats them like second-class citizens and is unconstitutional.

Because of the law, the plaintiffs said they were excluded from using federal benefits opposite-sex couples can use, including health insurance programs for federal employees, retirement and survivor benefits under the Social Security Act, and the ability to file joint federal income tax returns.

Janson Wu, a lawyer for Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, which is representing the plaintiffs, said the group’s legal team was prepared for the government’s motion to dismiss and that it closely resembled the Obama administration’s response to a similar lawsuit filed by a Southern California gay couple. A federal court dismissed that suit on Aug. 24.

“There’s nothing in the brief that we were unprepared to deal with, and there’s nothing in the government’s brief that addresses the fact the DOMA is the only exception in a long history of the federal government’s deferral to the states’ determination of who is married,” he said.

In the California case, as in the Massachusetts case, federal prosecutors wrote that the administration agreed with the plaintiffs that the Defense of Marriage Act is discriminatory and should be repealed. But Assistant Attorney General Tony West, who helped prepared both responses, wrote that prosecutors were obliged to defend the law until Congress moves to repeal or amend it.

West urged the court to dismiss the suits on grounds that the plaintiffs “fail to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.”

Wu declined to say whether he was disappointed that Obama, who criticized DOMA while running for president, was defending it against legal challenges.

“We’ll leave that to the political talking heads,” he said. “We, of course, disagree vehemently with the Obama administration that DOMA is constitutional, and we are very prepared to make those arguments in court.”

Legal specialists have said the suit filed in March was the first serious challenge by a group of plaintiffs to the federal law passed in 1996 by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton.

The lawyers who submitted the Boston brief included West and and Michael Loucks, the acting US attorney in Boston.

The government attorneys said the court should not act as a “superlegislature,” sitting in judgment on the wisdom or fairness of a law, but must uphold a law “so long as there is any reasonably conceivable set of facts that could provide a rational basis for it, including ones that Congress itself did not advance or consider. DOMA satisfies this standard.”

The government attorneys argued that Congress was entitled to address social reforms on a piecemeal basis and provide benefits only to those who have historically been allowed to marry.

“Its decision to maintain the federal status quo while preserving the ability of States to grant marriage to same-sex couples is rational. Congress may subsequently decide to extend federal benefits to same-sex marriage, and this Administration believes that Congress should do so. But its decision not to do so at this point is not irrational or constitutional,” the brief said.

- from Empowering Sprits Foundation

The decision not to seek federal benefits for domestic partnerships or civil unions in legislation aimed at lifting the country’s same-sex marriage ban is a mistake, contend some San Francisco activists.

“It is stupid. It is narrow-minded. We need to stop it,” said Leland Traiman, a member of the group National Marriage Equality. “It seems like an East Coast-West Coast thing. Where does marriage exist? Primarily on the East Coast.”

As the Bay Area Reporter first reported in July, the bill aimed at overturning the Defense of Marriage Act introduced September 15 by Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) only aims to extend the more than 1,100 federal rights and benefits that come with marriage to those couples who marry in the five states that allow LGBT couples to wed. (A law to extend marriage equality to LGBT couples in Maine will be decided by the Pine Tree State’s voters in November.)

“I do think it is a mistake not to extend it to domestic partnerships and civil unions,” said Jeff Sheehy, who helped create San Francisco’s equal benefits ordinance in 1996 that requires city contractors to extend the same employee benefits to LGBT couples who registered as DPs as those given to heterosexual married couples.

Nadler had told the B.A.R. in July he feared adding a domestic partnership provision to his DOMA repeal effort would complicate passing the bill and distract from the end goal of allowing LGBT couples to marry. Some activists had feared it would also hurt the LGBT community’s efforts to repeal Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban.

Yet the decision has some LGBT Bay Area residents upset that those same-sex couples in the Golden State who did not get married last year will be locked out from enjoying the same rights and privileges as the 18,000 gay and lesbian couples who did wed until Prop 8 is overturned, which most political pundits predict is unlikely to happen until 2012 at the earliest.

“It is disappointing for a guy who has been a hero for us … he doesn’t understand the ramifications for us who have just been turned away from the altar,” said Gloria Nieto, with Marriage Equality Silicon Valley.

Clark Williams, northern vice chair for the California Democratic Party’s LGBT Caucus, agreed, saying it is “certainly disappointing for states like California. We lost the Prop 8 battle and don’t have marriage rights at this time.”

At the same time Williams said that he is “sympathetic to the challenges our federal representatives have for gaining more rights for LGBT families. They operate in a climate that unfortunately is restrictive toward providing more rights to gays and lesbians.”

Nadler’s bill does include a “certainty provision” that would require states with gay marriage bans to recognize same-sex marriages from other states for federal purposes. But some congressional leaders oppose the provision, arguing it will make it impossible to pass out of the Congress.

Couples in California and elsewhere with so-called mini-DOMAs would therefore be forced to travel out of state in order to marry and receive federal rights, despite the fact that couples in domestic partnerships in the state already have legal rights equivalent to those the state grants to married couples.

“Right now you can only get married in five states. And the difference between domestic partnerships and marriage in California is infinitesimal,” said Traiman, who has long questioned the LGBT community’s push to secure marriage rather than civil unions or DPs.

Traiman and his partner, Stewart Blandon, have been together 20 years and registered with the city of Berkeley as domestic partners in 1991. They married in San Francisco five years ago during the “Winter of Love” – that wedding was later annulled by the state Supreme Court – and opted not to marry a second time last year following the court’s ruling that LGBT couples had a legal right to wed due to the legal uncertainty Prop 8′s passage would cause.

This year the state Supreme Court rejected legal efforts to overturn Prop 8 but did rule that the marriages that had taken place last summer and fall were valid. A gay couple and a lesbian couple are now suing the state in federal court, claiming Prop 8 violates the U.S. Constitution; a jury trial in San Francisco is set to begin in January.

In the meantime, openly gay state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) pushed through a bill in Sacramento this year that would ensure those California couples marrying outside the state are granted the same state rights and benefits extended to the couples who married prior to Prop 8′s passage. But the couples will not be considered married under state law, and it is unclear if Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will sign the bill into law.

Leno told the B.A.R. he does not understand why Nadler ruled out including DPs and civil unions in his Respect for Marriage Act considering that President Barack Obama, who supports repealing DOMA but does not support marriage equality, has spoken in favor of extending federal benefits to couples in any state sanctioned union.

“The president has said all couples should have access to the 1,000-plus benefits and rights and privileges of marriage, so I do not know why Congress wouldn’t put that on his desk. I would like to see Nadler’s bill include all legally recognized unions. The president has asked for it,” said Leno.

Traiman also said Nadler’s bill fails to live up to what Obama has promised.

“The president wants to be more inclusive. Instead, we get some federal legislation and it is restrictive not inclusive,” he said. “Clearly, repealing DOMA is good. Obama said he wanted benefits for legally recognized couples. He wanted to stay out of the marriage debate; he just wanted equality.

“Nadler doesn’t want equality, he wants marriage,” added Traiman. “It would be nice if we had marriage everywhere but we don’t.”

Nadler’s bill, said Traiman, “totally screws over” couples living on the West Coast and in Southwest states that are only allowed to enter into DPs in their home states. Unlike people living in the Midwest and along the East Coast, Traiman noted that those living west of the Rocky Mountains are not a short drive or flight away from Iowa or the New England states that have marriage equality.

“How many poor queer couples can fly out to other states? I know a lot of lesbians with kids; who is going to take care of their kids as they fly off 3,000 miles away to get married?” he asked. “It is classist, it is elitist, and it is a stupid strategy.”

Sheehy said the focus should not be on which institution LGBT couples can enter into but what rights they are granted when they form legally recognized unions.

“For me personally – and maybe I am the wrong person to ask because I am one of the 18,000 people who got married – for me it has always been about the benefits and not what we call it,” said Sheehy. “We can fight over the word marriage but the real issue is the discrimination in the provision of benefits.”

But Equality California Executive Director Geoff Kors countered that many people opt to become DPs because it is not marriage. The statewide LGBT advocacy group is supporting Nadler’s bill, and Kors said there is the possibility of addressing rights for couples in DPs and civil unions in future legislation.

“There are a lot of people in places like California in domestic partnerships who choose not to get married. Some don’t want the federal tax treatment and benefits that go with it,” said Kors. “Yes, people should not have to travel to get married elsewhere. But domestic partnership was never intended to be substituting for marriage; that is a different system that is just about states’ rights and benefits.”

Nearly all the national LGBT groups are backing Nadler’s bill. Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said her organization did not press Nadler to include extending marriage rights to people in DPs or civil unions since “every single state has marriage.”

Rather, the task force worked with his office on the “very specific remedy” of overturning the federal DOMA law and making sure that both opposite-sex couples and same-sex couples that marry are treated equally under the law.

“Until this law passes no one is protected; none of us whether married, in domestic partnerships or civil unions is protected,” said Carey. “We will over time gain back marriage in California and gain marriage in other states. I also believe overtime we will overturn the state-level DOMAs.”

-By Mike Alvear, host of HBO’s The Sex Inspectors

How could something like this happen in Martin Luther King’s home town?

The following occurred about a mile away from my home in Atlanta, Georgia at 11:30 p.m. on Thursday, September 10, 2009.

Mark Danack was watching the football game at his favorite bar, The Eagle, when he heard somebody yell, “HIT THE GROUND!” He thought a fight had broken out. The lights switched on and up to 30 cops were yelling, screaming and ordering everyone to the ground. The police had raided the bar.

For what?

“Shut the f**k up!” a cop yelled at one of the bar patrons who asked why they were being forced to lay face down on the grubby floors.

An acquaintance saw the police shove an 80 year-old man to the ground because he was moving too slowly.

Why?

“No questions! Do what you’re told or we’ll arrest you!” The officers threatened jail time to anybody asking why they were being held against their will.

The search and seizures began. Everything in everyone’s pockets was taken away.

Why?

“None of your G-D business! Get back on the floor and shut the hell up!” Driver’s licenses were taken and put through a laptop screening.

What are you looking for?

“I said SHUT THE F**K UP!” Three paddy wagons were waiting outside.

Nick Koperski was enraged. He knew he had done nothing wrong. Yet there he was, lying on the floor, face down, his pockets emptied. He had it better than some of the others, like Du-wan Ray, one of the bar’s managers. Ray was handcuffed on the back deck.

Why are you doing this?

“I hate queers,” a cop said. Other officers — some plain-clothed, some uniformed — walked around the bar demanding to know who was in the military, threatening to report them to their commanding officers.

“This is a lot more fun than raiding niggers with crack!” Du-Wayne Ray heard one white officer say this to another; other cops were high-fiving each other.

For almost two hours, Mark Danack, Nick Koperski, and sixty other gay men were forced to lay face down on the bar’s filthy floors. The drivers license screening revealed nothing.

Sixty two men and the cops didn’t find a suspended license, a criminal prior, nothing. Not even a parking ticket.

The search and seizure uncovered nothing. No drugs. Not even a joint.

Finally, the men were ordered to leave but without their cell phones, wallets and other personal belongings.

Not a single man was arrested.

Or given an apology.

Or given a reason for why they were held against their will.

Or how they could get their personal possessions back.

Welcome to Amerika.

 
Facts and quotes were sourced from my acquaintances who were victimized by the police as well as the city’s gay paper, Southern Voice, its mainstream paper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, its unofficial gay portal, Project Q Atlanta, its progressive paper, Atlanta Progressive News, its alternative paper, Creative Loafing, its PBS station, WABE-fm as well as the four local TV stations: ABC-affiliate WSB News, CBS Affiliate, WGNX News, NBC affiliate WXIA News and FOX affiliate WAGA News. The photo above used for illustration purposes only.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-alvear/stonewall-2009-police-rai_b_286649.html

- Posted by LGBT News www.newslgbt.blogspot.com

Anwar Basim Saleh, a 21-year old Iraqi gay activist from Baghdad, used the coordinator of a “safe house” for homosexuals working alongside the Iraqi LGBT organization prior to his arrest in February 2009. During his detention, he was badly beaten up, tortured and subject to be sentenced to death for being gay and for his role in the LGBT association.

Photo: AP

In the Iraqi capital, in an interview given to the newspaper The National a militiaman declared:
“We see homosexuality as a serious disease that is spreading rapidly among the young men in the community, after it has been brought here by American soldiers. These are not Iraqi habits or habits of our community, and we have to wipe them out”.
During a visit to the jail of an Iraqi LGBT volunteer, Anwar handed over a letter with a desperate appeal: “save me from the death penalty”. Iraqi LGBT immediately paid the authorities 5,000 dollars in bail to obtain the his release on April 14th, 2009.

Leaving Iraq, he first looked for a new home in Paris, where he didn’t get any help from the French institutions, associations and authorities.

He is now in Holland where he has applied for asylum.

EveryOne Group makes an appeal to the Dutch authorities to award him immediate refugee status.

Read more here:

http://www.everyonegroup.com/EveryOne/MainPage/Entries/2009/9/16_Stop_the_deportation_of_Anwar_Basim_Saleh.html

- from The Chinook Observer, Sept 16th 2009

Due to the somewhat confusing set-up of our state’s laws on ballot measures, our editorial headline last week incorrectly urged citizens to vote no on Referendum 71.

Although R-71 itself deserves to be blocked from the ballot, if it does go forward to Election Day, the correct action is to vote yes.

Voting yes will affirm the Legislature’s action granting all residents the ability to form domestic partnerships that are “everything but marriage.”

A strong majority of Washingtonians have come to believe that it is unfair to deny same-sex couples the same fundamental human rights as we acknowledge for conventional couples. Descrimination based on who someone falls in love with just isn’t right.

So if you see Referendum 71 on the ballot, vote yes.

- By Michale Cole Sept 15th 2009, www.hrc.backstory.org

It’s official — the Respect for Marriage Act has been introduced and now it’s time to repeal the descriminatory so-called “Defense of Marriage Act.” Go to www.RepealDOMAnow.org and tell your member of Congress to join on as a co-sponsor (you can see the initial list of co-sponsors after the jump).

HRC President Joe Solmonese joined the Members of Congress at this morning’s event and delivered the following remarks:

Thank you Representatives Nadler, Baldwin, and Polis for your leadership on the Respect for Marriage Act. Today we stand with you, with civil rights leaders, and most importantly with families to declare that the so-called Defense of Marriage Act must go.

The name Respect for Marriage Act is as good a name as the name “Defense of Marriage Act” was a deceptive one. For while DOMA defended nothing and no one, its repeal will give long overdue respect not only to marriages, but to people.

When DOMA passed in 1996, no U.S. state recognized that same-sex couples had an equal right to marry. So when this Congress voted to withhold Social Security family benefits, limit family and medical leave, tax family health benefits, and deny families over 1,100 other protections—the slap in the face was real, but the tangible harms were not yet felt.

Today thousands of couples are married. Today, several states recognize our equality. Yet we remain strangers under federal law.

The harm is real.

Although this is a unique and unacceptable indignity, the problem is not about dignity alone. DOMA hurts families. With us today, there are federal government employees who have high quality benefits. But those who are LGBT—including two members of Congress with us today— are paid less than their colleagues because their families are ineligible for benefits such as health insurance and pensions. Since our families are also carved out of Social Security family benefits even if we’re married, financial security is harder to attain—for our partners and our children. And workers who are offered equal health benefits for same-sex spouses pay taxes on them—which often makes the coverage unaffordable.

DOMA affects us and our families in more ways than I could say here. It defends nothing, helps no one, and harms real people every day.

I thank the sponsors for committing to replace insult with respect: respect for marriage, respect for families, and respect for millions of Americans who deserve it.

The best spokespeople for repealing DOMA are those whose lives are affected by it every day. A number of same-sex couples were present at the press conference including Lara Ballard and Gigi Sohn who delivered this message to leaders first hand:

We are delighted to support the “Respect for Marriage Act,” which would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). We are a lesbian couple that resides in the District of Columbia. Lara has worked for the U.S. Government for virtually her entire adult life, starting with a four-year tour of duty as an Army Air Defense Artillery Officer. Gigi has been a public interest lawyer for most of her career. We have a four year-old daughter named Yosselin. We were joined in a civil union in Vermont in 2007 and were married in California on September 12, 2008.

We rejoiced when our marriage became legal in our home jurisdiction on July 7 this year, because we believed that we had finally achieved equality with our heterosexual peers. We were wrong. It soon became abundantly clear that DOMA still renders us second-class citizens.

Here’s what happened: earlier this month, we went to a real estate lawyer to do what heterosexual couples do every day — put each other on the titles for our respective homes. We thought that we would sign the deeds, pay the lawyer for his time, and be done with it, just like other married couples. However, because under DOMA we are not considered married under federal law, this seemingly simple transaction is not so simple.

Because we are not considered married under DOMA, the “gift” we would be making to each other by putting ourselves on the title to each other’s property could be subject to federal estate taxes after we die. Gifts from one heterosexual spouse to another are exempt from not only from estate taxes, but from federal laws that limit the amount of monetary gifts you can make to others. This discriminates against us in two ways. First, if our estate exceeds the federal limit, the gifts we give each other become taxable up to 45% of the amount of the gift! Second, our ability to make non-taxable gifts is reduced by the amount of this real estate transaction.

Who gets hurt most by this discriminatory treatment? Our daughter, who will be forced to pay taxes on a transaction that heterosexuals take for granted. It is the ultimate irony that while those who oppose full LGBT equality insist that they are doing so to “protect children,” laws like DOMA will harm the very people they purport to be protecting.

Earlier this summer, we went to a cocktail party hosted by a good friend with progressive values. She asked us and another gay couple why we couldn’t simply contract for our equal rights. I’m sorry to say that this attitude is common among many well-meaning people. But notwithstanding the fact that attempting to ensure that you are protected under the law through legal contracts is expensive and time consuming, DOMA and state laws like it render any contractual solution inadequate. Even if you don’t feel much sympathy for a couple that owns two pieces of real estate and worries that they will exceed estate tax limits, there are many thousands of other same-sex couples who stand to lose much more from DOMA, like the ability of a same-sex partner to remain in this country or to be covered by a partner’s health insurance.

Same-sex marriage is here to stay, and there is nothing the so-called “protectors of marriage” can do to change that. But as we now are painfully aware, DOMA remains a roadblock to full marriage equality. We look forward to working with Representative Nadler and the other co-sponsors of the Respect for Marriage Act to ensure its passage in this Congress.

David Wilson, a member of HRC’s Board of Directors and a plaintiff in the Goodridge case offered these remarks:

My husband, Rob Compton and I were married on May 17th, 2004, which was the first day of legal same-sex marriages in Massachusetts. We are the proud parents of five adult children and six grandchildren. Our children and grandchildren live in four different states, two of which do not recognize our legal marriage. Several times a year we travel to Colorado and California to visit with our two daughters, son, and granddaughter. We are not legally protected once we leave Massachusetts so we carry our marriage license, health care proxy, power of attorney and living wills hoping we’ll never have to use them and afraid that if we do, we will not be able to protect and care for each other.

Since our marriage, Rob has had hip replacement surgery, been treated at local emergency rooms for seven kidney stones, diverticulitis, and an irregular heartbeat. I have had two surgeries for the removal of a malignant thyroid. The medications that Rob and I take for his irregular heartbeat, my blood pressure, cholesterol and thyroid supplement, keep us physically healthy but unfortunately our marriage license does not provide the emotional and psychological security that it does for opposite sex married couples.

Rob and I have each worked more than thirty years earning the right to employee pension plans, 401Ks, and company healthcare plans but clearly those plans were designed to protect us as individuals but not as a legally married same-sex couple. We have and continue to pay our Federal taxes and well as our Social Security tax that should provide benefits to us as a legally married couple but does not because of DOMA.

Rob and I are planning our retirement but ask ourselves, “what will happen if one of us should become ill disabled or God forbid, die”. The surviving spouse could be forced to sell our home to pay the inheritance and estate tax because our property does not pass without tax penalty to the survivor as property does for opposite-sex couples. If one of us needs to enter a nursing home, again our home would have to be sold which could mean one of us becomes homeless. Illness, disability or death spells disaster for one of us unlike all legally married same-sex couples.

We’ve raised our families, paid our Corporate and Federal dues and now we want to enjoy our senior years with our children and grandchildren. Finally we want to retire with the security that we deserve after a lifetime of work – we should have the same rights and benefits that every other legally married opposite-sex couple in this country enjoys! I say absolutely!

Original co-sponsors (list may increase throughout the day):

Representative Jerry Nadler
Representative Tammy Baldwin
Representative Jared Polis
Representative John Conyers
Representative Eliot Engel
Representative Mary Jo Kilroy
Representative Jackie Speier
Representative Shelly Berkley
Representative Alcee Hastings
Representative Carolyn Maloney
Representative Mike Quigley
Representative Steve Israel
Representative Jan Schakowsky
Representative Raul Grijalva
Representative Neil Abercrombie
Representative Diana DeGette
Representative Pete Stark
Representative Robert Wexler
Representative Peter Welch
Representative Linda Sanchez
Representative Lynn Woolsey
Representative Mike Capuano
Representative Anthony Weiner
Representative Jose Serrano
Representative John Olver
Representative Earl Blumenauer
Representative Ed Markey
Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton
Representative Paul Hodes
Representative Gary Ackerman
Representative Nydia Velazquez
Representative Rob Andrews
Representative Chaka Fattah
Representative George Miller
Representative Barbara Lee
Representative Maurice Hinchey
Representative Mike Honda
Representative Jim McDermott
Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Representative Diane Watson
Representative Nita Lowey
Representative Yvette Clarke
Representative Keith Ellison
Representative Robert Brady
Representative Luis Gutierrez
Representative Donna Edwards
Representative Dennis Kucinich
Representative Frank Pallone
Representative Rush Holt
Representative John Larson
Representative Ed Towns
Representative John Lewis
Representative Bobby Scott
Representative Xavier Becerra
Representative Jim Moran
Representative Bob Filner
Representative Henry Waxman
Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard
Representative Chris Murphy
Representative Ed Pastor
Representative Lois Capps
Representative Martin Heinrich
Representative Bill Delahunt
Representative Jim McGovern
Representative Brad Sherman
Representative Joe Sestak
Representative Howard Berman
Representative Carol Shea-Porter
Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr.
Representative Steve Rothman
Representative Patrick Kennedy
Representative Susan Davis
Representative Chellie Pingree
Representative Mazie Hirono
Representative Paul Tonko
Representative Niki Tsongas
Representative Hank Johnson
Representative Doris Matsui
Representative Jane Harman
Representative Grace Napolitano
Representative John Tierney
Representative Jim Himes
Representative Joe Courtney
Representative Mike Doyle
Representative Zoe Lofgren
Representative Sam Farr
Representative Greg Meeks
Representative Charlie Rangel
Representative Dan Maffei
Representative Rosa DeLauro
Representative Kathy Castor
Representative Betty McCollum

By Lisa Keen, Keen News Service
09.15.2009 2:01pm EDT

(Washington) A bill seeking to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was introduced today but this “top priority” for the community is already relegated to a legislative obscurity and inaction for this session and, perhaps, beyond, says U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.).

The bill, introduced by U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), a long-time supporter of equal rights for gays, has essentially no chance for a hearing or vote during this session of Congress, according to Frank. It is the last of eight bills of specific interest to the LGBT community to be introduced to this session of Congress, which is nearing the end of the first of its two years. And Frank, the de facto leader on LGBT-related measures in Congress, says four other bills come first.

“We have pending four major pieces of [LGBT] legislation which have a serious chance to pass,” said Frank Monday in a phone interview. Those, he noted, are the Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill, attached to a bill authorizing defense spending; the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA); a bill to give equal benefits to the partners of gay federal employees as provided to straight spouses; and a bill to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

The Nadler bill, said Frank, “has zero chance of passage, even out of committee. It’s a mistake.”

Frank’s problem with the bill isn’t just its timing on a crowded and unusually urgent Congressional calendar monopolized by health care reform, financial regulation reform, appropriations bills, and the other LGBT legislation.

“It’s a very controversial form” of the bill, he said.

Nadler’s bill, the “Respect for Marriage Act,” (ROMA) is a simple two-page measure, seeking to do two things:

· repeal both sections of DOMA –Section 2, which says no state can be “required” to recognize the marriage of a same-sex couple licensed in another state, and Section 3, which limits the interpretation of “marriage” for any federal purpose to only heterosexual couples; and,

· add language that says “for the purposes of any Federal law in which marital status is a factor, an individual shall be considered married if that individual’s marriage is valid in the State where the marriage was entered into or, in the case of a marriage entered into outside any State, if the marriage is valid in the place where entered into and the marriage could have been entered into in a State.”

Frank says the latter clause abandons the strategy of “dealing with marriage state by state.” If a same-sex couple obtains a marriage license in Massachusetts and moves to California, the federal government would recognize their marriage in California.

Evan Wolfson, executive director of the national Freedom to Marry organization, helped write that latter provision, which has been dubbed the “certainty clause.”

“It’s called the ‘certainty clause,’” said Wolfson, in a phone interview after the press conference, “because it establishes certainty that your federal protections and responsibilities will remain with you no matter where you travel” as a same-sex married couple. “The federal government will have a consistent approach. And it’s not telling states what to do,” says Wolfson.

Frank concedes that it’s “a desirable goal,” but says, “we’re not remotely close to achieving it and it’s unwise politically.” For that reason, said Frank, he’s not one of the bill’s current 90 co-sponsors.

But doesn’t Frank’s refusal to co-sponsor the bill, even as a starting point for discussion, essentially kill the bill before it’s out of the chute?

“It does send a message that it’s a bad idea,” says Frank. “But I want to send a message.”

Top priority for community

While the Nadler bill doesn’t have Frank’s support, it does have the co-sponsorship of two of Congress’ other openly gay members – Reps. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.).

Joining Nadler and others at Tuesday’s press conference were some of the movement’s biggest leaders –Wolfson; Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign; Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force; Kevin Cathcart, executive director of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund; and Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

HRC’s website says its communications with the LGBT community around the country indicates repealing DOMA is “a top priority.” Some 50,000 people responded to the organization’s request for examples of how DOMA affects them negatively.

“We’re in this for the long haul,” said Solmonese, in a phone interview following Tuesday’s press conference. “This is a long term strategy.” He seems untroubled by Frank’s withholding of support.

“We have a difference of opinion about tactics,” said Solmonese.

Perhaps, but Frank likens Nadler’s bill to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome’s decision, in February 2004, to direct city officials to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples even though a state law prohibited it.

“It’s an effort to make people in the community happy,” said Frank. “That’s not our job. We owe people our judgment.”

Some political observers have blamed Newsome’s tactic as off-putting and responsible for at least some of the vote to approve Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage, in California last November.

Frank says he thinks “the way we’ll win” repeal of DOMA is through the lawsuit filed by GLAD against Section 3 of the law.

Noticeably absent was the Massachusetts-based legal organization that has been leading the charge for same-sex marriage rights and against DOMA –the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders. But Carisa Cunningham, a spokesperson for GLAD, said the organization supports the bill.

“We just didn’t have anyone who could make it to Washington today,” said Cunningham.

And Nadler defends ROMA: “Mr. Frank knows better than anyone that our opponents will falsely claim that any DOMA repeal bill ‘exports marriage’ in an effort to generate fear and misunderstanding. But the dishonest tactics of our opponents should not stop us from aggressively pushing to end this horrific discrimination now, as is the consensus of the nation’s top LGBT groups who all support this approach.”

Nadler says his bill “does not tell any state who it must marry or what marriage it must recognize under state law.”

“Our bill,” says Nadler, “allows states to continue deciding those questions, while ensuring uniform access to critically important federal responsibilities and rights that hinge on marriage and upon which all married couples should be able to rely.”

© 2009 Keen News Service