- www.blabbeando.blogspot.com May 15th, 2010

A Roman Catholic priest from the city of Mendoza in Argentina, who has a weekly segment on local television on issues related to religion, has used his televised spot to back marriage rights for same-sex couples.

On Sunday, May 9th, Reverend Vicente Reale began his segment by telling viewers that the topic at hand was something he felt almost forced to address considering all the questions raised around the country on the issue of same-sex marriage (Argentina’s House of Deputies passed a marriage equality bill on the early morning of May 5th, it is expected that the Senate will take up debate of the bill in July; President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has vowed to sign the bill into law if the Senate approves it, which would make Argentina the first country in Latin America to approve same-sex marriage).

He first spoke about having lesbian and gay friends and vouchered for our humanity. He then said that many of us lived as couples and, as such, he had no problem with the recognition of our partnerships “because it is now a fact, and it’s a fact that cannot be hidden.”

He then mentioned that, while he had his own Christian convictions, he did not want to impose them on everyone. He argued that the marriage bill that made its way through the House and is now headed to the Senate was a “civil” law that would regulate something that already existed in civil society and that the law would “allow” same-sex partnerships, not “force” them upon everyone.

Finally, he said that the only “problem” he had with the law was the language allowing gays to adopt children but then clarified himself and said that it was a “question” he had based on not having seen any studies on the impact of child-rearing by gay couples.

Reverend Reale’s comments drew an immediate repudiation from the leader of the Archdioceses of Mendoza, Marcelo de Benedictis, who, in true doublespeak, said that everyone had a right to their opinions but quickly reminded Rev. Reale that it was imperative that he “defend the beliefs of the Church”.

Below, a YouTube video I’ve uploaded and annotated with my own translation as well as a full transcript of the Reverend’s televised commentary…

OK, this was my opinion and my commentary. I am sure you can be in agreement or disagreement. But I wanted to tell you what I thought about this. Thanks, and thank you, and until next week.

BY CARLOS SANTOSCOY
PUBLISHED: MAY 14, 2010 www.ontopmag.com

Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank says he won’t give in to pressure to exclude transgender people from a federal gay protections bill that has stalled out in committee.
Passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that would ban workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity (transgender protections), has been elusive. The measure remains bottled up in the House Education & Labor Committee, despite strong support from committee members.
The main sticking point appears to be the inclusion of transgender protections. Frank, the bill’s sponsor in the House, has vowed to keep transgender rights in his bill.
“No,” Frank spokesman Harry Gural told On Top Magazine in an email, “he’s not considering any changes.”
Yet three years ago, that’s exactly what the openly gay Newton Democrat did in order to ensure passage of the measure through the House. The move divided the gay community. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest gay advocate, backed the move, while other gay groups refused. The measure fizzled in the Senate.
This year’s version adds back transgender people, a move that has drawn some serious heat. Republicans appear united against inclusion and even several moderate Democrats are speaking out as well.
“If you include transgender rights, I think that just pushes the envelope too far,” Representative John Campbell, a California Republican who voted for the measure in 2007, told the Boston Globe.
The chief whip of the moderate Democratic political block – known as the Blue Dogs – Representative Heath Shuler of North Carolina, agreed, saying that asking House members to vote on a trans-inclusive bill during an election year would be “a mistake.”
Social conservatives throughout the country are fighting local and state level legislative efforts to outlaw transgender discrimination. In some states – including Massachusetts, Florida, New Hampshire and North Dakota – opponents have labeled such measures “bathroom bills,” warning that the laws invite sex offenders to lurk in public restrooms, endangering public safety.
“This is an invitation, it seems to me, for people with predatory tendencies to come out and hide behind the fact that they are having a transgender experience,” state Rep. Peyton Hinkle, a Republican, said on the New Hampshire House floor during debate on a similar bill that was ultimately approved by the Legislature.
Leading transgender rights activists appear to be in a catch 22; they do not want to be held responsible for holding back the entire gay community, but also recognize that they may not get another shot at federal transgender rights for a long time, maybe decades.
Still, they say, their support hinges on proposed language around bathroom usage.
Denise Leclair, executive director of the International Foundation for Gender Education, a transgender advocacy group, warned that the inclusion of bathroom rules could trickle down to the state level, setting a precedent that could last generations.
It’s a “serious concern,” Leclair said in a telephone interview.
“On the surface, it seems like a reasonable compromise,” she said. “It’s not a given that the language is actually necessary. It might get more votes for ENDA, but in a practical sense it’s not strictly necessary.”
“I think if it gets in there, that we’ll see that future state laws will include very similar language, because state laws typically model federal legislation.”
Complicating the issue for transgender people is the fact that many see themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual – groups that would be included under the bill’s sexual orientation clause.
Half-a-year after the bill was scheduled to be voted out of committee, gay rights groups are becoming increasingly vocal over the delay. Last month, a group of seven gay activists disrupted a House committee hearing demanding action on ENDA.
“We’ve waited too long already,” Robin McGehee of the group GetEQUAL told gay weekly Metro Weekly after she was briefly detained. “We have been promised since last year and, since the ’90s, that we were going to have employment protections put in place. And yet, we still don’t have it on the House floor.”
Frank, however, says progress is being made and urged greater lobbying for the bill.
“Congressman Frank encourages people to continue calling their own representatives,” Gural said. “He says that the phone calls have been very effective but the work isn’t over yet.”

- www.towleroad.com May 10th, 2010

Kagan’s answer on a questionnaire for her confirmation as Solicitor General before the Senate Judiciary Committee is now being parsed:

1. As Solicitor General, you would be charged with defending the Defense of Marriage Act. That law, as you may know, was enacted by overwhelming majorities of both houses of Congress (85-14 in the Senate and 342-67 in the House) in 1996 and signed into law by President Clinton.

a. Given your rhetoric about the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy—you called it “a profound wrong—a moral injustice of the first order”—let me ask this basic question: Do you believe that there is a federal constitutional right to samesex marriage?

Answer: There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

b. Have you ever expressed your opinion whether the federal Constitution should be read to confer a right to same-sex marriage? If so, please provide details. Answer: I do not recall ever expressing an opinion on this question.

Some predict this spells doom for the Olson-Boies federal challenge to Proposition 8.

Others have a different view:

“The question was phrased in the present tense. At the time Kagan answered the question, the Supreme Court had not yet said there was such a right, so she could say there is no right, in a narrow sense. Now, you might think that if a person is ever going to find a right in the Constitution, it must be that the right is already there. But that is a view of the Constitution that fits with a strong commitment to sticking to the original meaning of the text, and I don’t think Kagan is on record or will ever be the sort of judge who says that constitutional rights are only what they were at the time the text was written. If the meaning of rights can grow or evolve or change over time, then one could say ‘There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage’ one day and, later, say that there is.”

The Human Rights Campaign praises Obama’s nomination of Kagan. I’d love to hear their point of view on this particular nugget.

Some previous reporting on Kagan’s support for the Solomon Amendment, which withholds federal funds from colleges and universities when they ban military recruiters because the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy conflicts with many universities’ antidiscrimination policies, here.

UPDATE: HRC has given us a statement regarding the Cornyn question: “While we understand this answer to be an assessment of the current state of Supreme Court precedent, it certainly merits further consideration during the confirmation process.

By DAVID CRARY
The Associated Press
Monday, May 10, 2010

PHILADELPHIA — When government forms inquire of her marital status, Isabelle Barker sometimes resorts to an asterisk and an explanatory note.

She and her wife, Cara Palladino, got married five years ago in Massachusetts. Six months later, for job reasons, they moved to Pennsylvania – one of the majority of states that do not recognize same-sex marriages.

Hence the asterisk.

“I’m not single. I’m married in Massachusetts, but I’m not married in Pennsylvania, I’m not married in the eyes of the federal government,” she said. “It’s this weird limbo, this legal netherworld.”

Barker and Palladino, and their 15-month-old son, Will, have plenty of company across the United States as gay and lesbian couples confront an unprecedented and often confusing patchwork of marriage laws.

Historically, such laws have been the jurisdiction of the states, not the federal government, and the common practice throughout U.S. history has been for any given state to recognize a marriage performed legally in another state.

The advent of same-sex marriage in 2004 has changed all that.

Five states – Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Iowa – and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage. New York and Maryland recognize those marriages even though same-sex couples can’t wed within their borders. California had legal same-sex marriage for about five months in 2008.

However, the federal government doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage, nor do the vast majority of states, including Pennsylvania. Even with a valid out-of-state marriage license, gay and lesbian couples in those states face uncertainty, extra legal bills and inevitable rebuffs that straight couples avoid.

Barker and Palladino, who began dating in 1998, moved from New York to Massachusetts in 2004 and married in February 2005 in a low-key ceremony at a Northampton coffee shop.

They had previously exchanged commitment rings – the chief motive for marrying was to obtain health insurance for Barker through Palladino’s job at the University of Massachusetts.

Later in 2005, Barker’s own academic job ended and she was offered a postdoctoral fellowship at Bryn Mawr College outside Philadelphia. The couple decided to move, though they knew there’d be drawbacks.

“In Massachusetts, people understood what our relationship was,” Palladino said. “I miss being able to say, ‘Oh, we’re married’ and not having to explain it any further.”

Barker elaborated.

“When you’re in Pennsylvania, you’re constantly having to wonder, “Do they get this? Do they not get this?’” she said. “You get these looks of befuddlement.”

Day to day, there’s plenty of support from friends, neighbors and employers – Barker coordinates summer programs at Bryn Mawr, Palladino is a fundraiser at the University of Pennsylvania. They feel comfortable in their diverse Philadelphia neighborhood, Mount Airy, and send Will to a day-care center patronized by several other lesbian couples.

But frustration was evident as they told of the hoops they had to jump through, at extra cost, to amass legal documents they wouldn’t have needed in Massachusetts – including a second-parent adoption giving Palladino parental rights along with Barker, who is Will’s biological mother.

At their lawyer’s advice, the two women have stored their legal forms on flash drives that they carry constantly.

“We’re 12 years into our relationship,” Palladino said. “I’d just like to know when we’re done proving it over and over. … To have to work harder and save harder to make up for what everybody else gets just as an entitlement does really make me angry.”

Same-sex couples in non-recognition states received a modest boost from President Obama in April, when he ordered new rules providing such couples with visitation and medical decision-making rights in any hospital participating in Medicaid or Medicare.

Evan Wolfson, who heads the advocacy group Freedom to Marry, called the directive “a small, but welcome step forward.”

“Of course, the real cure is to end exclusion from marriage,” Wolfson added. “Piecemeal steps, addressing one protection at a time, will take up a lot more time than either the administration or American families can afford.”

Wolfson says the current patchwork not only discriminates against gay families, but also causes headaches for employers who have to consider the diverse laws as they weigh transfers of employees with same-sex partners.

Gay and lesbian couples who turn to the courts when they break up are getting mixed results in non-recognition states. Judges in Oklahoma and Pennsylvania recently denied divorces to same-sex couples who had married in Canada and Massachusetts, while New York and New Jersey have granted such divorces even though they don’t allow same-sex marriage.

In Texas, Attorney General Greg Abbott is appealing the decisions of judges in Dallas and Austin to grant same-sex divorces. In Arizona, some lawyers have succeeded in getting out-of-state same-sex marriages annulled on grounds they were never legal under state law in the first place.

The Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative legal group, represented the speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives in a recent unsuccessful lawsuit by a woman who’d had a same-sex wedding in Canada and sought to divorce in Oklahoma.

“The government cannot issue a divorce for a marriage it doesn’t recognize,” said ADF senior legal counsel Austin Nimocks.

The uneven legal landscape poses daunting challenges for lawyers who work with same-sex couples – not only on divorces but also on estate planning, parental rights and other matters.

“It seems like every state has a different law,” said Phoenix lawyer Kathy Gummere. “We have people who are married in some states and not married in others, which, in this day and age of everybody moving around all the time, is ludicrous.”

For some couples, among the most galling problems is trying ensure that both are legally recognized as parents of their children. Many states allow second-parent adoption for same-sex couples, which addresses this situation, but many other states do not.

That’s been a problem for Cari Searcy and Kim McKeand of Mobile, Ala. They married in California in September 2008 during the brief period before same-sex marriages were banned there by a ballot measure, Proposition 8.

It was a whirlwind wedding trip, and the couple promptly returned to Alabama – a state unlikely to recognize same-sex unions without some sort of federal mandate that for now seems far away.

Even with a marriage license, Searcy has been unable to complete a second-parent adoption and is not recognized by Alabama as a legal parent of the couple’s son, Khaya, whom McKeand gave birth to in 2006. Yet despite that rebuff, there’s no talk of moving out.

“We’re from the South – this is our home,” Searcy said. “If everybody moves to states that recognize, it, how are we going to change?”

Day to day in Mobile, there’s little practical benefit to being married, Searcy said, though she and McKeand enjoy referring to each other as “my wife.”

“One of the biggest things – now that Khaya is talking – he’s constantly going around telling people, ‘My mommies are married,’” Searcy said. “He’s really proud of that. Seeing that through his eyes, that’s pretty special.”

Carrington Mead, a lesbian attorney from Jacksonville, Fla., struggles with the complex array of laws both in her practice and in private life. She considers herself married, based on a civil union obtained in Vermont in 2008 – but Florida doesn’t recognize the relationship.

“I feel I’m beating my head against the wall,” said Mead, a Navy veteran. “It’s frustrating to be an officer of the court, charged with upholding the law, and sit there realizing you have fewer rights than the people you’re serving.”

Attorney Tiffany Palmer counsels gay and lesbian couples in Philadelphia, helping them sort through the array of legal protections they might need in a state that doesn’t recognize their unions.

When clients raise the possibility of an out-of-state marriage, “I often advise them, it’s probably better that they don’t,” Palmer said.

“But there are so many things attached to marriage beyond legal conditions,” she said. “They go forward anyway, even though it’s not necessarily an easy path.”

Indeed, Palmer and her partner of 10 years plan to ignore the legal cautions themselves and get married July 4 in Vermont. Their 3-year-old daughter will be the flower girl.

“She’s starting to learn and understand what marriage is,” Palmer said. “Now she knows that two adults who love each other, even if they’re two women or two men, can get married.”

Unlike Alabama, Pennsylvania is receptive to second-parent adoptions, so same-sex couples can fairly readily establish that both are legal parents of any children they have.

Tracy and Mia Levesque, Philadelphians who got married in Canada in 2003, said the marriage license helped speed a second-parent adoption after the birth of their 3-year-old daughter, Josephine – with the judge seeing no need for detailed questions about their relationship.

On other fronts, though, lack of marriage recognition can be grating – for example, when they file separate tax forms, with separate deductions, despite raising a daughter together and jointly owning a website design firm.

“It’s ridiculous,” Tracy Levesque said.

Another Philadelphia couple, Gisele Pinck and Kathy Coyle, has been going through tri-state legal gyrations.

They own a house in Massachusetts, where they married in 2004 and still spend the summers. They work and pay taxes in Pennsylvania, which won’t let them file jointly. And last year, they decided that Pinck would give birth to their son in New Jersey because that state’s laws – unlike Pennsylvania’s – allowed them both to be listed as parents on the original birth certificate.

They still felt a need to spend roughly $2,500 for Coyle to go through a second-parent adoption in Pennsylvania so she’d have parental rights there.

“In some ways that doesn’t seem fair,” Pinck said.

On the other hand, Pinck and Coyle say their employer, a Quaker secondary school, fully supports their relationship. That’s a trend nationwide, as more employers respect the marital status of gay and lesbian workers even if state governments don’t.

In Lawrence, Kan., Dave Greenbaum and Mike Silverman say there are upsides and downsides to being husbands in a state which voted by a 70 percent majority in 2005 to ban recognition of any same-sex union.

They got married in California in 2008 but never seriously considered abandoning Lawrence, where Greenbaum runs a computer business.

“Even in a state like Kansas, unless someone is a complete bigot, they’re going to respect the intent behind the marriage license even if they can’t officially recognize it,” Silverman said.

Then there’s the nomenclature benefit.

“Until our marriage, I’d get semi-awkward questions from people – ‘What do you call Mike? Your partner? Your spouse?’” Greenbaum said. “Now it’s easier for family and friends. ‘OK, he’s your husband.’ It’s a framework that everyone understands.”

But the acceptance doesn’t carry over to tax season.

“Any time you’re filling out a tax form, you have to lie by declaring yourself single even though you’re married, so you don’t get in trouble with the government,” Silverman said.

Jennifer Pizer, marriage project director for the national gay-rights group Lambda Legal, says attitudes and laws affecting same-sex couples vary widely across the country – generating an evolving flow of “incredibly interesting legal questions.”

If a married same-sex couple wants to move to a non-recognition state, “it’s important to do everything they can do, with private legal documents and commitments from employers, to protect their families,” she said.

“It’s going to keep happening. People don’t decide whether to walk down the aisle or not based on the intricacies of interstate family recognition.”

Map of state laws:

- www.gardenstatequality.org May 8th 2010

Today, six organizations file a landmark brief with the New Jersey Supreme Court
on the profound harm that the state’s failed civil union law inflicts on children.

For the brief in its entirety, click here.

The brief is from Garden State Equality and five other organizations –
the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Association of Social Workers,
the Family Equality Council, PFLAG and COLAGE – in support of Lambda Legal’s
motion to the New Jersey Supreme Court seeking marriage equality.

Monday, May 10, 2010
Contact Steven Goldstein, cell (917) 449-8918

Today, Garden State Equality and five children’s and family organizations filed an amicus brief with the New Jersey Supreme Court which details the profound psychological harm that the New Jersey’s civil union law inflicts on children. The brief is in support of Lambda Legal’s motion to the Supreme Court seeking marriage equality in light of the civil union law’s failure to fulfill the Court’s 2006 decision mandating equality for same-sex couples and their children.

Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire changed their civil union laws to marriage after considering the negative impact that civil unions had on children compared to marriage equality. Four state Supreme Courts which ruled for marriage equality, Massachusetts, Connecticut, California and Iowa, cited the harm inflicted by marriage inequality upon children.

New Jersey is the only remaining U.S. state with a civil union law. Six jurisdictions, Massachusetts, Connecticut, California, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire and the District of Columbia, now allow same-sex couples to marry.

Today’s brief, prepared by New Jersey’s largest law firm, McCarter & English, with the six organizations, brings to the Court a wide array of sources, including social science literature, the legislative record in New Jersey, and the expert views of psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers.

Among the gut-wrenching testimony in the brief is that of a 16 year-old gay high school sophomore from South Jersey, John Otto III, who appeared before the New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee on December 7, 2009, and described his agony in being bullied because of his sexual orientation.

“It’s not easy walking down the hallway, having names and derogatory terms hurled at you like you are some kind of animal being brutally stoned to death,” young Otto told the committee. “Faggot, queer, homo – they all hurt my self-esteem and made me feel worthless. And what’s even worse is knowing that our State government also views me just like those bullies in school viewed me. In New Jersey, I am a second-class citizen, someone who does not have equal rights, someone whom it is perfectly okay to treat differently according to the State government.

“I’ve endured more discrimination and hatred than anyone should ever have to deal with in a lifetime. Marriage equality is extremely important to me, because one day I do hope to get married and make a life together with one very special person, just as my two wonderful parents have done. And although many things can happen in the future, and I cannot say for sure that I will marry, I certainly do not want to have one road completely blocked from me: the road to a happy and lifelong marriage.”

Aside from describing the impact that marriage inequality has on LGBT children, the brief painstakingly describes how the civil union law inflicts psychological harm on the children of same-sex couples, whether the children are LGBT or straight, by making it difficult or impossible to explain their parents’ relationship – thereby making the children feel inferior and deeply insecure.

“How can a state which was a national pioneer in allowing same-sex couples to be parents then turn around and tell those children, ‘Your parents aren’t good enough to marry – and beyond that, they must wear a separate label.’” said Garden State Equality chair Steven Goldstein upon today’s filing. “How can our state live with itself when it harms a family that way? What kind of family values are those?”

With more than 70,000 members and four offices across New Jersey, Garden State Equality is New Jersey’s largest civil rights organization and largest LGBT advocacy organization. Since Garden State Equality’s founding in 2004, New Jersey has enacted 211 LGBT laws at the state, county and local levels – a national record.

- By Staff Writer, PinkNews.co.uk • May 6, 2010

Argentina’s House of Deputies has approved a bill which proposes giving gay couples the right to marry.

The lower house passed the bill by 125 votes to 109 and it will now go to senators for approval.

If it passes the upper house, it will go to President Cristina Fernandez, who has promised she will not veto it.

Mexico City passed a law legalised gay marriage recently, but if Argentina’s bill becomes law, it will be the first country in Latin America to legalise the practice. The bill also proposes giving gay couples the right to adopt.

Five gay couples have already married in Argentina after judges gave them permission, although some of these marriages have been overturned.

Maria Rachid, president of the Argentine Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transsexuals, is hopeful the Senate will approve the bill.

She told Reuters: “We’ve talked to the heads of the political blocs [in the Senate] and the majority are in favour of this, so we think we could get a favourable vote in the Senate as well.”

Currently, only a few areas of Argentina recognise civil unions between same-sex couples: Buenos Aires itself, the province of Río Negro in Patagonia, and the city of Villa Carlos Paz in Córdoba province.

Since the 2002 decision to allow civil unions, Buenos Aires has become one of the hotspots on the international gay-friendly tourist circuit.

- By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: May 4, 2010

ALBANY — New York State’s highest court somewhat expanded the rights of gay and lesbian parents on Tuesday in a narrow ruling that said nonbiological parents in same-sex relationships should be treated the same as biological parents.

But the high court, the Court of Appeals, declined to resolve two cases involving lesbian parents and instead sent both back to lower courts, saying that the question of whether nonbiological parents should be given full parental rights was up to the State Legislature.

In one case, the court found that a lesbian who had given birth while in a committed relationship was entitled to seek child support in Family Court from her former partner. The ruling was 4 to 3.

In the other case, which legal experts said had broader implications, the court ruled that a woman seeking visitation rights from her former partner, who gave birth to a child conceived by artificial insemination after the two had entered into a civil union in Vermont, was a legal parent of that child.

The decision, by a 7-to-0 vote, said the woman, identified in court documents as Debra H., could ask a court for visitation and custody rights because New York confers parental rights to both parents in a same-sex relationship if the couple has a civil union.

Though the court did not specifically address the parental rights of gays and lesbians who are not birth parents but have other legally sanctioned unions, like a marriage performed in a jurisdiction that allows same-sex couples to wed, the case provides them a legal claim to parenthood.

“In many ways this is a real breakthrough in New York,” said Susan L. Sommer, who argued the case before the Court of Appeals and is senior counsel and director of constitutional litigation for Lambda Legal, a gay-rights advocacy group.

“But there’s also a lot more work that needs to be done, because the decision stops short of bringing New York into line with the growing trend in other jurisdictions,” Ms. Sommer added.

Some legal experts said they were dismayed by the ruling because it effectively established two sets of standards for children of same-sex couples: one set for those born to couples with a legally recognized relationship, and another for those born to couples without legal recognition.

“A distinction between whether one is a parent or is not a parent based on whether a couple is in a civil union or not in a civil union — that should not matter,” said Nancy Polikoff, a law professor at American University. “From the child’s point of view, he or she has two parents.”

The court declined to establish criteria for parenthood in relationships in which one partner or spouse is not the biological parent, saying a more flexible standard could invite claims of parental rights by people who have no business raising them.

“Parents could not possibly know when another adult’s level of involvement in family life might reach the tipping point and jeopardize their right to bring up their children without the unwanted participation of a third party,” Judge Susan P. Read wrote in the opinion.

Other jurisdictions have amended their laws to grant nonbiological parents broad legal rights. Colorado, Indiana, Minnesota, Texas and the District of Columbia have all established criteria under which people other than biological parents can claim to have parental rights.

The Court of Appeals said nothing prevented the Legislature from following that lead.

Sherri L. Eisenpress, the lawyer for the biological mother involved in the case stemming from the Vermont civil union, who is identified only as Janice R., said the case was never about broader issues. Instead, Ms. Eisenpress said it was about following established family law in New York, which states that anyone who is not a biological or adoptive parent lacks standing to seek custody or visitation rights.

“Her goal in this case was never to establish some precedent or to make any broader statement other than that she expressly declined to allow this woman to adopt her son because she did not want to co-parent with this person,” Ms. Eisenpress said.

Though the case presents a twist on the traditional American family, in one sense it is conventional. Explaining why she entered into a civil union, Janice R., according to the decision, said, “to put an end to (Debra H.’s) nagging.”

A version of this article appeared in print on May 5, 2010, on page A26 of the New York edition.

By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff May 6th 2010

A lawyer for 17 gays and lesbians who wed in Massachusetts urged a federal judge today to strike down a 1996 federal law that defines marriage as a union strictly between a man and a woman, calling it an unconstitutional intrusion on a matter previously left to states.

Mary L. Bonauto, the lawyer for Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), said that until Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal government always let states decide who was legally married. GLAD led the legal fight that convinced the Supreme Judicial Court to declare same sex marriages in Massachusetts legal under the state’s constitution.

“All the federal government has ever cared about is that the person is married at the state level,” Bonauto argued before US District Court Judge Joseph L. Tauro in Boston. The federal law is known by the acronym, DOMA. “For the first time ever, DOMA departed from that.”

As a result, the federal government treats the 17 plaintiffs — seven gay and lesbian married couples and three men whose husbands have died — as second-class citizens, she said.

The plaintiffs are barred from numerous benefits that same-sex couples routinely obtain, including health insurance for federal employees, retirement and survivor benefits under the Social Security Act, and the ability to file joint federal income tax returns.

W. Scott Simpson, a Justice Department lawyer defending the government, said the Obama administration agrees the federal law is discriminatory and supports its repeal.

But Simpson said the department is obliged to follow the longstanding practice of defending federal laws signed by previous presidents as long as the statutes are constitutional, which, he contends, the Defense of Marriage Act is.

He said Congress had a legitimate rationale to pass the federal law 14 years ago, given that some states were beginning to consider legalizing same-sex marriage. DOMA, he said, maintains the status quo — marriage reserved exclusively for heterosexuals — and prevented the federal government from having to keep track of which states had legalized gay marriages and which had not.

”This presidential administration disagrees with DOMA as a matter of policy,” he said, in a courtroom overflowing with gay marriage supporters, including the 17 plaintiffs, who were allowed to sit in the jury box. “But that does not affect its constitutionality.”

The lawsuit is widely considered the first serious challenge to DOMA and, regardless of how Tauro rules, is expected to ultimately end up before the Supreme Court. The federal government has asked Tauro to dismiss the complaint, while the plaintiffs have asked the judge to rule in their favor on summary judgment.

Tauro, who interrupted both sides with numerous questions, said he would take the matter under advisement.

The plaintiffs include Dean T. Hara, the husband of the late retired Congressman Gerry E. Studds. Outside the courthouse, Hara said the US was “not a country built on double standards,” and he rejected government arguments in favor of “incrementalism.”

“I think that’s the equivalent of going to Rosa Parks and saying, `You can move up one row of the bus at a time and eventually you’ll get to the front,”’ said Hara, a 52-year-old Boston financial adviser.

If the plaintiffs win, it will not extend same-sex marriage beyond the states where it is legal. Nor would it require other states to recognize same-sex marriages carried out in states where it is legal. But it would dismantle a federal statute that affects more than 1,000 marriage-related benefits and would be a huge symbolic victory for supporters of same-sex marriage.

Paul Morse
The Hamilton Spectator
(May 5, 2010)

A Hamilton businessman who was severely injured in what police described as a hate crime has won a civil lawsuit against his attacker.

Ronn Mattai was slashed numerous times in the face with a broken bottle by 19-year-old Michael Cordeiro in a Hamilton bar on Feb. 21, 2004. The injuries were so extreme that surgeons had to put more than 200 stitches into Mattai’s face to close the wounds. Cordeiro was sentenced to two years in jail for his attack on the gay businessman.

Yesterday, Superior Court Justice Richard Lococo ruled that Cordeiro must pay Mattai just over $73,000 in damages and legal costs for assaulting the former co-owner of the Junction Cafe.

Mattai’s lawyer Devon Kinch said his client did not want to speak publicly about the lawsuit. Kinch said the judge awarded his assessment of damages after oral arguments and that Cordeiro had chosen not to contest the lawsuit.

Cordeiro pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in late 2004. Court at the time heard that Mattai had left his Junction Cafe that night and stopped off for a drink with friends at the Absinthe bar on King Street East.

According to prosecutors, Mattai was lured into a coat check room by someone crying for help. Cordeiro grabbed Mattai and slashed him repeatedly in the face with a broken drink glass.

The trial heard that Cordeiro made homophobic comments after the attack.

In a simple handwritten decision yesterday, Lococo wrote: “For oral reasons given today, judgment is entered in favour of Mr. Ronn Mattai against Mr. Michael Cordeiro in the amount of $65,117.73. Mr. Mattai’s costs on a partial indemnity basis are fixed at $8,000 … payable by Mr. Cordeiro forthwith.”

Mattai had also sued the owners of Absinthe. Yesterday, the bar’s lawyer Harvey Klein said his client had long ago resolved the matter.

- by Paul Hogarth‚ May. 05‚ 2010
www.beyondchron.com

As Californians await the outcome of the Prop 8 trial, a federal court in Boston will hear a lawsuit tomorrow that challenges the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA.) Brought by lawyers at GLAD (Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders), the equal protection claim represents same-sex couples who have married in Massachusetts – but are denied federal benefits, such as Social Security survivor benefits. Even as states find that gays have a fundamental right to marry, we still do not have real marriage equality if DOMA is on the books – giving this case a more historic significance. And while the Justice Department has toned down its rhetoric defending the law (they no longer equate gay marriage with incest and pedophilia), the Obama Administration still defends Part 3 of DOMA – which says that federal benefits cannot be extended to same-sex couples. Using circular logic, their legal brief argues that a constitutional “right to marry” does not include a “right to marriage benefits” – proving that LGBT activists still have a long way to go.

The Prop 8 trial – which has been extensively covered by the Courage Campaign through its trial tracker – has been significant because the very essence of homophobia has been put on trial. But it’s always been risky taking such a case to federal court. As I argued when the Prop 8 trial began in January, going to federal court was inevitable – but a more proper course of action would be to first challenge DOMA on behalf of gay couples married in states where it is legal. Which is what we have here.

The lawsuit, Gill vs. Office of Personnel Management, represents a group of same sex couples in Massachusetts who married legally – but have been denied various federal benefits. DOMA bars the federal government from recognizing any gay marriage or civil union, even if their state does. While gays in California could marry before Prop 8, they still lacked full marriage rights. “Our case rests on equal protection,” said GLAD lawyer Mary Bonauto. “DOMA takes one class of married people in Massachusetts, and treats them differently.”

Unlike the separate challenge to DOMA filed on behalf of California couples (which was dismissed because the plaintiffs had not applied for federal benefits), the GLAD lawyers have done their homework with their clients – so the case should survive any procedural hurdles. Again, this puts the Obama Administration in the unenviable task of defending a law they are on record opposing. Now, there’s no way to avoid debating the substance.

In June, the Justice Department replied to the California suit by defending DOMA on the merits – in a highly offensive brief that equated gay marriage with incest and pedophilia. This fueled a public outrage in the LGBT community, but what was less heavily reported was how they defended Part 3 of DOMA. Calling it a “cautious policy of federal neutrality towards a new form of marriage,” the Obama Administration said that DOMA’s section barring the federal government from recognizing gay couples “does not discriminate against gays.”

Now, the Justice Department has been careful to start off by saying it “does not support DOMA as a matter of policy, believes it is discriminatory, and supports its repeal.” But as a matter of course, the Obama Administration insists that it must defend existing laws on the books. They have disavowed reasons cited in the 1996 Congressional record for passing DOMA (where Republican politicians spoke disapprovingly of homosexuals), but insist that sexual orientation is not a “suspect class” – so as long as any rationale can be dreamed up to justify DOMA, it passes a “rational basis” test under equal protection.

And in its reply brief, the Obama Administration uses circular logic in a way that only Joseph Heller – author of Catch 22 – would appreciate. Marriage is a constitutional right, they acknowledge, but there is “no fundamental right to federal benefits based on marital status.” Unlike the Prop 8 case, where plaintiffs argue that gays are being denied the right to marry, no one here disputes that Massachusetts couples have that right. The only question is whether they have a right to the benefits of marriage. In other words, gays in Massachusetts who fought for the right now only have it on paper.

This could set an infuriating precedent. Opponents of gay marriage always say that civil unions are an adequate substitute, as long as they grant same-sex couples all of the same benefits as marriage. States like California, Washington and New Jersey have expanded their civil unions statutes to grant all the same rights that state law allows – and in those states, gays must explain how the word “marriage” is essential. But now Massachusetts couples are told they can have the word “marriage,” just not the right to equal benefits.

It’s an untenable position legally – and the longer the White House drags its feet on a repeal of DOMA, the more they will feel compelled to make these arguments in court. Far from just a legal problem, it is a political problem for the Obama Administration.

President Bill Clinton – who signed DOMA in 1996 for crass political reasons – now admits that it is time to repeal it. Even Bob Barr, the right-wing former Congressman who authored DOMA, now says it should be scrapped. The only people against repealing DOMA is the religious right. If Obama does not move on a political solution fast, it will continue to give him headaches.

Paul Hogarth has a J.D. from Golden Gate University. He is an attorney licensed to practice law in California, but this piece is not intended as legal advice. He was a summer intern for Equality California in 2005, organized volunteers in 2009 for the “No on 1” campaign in Maine, and has helped live-blog the Prop 8 trial for the Courage Campaign.