Same-Sex Marriage Update

[MsTinkerbelly]

Gay and lesbian couples sue for marriage equality and adoption rights in North Carolina
by John H. Tucker


Six same-sex couples are suing the state of North Carolina and Durham and Guilford county court officials as they seek to overturn the state Supreme Court's 2010 ban on second-parent adoptions and the state's prohibition on gay marriage.

They are being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of North Carolina Legal Foundation.

The second-parent adoption case, Fisher-Borne v. Smith, was filed in Greensboro last year and amended this summer to include a challenge to the gay marriage ban.

Here, the families speak about their lives and the lawsuit.

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Terri Beck, 50, is from Morrisville and works as a recruiter for Duke University. Four years ago she and her partner of 16 years, Leslie Zanaglio, adopted two brothers through the foster care system.

BECK: The two things that have kept Leslie and I together, and the key to our success, is our ability to communicate with each other and our sense of humor. We both have the same basic core values. Family comes first for us.

Our boys had a very, very difficult first few years of their lives. They came from a severely neglectful, abusive early childhood. When they came to us, my younger son, who was 6, didn't know how to chew. They needed the love and nurturing that Leslie and I felt, and feel today that can provide for them and have provided for them. In the four years they've been with us, they've been thriving in amazing ways.

I have no legal rights as their mom. In every other way, I'm their mom. To them, I'm their mom. So it was important for us to formally ask the courts through this lawsuit to recognize our family.

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Leigh Smith, a 39-year-old stay-at-home mom, and her partner, Crystal Hendrix, 41, an elementary school librarian, have two children, Quinn, 3 ½, and Joe, 18 months.

They met at a school where Smith was a kindergarten teacher and Hendrix, a librarian.

HENDRIX: There was a real instant friendship, and just that constant wanting to be around each other. I just loved the way Lee interacted with her kids at school and the way she treated them all just like they were her own.

After Quinn was born, we knew we wanted to have another one. I was getting older, so we ended up having them closer together. Not quite two years between them.

SMITH: Second-parent adoption is very important to me because I did not have the [parental rights], that if something were to happen to Crystal, they would remain with me. And because she has a conservative family, we have that fear, always, that if something were to happen, that they could go to live with someone that they don't know.

HENDRIX: My parents don't recognize Lee as the children's mother, and they don't recognize us as a couple. I have a very strained relationship with them, but if something were to happen to me, there is a possibility that my parents can end up raising our kids. That's not the way things should be. We felt it was our responsibility to our kids and to our relationship, but also to other families who were in similar situations.

SMITH: We want them to know that we're a family unit, and marriage does that. It pulls everyone and everything together.

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Dana Draa, 42, works at the VA with blind and visually impaired veterans. She is a veteran. Lee Knight Caffery, 38, is an attorney. They have two children. They held a commitment ceremony in 2007.

DRAA: I had always wanted children, but I never thought about having them myself. I was always going to adopt. Finally, I decided to have the children. One of the unique things about us, because we have donor-conceived children, Miller and Margo are actual full brother and sister.

I can tell you that being the non-birth mother, it's a scary prospect. It's something I felt passionate about in the sense of protection for the children. I wanted to make sure that if anything happened to Lee Knight—now, I have a great relationship with her family, but not having legal protections, you know, all bets are off. I really needed to do this to say that I had done all that I could do for not just my family but for other families like ours.

KNIGHT CAFFERY: I echo Dana's sentiments about making sure our family remains cohesive no matter what, but in the event that something very unlikely happened to me, my worst fear is that our children would be torn apart and taken away from her, and she's the only other parent they've ever known. Because I'm an attorney, I understand the significance of the legal arguments in discrimination and I always felt like this is part of my calling, to do legal advocacy work on the part of the gay and lesbian community.

I have always thought that sometime in our lifetime we would be able to be married. But I always thought we might be walking down the aisles in walkers or a wheelchair, and that our children would be long grown. And now I can see that it's a real possibility that we might be able to be a loving, real, legally recognized family long before that time.

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Chantelle Fisher-Borne, 38, works as a consultant with nonprofits and charitable foundations. Her partner, Marcie Fisher-Borne, 38, is an assistant professor and teaches social work. They have been together 16 years and had a wedding in 2003. They are the parents of a 5-year-old and an 18-month-old.

MARCIE FISHER-BORNE: This amendment changes things, and will change things for more people in this state, if it has the outcome that we want. It's about my love for Chantelle, which has always been there. It's about my love for my children. And it's about an opportunity to do this for folks who can't. I know some folks who don't feel like they can be public for fear of their job, and for other reasons.

CHANTELLE FISHER-BORNE: Yeah, I think the irony of our situation is one of us each gave birth to our kids. I'm no less a parent to my Miley as I am to her Eli, and Marcie is no less a parent to Eli as she is to my Ellein. We know that. Our kids know that. What we are requesting is that the state acknowledge our relationships, as being a legal stranger to your own kids is unconscionable.

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Shawn Long, 43, is an office manager at a nonprofit. His partner, Craig Johnson, 46, is a clinical program assistant at a pharmaceutical company. They have a son, Isaiah.

They met several years ago through the INDY's personal ads.

LONG: Initially, I was opposed to having kids. Craig was open to kids, but it wasn't a deal breaker. Over the course of many years, he wore me down until finally he was like, "All right, we're gonna look at getting a kid!" And it was great. I was a fool for waiting this long.

JOHNSON: Isaiah comes from the Cabarrus County Department of Human Services. We initially were matched with him, and we thought, "OK, yeah, sounds interesting, sounds possible." He was 5 when we met him. We spent a weekend in Cabarrus County with him and took him back to his family.

LONG: We took him to Discovery Place in Charlotte—great!

JOHNSON: We felt like this is a really good match. He gets along really well with us; we get along well with him. So we did another weekend and he stayed with us for a weekend in our house. He stayed one more weekend with us and we thought, "Yes, we're ready to go. This is the right decision."

The result was fantastic. Isaiah has multiple times asked about getting a sibling. We're very reluctant to do that because this match was so good. I'm really afraid that if we were to try that process again that we would not have such a positive experience.

LONG: He had a biological sister, but she was not in the foster care system, so we weren't able to find her and adopt her, which we initially wanted to do.

We both want to be parents to him. We were both foster parents. Craig is his adoptive parent; suddenly I'm nothing. Anytime we go anywhere, I have to have paperwork. If something happens, I have to worry about, "Do I have the paperwork? What will people say? Will there be some kind of challenge?"

And Isaiah has asked before, "When are you getting married? Can you get married yet? What does this mean, you're not married? Are you still with my dad?"

We're both his parents, we both take him to soccer, we take him to the doctor, we send him up to his room. He should be supported with all the rights and responsibilities that come with having a two-parent family.

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Shana Carignan, 30, works for a local HIV/AIDS nonprofit, and Megan Parker, 34, is a stay-at-home mom. They met five years ago. They have a son, Jax, who has special needs.

CARIGNAN: We really liked each other, and there was no denying it, so once we started dating, it was pretty obvious that we were falling in love.

PARKER: It was interesting because at the time, I cared for an older lady, Mary, with disabilities in my home. She lived there and I was her sole care provider, so she was always around. [Mary's] cognitive issues made her about the age range of between 5 and 7.

CARIGNAN: We just had a great rapport. We were always laughing together, the three of us. So, it was like a ready-made family, because we started spending so much time together, and then I ended up helping take care of Mary. Once our relationship progressed, we thought, "Well, we both want kids. We really like doing this together, we're both good at it, what's holding us back?"

PARKER: We knew we wanted to adopt, but when a special needs case came in, we knew we could do it. We had already seen Mary as an adult, so we had seen what it looked like further down the road.

CARIGNAN: And we saw what life she didn't have. Because she didn't have the resources and the parents that were really going to take care of her. Every day Jax amazes us, because he constantly is proving to the world that he can do more than anybody ever thought he could. It's an amazing feeling to be a part of that, to know we help parent this amazing kid, who has this awesome personality, this smart brain, begging to get out and be noticed by the world, and we helped him find that.

PARKER: Marriage equality, as well as second-parent adoption, would mean an equal playing field for our family. There's so much that's just denied to us, when we're just a regular family. By our marriage being legally recognized, it would just make things so much easier. And we have to do everything we can to protect everything that we've worked for and we live for.

CARIGNAN: Since Jax has special needs, we had to go to doctors and stay overnight in hospital visits, and because Megan is his only legal parent, I don't have the same rights, so I wasn't allowed to stay overnight with him.

I can't receive Shannon's benefits because her job doesn't offer them to same-sex partners, but they do offer them to a married spouse. And Jax cannot receive medical benefits. He has federal Medicaid because he was adopted through foster care, but he can't receive secondary insurance, which would be a huge benefit, because Medicaid will often deny things that secondary insurance can pick up. He can't receive that because she's not his legal parent. We ended up becoming advocates just by telling our story

[Cin]

I don't suppose this is a marriage update, but i thought it was interesting. And it might reflect the changing times. One can hope.

George H.W. Bush Is Witness At Same-Sex Wedding Of Friends

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...ds?ft=1&f=1001

[MsTinkerbelly]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

I don't suppose this is a marriage update, but i thought it was interesting. And it might reflect the changing times. One can hope.

George H.W. Bush Is Witness At Same-Sex Wedding Of Friends

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...ds?ft=1&f=1001

I saw this earlier and thought the same as you basically...one person at a time!

[Cin]

Originally Posted by MsTinkerbelly

I saw this earlier and thought the same as you basically...one person at a time!

LOL! Yes. It will take awhile at that rate but I got time. *grin*

[MsTinkerbelly]

'We're outta here!': Gay couples in exile return to America post-DOMA decision


By Miranda Leitsinger, Staff Writer, NBC News

NEW YORK – The two men held a long embrace after a Manhattan city clerk pronounced them married at a City Hall ceremony. They had traveled 2,000 miles to get here, one more leg of a years-long journey to having their relationship legally recognized in the United States.

Richard Hurtado, a Texas native, and Hugo Rendon, a Mexican national, were married last Tuesday after living abroad for years, unable to reside as spouses in the States. But that changed in June, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act, which had denied recognition of same-sex marriages and prevented gay Americans from sponsoring their foreign spouses for citizenship. Now bi-national couples like Hurtado and Rendon, who had faced the choice of moving abroad or risking deportation for the foreign spouse, are coming back to America.

“This is the start of a new beginning,” said Rendon, 43, who called his wedding to Hurtado, 40, a “blessing.”

For six years, Hurtado and Rendon, both certified public accountants, have lived in the violent Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo, where the couple escaped an attempted robbery last November. But they couldn’t leave Nuevo Laredo, where Rendon has family and an established business. “I felt like it was a never-ending fight,” Rendon said in Spanish of waiting for U.S. law to change.

The DOMA decision was heralded by gay rights advocates as a first step toward legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. A week after the ruling, the Department of Homeland Security said immigration visa applications for same-sex spouses would be treated the same as those for opposite-sex spouses.

That was welcome news for bi-national gay couples in the U.S., a group estimated to number more than 32,000, according to Williams Institute, a think tank based at the UCLA School of Law. The federal government does not track data on such couples living overseas. But Immigration Equality, an advocacy group for gays and lesbians, said 900 of the 3,000 online inquiries it received after the DOMA ruling came from couples outside the U.S.

Under the new immigration guidelines, a valid marriage in a foreign country or a U.S. state where same-sex marriages are legal will be accepted, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Processing of family visas – a first step toward qualifying for a green card – is taking about 11 months, the agency said.

The DOMA Project said at least 15 binational, same-sex couples it works with, including two overseas, have received green cards following the court’s ruling. U.S. immigration officials have identified about 100 visa applications for foreign same-sex spouses of U.S. citizens that had been rejected because of DOMA but were being reviewed anew. Any other previously denied applicants can request to re-open their case, officials said.

Gay Americans who moved overseas to join foreign partners say they gave up a lot in the process: well-paid jobs, spending time with aging parents and other family, and leaving behind homes and communities.

“Part of the enormous cruelty of the Defense of Marriage Act has been that it forces you out of your country and away from social ties,” said Derek Tripp, project associate for The DOMA Project, an advocacy group for binational, same-sex couples.

For Darlene Nichols and her Belgian wife, Marie Le Fevere de Ten Hove, living abroad meant postponing their dreams.

Nichols, 55, moved to Belgium four years ago to join her wife, 37, but had a hard time finding work because of the language barrier. She also couldn’t get certifications in her field, home health care and massage therapy, forcing her to take lower-paying jobs such as cleaning buses.

Nichols missed her daughter and two young grandchildren, but visa requirements in Belgium hindered travels home. “It’s not been a vacation,” she said of her time abroad.

Soon after the couple learned about the DOMA ruling, they flew to California to be married (they previously had a civil union in Belgium). The pair now lives with Nichols’ daughter in Texas as they transition back to the U.S. “Every day I think about how it’s held us back,” Nichols said. “I just don’t feel like I’m living my life.”

Theresa Ewadinger, an American living in Japan with her Japanese wife and their infant son, couldn’t agree more. Ewadinger, 43, has been teaching English, one of the only jobs available to her in a country that promotes hiring citizens over foreigners. But the job offered no possibility of promotion, no bonus and no retirement plan.

“We’re outta here!” Ewadinger said of leaving Japan. “I just see our world opening up so much.” The family plans a return to her home state of Texas, where Ewandinger plans to apply to graduate school.

But challenges remain for these couples. There are immigration requirements, such as proving to the government that their relationship is legitimate, plus the daunting task of rebuilding their lives back in the U.S.

The couples may also have to contend with anti-gay marriage groups, who have objected to the government’s decision to allow them to immigrate.

John Eastman, board chairman for the National Organization of Marriage, said his group hasn’t discussed legal action on the issue yet but doesn’t rule it out. The majority opinion in the DOMA case was “tied to the fact that states have been the primary place where marriage policy is decided,” he said. “The federal government now seems bent on imposing it on them.”

Such concerns are far off for Rendon and Hurtado, who plan to move across the border to Laredo, Texas, where Hurtado grew up. He will work on mending his relationship with his parents, who couldn’t understand why he would leave his family and move to a place known for cartel violence.

“I wanted to be with him, so I had to do it this way,” said Hurtado.

As the nervous grooms awaited their big moment at the Manhattan marriage bureau last Tuesday, they talked about the home they’ve created together – Hurtado cooks, Rendon cleans – and showed off their Yorkshire Terrier, Valentino, whom they call their kid.






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“We had a bit of everything,” highs and lows, Rendon said. But overall, “It’s been a beautiful journey.”

[MsTinkerbelly]

Illinois AFL-CIO passes resolution backing marriage equality

by GoPride.com News Staff

Fri. September 27, 2013 8:12:28 AM : 0 Comments - start the discussion

Illinois Unites coalition applauds AFL-CIO for landmark support

Chicago, IL — The Illinois Chapter of American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) passed a resolution Sept. 26 supporting the freedom to marry and urged the Illinois House of Representatives to pass Senate Bill 10 – the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act.

"As an organization, we speak out for fairness and justice where it is most needed. Gay and lesbian couples in Illinois shouldn't have to wait another moment to be afforded the tools they need to protect their families," said Michael Carrigan, President of the Illinois AFL-CIO. "It is time we pass the freedom to marry for all."

The resolution, which was passed by the Executive Board of the Illinois AFL-CIO, states "the Illinois AFL-CIO joins with leaders from the faith community, civil rights organizations, President Obama, our own unions and a growing majority of Americans in supporting marriage equality legislation that effectively protects religious freedom."

"Securing the freedom to marry for all is a defining human rights issue of our time," said Timothy Drea, Secretary Treasurer of the Illinois AFL-CIO. "We urge Illinois lawmakers to be on the right side of history and pass marriage equality."

Since the legislative session ended in May without the House considering the marriage bill, Illinois Unites for Marriage has been increasing its reach with numerous labor organizations expanding their roles in the campaign, including, AFSCME Council 31, Illinois Education Association, Illinois Federation of Teachers, Illinois Nurses Association, National Association of Social Workers - Illinois Chapter, Pride at Work Chicago, Service Employees International Union State Council, Unite Here Local 1, and United Food and Commercial Workers Local 881.

"We applaud the significant support from the AFL-CIO today. Their resolution helps us in our fight to strengthen the American family by extending the protections of marriage to gay and lesbian couples," said John Kohlhepp, Campaign Manager for Illinois Unites for Marriage.

[iamkeri1]

A judge in New Jersey has ruled that the state has to allow same-sex couples to get married since the state would be depriving same-sex couples of rights granted to them by the federal government if the state were to continue to not allow same-sex marriage, according to the New York Times.

Since the federal government recognizes same-sex marriage and doles out certain benefits to married couples Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson ruled that by banning same-sex marriage the state was violating the state constitution by denying equal benefits to same-sex couples, according to the Wall Street Journal.

"The ineligibility of same-sex couple for federal benefits is currently harming same-sex couple in New Jersey in a wide variety of contexts," Jacobsen wrote in her decision.

Gov. Chris Christie opposes same-sex marriage and has tried to convince the court to "reserve the name of marriage for heterosexual couples." John Hoffman, the acting attorney general for New Jersey, believes that it is the federal government, not New Jersey, who is guilty of denying rights to same-sex couples by not offering the benefits to couples in a civil union, NBC News reports.

"Civil union partners who are federal employees living in New Jersey are ineligible for marital rights with regard to the federal pension system," Jacobson said. "All civil union partners who are employees working for businesses to which the Family and Medical Leave Act applies may not rely on its statutory protections for spouses, and civil union couples may not access the federal tax benefits that married couples enjoy."

Jacobsen was ruling on a lawsuit filed by six same-sex couples who argued that since the federal government will recognize same-sex marriages in states that legalize them it is unfair that the state of New Jersey only allow civil unions, according to NBC News.

"This news is thrilling," Hayley Gorenberg, Lambda Legal deputy legal director, said in a statement. "We argued that limiting lesbians and gay men to civil union is unfair and unconstitutional, and now the Court has agreed."

The ruling by the New Jersey court is the first to legalize same-sex marriage in response to the Supreme Court decision that struck down the Defense of Marriage act this past summer. State officials have been ordered to begin allowing same-sex marriage on Oct. 21, according to the Star-Ledger.