Same-Sex Marriage Update

[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.






Advertise | AdChoices







“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.

[MsTinkerbelly]

Prop. 8 Legal Team Sets Sights on Va. Marriage Ban

Ted Olson and David Boies, the bipartisan legal team that successfully argued against California's Proposition 8 at the Supreme Court, have signed on to a federal challenge to Virginia's ban on marriage equality.

BY Sunnivie Brydum.

September 30 2013 12:48 PM ET

The so-called odd couple — a conservative lawyer who represented George W. Bush and his liberal opponent who represented Al Gore in the contested 2000 election — who helped strike down California's Proposition 8 are now taking their legal prowess to Virginia to fight that state's prohibition on marriage equality.

Ted Olson and David Boies, the bipartisan legal team who successfully argued Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Prop. 8 case, at the Supreme Court, have signed on to a pending federal case that aims to strike down Virginia's constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, the American Foundation for Equal Rights announced today.

The Virginia case, Bostic v. Rainey, was filed in the U.S. District Court for Virginia's Eastern District on behalf of two couples who contend that the Virginia Marriage Amendment, which prohibits gay and lesbian couples in Virginia from marrying, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. One of the couples, Timothy Bostic and Tony London, were denied a marriage license in July, while the secondary plaintiffs, Carol Schall and Mary Townley, married in California in 2008, have a 15-year-old daughter, and are asking Virginia to legally recognize their relationship.

The Equal Protection argument is, in part, the same logic Olson and Boies successfully advanced in the Prop. 8 case, where California voters rescinded the gay and lesbian couples' right to marry by ballot initiative in 2008. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively repealed Prop. 8 on a legal technicality, deciding that the official ballot proponents had no legal standing to defend the law after two sets of California governors and attorneys general declined to do so. When AFER enlisted Boies and Olson to fight California's marriage equality ban in 2009, no other mainstream LGBT organization was willing to mount the legal challenge.

But with two landmark rulings in favor of marriage equality at the Supreme Court this summer — both the Prop. 8 case and Windsor v. U.S., which struck down a key section of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act — and 13 states and the District of Columbia with legal marriage equality in place, the winds have shifted toward equality.

Olson, who lives in Virginia, said his state is an "attractive target" for a federal challenge that he hopes will establish a federal constitutional right to marry.

In their arguments against Prop. 8, Olson and Boies often cited the 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, which struck down bans on interracial marriage as unconstitutional. Because Virginia's marriage amendment not only bans same-sex marriage in the state but also the recognition of any legal same-sex marriages from other states, Olson said Virginia provides a good example to highlight the importance of establishing gay and lesbian Americans' to marry on a national basis.

"The more unfairly people are being treated, the more obvious it is that it's unconstitutional," Olson told the The Washington Post.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal also filed a request for swift judgment in another federal case challenging Virginia's ban on marriage equality — this one filed in the U.S. District Court for Western Virginia, on behalf of two lesbian couples.

[MsTinkerbelly]

Chris Christie tries to block marriage equality in New Jersey

Evan Puschak
9:59 PM on 10/01/2013


New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie wants to block the state’s upcoming legalization of same-sex marriage.

Interim state Attorney General John Jay Hoffman said in a letter to the state Supreme Court on Monday that the Christie adminstration would seek a stay on the Superior Court’s ruling. If granted, the ruling may postpone marriage equality from kicking into effect on October 21. Hoffman also expressed a wish to bypass appellate courts and take the issue directly to the New Jersey Supreme Court.

On Friday, Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson ruled that New Jersey’s civil union laws did not provide LGBT individuals the same rights as married couples.

“The court, the legislature, and a super-majority of New Jerseyans all support the freedom to marry, but the governor seems intent on blocking New Jersey’s path to fairness, adding more delay now with his decision to appeal the trial court’s clear ruling,” Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom to Marry, told MSNBC. “The New Jersey Supreme Court should swiftly take and affirm the marriage ruling, and should let couples begin marrying Oct. 21, as the trial court ordered.”

Christie’s move to appeal is just the latest step in his back-and-forth with gay rights advocates over the issue of same-sex marriage. Back in February, Christie vetoed a bill passed by the New Jersey legislature that legalized same-sex marriage. Personally against marriage equality, the governor was willing to let the matter go to a state referendum in November, yet unwilling to let “an issue of this magnitude and importance” be decided by elected officials.

Instead, Christie appointed an official to oversee same-sex couples’ complaints that civil union laws were not affording them all the legal rights and benefits of married couples. For gay rights advocates, this measure did not go far enough to ensure equality.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act gave the same-sex marriage movement in New Jersey new life. The majority’s ruling in that case, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, stated that same-sex married couples deserved the same benefits as any other married couple, but was confined to legal marriages. This primed New Jersey for the challenge to its system that led to Judge Jacobson’s ruling Friday.

The other factor in the ruling was a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling from 2006 (Lewis v. Harris), which required the state to extend all the rights of heterosexual unions to same sex unions, but stopped short of legalizing same-sex marriage.

“The issue of whether the state must act to change its statutory structure for civil unions and marriages is purely a legal one that depends upon the interaction of the Windsor [DOMA] decision with the mandates established by the New Jersey Supreme court in Lewis,” wrote Jacobson in her 53-page opinion, illuminating the crux of the issue.

The plaintiffs in the case, six same-sex couples represented by Garden State Equality and Lambda Legal, said that Windsor and Lewis don’t work in sync for gay couples. As NJ.com reported, over 1,000 tax and inheritance benefits extended by the DOMA decision to same-sex married couples were withheld from those couples in New Jersey, trapped behind civil union laws.

The attorneys argued that such civil union laws made same-sex couples “second class” citizens, and Judge Jacobson agreed. “Same-sex couples must be allowed to marry in order to obtain equal protection of the law under the New Jersey constitution,” she wrote.

Though they don’t agree with Christie’s appeal, New Jersey Democrats urged the state Supreme Court to fast-track the case, per the administration’s wishes. If the court decides quickly in favor of Jacobson’s ruling, same-sex couples won’t have to wait longer than October 21st to enjoy full marriage equality.

It’s unclear to what degree Gov. Christie’s repeated moves against same-sex marriage are politically motivated, intended to bolster his conservative credentials.

“Within the Republican universe, he’s actually pretty far out there already on gay marriage, saying he wants a referendum and that he’d honor the result if voters pass it,” said MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki. “In terms of positioning for the 2016 GOP race, that alone puts him on shaky ground, so if a court moves to legalize it, he risks giving opponents on the right ammunition if he does anything but challenge it.”