Gay-marriage advocates switch tactics

Posted on April 16, 2007
Filed Under USA | Leave a Comment

Any day now, the Maryland Supreme Court may decide whether same-sex couples have a right to marry.

After Massachusetts’ highest court extended that right in 2003, many lawyers expected a cascade of lawsuits in other states. But resistance from conservative legal groups and the public has been stiffer than expected, forcing advocates to abandon the courts and settle for civil unions — at least for now.

A stepping stone to marriage
Maria and Lidia Agramonte-Gomez live with a 90-pound dog and five cats in a house perched at the top of a hill in New Britain, Conn. They met seven years ago and have lived together for six. On an April evening, they sat around eating flan for dinner and talking about Oct. 1, 2005. On that crisp New England day, Connecticut offered civil-union licenses for the first time in its history. Maria and Lidia rushed to the statehouse.

“We got up early, because I was concerned there would be a lot of people, and I didn’t want to spend the whole day there,” Maria recalled. “But there were only 26 people, so we ended up being first.”

The civil union was historic, but Lidia saw it as a necessary stepping stone to marriage.

“Because we can go back and we can say to people, ‘We have tried this civil union, this new social construct. And it isn’t equal,’” Lidia said. “If we had never tried it, then the argument on the other side, I think, would have been, ‘How do you know it doesn’t work, if you haven’t given it a chance?’”

Now the two women, along with other couples, are lobbying for Connecticut to take the next step: to enact a same-sex marriage bill. The Agramonte-Gomezes recently invited a state senator to their house, to meet with straight and gay folks about why they support same-sex marriage. Maria testified in March before the state legislature’s Judiciary Committee, a 12-hour marathon of testimonies for and against gay marriage. If the committee decides to approve a marriage bill, it will go before the full legislature.

Maria and Lidia embody the shifting strategy of advocates for same-sex marriage. Advocates long ago decided that it was too risky to allow these cases to go before federal courts, since they believe the current U.S. Supreme Court would not be favorably disposed toward this new type of marriage. But they have also shifted away from fighting in state courts. Instead, they’re wooing state lawmakers.

“We actually have seen a record number of states this year in which bills were introduced to end gay couples’ exclusion from marriage,” says Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry. “Some of them will move forward. Some of them may move forward slowly over a period of a few years. And some of them will see a nonlinear progress, where they may move toward marriage, but through other measures, such as partnership or civil union, on the way to marriage equality. But the conversation has begun, and it’s begun at the right level.”

Recently California, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and Washington state have considered changing state laws prohibiting same-sex recognition. In New Hampshire, the state House has approved a civil-union bill, and the Senate is expected to pass it Thursday. Vermont already has civil unions, and New Jersey — faced with a command from the state’s highest court to strike down discrimination — passed a civil union law rather than a marriage law. Read more….

Source: NPR

Blankenhorn’s logic doesn’t hang together

Posted on April 12, 2007
Filed Under Michigan | Leave a Comment

Opposition to homosexuality has long been marked by bad science. In the past, that usually meant bad psychology or even bad physiology. Today, the more common problem is bad social science, usually involving cherry-picked data about alarming social trends followed by breathtaking leaps of logic connecting these trends to same-sex marriage.

David Blankenhorn positions himself as an exception. In his new book “The Future of Marriage,” and in a recent Weekly Standard article entitled “Defining Marriage Down … Is No Way to Save It,” Blankenhorn makes the familiar argument that supporting same-sex marriage weakens marriage as a valuable social institution. But he claims to do so in way that avoids some of the simplistic analyses common in the debate, including those made by his conservative allies.

In particular, Blankenhorn criticizes Stanley Kurtz’s argument that same-sex marriage in the Netherlands and Scandinavia has caused the erosion of traditional marriage there. Blankenhorn rightly recognizes Kurtz’s causal claims to be unsupported: “Neither Kurtz nor anyone else can scientifically prove that allowing gay marriage causes the institution of marriage to get weaker,” Blankenhorn writes. “Correlation does not imply causation.” This is a refreshing concession.

But having made that concession, Blankenhorn proceeds as if it makes no difference: “Scholars and commentators have expended much effort trying in vain to wring proof of causation from the data, all the while ignoring the meaning of some simple correlations that the numbers do indubitably show.” But what can these correlations mean, if not that same-sex marriage is causally responsible for the alleged problems? What do the numbers “indubitably show”? Blankenhorn’s answer provides a textbook example of a circular argument:

“Certain trends in values and attitudes tend to cluster with each other and with certain trends in behavior … . The legal endorsement of gay marriage occurs where the belief prevails that marriage itself should be redefined as a private personal relationship. And all of these marriage-weakening attitudes and behaviors are linked. Around the world, the surveys show, these things go together. ”

In other words, what the correlations show is that these things are correlated. Not very helpful.

From there, Blankenhorn argues that if things “go together,” opposition to one is good reason for opposition to all. He attempts to illustrate by analogy:

“Find some teenagers who smoke, and you can confidently predict that they are more likely to drink than their nonsmoking peers. Why? Because teen smoking and drinking tend to hang together.” So if you oppose teenage drinking, you ought to oppose teenage smoking, because of the correlation between the two. In a similar way, if you oppose nonmarital cohabitation, single-parent parenting, or other “marriage-weakening behaviors,” you ought to oppose same-sex marriage, since they, too, “tend to hang together.” Read more….

Source: Pride Source

This is breathtakingly bad logic. The analogy sounds initially plausible because teen drinking and teen smoking are both bad things. But the things that correlate with bad things are not necessarily bad. Find some teenagers who have tried cocaine, and you can confidently predict that they are more likely to have gone to top-notch public schools than their non-cocaine-using peers. It’s not because superior education causes cocaine use. It’s because cocaine is an expensive drug, and expensive drugs tend to show up in affluent communities, which tend to have better public schools than their poor counterparts. Yet it would be ridiculous to conclude that, if you oppose teen cocaine use, you ought to oppose top-notch public education.

The whole point of noting that “correlation does not equal cause” is to acknowledge that things that “tend to hang together” are not necessarily mutually reinforcing. They are sometimes both the result of third-party causes, and even more often the result of a complex web of causes that we haven’t quite figured out yet. In any case, when babies correlate with dirty bathwater, we don’t take that as a reason for throwing out babies.

Which brings me to another significant flaw in Blankenhorn’s analysis. Even if we grant that support for same-sex marriage correlates with negative factors such as higher divorce rates, it also seems to correlate with positive factors such as higher education, greater support for religious freedom, and greater respect for women’s rights. On Blankenhorn’s logic, we ought to oppose those things as well, since they “tend to hang together” with the negative trends.

I don’t often find myself agreeing with Stanley Kurtz. But at least he seems to understand that, without the causal connections, the “negative marriage trends” argument gets no traction.
 

New York liberal links “gay marriage,” destruction of family unit

Posted on April 10, 2007
Filed Under USA | Leave a Comment

Readers may not be surprised to learn the head of an organization promoting “American values” making a strong case for the relationship between the adoption of “gay marriage” and the erosion of traditional values (i.e., higher rates of divorce, unwed childbearing, nonmarital cohabitation, etc.). The surprise comes when readers learn the author is a self-described liberal Democrat from New York who does NOT otherwise oppose homosexual behavior.

David Blankenhorn is the founder and president of the New York-based Institute for American Values. While he acknowledges in his column that no one can prove “gay marriage” is directly causing social ills in countries that have adopted it like Scandinavia and the Netherlands, he points to statistical data that shows a definite correlation between “gay marriage” and the erosion of the family.

He writes: [The data] yields a clear pattern. Support for marriage as an institution is weakest in those countries with same-sex marriage. Countries with same-sex civil unions show more support, and countries with regional recognition [such as the United States] show still more. By significant margins, support for marriage is highest in countries that extend no legal recognition to same-sex unions.

He continues: Certain trends in values and attitudes tend to cluster with each other and with certain trends in behavior. A rise in unwed childbearing goes hand in hand with a weakening of the belief that people who want to have children should get married. High divorce rates are encountered where the belief in marital permanence is low. More one-parent homes are found where the belief that children need both a father and a mother is weaker. A rise in nonmarital cohabitation is linked at least partly to the belief that marriage as an institution is outmoded. The legal endorsement of gay marriage occurs where the belief prevails that marriage itself should be redefined as a private personal relationship. And all of these marriage-weakening attitudes and behaviors are linked. Around the world, the surveys show, these things go together.

Blankenhorn’s observation is a timely one, since his home state of New York is poised to be the first in the nation to pass a state law creating “gay marriage.” Contrary to popular belief, the legislature in Massachusetts never created such a law. Rather, that state’s supreme court told lawmakers to do so, but they never did. The governor took it upon himself to change the marriage contracts without a statute. Therefore, “gay marriages” exist in Massachusetts, but they exist outside the bounds of the law. New York, on the other hand, recently elected a governor who campaigned on a promise to push for a state law allowing homosexuals to marry.

Pro-homosexual Governor Elliot Spitzer is expected to introduce a “gay marriage” bill for New York sometime in April 2007. Undoubtedly, proponents of homosexual “marriage” will be out in full force to pressure legislators to support Governor Spitzer’s efforts to destroy marriage — all the while claiming that no harm will come to the traditional family. However, Blankenhorn knows creating “gay marriage” and strengthening marriage in society are two mutually exclusive objectives.

He writes: As individuals and as a society, we can strive to maintain and strengthen marriage as a primary social institution and society’s best welfare plan for children (some would say for men and women too). Or we can strive to implement same-sex marriage. But unless we are prepared to tear down with one hand what we are building up with the other, we cannot do both. Read more….

Source: Family Policy Network

Married couples tell their stories

Posted on April 8, 2007
Filed Under Massachusetts | Leave a Comment

Marriage Equality“It’s about time that Rhode Island became the second state in our nation to have legalized same-sex marriage. Not civil unions. Not domestic partnerships.”
Those words, spoken by Katie Bennett, echoed the feelings of 70 or so people who gathered at the Statehouse in Providence.

The press conference was organized by Marriage Equality RI and featured eight of the many Rhode Island married same-sex couples as well as two members of other couples whose spouses could not attend.

Also there were Patricia Lynch-Gadaleta, the sister of Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch, and her spouse Margaret. The attorney general recently issued a legal opinion that state government agencies should respect same-sex marriages performed out-of-state and offer employees in those marriages the same benefits straight married employees receive.

“We took vows and we got married and then came home to Pawtucket,” said Chris Butler, who married his partner of eight years, R. J. Rose, a month ago in Attleboro.

“We literally drove four miles from where we got married to our house. And as soon as we crossed that line, we were no longer married, at least in the eyes of the people in this building. That’s wrong.”

Butler says that before he met Rose “I never gave much thought to getting married…but eight years ago, it became clear to me that someday might [happen].” He says that, although he didn’t think it was possible, he and Rose have grown closer since they married.

However, Butler also told a story illustrating the perils same-sex couples face in a state where their relationship is not legally recognized.

Two years ago, Rose had a medical emergency at work and was rushed to the emergency room. “As his emergency contact in his personnel file, they called me,” said Butler.

“I ran down to Memorial Hospital and said ’I’m here to see R. J. Rose’, and the nurse looks up and says ’Who are you?’ I struggled with ’am I his lover, am I his partner,
am I his friend?’ I finally settled on ’partner.’ I explained that we were together in a relationship and I was his partner.”

At that point, it struck Butler that the nurse could have refused to let him see Rose.

“Luckily, she didn’t, and she let me in. And luckily, He was okay. But we had the conversation later, ’what would have happened if he was unresponsive, if he wasn’t able to answer questions, or to consent?’ It would have been me trying to call his mother as his nearest relative to try to get to the emergency room to make those decisions, even though we’ve built a life together.”

For Butler and Rose, as well as Rhode Island’s other married same-sex couples, a legal scene more like the Soviet Union plays out every day. To have just some of the rights of married heterosexuals during an emergency or worse, they have to carry powers of attorney, wills, and other legal documents with them at all times, even for “a ride to the corner store,” in the words of MERI Director Jenn Steinfeld.

Discrimination hit home for Frank Ferri and Tony Carpaco when they had to get married in Canada. “Several of our straight friends have gotten married and had weddings in their backyard,” Carpaco told EDGE. “We had to go to Canada. It was a very happy day, but it was bittersweet because we weren’t somewhere where we could have all of our family and friends with us.”

For reasons like these, Steinfeld said that doing anything less than enacting equal marriage legislation “would be a step backward.”

Other couples shared a lot of the same joys and concerns. Read more about them…

Source: Edge Boston

Disney opens Fairy Tale Wedding service to gay couples

Posted on April 6, 2007
Filed Under California | Leave a Comment

Same-sex couples who want to exchange vows in front of Cinderella’s Castle now have the chance. 
 
The Walt Disney Co. had limited its Fairy Tale Wedding program to couples with valid marriage licenses, but it is now making ceremonies at its parks available to gay couples as well. ”We believe this change is consistent with Disney’s long-standing policy of welcoming every guest in an inclusive environment,” Disney Parks and Resorts spokesman Donn Walker said. ”We want everyone who comes to celebrate a special occasion at Disney to feel welcome and respected.” 
 
The company said it made the change after being contacted by a gay couple who wanted to use the wedding service, which offers ceremonies at Disneyland in California, Walt Disney World Resort in Florida and Disney’s cruise ships. 
 
The service offers flowers, dining, music and many optional Disney touches, from ceremonies in front of the parks’ iconic attractions to having Mickey and Minnie Mouse in formal wear as guests. The packages start at $8,000 and can cost more than $45,000. 
 
Groups not affiliated with Disney have held annual ”gay days” celebrations at Disney parks for years. Company officials have taken a tolerant attitude to the weekend, allowing party promoters to rent out parks after hours and rebuffing religious groups that condemned Disney. 

Source: Associated Press

Where states stand on same-sex marriage

Posted on April 4, 2007
Filed Under USA | Leave a Comment

Massachusetts is the only state that recognizes same-sex marriages, the result of a 2003 ruling by its Supreme Judicial Court.

Vermont, Connecticut and New Jersey have civil unions that extend marriage-like rights to same-sex couples.
California, Hawaii and Maine have granted various spousal rights to same-sex couples registered as domestic partners.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, all but five states — Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Rhode Island — have adopted constitutional amendments or statutes banning gay marriage. New Hampshire’s ban is statutory.

The federal government does not recognize same-sex marriages, whether performed in Massachusetts or abroad. Congress has twice failed to approve a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would ban gay marriage nationwide.

Source: Boston Globe

Same-sex marriage ban gives gays, lesbians ’second-class’ status

Posted on April 2, 2007
Filed Under California | Leave a Comment

The state’s ban on same-sex marriage tells lesbians and gay men that they are “second class citizens” inferior to sex offenders and prisoners, and it contributes to discrimination, the city of San Francisco argued today in asking the California Supreme Court to strike down the law.

In a strongly-worded brief, the city traced the discrimination of lesbians and gay men from the first millennium to the Enlightenment to the present day. City attorneys compared the fight for same-sex marriage rights to the battle for desegregation, and they asked the state’s highest court to ignore the pull of tradition and “the will of the popular majority.”

The Supreme Court, which nullified nearly 4,000 weddings of gay and lesbian couples performed at San Francisco City Hall in February and March 2004, voted unanimously in December to decide whether a state law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman violates a constitutional right to marry the partner of one’s choice. Read more….

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Same-sex benefits debate

Posted on April 1, 2007
Filed Under Alaska | Leave a Comment

Same-sex wedding in AlaskaJackie Buckley, a 10-year employee of the Anchorage School District, can finally tap into a benefit most of her colleagues have long taken for granted: health coverage for her partner of 23 years.

Buckley and Dawn Ridge, who have two teenagers at home and four grown kids, see themselves as a regular Alaska family. They deal with dishes and laundry, household bills and homework. They own vehicles together, take care of each other in hard times. Maybe they are tougher than some. For spring break, they hunkered down in a bare-bones public-use cabin up north near the Chena River.

To same-sex couples and those who support them, getting health benefits is a matter of equal pay for equal work. Ridge, who works from home, is a diabetic with $200-a-month medication bills, so the health coverage, acquired in January as a result of a court decision, is sorely needed.

Tuesday’s statewide advisory vote on whether to ban health benefits for same-sex partners pits families like Buckley’s against religious conservatives who frame the issue as being all about marriage. She sees the effort as cruel.

“It says we are not as good as somebody else,” says Buckley, 49, who has coached youth sports, volunteered for her church and been active in PTA. In her School District job, she coordinates services for families.

The state vote coincides with a municipal election in Anchorage. But in most of Alaska, voters are being asked to show up at the polls just to vote on this one question. Turnout is expected to be low.

The ballot measure doesn’t say a word about marriage, but anti-gay groups and fundamentalist pastors insist that protecting marriage is what the vote is all about.

They argue that the state Supreme Court overstepped when it ruled in 2005 that same-sex partners with the same “truly close relationship” as married couples are entitled to the same state benefits, especially since state law makes it impossible for such couples to qualify by marrying.

About 30 pastors of Anchorage churches, big and small, came forward in mid-March to say limiting benefits “isn’t about hatred and bigotry and discrimination. It’s about protecting marriage,” said event organizer Jim Minnery, chairman of Alaska Family Action, the political arm of the Alaska Family Council.

Such groups argue that gay couples really want affirmation that their relationship is akin to marriage. Couples say that’s not so. Some say they’d be fine with an oft-mentioned idea of benefits for relationships like unmarried heterosexual couples, two adult sisters sharing a home — or gay couples.

In 1998, 68 percent of Alaska voters approved a constitutional amendment that defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman. That banned gay marriage here. The next year, a group of same-sex couples and the American Civil Liberties Union sued for benefits, arguing the state and the city of Anchorage illegally discriminated against gay and lesbian employees.

“There is no indication here that denying benefits to public employees with same-sex domestic partners has any bearing on who marries,” the Supreme Court said.

It took until January for the state and city to comply with the ruling. Couples must attest to being in a committed relationship and to financial interdependence such as co-owning property. Few people have signed up as a result of the ruling, officials say. Read more….

Source: Anchorage Daily News

Same sex, different rules

Posted on April 1, 2007
Filed Under Massachusetts | Leave a Comment

For years, the right wing has wrongly accused the gay movement of seeking special rights. At no time has our struggle for equal rights been more transparent than in the fight to legalize marriage for gays and lesbians.

Those who push civil unions as a solution to the dilemma sicken me. To offer civil unions to some citizens and marriage to others is simply un-American. The only way to advocate for civil unions is to concurrently abolish marriage for all. Our rule of law has been interpreted as “separate but equal is not equal.” How much more simply do you need the law explained?

Not only are civil unions unconstitutional, they are unworkable. Allow me relate the following example: My friend Charlie and his partner have been civilly unionized and, thanks to that law, his partner is covered under Charlie’s union health insurance. However, at tax time Charlie received notification from the feds that he was responsible for an extra $10,000 of income for that coverage. As a married couple, the coverage would not be taxable income. That, my friends, is not even separate-but-equal. That is institutionalized second-class citizenship.

Instead of a reasonable discussion of law, the debate over marriage has been reduced to a cacophony of selective Bible quotes, social doctrine, psychological misinformation and naked prejudice. Do you want to know what marriage law is really about? Ask anyone who has been divorced: Property rights are the root of these laws. It is ridiculous to assert that the state has any interest or business in “holy matrimony.” Looking for something holy from government makes as much sense as shopping for art in a hardware store.

The good-thinking citizens of Massachusetts have shared the legal right of marriage with their gay and lesbian families for some years. Thus far, they’ve not been visited with predicted plagues or righteous retribution.

Rather, according to all reports, the state has found the amending of their laws a non-event. But instead of accepting the facts of that excellent example, we are still tortured with superstitious lies that the acceptance of homosexual citizens will diminish the bonds of heterosexual ones. It’s as silly as someone watching an airplane soaring overhead while proclaiming, “If God meant man to fly, he would have given him wings.” The rightness of equal marriage laws is no longer a matter of opinion. It is measurable visible fact.

Equal marriage rights are going to be the law of the land sooner or later. We can waste time, energy and billions of tax dollars fighting the inevitable, but America was founded on ideals of fairness and equality. Those principles will win the war.

How long the wrong-thinking want to drag the battle out is up to them. But they have already lost. Right is on our side.

Source: Hartford Courant

Same-sex couples fear losing domestic benefits

Posted on March 30, 2007
Filed Under Indiana | Leave a Comment

Ball State University interior designer Dan Stephenson said when his mother died four years ago, his partner had to use vacation days to attend the funeral, a benefit automatically given to married couples.

Since then, the university passed a regulation letting same-sex domestic partners take time off for a death in the family. This, and other employee benefits for same-sex partners, could be lost if Indiana passes an amendment banning same-sex marriage, Stephenson said.

State senators will vote on whether to place Senate Joint Resolution No. 7 on the ballot in 2008. According to the bill, a legal marriage is “only the union of one man and one woman.”

Stephenson said the amendment will ostracize the gay community if it passes. “My partner and I have been together for almost 20 years, and we’ve paid the same taxes as everybody else,” he said, “but we’re being treated as second-class citizens. I would consider moving to a state where they wouldn’t treat me that way.”

Advance America Founder Eric Miller said his organization is working to pass SJR 7 and protect traditional marriages. “I believe it is in the best interest for the children and the moral foundation of our state and nation to have marriage only between one man and one woman,” he said. “We believe this will benefit the state of Indiana by continuing to define marriage as it has historically been defined, and this is best for society.”
Advance America is also against same-sex civil unions, Miller said. “Civil union is nothing more than marriage with a different name,” he said.

Those speaking out against the bill are worried about potential side effects it could have on the state’s society and economy.

Indiana Equality spokesperson Jerame Davis said if the amendment is passed it will be almost impossible to overturn. “The way the amendment is written, even if the legislators somewhere down the road wanted to pass a law that is positive toward same-sex couples, this would prevent that,” he said. “Imagine how hard it would be to pass another amendment to change this amendment.” Read more….

Source: DN Online

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