FIRST COMES PARTNERSHIP, THEN COMES MARRIAGE: Seattle Times editorial

here
posted by Eve at 6:17 PM | Link |  

ALIMONY PROVIDES A SAME-SEX UNION TEST: From the Los Angeles Times

Ron Garber knew his former wife was living with another woman — and had taken her last name — when he agreed to pay her $1,250 a month in alimony.

What he didn't know was that the two women had registered with the state as domestic partners under a law that was supposed to mirror marriage law, Garber said.

State marriage laws say that alimony ends when the former spouse remarries, and Garber reasons he should be off the hook, given that domestic partnership is akin to marriage. But an Orange County judge has decided that registered partnership is cohabitation, not marriage, and that Garber must pay.

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posted by Eve at 6:12 PM | Link |  

Dem Candidates on SSM

Evan Wolfson critiques the candidates response on this week's youtube/CNN debate here.
posted by maggie at 4:03 PM | Link |  

Shelley Hendrix Reynolds

For a very simple reason over the last six years, I have clung to the hope that my son Liam was insulated from the emotional distress that can envelope a child when their parents divorce. He has autism. For once, I had hoped that his exceptionality was a perk, protecting his innocence and preserving his heart. I was wrong. ...

Out of the blue the other day in the car, Liam told me that it made him sad not to have two parents in the same house like Timmy Turner does on the Fairly Odd Parents. He explained that he remembers when we all lived in the same house, what that house looked like and described events that happened there that I had long forgotten. To hammer his point home, as soon as we got in the house, he ran upstairs and dug through my photo albums in my closet. He found a picture of his dad and me when we were seniors in college--smiley, happy, just engaged. He thrust it into my hand and said, "See! You and daddy loved each other."

For the first time, I sat him down and explained that we weren't able to work things out. Sometimes mommies and daddies cannot pull it together no matter how hard they try and they get a divorce. His lip quivered. He said, "But I am getting better so you and daddy can get married again."

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posted by Eve at 11:12 PM | Link |  

Exporting Massachusetts Same-Sex Marriages?

According to this Associated Press story and this press release from a New Mexico group, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health has issued new guidelines to city and town clerks allowing them to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in New Mexico. The rationale is that New Mexico law does not appear to expressly prohibit same-sex marriages. Massachusetts’s law currently prohibits clerks from issuing marriage licenses to couples from other states where the marriage would be prohibited in the home state. This has been applied to prevent same-sex couples from out-of-state from marrying in Massachusetts only to return home. Though there has been noise made about repealing this law, it is currently in place.

Legal action in Massachusetts has previously resulted in a ruling that same-sex couples from Rhode Island may be issued marriage licenses in Massachusetts and that same-sex couples in New York who married prior to July 6, 2006 were not prohibited from marriage in Massachusetts (more information here).

There is also currently a case ongoing in Rhode Island (case documents here) about whether a Rhode Island court has jurisdiction to grant a divorce sought by a same-sex couple that married in Massachusetts.

So, the process of exporting same-sex marriages from Massachusetts to other states may be slowly gaining steam.
posted by William Duncan at 12:18 PM | Link |  

Ohio Marriage Amendment and Domestic Violence

The Ohio Supreme Court issued a decision today in a case where a man charged with domestic violence against his live-in partner had argued that the domestic violence law (which includes protections for a “person living as a spouse”) conflicts with the state marriage amendment (which includes a sentence prohibiting creation of “a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage”).

The court held 6-1 (one judge in the majority joining only the outcome) that the domestic violence statute’s coverage of cohabiting couples was not in conflict with the marriage amendment. The majority said the second sentence of the amendment “prohibits the state and its political subdivisions from circumventing the mandate of the first sentence [defining marriage] by recognizing a legal status similar to marriage (for example, a civil union).” The majority held the domestic violence statutes did not create any additional rights or benefits for unmarried household members and that cohabitation is not a legal status created by the state but a relationship created by individuals. Thus, the court concluded the statute “merely identifies a particular class of persons for the purposes of the domestic-violence statute” and “does not create or recognize a legal relationship that approximates the designs, qualities, or significance of marriage.”

The dissent argued that the statute did create a status because it gave individuals in a household standing to prosecute one another for domestic violence. The dissent said the statute “inherently equates cohabitating unmarried persons with those who are married and extends the domestic violence statutes because their relationship approximates the significance or effect of marriage.”

The Ohio amendment has been considered particularly broad, so this decision severely undercuts the claims in any other state that a marriage amendment, even one that prohibits recognition of marriage-equivalent statuses, would inadvertently remove domestic violence protection from the unmarried.
posted by William Duncan at 4:02 PM | Link |  

Washington (state): 150 SS couples sign up for dps

The Olympian:

"OLYMPIA, Wash. — The Washington Secretary of State's office registered 155 couples in the first day of its new domestic partner registry by closing time today.

The registry, which offers some legal protections between same sex partners and unmarried senior couples, is the first legal recognition of the relationship between same sex couples in the state.

A long line had formed by 7 a.m. today, though by mid-day traffic had slowed significantly . . ."

posted by maggie at 3:46 PM | Link |  

SLATE: Why U.S. Muslims Don't Want to Legalize Polygamy

Excerpts:

"So, you're happily married to the Muslim man of your dreams when, suddenly, he drops the p-bomb: polygamy. For Aneesa Azeez, a 23-year-old Muslim convert and college graduate, her husband's announcement of his intention to marry a second wife devastated her. "I am shocked, hurt, angry and confused, all in one," she wrote in a letter to him.

Seems like a recipe for divorce, right? Polygamy is illegal, after all. But Azeez didn't play that card with her husband, 15 years her senior. Under the law that mattered to her—classical Islamic law—she accepted her husband's right to take up to four wives, as allowed by the Quran, as long as he could treat them equally.

At first, Azeez wrestled with jealousy toward her co-wife and pined for her husband on the nights and weekends he stayed with his second wife, who lived half an hour away. But eventually, a peacefulness settled in her heart and a friendship with her co-wife blossomed: "I am in polygyny because I want to be," she wrote on her blog, Polygynous Blessings, whose initial entries are collected in a self-published book of the same title. (Polygyny is the more precise term for the type of polygamy in which a man marries more than one wife.) Azeez's blog is just one of several in which American Muslims write thoughtful, sometimes wry, but usually positive commentary about living polygamously; other notables include Thoughts of a First Wife and Big Faith.

. . .So, while the existence of Azeez's book, which had sold 150 copies as of mid-July, won't necessarily prompt the Department of Homeland Monogamy to raise its threat level to yellow, American Muslim polygamists are still a group to watch.

For one thing, they may be almost as numerous as the fundamentalist Mormons who make all the headlines (and score big ratings for HBO). Debra Mubashshir Majeed, a religious studies professor at Beloit College who is researching a book on American Muslim polygamy, estimates that less than 1 percent of American Muslims indulge in the practice—and these practitioners are most often African-American Muslims or recent immigrants from West Africa. That percentage may seem infinitesimal, given that the most recent estimate of the American Muslim population puts their numbers at 2.35 million, but it does mean there are perhaps as many as 20,000 American Muslim polygamists. In comparison, the current best guess about the number of fundamentalist Mormons involved in polygamy in the United States, Mexico, and Canada is only 37,500, according to Brooke Adams, who covers the polygamy beat at the Salt Lake Tribune. (Yes, polygamy has its own beat—in Utah, at least.) And while Muslim polygamists are quiet now, their political awareness may grow over time; after all, fundamentalist Mormon polygamists lived for decades in disparate and secretive communities, only recently emerging to claim their place at the civic table.

American Muslim polygamists are unafraid of prosecution, and they sometimes seem almost puzzlingly unconcerned with the illegality of their conjugal life. Azeez takes only minor steps to conceal her husband's identity, and only then to ensure his job is not jeopardized. "It's not like everyone is being rounded up and thrown in jail," she says—in stark contrast to fundamentalist Mormons who recall the raid of the Short Creek, Ariz., polygamist community in 1953. Similarly, Senegalese-American hip-hop star Akon casually revealed to a New York radio host in late 2006 that he not only had four mothers growing up but also currently has several wives at home in Atlanta. (He said he would go public with his "multimonogamous" family only if he had his own reality show. Just imagine it: Big Love meets Run's House.)

And prominent American Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who was the first Muslim cleric to ever offer the invocation at the U.S. House of Representatives, was quoted in Paul Barrett's 2007 book American Islam* as saying that he performs polygamous unions at his Al-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y. "If a man can have a hundred girlfriends, and it's legal, I don't say you can't have more than one wife," he reasons. Of course, Wahhaj is in the minority on this point; most mainstream imams would not condone the open flouting of the law. . ."

posted by maggie at 3:43 PM | Link |  

SSM Update: Marriage Groups Vow "This Campaign is Far from Over"

July 24, 2007 Boston Globe:

Gay-union foes vow to target legislators

Backers of a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in Massachusetts said yesterday they will not attempt to place the issue on the ballot in 2010, confirming that the soonest the issue could go before voters is 2012.

But they vowed to campaign in 2008 against lawmakers who have blocked their efforts and said they would launch a new campaign in the future. On June 14, state lawmakers rejected a proposal to let voters decide whether same-sex marriage should be banned.

"We acknowledge that our support in the current Legislature is weak, but our support among the people is tremendous," said Kris Mineau, spokesman for VoteOnMarriage.org and president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, one of several groups that supported the constitutional amendment.

"This campaign is far from over, believe me," Mineau said. "Some of these legislators will go away, but we will not."

posted by maggie at 2:04 PM | Link |  

Utah's Recent Polygamy Decision

A note from Roger Severino, one of the lawyers at the Becket Fund on a recent case in which the Utah Supreme court declined to follow where Lawrence leads and decriminalize consensual polygamy, where the actors do not pretend they've mnade a civil marriage:

Maggie,



Interesting thought. If the logic of the Utah Supreme Court’s recent polygamy decision is to be believed, Utah is free to criminalize purported same-sex marriages because the state has a compelling interest in preventing “attempts to extralegally redefine the acceptable parameters of a fundamental social institution like marriage.” I suppose this is not completely out of the question if the public sees enough justification to pass a small fine to fend off Massachusetts same-sex émigrés to Utah who would hold themselves out as being validly married. That would be an interesting test case that would surely go straight to the Supreme Court. Can polygamy be criminalized but not same-sex marriage?

http://www.utcourts.gov/opinions/supopin/Holm051606.pdf

posted by maggie at 3:48 PM | Link |  

Dem Candidates on SSM

From the CNN debate earlier this evening, transcript here:

COOPER: Our next question is on a topic that got a lot of response from YouTube viewers. Let's watch.

QUESTION: Hi. My name is Mary.

QUESTION: And my name is Jen.

QUESTION: And we're from Brooklyn, New York.

If you were elected president of the United States, would you allow us to be married to each other?

COOPER: Congressman Kucinich?

KUCINICH: Mary and Jen, the answer to your question is yes. And let me tell you why.

Because if our Constitution really means what it says, that all are created equal, if it really means what it says, that there should be equality of opportunity before the law, then our brothers and sisters who happen to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender should have the same rights accorded to them as anyone else, and that includes the ability to have a civil marriage ceremony.

Yes, I support you. And welcome to a better and a new America under a President Kucinich administration.

(APPLAUSE)

COOPER: Senator Dodd, you supported the Defense of Marriage Act. What's your position?

DODD: I've made the case, Anderson, that -- my wife and I have two young daughters, age 5 and 2.

I'd simply ask the audience to ask themselves the question that Jackie and I have asked: How would I want my two daughters treated if they grew up and had a different sexual orientation than their parents?

Good jobs, equal opportunity, to be able to retire, to visit each other, to be with each other, as other people do.

So I feel very strongly, if you ask yourself the question, "How would you like your children treated if they had a different sexual orientation than their parents?," the answer is yes. They ought to have that ability in civil unions.

I don't go so far as to call for marriage. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman.

But my state of Connecticut, the state of New Hampshire, have endorsed civil unions. I strongly support that. But I don't go so far as marriage.

COOPER: Governor Richardson?

RICHARDSON: Well, I would say to the two young women, I would level with you -- I would do what is achievable.

What I think is achievable is full civil unions with full marriage rights. I would also press for you a hate crimes act in the Congress. I would eliminate "don't ask/don't tell" in the military.

(APPLAUSE)

If we're going to have in our military men and women that die for this country, we shouldn't give them a lecture on their sexual orientation

I would push for domestic partnership laws, nondiscrimination in insurance and housing.

I would also send a very strong message that, in my administration, I will not tolerate any discrimination on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation.

(APPLAUSE)

COOPER: This next question is for Senator Edwards.

QUESTION: I'm Reverend Reggie Longcrier. I'm the pastor of Exodus Mission and Outreach Church in Hickory, North Carolina.

Senator Edwards said his opposition to gay marriage is influenced by his Southern Baptist background. Most Americans agree it was wrong and unconstitutional to use religion to justify slavery, segregation, and denying women the right to vote.

So why is it still acceptable to use religion to deny gay American their full and equal rights?

(APPLAUSE)

EDWARDS: I think Reverend Longcrier asks a very important question, which is whether fundamentally -- whether it's right for any of our faith beliefs to be imposed on the American people when we're president of the United States. I do not believe that's right.

I feel enormous personal conflict about this issue. I want to end discrimination. I want to do some of the things that I just heard Bill Richardson talking about -- standing up for equal rights, substantive rights, civil unions, the thing that Chris Dodd just talked about. But I think that's something everybody on this stage will commit themselves to as president of the United States.

But I personally have been on a journey on this issue. I feel enormous conflict about it. As I think a lot of people know, Elizabeth spoke -- my wife Elizabeth spoke out a few weeks ago, and she actually supports gay marriage. I do not. But this is a very, very difficult issue for me. And I recognize and have enormous respect for people who have a different view of it.

COOPER: I should also point out that the reverend is actually in the audience tonight. Where is he? Right over here.

Reverend, do you feel he answered your question?

(APPLAUSE)

QUESTION: This question was just a catalyst that promoted some other things that wrapped around that particular question, especially when it comes to fair housing practices. Also...

COOPER: Do you think he answered the question, though?

QUESTION: Not like I would like to have heard it...

(LAUGHTER)

COOPER: What did you not hear?

QUESTION: I didn't quite get -- some people were moving around, and I didn't quite get all of his answer. I just heard...

COOPER: All right, there's 30 seconds more. Why is it OK to quite religious beliefs when talking about why you don't support something? That's essentially what's his question.

EDWARDS: It's not. I mean, I've been asked a personal question which is, I think, what Reverend Longcrier is raising, and that personal question is, do I believe and do I personally support gay marriage?

The honest answer to that is I don't. But I think it is absolutely wrong, as president of the United States, for me to have used that faith basis as a basis for denying anybody their rights, and I will not do that when I'm president of the United States.

(APPLAUSE)

COOPER: Senator Obama, the laws banning interracial marriage in the United States were ruled unconstitutional in 1967. What is the difference between a ban on interracial marriage and a ban on gay marriage?

OBAMA: Well, I think that it is important to pick up on something that was said earlier by both Dennis and by Bill, and that is that we've got to make sure that everybody is equal under the law. And the civil unions that I proposed would be equivalent in terms of making sure that all the rights that are conferred by the state are equal for same-sex couples as well as for heterosexual couples.

Now, with respect to marriage, it's my belief that it's up to the individual denominations to make a decision as to whether they want to recognize marriage or not. But in terms of, you know, the rights of people to transfer property, to have hospital visitation, all those critical civil rights that are conferred by our government, those should be equal.

posted by maggie at 11:25 PM | Link |  

Three Parents? Responses to Elizabeth Marquardt

In today's NYT. An emerging rhetorical theme? Children don't need parents so much as communities of people who love and care for them. . .here
posted by maggie at 9:41 PM | Link |  

HEALTH DAY NEWS PIECE: "FAMILY, MORE THAN GENES, HELPS DRIVE DIVORCE"

[have not read study --Eve]

The propensity toward divorce does not lie mainly in the genes, new research suggests.

An Australian study of twins and their grown children finds that family history plays a key role, however. Adults whose own parents had split had nearly twice the risk of going through a divorce themselves, the researchers found.

But there is no "gene" for divorce, so to speak, said lead researcher Brian M. D'Onofrio, an Indiana University psychologist. "Genetic factors that influence both generations do not [significantly] account for that increased risk," he said.

The findings are published in the August issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

Prior studies have found that a higher percentage of divorced people come from families split by divorce. That raised the question of whether genes, "could account for the increased risk of marital instability in offspring of divorce," D'Onofrio explained. His team is the first "to test out that possibility and, in large part, rule out the role of genetic factors," he said.

The research did not completely eliminate all genetic factors, however. According to D'Onofrio, about 66 percent of the increased risk for divorce appears to stem from the simple fact of a person's parents having been divorced. The remaining 34 percent of the risk seemed to be tied to genetic factors, as well as other factors affecting parents and children.

Also, since the study was conducted in Australia, the results cannot be generalized to the United States, D'Onofrio said. To do that, researchers will need to replicate the results in an American sample -- something his group is already working on.

The study is unique, the researcher said, because it is based on data from more than 2,300 twins, their spouses and their adult offspring. In other words, many of the younger people in the study are actually cousins who are also "genetically half-siblings," because their aunt or uncle shares their parents' genes.

So, to help separate out the effects of genetics from family environment, the Australian team compared the marital success of cousins who grew up in stable families (no divorce) against cousins who came from families split by divorce.

The study still had flaws, one expert said.

One factor that D'Onofrio and his colleagues did not look at in their study was what's known as "assortative mating" -- the tendency of people to marry people like themselves, noted British expert Dr. Stephen Stansfeld, a professor of psychiatry at Barts and The London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry.

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posted by Eve at 12:42 AM | Link |