Same-Sex Marriage & the Family

New England has been at the center of the debate over granting marriage rights and responsibilities to same-sex couples.

Vermont became the first state in the nation to grant those rights in 2000 when it adopted civil unions. Four years later, Massachusetts became the first state to give gay and lesbian couples full marriage rights.

And last year, Connecticut’s Supreme Court determined that civil unions didn’t go far enough and ordered marriage, instead.

As part of annual Law Day observances, on April 30, 2009, Dartmouth College invited a lawyer and three Supreme Court justices who have participated in these decisions to talk about rulings from their respective courts.

The panelists are: Beth Robinson, a Middlebury lawyer who argued the Vermont case; retired Vermont Supreme Court Justice James Morse; Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justice Robert Cordy; and Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Joette Katz.

See Same-Sex Marriage & the Family
Vermont Public Radio – Colchester,VT,USA

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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/same-sex-marr…

Connecticut gay group disbands

(Hartford, Connecticut) Saying its work is done, a Connecticut gay rights group will disband at the end of the year.

For a decade Love Makes A Family fought for adoption rights for gay and lesbian couples and for same-sex marriage rights in the state.

Last year, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that …

Same-sex marriage doesn’t cost justices

Unfolding in the state Senate today: a proxy battle over same-sex marriage.

The Senate just reconfirmed three justices of the Connecticut Supreme Court, all of whom were among the five-member majority in Kerrigan v. Department of Public Health, which ruled the state’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional.

There were objections to the justices from some Republicans, with many citing concerns about what they view as relative loose constructionism in interpretation of the state Constitution. But there wasn’t enough to make a difference.

Associate Justices Flemming L. Norcott Jr., Joette Katz and Richard N. Palmer were all confirmed by the same vote total: 28-7, with one senator absent. (The missing senator is Sen. Thomas Gaffey, D-Meriden, who has been absent from the Capitol since the death of his teenage son earlier this month.)

This conclusion isn’t hugely surprising. Senators don’t toss out Supreme Court justices all that often.

And the rumors of some grave comeuppance for those who support same-sex marriage have been, like those of Twain’s death, greatly exaggerated. Lobbying efforts to open the state constitution to a new convention (and thus to direct-initiative lawmaking and a gay marriage ban) or to unseat the pro-marriage chairmen of the Judiciary Committee have come up short.

See Same-sex marriage doesn’t cost justices
TheDay – New London,CT,USA