Gay Hawaiians file suit for equal rights
Six couples represented by Lambda Legal and ACLU filed suit asking for couple recognition and rights.
20 gay weddings in Portugal this year
Few couples have married since Portugal legalized gay unions, but problems have been fixed.
20 gay weddings in Portugal this year
Few couples have married since Portugal legalized gay unions, but problems have been fixed.
Culhane: Pawlenty throws gays under the bus
OK, maybe it’s just because I’ve taught Torts for so long, but an apparently minor development out of Minnesota really has me irked.
First, consider these two stories:
(1) A California woman is mauled to death by vicious dogs, under circumstances so horrific that the owner is convicted of second-degree murder. Her surviving same-sex partner sues under the state’s wrongful death law. Under a strict reading of the statute, she would lose because she doesn’t have “standing” to sue – unlike the deceased woman’s mother, who does have such standing, even though her actual financial and emotional losses are much less. Yet the court allows the claim to proceed anyway, and she collects a large settlement.
(2) A New York couple enters into a civil union in Vermont. Later, one of the men dies because of alleged medical malpractice. Instead of contesting the merits of the suit, the hospital moves to dismiss the claim because the surviving “spouse” isn’t a spouse at all – the civil union doesn’t count. A trial judge allows the case to proceed, but the appellate court holds that the case should have been dismissed.
Since those cases were decided, the laws in both New York and California have been changed to allow “registered” same-sex couples to bring their claims – not necessarily to recover, simply to have the right to try to establish their losses.
These developments had no effect on Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who has just vetoed a bill that would have given surviving members of same-sex couples the right to make decisions about the remains of their partners and the right to sue in wrongful death for negligent acts that resulted in their partners’ demise.
When Pawlenty gave as the reason for his veto that the law was unnecessary because same-sex couples can protect themselves by executing living wills, he was flat wrong – at least as to the wrongful death part of the law.
Some quick background on wrongful death law (more than you’d probably ever want to know): These state laws are designed to provide the survivor with what he or she would have been expected to receive from the deceased: In most states, including Minnesota, damages can include some of the income that the deceased would have been expected to earn (whatever the survivor could have been expected to receive), as well as the loss of emotional support and companionship.
So what’s the problem for same-sex couples? Unlike most of tort law, suits for wrongful death are based not on judge-made (common) law, but on statutes that clearly define who’s eligible to recover. And most of the statutes continue to restrict recovery to certain named classes of survivors: In Minnesota, which is fairly typical in this regard, that’s limited to spouses and “next of kin.”
So why and how did judges in California and New York hold to the contrary? By looking to the purpose of the law, which is to compensate based on real loss, and to make sure that bad conduct is deterred. Since the strict categorical requirements of wrongful death laws frustrate those purposes, judges are tempted to “get creative.”
Given the purposes of the law and what the California judge called the “insurmountable obstacle” that gay and lesbian couples face in these cases – you can’t contract around a statute – why the veto?
Here’s a thought: Pawlenty wants to be President, and has to burnish his social conservative credentials first. So everything becomes a threat, suddenly, to “traditional marriage” – however tangential the message on marriage, and however real the costs to actual people.
Here are a few questions I’d like to ask Gov. Pawlenty.. I’m going to send them to his office (unless a reader living in Minnesota would like to!), but I don’t expect an answer.
“Governor, under the law as it now stands, a murderer would owe nothing to the surviving member of a same-sex couple, even if the deceased provided most of the support for that survivor. Can you explain and justify the policy that permits this result?”
“The result of these statutes is so unfair that judges in other states have ignored their language and looked to the purpose of the law in allowing these claims. Why not simply amend the law to better reflect the compensatory and deterrent purposes of wrongful death law?
“What advice would you give to same-sex couples to protect themselves against this result?
“If the same-sex couple had adopted a child, that child’s future prospects could be negatively and even dramatically affected by her surviving parent’s inability to recover for wrongful death. Why should that child be differently affected than the child of an otherwise identical opposite-sex couple?
“You described the law as “divisive.” Can you explain why this law is any more divisive than the one you signed last year, that prevented jointly owned homes from being sold to pay medical bills when one partner dies?”
Politicians in the Pawlenty mode continue to throw us under both the express and the local bus: Marriage and the puny but necessary baby steps that are necessitated by intransigence on full equality. We must hold him accountable, now and if he seeks the Presidency.
John Culhane is Professor of Law and Director of the Health Law Institute at Widener University School of Law in Wilmington, Delaware. He blogs about the role of law in everyday life, and about a bunch of other things (LGBT rights, public health, sports, pop culture, music philosophy and lots of personal stuff) at: http://wordinedgewise.org. A fuller bio can be found here. He can be reached via email at: johnculhane@comcast.net.
Laura Bush says she supports gay marriage
Former first Lady Laura Bush told Larry King this week [1]that she is in favor of gay marriage – a very different position than her husband, the former president.
She and her husband “disagree” on the issue, she told King.
“There are a lot of people who have trouble coming to terms with [gay marriage] because they see marriage as traditionally between a man and a woman,” she told King. “But I also know that, you know, when couples are committed to each other and love each other, that they ought to have, I think, the same sort of rights that everyone has.”
She added, “I understand totally what George thinks and what other people think about marriage being between a man and a woman. And it’s a real, you know, reversal really for [them] to accept gay marriage,” but she thinks that legalization is coming, she said.
Laura Bush is making the talk show circuit while promoting her memoir “Spoken from the Heart.”
[1] http://larrykinglive.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/12/laura-bush-supports-gay-marriage-abortion/?iref=allsearch
Students rally against Georgia prom decision
Although Georgia high school student Derrick Martin has the okay from school officials to bring his boyfriend to prom, not all his fellow students agree with the move. In fact, some students organized a protest.
Protest organizer Amber Duskin, a senior at Bleckley County High School, sent text messages to her fellow students on Wednesday asking them to show up, according to the Macon Telegraph.
[1]
“I don’t believe in going up there and dancing with gay guys like that,” she told the newspaper. “It’s also not just him bringing a boy. It was bringing all this attention to it.”
And his parents, who dislike the media attention, kicked him out of the house. He is currently staying with friends. Ironically, Martin’s father is a math teacher at Bleckley County High and is the school’s Teacher of the Year.
Martin said Thursday the school is considering abandoning the traditional “walk-through” where couples are announced as they enter the dance. He also said some students discussed having a separate prom.
[1] http://www.365gay.com/wp-content/uploads/news-gay-prom-guys-top.jpg
Monday Watercooler: McCain’s love of pretzels to Ashley’s missing brain cells
All you couples better get to D.C. Want to make your mate an honest woman (or man) and be part of marriage equality history? Then grab a marriage ring and get to Washington, D.C. On March 20 up to 400 couples will be exchanging vows and tying the knot. If …
No gay families in Immigration bill
Setback for multinational couples as bill is introduced; hope for inclusion remains.
No gay families in Immigration bill
Setback for multinational couples as bill is introduced; hope for inclusion remains.
Study says lesbians make better parents
Lesbians make better parents than a man and a woman, according to Stephen Scott, Director of Research, at the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners.
In a meeting hosted by the think tank Demos, Scott said that the latest research showed that children of such couples did better in life, reported UK Daily …
