Russian court rules against lesbian couple
(Moscow) A Moscow court on Tuesday ruled against two lesbians seeking to become Russia’s first legally married gay couple.
Irina Fedotova-Fet and Irina Shipitko said the Tverskoi District Court upheld a decision by the city’s civil registry that said Russian law defined marriage as between a woman and a man.
“We want …
Tags: Fet, Gay Couple, Irina, Lesbian Couple, Lesbians, marriage, Married Couple, Moscow Court, Russia, Russian Court, Russian Law, Russian Lesbian, Russian Marriage, Woman And A ManHuman Rights Campaign Calls on the LGBT Community and Allies to Participate in National, Grassroots Push to Lobby Congress Face-to-Face
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, today launched a national, grassroots campaign called “No Excuses” to demand action from Congress on key issues of equality. Designed to take advantage of the congressional summer recess, when members are in their local offices and meeting with constituents, “No Excuses” will mobilize HRC’s 750,000 members and their allies to meet directly with lawmakers and push for federal legislative change. Members and supporters can get involved by visiting: http://noexcuses.hrc.org.
“While we salute and acknowledge the heroic members of Congress who have worked tirelessly on our behalf, far too many have dragged their feet on basic matters of fairness and equality that have lingered too long and hurt too many LGBT people and their families,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “Yes, there are many challenges facing this Congress and this president. But LGBT people often face additional hardship protecting their families, their loved ones and their jobs, and too few in Congress are willing to champion these issues of basic fairness. Now, more than ever, members of the LGBT community need to make their voices heard face-to-face and in the districts where they live.”
Using innovative online tools, one-on-one trainings and staff and volunteer follow-through, HRC members will press lawmakers to end discrimination in the military, treat all legally married couples equally, pass immigration reform that recognizes and honors LGBT families, outlaw workplace discrimination for LGBT employees, and treat all federal employees’ compensation equally.
The interactive “No Excuses” website allows supporters to download a meeting toolkit, schedule a meeting and report back on how it went. To take action, visit: http://noexcuses.hrc.org.
The in-district meetings will focus on the following key legislative priorities in the 111th Congress:
–Repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which denies legally married lesbian and gay couples more than 1,000 federal protections;
–Prohibit workplace discrimination for the LGBT community by passing an inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA);
–Repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to ensure that service members who contribute to our nation’s security are no longer summarily discharged for who they are;
–Pass immigration reform that recognizes permanent same-sex couples and ends the painful separation of families;
–And provide health benefits equally to the nearly 3 million federal government employees, including same-sex domestic partners.
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Gay spouses to get AAA discounts Florida Times-Union -
AAA Auto Club South will now allow same-sex married couples to receive spousal discounts under AAA’s Associate Membership program, a rights group that advocates for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people announced Thursday.
The company met with members of Equality Florida on Wednesday after the group received calls from gay couples who had been denied family memberships.
“Our policy does include gay and lesbian spouses, wherever they were married. Whether in other states or countries, they qualify,” said Tom O’Brien, president and chief executive officer of AAA Auto Club South, in a statement.
Gay marriage is not legal in Florida but has been approved in other states.
See Gay spouses to get AAA discounts
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Lawsuit Challenges Wis. Domestic Partnership Law
Social conservatives asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday to strike down the state’s new domestic partnership law, saying it violates a constitutional ban on gay marriage.
The lawsuit, filed by three members of Wisconsin Family Action, acknowledges the court will not have time to act before the law goes into effect next month but says justices should halt registrations as soon as possible.
Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle signed the law in the state budget last month. Starting Aug. 3, same-sex couples can register with counties to receive dozens of the same legal protections as married couples, including the right to inherit assets, make hospital visits and take medical leave to care for an ill partner.
Wisconsin became the first Midwestern state to enact legal protections for same-sex couples through the Legislature. It also became the first nationwide to allow domestic partnerships despite having a ban on gay marriage and any “substantially similar” relationships. See Lawsuit Challenges Wis. Domestic Partnership Law WCCO
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Humpday Isn’t Really About Gay Sex
Lynn Shelton’s Humpday, a sexual sitcom, opens with a pair of breeders in bed. A youngish married couple, Ben (mumblecordeon Mark Duplass) and Anna (Alycia Delmore), confess they’re too tired to procreate that night and then confess their mutual relief. As if in response, the doorbell rings at 2 a.m. and Ben’s long-lost college buddy, Andrew (Blair Witch Project survivor Joshua Leonard), stumbles in from deepest Mexico. Anna, who has never had the pleasure, watches the unexpected bromantic action with grim incredulity. Aggressively loud, demonstrative, and hairy, Andrew is a credible representation of Ben’s id.
Reuniting an uptight married man with a footloose old pal, Shelton’s third feature offers a (much) more extreme version of Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy, also a sort of buddy movie, also shot in the Pacific Northwest. In this case, the lost weekend is steeped in sexual anxiety. Friday night, Ben has to retrieve merry Andrew from a house called “Dionysus” — home to a bi cutie (the director herself) and an omnisexual assortment of roisterers. No orgies, but plenty of stoned dancing. Anna, who has prepared her signature pork chop dinner, sits home alone. She stews; Ben gets stewed. Prompted by news of an amateur porn festival — sponsored by a local alt-weekly — Ben finds himself proposing to costar with showoff Andrew in a mad art project, dude-on-dude action, totally straight, yet somewhere “beyond gay.” Maybe they’ll be famous. The only problem: Just who is going to bone whom?
Having thus invested its protagonists in a game of “chicken,” played to justify their respective life choices, Humpday delivers some excellent situation comedy. The scene where Andrew and Anna have a get-acquainted drink and Andrew inadvertently exposes Ben’s boastful lie that his wife has signed off on their “project” is pure Honeymooners. (Bang, zoom, straight to the moon!) Ben can’t tell Anna why he wants to have sex with Andrew, only that it’s very, very important to him. And, terrified that Ben might think he really did have a yen, Andrew can only sigh, “I wish I was more gay.” Of course. Just as Brüno is more of a comment on celebrity culture than the love (or hate) that dare not speak its name, Humpday is actually less a queer comedy than a satiric view of macho. Appreciative as Shelton may be of her dudes, she has another agenda. Each in his own way, the guys have been freaked by a manifestation of assertive female sexuality — although the term “pussy-whipped” is never used.
See Humpday Isn’t Really About Gay Sex
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Census study of gay married couples finds similarities to husband-and-wife couples
Marriage — whether you are gay or straight — may be the great common denominator among American households, according to a new government study that offers a first-ever look at the nation’s same-sex couples who say they are spouses. Married men and women average about 50 years old, and about four in 10 have kids living at home. The average couple pulls down a little over $90,000 a year and four in five own their home. That demographic portrait doesn’t just fit the nation’s 56 million husband-and-wife couples. It also closely fits the roughly 340,000 households where two men call themselves husbands, or two women consider themselves wives. In the midst of the nation’s widening debate over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, the U.S. Census Bureau has quietly completed a statistical portrait of U.S. lesbian and gay couples who describe themselves as married. With same-sex marriage likely to be legal in as many as six states by Jan. 1, the study could add another layer to the debate. Many of those gay and lesbian couples live in states where they cannot legally marry, and may be checking the spouse box on their census form to reflect a domestic partnership, a civil union or partnership where two lives have been merged into one household.
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Gay marriage law’s impact on Iowans subtle, yet powerful DesMoinesRegister.com -Gay marriage law’s impact on Iowans subtle, yet powerful
The April marriage ruling hasn’t enticed Jean and George Huffey’s two gay children to move back to Iowa from Wisconsin and Indiana, as the two parents had hoped.
Not many same-sex couples have relocated here in the two short months since the Iowa Supreme Court ruled on April 3 that both gay and straight couples have equal rights to marriage, anecdotal evidence suggests.
“It’s going to take time,” said Des Moines real estate agent Mindi McCoy, who had two same-sex clients from New York City look at properties, then decide against purchasing. “We’re still in kind of this honeymoon stage, no pun intended.”
Gay culture is sharply in focus this weekend as thousands gather to celebrate at the Capital City PrideFest in Des Moines. The Des Moines Register interviewed dozens of gays and lesbians to identify early trends since the first marriages took place April 27, including the effects on the ease of coming out of the closet, family relationships, religion, business, politics and the underground gay sex scene.
The changes in Iowa since the ruling are subtle but powerful to the individuals affected, according to both advocates and opponents.
Same-sex married couples who live here said they are already experiencing firsthand how Iowa law still treats them differently from opposite-sex couples.
Of the hundreds of same-sex Iowa couples who are now married - no state agency tracks the number of same-sex unions - some said they feel less guarded about holding hands or sharing a kiss in certain public settings.
“At your job, you don’t feel like you can’t have a picture of you and your partner up,” said Des Moines resident Justin De Vries.
Marriage seems to have been embraced mainly by same-sex couples with a history together: five years, a decade, 20 years or more. Some faith leaders have committed acts of quiet rebellion to marry them, even as their churches remain locked in debate over same-sex weddings.
“People are taking this as a very serious issue,” said Sharon Malheiro, a Des Moines lawyer. Couples are asking: ” ‘If we get married, what will the impact be? What are our obligations to each other?’ They’re not being nonchalant about it.”
See Gay marriage law’s impact on Iowans subtle, yet powerful
DesMoinesRegister.com -
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Obama Admin References Incest, Child Rape in DOMA Defense
Obama defends DOMA in federal court. Says banning gay marriage is good for the federal budget. Invokes incest and marrying children.
At AMERICABlogs, John Aravosis writes:
“despicable, and gratuitously homophobic. It reads as if it were written by one of George Bush’s top political appointees. I cannot state strongly enough how damaging this brief is to us. Obama didn’t just argue a technicality about the case, he argued that DOMA is reasonable. That DOMA is constitutional. That DOMA wasn’t motivated by any anti-gay animus. He argued why our Supreme Court victories in Roemer and Lawrence shouldn’t be interpreted to give us rights in any other area (which hurts us in countless other cases and battles). He argued that DOMA doesn’t discriminate against us because it also discriminates about straight unmarried couples (ignoring the fact that they can get married and we can’t).He actually argued that the courts shouldn’t consider Loving v. Virginia, the miscegenation case in which the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to ban interracial marriages, when looking at gay civil rights cases. He told the court, in essence, that blacks deserve more civil rights than gays, that our civil rights are not on the same level.”
See Obama Admin Defends Federal Gay Marriage Ban In Court Filing
References Incest, Child Rape… DOJ Defends
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LGBT Legal And Advocacy Groups Decry Obama Administration’s Defense of DOMA
We disagree with many of the administration’s arguments, for example, that DOMA is a valid exercise of Congress’s power, is consistent with Equal Protection or Due Process principles, and does not impinge upon rights that are recognized as fundamental.
We are also extremely disturbed by a new and nonsensical argument the administration has advanced suggesting that the federal government needs to be “neutral” with regard to its treatment of married same-sex couples in order to ensure that federal tax money collected from across the country not be used to assist same-sex couples duly married by their home states. There is nothing “neutral” about the federal government’s discriminatory denial of fair treatment to married same-sex couples: DOMA wrongly bars the federal government from providing any of the over one thousand federal protections to the many thousands of couples who marry in six states. This notion of “neutrality” ignores the fact that while married same-sex couples pay their full share of income and social security taxes, they are prevented by DOMA from receiving the corresponding same benefits that married heterosexual taxpayers receive. It is the married same-sex couples, not heterosexuals in other parts of the country, who are financially and personally damaged in significant ways by DOMA. For the Obama administration to suggest otherwise simply departs from both mathematical and legal reality.
When President Obama was courting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender voters, he said that he believed that DOMA should be repealed. We ask him to live up to his emphatic campaign promises, to stop making false and damaging legal arguments, and immediately to introduce a bill to repeal DOMA and ensure that every married couple in America has the same access to federal protections.
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Many domestic partners face deadline to reduce property tax hikes
Many gays, lesbians and seniors who registered their domestic partnerships in the early part of this decade were later hit with huge property-tax reassessments after their partners died or they broke off their relationships.
But they have until the end of this month to get those increases reversed.
The reversals are available to individuals who registered as domestic partners before Jan. 1, 2006, but were slapped with property tax hikes when their relationships ended or their partners died. The increases occurred because under laws enacted before 2006, couples in domestic partnerships were not treated like married couples when it came to property reassessment.
“I’ve known a number of people who had to give up their property because a partner died,” said longtime lesbian activist Wiggsy Sivertsen, a counselor and sociology professor at San Jose State University.
Under a 2007 law sponsored by Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, the reassessments can be reversed. But time is running out: Forms must be filed at county assessors’ offices by June 30.
Three years ago, domestic partners in California obtained the same property-tax rights as married people. But the new law was not retroactive, so gay and straight domestic partners who registered from Jan. 1, 2000, to Dec. 31, 2005, were treated differently from those who registered afterward. See Many domestic partners face deadline to reduce property tax hikes
San Jose Mercury News
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