Neff: In Texas, only gay marriage is til death do they part

Spouses can’t always take that bit about “till death do us part” literally.

And judges and lawyers don’t always take that bit about “till death do us part” literally either. Some dedicate their workdays dissolving such vows.

Yet in some states that don’t recognize same-sex marriages, same-sex marriages could last till death do they part.

Oh, these funny times.

A Dallas man, identified only as J.B. in court papers and the press, is trying to divorce a man he married four years ago in Massachusetts and separated from — amicably enough — two years ago.

J.B. was winning his case for divorce before District Judge Tena Callahan, when the Texas Attorney General tried to intervene and stop the process. It seems that because the state of Texas does not recognize same-sex marriages, the court shouldn’t divorce the two men, according to the AG.

Callahan ruled against the AG, which appealed her decision.

“My client is a married man and he needs a divorce. But for the actions of the attorney general, there would already be one less same-sex marriage in Texas,” attorney Jody Scheske told a three-judge appeals court panel in a hearing last week.

Oh, these funny times.

“The parties lack standing to file a divorce because they are not married. If you are not party to a marriage, you cannot file for a divorce,” an assistant Texas solicitor general argued last week before the federal appeals court.

The assistant Texas solicitor general said, the court should “void” the union not divorce the men.

An annulment, then, is Texas’ preferred alternative to a gay couple’s divorce.

Oh, these funny times.

The stakes in this Texas case are considerable, because in finding that she has standing to hear the gay man’s request for a divorce, Callahan also found that Texas’ 2005 constitutional amendment that defines marriage exclusively as a union between a man and a woman violates the right to equal protection and therefore violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Had the Texas Attorney General not tried to intervene and block the court from hearing the divorce case, the district court judge might not have deemed the anti-gay amendment unconstitutional. We don’t know really. Callahan might have taken up the constitutional issue, or she simply might have granted the divorce.

Attorneys for J.B. say they didn’t want a constitutional fight or a federal case — just a divorce for their client.

“My client’s very private matter has become a public spectacle,” Scheske told the court last week.

Oh, these funny times.

J.B., seeking to end his marriage, is at the forefront of a legal dispute that could tear down a ban against gay marriage in Texas.

And opponents of gay marriage are worried, which is why the Plano-based right-wing Liberty Institute argued alongside the attorney general against what it called “judicial activism at it’s worst.”

Opposing J.B.’s divorce, Liberty Institute attorney Hiram Sasser said a gay divorce is an attack on same-sex marriage.

Oh, these funny times.

And Sasser, who said he represented the two authors of the anti-gay amendment that 76 percent of Texas voters supported in 2005, cited Bill Clinton in his defense of the Texas ban and his opposition to the gay couple’s divorce.

Clinton signed the federal Defense of Marriage Act that allowed states to refuse to honor another state’s same-sex marriage and defined marriage at the federal level as the union of one man and one woman.

“I think President Clinton said it best when he said we have to honor the decisions of the states,” Sasser said.

The former president, however, has said that his position on same-sex marriage is evolved and he “didn’t like signing DOMA.”

Oh, these funny times.

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

Miami New Times

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Landmark rulings strengthen gay rights in UK workplace

Discrimination against gay people in the workplace will be treated more harshly by the courts after two landmark judgments yesterday.

Lillian Ladele, the registrar who refused to conduct same-sex civil partnership ceremonies “as a matter of religious conscience”, lost her case against Islington council in north London. And Stephen English, a married man who was driven out of his job after being repeatedly called a “faggot” by colleagues had an employment tribunal ruling that he had not been the victim of sexual harassment overturned by the court of appeal.

The employment appeal tribunal ruled that Islington council had been entitled to discipline Ladele and threaten her with dismissal, even though her conduct was the result of “her strong and genuinely held Christian beliefs”.

The council had been entitled to the view that “it was unacceptable discrimination for the claimant to refuse to participate in civil partnership ceremonies. It offended some gay employees and involved discriminating against third parties making use of the services of the council.” Although the tribunal acknowledged that changes in social attitudes towards gay people could be “genuinely perplexing” for some religious groups, it ruled that it was proportionate for the council to require its registrars to conduct civil partnerships. Ladele, whose case was financed by the Christian Institute’s Legal Defence Fund, said she would appeal.

See Landmark rulings strengthen gay rights in workplace
guardian.co.uk, UK