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Obama was courting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender voters, he said that he believed that DOMA should be repealed.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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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/06/lgbt-legal-an…
California legal chief calls for end to gay marriage ban
California’s top lawyer has called for the result of a referendum effectively banning same-sex marriage to be quashed, two days ahead of the latest court-room showdown over the issue.
Attorney General Jerry Brown said the ballot measure known as Proposition 8, which redefined marriage in California as a union between a man and a woman, should be invalidated because it “discriminates against same-sex couples.”
On Thursday, supporters of same-sex marriage are to go before California’s Supreme Court in San Francisco to argue for the ballot measure to be invalidated in the latest twist to the long-running legal battle.
Brown said Tuesday the Supreme Court should strike down the measure on the grounds that same-sex couples had an “inalienable” right to marry that should not be allowed to be taken away by a simple majority vote.
He compared the current dispute to a case in 1964, where the California and US Supreme Courts quashed a voter measure that would have allowed racial discrimination in renting or selling of property.
See California legal chief calls for end to gay marriage ban
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/california-le…
State supreme courts to rule in gay marriage cases
(San Francisco, California) Supreme courts this year will rule on cases involving same-sex marriage in Iowa and California.
The Iowa case involves the constitutionality of limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples, while the one in California centers around Proposition 8, the voter-approved amendment to the state constitution that bars same-sex marriage.
In May, …
