Freeheld

THE GIST: Laurel is a very committed policewoman who keeps her relationship to Stacie a secret for fear of reprisals. They are registered domestic partners, but when Laurel is diagnosed with cancer she's told that Stacie won't be able to inherit her pension like a heterosexual couple would, so she sturdily sets her mind to fix the issue.

Freeheld is a heartwrenching story that was all too common just a few years ago, when same-sex couples in the US were not granted the rights and privileges that heterosexual couples automatically got by simply getting married.

Julianne Moore and Ellen Page are fantastic in their roles and the characters they breathe life into are simply wonderful. Michael Shannon, Steve Carell, and Josh Charles also star.

THE BOTTOM LINE: A good movie to watch to get a sense of what inequality means for the LGBT+ community. The laws have changed and fortunately we are allowed to get married now, but a lot of the prejudices and mistreatments displayed on screen are still very much present all over the country, unfortunately.

Grade: 8

Homophobia Social Experiment

Three friends decided to see how widespread homophobia is with an experiment. Watch:

There's still hope for the future...

From Raw Story.

The Dangers of Simply Being Who You Are

From Towleroad, a stark reminder of what we all still face out there even in those places where we think we might be safe:

This Is What Homophobia Looks Like

For anyone who ever wondered why gays and lesbians are always "complaining" about being treated unfairly and being the target of hateful rhetoric, this video from Towleroad should be illuminating:

Equality

I saw this video and had to repost it. It's raw and very emotional, but it succinctly corrals all of the ridiculous, irrational, risible, and plain offensive reasons that all of the bigots out there give for hating us so much.

It packs a wallop, but it's a must-see:

"The progress of humankind"

From Towleroad, a wonderful example of what it means to have progressive, understanding, and reasonable people in power:

Thank you Mr. Vice President.

"Sexual Orientation Discrimination is Sex Discrimination"

That's the position the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) took in urging a federal court to rule in favor of a lesbian in her lawsuit against her former employer (emphasis mine):

In yet another step toward protecting LGBT people against job discrimination, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is urging a federal appeals court to rule in favor of a lesbian who claims she was fired by a Florida college because she married a woman.

Seal of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The EEOC filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief Wednesday in the case of Barbara Burrows (right), whose lawsuit against the College of Central Florida was dismissed by a trial court judge in 2014. In its brief at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the EEOC argues that even though neither Florida nor federal law explicitly prohibits anti-LGBT employment discrimination, Burrows is protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

Title VII prohibits discrimination based on sex, and the EEOC wrote that “sexual orientation discrimination is sex discrimination, and such sex discrimination violates Title VII,” according to BuzzFeed News. 

“The district court’s treatment of sexual orientation discrimination as distinct from sex discrimination is untenable and based on a fundamentally flawed premise,” the EEOC wrote. “Thus, the district court erred in peremptorily concluding that any claim relating to sexual orientation must fall outside the protection of Title VII.”

From Towleroad.

The Queen of Ireland Has a Message for the World

Sometimes you find wisdom and wits in the unlikeliest of places:

How Safe Is It To Be Out in 2015?

Apparently not that much if you’re looking for a job.  Watch this:

From Towleroad.

The Idiocy of Anti-LGBT Bigots

Watch this video from The Daily Show.  It perfectly puts in perspective how ridiculous the religious right’s arguments that they are persecuted by LGBTs are and shines a light on their desperation for predominance over a culture and a nation that is (hopefully) slowly leaving them behind in the past:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

#TruthTrending

If you happen to hear some fervent believer railing against marriage equality and how the LGBT minority is victimizing them, point them to this excellent video:

From Towleroad.

Title VII Covers Sexual Orientation

That’s what the EEOC (Equal Election Opportunity Commission) ruled last week and it’s a big fraking deal.  From Towleroad (emphasis mine):

The EEOC’s job is to stop employment discrimination and to hold companies accountable when they do discriminate.

On Friday, in a 3-2 party-line ruling, the Commission held that discrimination against gay persons violates Title VII’s ban on discrimination on the basis of sex. This is potentially groundbreaking: until Friday, there was no federal law protecting gay workers if they are discriminated against because they are gay, and although only the Supreme Court can issue a definitive ruling on the subject, the EEOC’s view is given substantial weight by [federal] courts. Plus, the decision may influence state courts on the matter, as well. Still, this huge step forward is unstable: We still have work to do to ensure that sexual orientation discrimination protections are codified in both state and federal laws.

And this is the very simple explanation for the logic behind the ruling:

Title VII, part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, bans discrimination “on the basis of sex.” An employer cannot, for example, treat women different than men. Nor can they allow people to behave in a way that creates an environment hostile to women because they are women.

How discrimination “on the basis of sex” also covers discrimination of gays is pretty simple: discrimination against gays only occurs because of the victim’s gender. That is because the status of someone being gay or lesbian is defined relative to the person he or she loves. I am gay because I love a man; if I were a woman, I would be heterosexual and, thus, not the subject of anti-gay discrimination. Consider this example: Sam works for Big Corp. Last Sunday, Sam married Patrick and their announcement was in the New York Times. Today, Sam is fired because Sam is short for Samuel. If Sam were short for Samantha, he wouldn’t be fired. […]

Notably, this interpretation of Title VII is on top of a decades-old interpretation that Title VII bans gender expression discrimination. […]

And since the EEOC is the agency in charge of interpreting and implementing Title VII, the experts in the field, so to speak, its rulings are generally given significant deference by any court of law.

This is very good news and a good start, but it really only applies to federal employees for now, and gays and lesbians can still be discriminated against in areas like housing and education.

What we really still need is comprehensive anti-gay discrimination legislation at the federal level, but with the GOP in control of Congress that won’t happen anytime soon.

Equal. At Last.

As anyone not living under a rock knows by now, the US Supreme Court declared on June 26 that gay and lesbian American citizens have a constitutional right to marriage like any other American citizen protected by the US constitution.

The ruling, hailed by all human beings of sound mind and willing to see the injustice of treating a segment of the population differently for no reasonable cause, was vituperated by the 4 justices in dissent and by those religious fanatics who love to cherry-pick what parts of their religious texts should be followed to the letter and which can be partially or fully ignored.

Justice Anthony Kennedy joined the 4 justices that make up the liberal wing of the Supreme Court and in so doing wrote the last chapter of his legacy regarding the defense and recognition of all gay and lesbian people.

From his ruling:

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.”

Read this passage again: “Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

I cannot see any flaws in his entire logic and I want to thank Justice Kennedy for rallying once more to our defense and giving us, finally, the equality we so desired and deserved.  Thank you Sir.

From Vox:

A few passages from Towleroad’s Ari Waldman:

The Supreme Court’s opinion guaranteeing the freedom to marry for gay persons is a Kennedy-esque take on Mary Bonauto’s brief. It vindicates almost every argument the marriage equality movement has been making for some time and squashes the grasping anti-equality rejoinders. It is a complete victory for the LGBT community, and one that reflects the jurisprudence of the man that is the undisputed leader of gay rights at the Court.

It is not a matter of gays wishing to marry other gays. It is a matter of “a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons … to define and express their identity.”

As Justice Kennedy stated later in the opinion when discussing the history of marriage jurisprudence at the Supreme Court, previous cases were all about marriage, generally:

Loving [v. Virginia] did not ask about a “right to interracial marriage”; Turner [v. Safley] did not ask about a “right of inmates to marry”; and Zablocki [v. Redhail] did not ask about a “right of fathers with unpaid child support duties to marry.” Rather, each case inquired about the right to marry in its comprehensive sense, asking if there was a sufficient justification for excluding the relevant class from the right.

Obergefell was just the next case in that long line of cases that recognized the importance of two persons joining together in a powerful, mutually and socially beneficial enduring union of love.

The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning. When new insight reveals discord between the Constitution’s central protections and a received legal stricture, a claim to liberty must be addressed.

Gay persons may not have been at the forefront of the Framers’ minds, but the Constitution that they wrote is as applicable to gays as it is to the men of 1789.

The marriage right is fundamental because the two-person marriage union is unique, essential, and “important to committed individuals.” It would be unfair to let the liberty of gay persons stop at Lawrence, which only guaranteed a gay person’s right to express himself intimately with whomever he chooses. That case decriminalized homosexuality in practice, but turned us merely from “outlaws to outcasts,” unable to enjoy the full benefits and liberties guaranteed us under the Constitution as gay persons. Those liberties ensure that we can do more than just have sex with someone of the same sex. They ensure we can marry the one we love.

In teasing out these lessons, Justice Kennedy vindicated almost every substantive argument from the marriage equality side. Marriage, he wrote, was not about children, but rather “through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality. This is true for all persons, whatever their sexual orientation.” Gay persons are the same as everyone else when it comes to wanting the same fulfillment out of the institution of marriage. And, therefore, preventing gays from marrying is both a violation of a fundamental right to marry–as evident from framing the question in the case as about a “right to marry” and the many Supreme Court cases that followed–and equal protection.

Essentially, Kennedy has erected a form of heightened scrutiny without the group classifications: marriage is a fundamental right under the Due Process Clause; gays are banned from it, but gays are equal in the eyes of the law; there is no justification for discriminating against a similarly situated group on such an important, essential guarantee.

When violations of fundamental rights are at stake, individuals need not wait endlessly for votes and legislatures to deign to grant them the rights the Constitution has always guaranteed them.

Finally, a moving recap of the path to equality from Freedom To Marry:

And the White House reaction:

Holy Alabama!!

Alabama has officially become US state #37 with marriage equality, but it’s the one where it’s being fought out the most.  Like in many other states in the past few months, a federal district judge ruled Alabama’s constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage to be in violation of the US Constitution, and therefore struck it down.

The ruling was condemned by the state’s Republican governor and attorney general, who filed an appeal, but their requests for a hold were not heeded by either the Appeals Court nor the US Supreme Court and so marriage equality began this past Monday.

However, the Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court ordered the probate judges not to obey the ruling and to refuse to issue marriage certificates to same-sex couples!!  The nerve.

Not all have followed his orders fortunately, and marriage equality spread through the state, but in many counties judges are refusing to issue licenses to same-sex couples or to all couples, just to avoid being called homophobic bigots.  Well, guess what, you’re homophobic bigots and you’re breaking the law.  I hope they get reprimanded, fined, and even jailed if they keep this up for long.

Anyway, welcome Alabama!!

And this is what the marriage equality map looks like right now:

Link.

The Great Expansion

Because of the huge seismic shockwave, I wanted to wait until the waters had settled and the picture was clearer, which it now is.

On October 6th, 2014, the United States Supreme Court denied review of seven cases from three Appellate Courts (Fourth, Seventh, and Tenth) upholding lower Federal District Courts that had struck down anti gay marriage constitutional amendments in five states (Utah, Oklahoma, Virginia, Indiana, and Wisconsin) under their jurisdictions, thereby letting those judgments stand.

Furthermore, because Appellate Courts judgments apply to all the states in their respective circuits, the list of progressive states didn’t just go up by four but by eleven!!  Although some states more than others were dragged into the club kicking and screaming and not before a flurry of last-minute appeals to the Supreme Court that were quickly rejected.

Following are the new states were gays and lesbians can now legally marry thanks to the Supreme Court “inaction”:

From the Fourth Circuit a warm welcome to:

• North Carolina
• South Carolina
• Virginia
• West Virginia
  

From the Seventh Circuit a warm welcome to:

• Indiana
• Wisconsin
  

From the Tenth Circuit a warm welcome to:

• Colorado
• Kansas
• Oklahoma
• Utah
• Wyoming

But that’s not all!!  The day after the Supreme Court’s decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals released its decision in favor of striking down constitutional amendments banning gay marriage in Idaho and Nevada.  Their ruling, as it were, applies to all the states in the circuit, which happens to be the largest in the nation.

Given that the Ninth Circuit had previously determined (the only one to date) that the use of heightened scrutiny is warranted when dealing with litigation involving gay and lesbian minorities, a positive outcome for our side was widely expected, and the Supreme Courts’ decision a day earlier simply made it that much more likely.

So just like that, five more states, again, some more willingly than others…, joined the list of marriage equality:

• Alaska
• Arizona
• Idaho
• Montana
• Nevada

We now stand at 35 out of 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, enjoying marriage equality, and while recently the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeal ruled against us, I am more than hopeful that nationwide marriage equality will soon be the law of the land in the land of the free!!

Here’s what the US map looks like right now in regards to marriage equality, courtesy of Freedom to Marry:

More here and here.

New Additions!

Time flies and albeit late to the game I want to congratulate the 2 new states that have joined the club of the progressives:

A passage from the openly gay judge who ruled in the case:

Generations of Americans, my own included, were raised in a world in which homosexuality was believed to be a moral perversion, a mental disorder, or a mortal sin. I remember that one of the more popular playground games of my childhood was called "smear the queer" and it was played with great zeal and without a moment’s thought to today’s political correctness. On a darker level, that same worldview led to an environment of cruelty, violence, and self-loathing. It was but 1986 when the United States Supreme Court justified, on the basis of a "millennia of moral teaching," the imprisonment of gay men and lesbian women who engaged in consensual sexual acts. Even today I am reminded of the legacy that we have bequeathed today’s generation when my son looks dismissively at the sweater I bought him for Christmas and, with a roll of his eyes, says "Dad… that is so gay."

From Towleroad:

Judge John Jones III (above, right), a George W. Bush appointee, was not to be outdone by Judge McShane's lyrical and personal approach to the case. To Judge Jones, bans on same-sex marriage, whether they be constitutional provisions or statutes (Oregon had a constitutional amendment; Pennsylvania just had a law), are the worst of us and not worthy of our traditions and our future.

The decision was a broad one, covering equal protection and due process. Judge Jones even called for the application of heightened scrutiny in an equal protection analysis when antigay discrimination is at issue.

But one of the opinion's final lines struck me as too simple, at best:
In the sixty years since Brown [v. Board of Education] was decided, "separate" has thankfully faded into history, and only "equal" remains.

The count now stands at 19 (plus DC) states FOR marriage equality.

That almost half the number of states is now firmly on our side is truly remarkable and with pending litigation in all the remaining 31, it’s only a matter of time before the whole country has marriage equality.

We’re now at 17!

The New Mexico Supreme Court has just ruled unanimously in favor of gay marriage, making it the 17th state to offer equal rights to all its citizens.

From Towleroad:

We conclude that the purpose of New Mexico marriage laws is to bring stability and order to the legal relationship of committed couples by defining their rights and responsibilities as to one another, their children if they choose to raise children together, and their property.

Prohibiting same-gender marriages is not substantially related to the governmental interests advanced by the parties opposing same-gender marriage or to the purposes we have identified. Therefore, barring individuals from marrying and depriving them of the rights, protections, and responsibilities of civil marriage solely because of their sexual orientation violates the Equal Protection Clause under Article II, Section 18 of the New Mexico Constitution.

We hold that the State of New Mexico is constitutionally required to allow same-gender couples to marry and must extend to them the rights, protections, and responsibilities that derive from civil marriage under New Mexico law.

Three More Join the Fold

I know I’m late with this post but the news just kept pouring in and I’ve been very busy with work and life…

Anyway, three more states have joined the marriage equality club, New Jersey (via court ruling), Illinois and Hawaii (both legislatively).

 

From CNN:

As Hawaii and Illinois join the list of states approving same-sex marriage, the United States crosses a big mark on the issue: More than 1 in 3 Americans will live where same-sex marriage is legal.

It's a dramatic shift in a short period of time -- one not seen on other social issues.

Great news indeed.

England and Wales

Yesterday, Queen Elizabeth II signed into law same-sex legislation that made gay marriage legal in England and Wales:

With little fanfare or controversy, Britain announced Wednesday that Queen Elizabeth II — hardly a social radical — had signed into law a bill legalizing same-sex marriages in England and Wales.

Official word that the queen had approved the bill drew cheers in the usually sedate House of Commons.

“This is a historic moment that will resonate in many people’s lives,” Equalities Minister Maria Miller said in a statement. “I am proud that we have made it happen and I look forward to the first same sex wedding by next summer.”

There were British political figures and religious leaders vehemently opposed to gay marriage but the opposition never reached a fever pitch, in part because the same-sex marriage bill had broad public support and the backing of the leaders of the three major political parties. In fact, it was Prime Minister David Cameron, leader of the tradition-minded Conservatives, who proposed the legislation in the first place.

The public seemed to take it for granted that gay marriage should be a part of British life. It was perhaps a sign of how Britain has evolved in past decades into a much more cosmopolitan nation than its starchy, traditionalist image would suggest.

“The opposition seemed restricted to a very small number of people very vigorous in their views,” said Stephen Fielding, a political scientist at the University of Nottingham. “It was restricted to the back benchers of the Conservative Party. It wasn’t shared across the political spectrum. It was an issue whose time had come. To oppose it seemed slightly strange.”

The law was also written in a way that allowed the Church of England — which is opposed — to sidestep the controversy since it is explicitly barred from conducting same-sex marriages.

(From The Washington Post)

The Death of Prop 8 and DOMA

On June 26 2013, the United States Supreme Court handed gays and lesbians their biggest victories in a decade by striking down Article 3 of DOMA, which allowed the federal government to ignore all legal same-sex marriages performed in the country, and by dismissing the proponents of Proposition 8 (California’s Constitutional Amendment that blocked gay marriage in 2008 after a brief period during which it was legal) for lack of standing.

In a nutshell, after the California Supreme Court unanimously declared gay marriage legal in the state effective immediately, gays and lesbians started to marry while our opponents started gathering the signatures to pass a Constitutional amendment to limit marriage to heterosexual partners.  They succeeded in November 2008 when same-sex marriages were blocked.

Soon after, AFER (American Foundation for Equal Rights) sued the state to overturn Prop 8 because it effectively took away a right that had been deemed fundamental by the Supreme Court according to the state Constitution.  We won the first time when a federal judge, Judge Walker, declared that Prop 8 was unconstitutional.

Our opponents appealed that decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals when the new California Governor and his Attorney General both declined to defend Prop 8 because they too considered it unconstitutional.  Their appeal was allowed to proceed at the Circuit court level after the Supreme Court of California declared that they had the right to defend their championed proposition if the legitimate governmental entities declined to do so.  Unfortunately for them, we won a second time when the Ninth Circuit Court sided with us and substantially upheld Judge Walker’s decision.

Unsatisfied, Prop 8’s proponents appealed to the US Supreme Court, which has now declared that they had no standing to defend the proposition in court in the first place, thereby invalidating the Appeals Court’s decision, and rolling history back to Judge Walker’s ruling, officially and permanently ending the travesty that was Proposition 8.

The Appeals Court didn’t even wait for the customary 25-30 days after a Supreme Court’s decision before lifting its stay on gay marriages in the state of California, so just 2 days after the ruling, on June 28, gays and lesbians started to marry again, and the first marriage was performed by none other than the Attorney General herself!!

While ecstatic for the state of California and what it means to re-add the most populous state in the union to the column of the Equality States (now 13 plus DC!!), our personal biggest joy came for the death of Article 3 of DOMA.

DOMA, the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, was passed to prevent the federal government from recognizing gay marriages.  It was passed by a panicked GOP when it realized that gay marriage was becoming a reality and signed by a panicked Bill Clinton who, I believe, signed it only to avoid the possibility that a constitutional amendment would be passed instead, something that would have been much harder to undo.

DOMA’s Article 3 held that the federal government didn’t have to recognize any legal same-sex marriage for any federal purpose.  This is utterly unconstitutional and was found to be just that by a 5-4 Court decision that declared it null because it infringed upon our equal rights and due process, and also because of federalism issues.

With this ruling, the federal government can no longer withhold federal benefits from legally married same-sex couples.  This brings us well over a thousand federal benefits that were previously denied, including social security, taxation, inheritance and immigration.

DOMA is not completely defunct but its Article 2, which states that individual states don’t have to recognize other states’ same-sex marriages, infringes upon another US Constitution article, and will therefore be struck down as well once it reaches the Supreme Court.  That’s the next battleground.

Ray and I, the death of Article 3 means that my legally wedded husband can now file a green card petition on my behalf just like any straight couple would be allowed to do.  This is something we’ve been waiting for almost 16 years to happen.

After jumping from one visa to the next just so that we can stay together, we’ll finally be able to plan our future without having to worry if it will be here in the States or somewhere else.  I will finally be free from the yoke of uncertainty that has shackled me for all these years.

This momentous decision for gay rights in America means that our family is finally safe from the possibility of getting splintered in just over a year when my work visa would have run out.

Our joy and relief was expressed in tears, hugs, kisses, and boundless joy that lasted for days, and can still be felt.

Our application has been submitted and we know for a fact that it will be approved.  That, my friends, is the meaning of happiness.

Here’s a video compilation put together by AFER about the events surrounding June 26.  Keep the Kleenexes handy: