Sad. And what a beautiful name for the case that paved the way for marriage equality among and between the races.
Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday....
Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.
"There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause," the court ruled in a unanimous decision.
Her husband died in 1975. Shy and soft-spoken, Loving shunned publicity and in a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, insisted she never wanted to be a hero — just a bride.
"It wasn't my doing," Loving said. "It was God's work."
L-O-S-E-R. Boston resident Stephen Dunne has asked a federal court to dismiss his ridiculous lawsuit that claimed his religious rights were violated when he was presented with a question on same-sex marriage. His 268.866 score on the November 2006 bar just missed the passing score of 270 points.
This is the question that offended Mr. Dunne:
"Yesterday, Jane got drunk and hit (her spouse) Mary with a baseball bat, breaking Mary's leg, when she learned that Mary was having an affair with Lisa. As a result, Mary decided to end her marriage with Jane in order to live in her house with (children) Philip (and) Charles and Lisa. What are the rights of Mary and Jane?"
In July I blogged about this suit, after Dunne launched a website, christianlawsuit.com (it only goes to his dismissal document now), he put up a batsh*t insane statement:
My dream is to become a Lawyer, but I cannot defile my Christian faith simply to pass an examination. I will not pay the price that the Defendants are forcing me to pay in order to practice law in Massachusetts. There is no price tag on my faith. It is not for sale.
He also modestly proclaimed:
I am challenging the constitutionality of Homosexual Marriage and Homosexual Parenting in Massachusetts. In 2003, four unelected judges legalized Homosexual Marriage in Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, 798 N.E. 2d 941 (Mass. 2003). I sincerely believe that this ruling is profoundly undemocratic and un-American.
I have preemptively fired the first shot that has been heard around the world.
Uh, not really.
A question of this nature was not included in the most recent bar exam, so Dunne tries to claim victory much in the same way the American Family Association's Don Wildmon likes to think Ford is being hurt by his fundie boycott:
In court documents, Dunne said he wanted to drop his suit because the July bar exam didn't include what he called the "patently offensive and morally repugnant" gay marriage question. He characterized that as a "corrective action" by the board.
In a move to quickly smack down that assertion...
[I]n court documents filed yesterday, the board's attorney said the board has "not agreed to limit the content" of any future bar exams. The board's decision not to include the same question on the July exam "merely reflects their standard practice of not repeating questions on successive bar examinations," the court filing said.
...The board maintains that the question was a legitimate one regarding current Massachusetts law.
The Family Research Council, established by James Dobson and headed up by Gary Bauer until Tony Perkins took the helm, is one of those of "family values" conservative lobbying groups whose membership the GOP clown car candidates have been courting so desperately. Perkins and his organization is on speed-dial at the Bush White House.
FRC gets my quote of the day award for this gem....
In Rhode Island, a same-sex couple married in Massachusetts is seeking a divorce; because their marriage was not recognized in R.I., when they filed for divorce, it is now in the courts to decide whether it can be dissolved there.
FRC decided to weigh in on the matter by filing a brief to argue that the marriage cannot be recognized (even though there is no law in R.I. banning same-sex marriage), citing this unhinged thinking:
"Following the logic of the appellants and their supporters, man/animal marriage and man/deceased woman marriage must be permitted under Rhode Island law simply because the General Assembly has not expressly prohibited it."
Tony and Co., when you are able to explain how animals and corpses can grant consent to enter a union of any kind, please let us know.
I'd love to hear the GOP candidates comment on this kind of rhetoric coming from one of its allies in the fight to restore family values to this great nation.
Perkins, by the way, gets bonus family values points for having paid $82K to David DuKKKe for his mailing list.
The Garden State legislature, ordered by its high court to either allow gays and lesbians full marriage rights or create civil unions chose the latter, hoping that separate and equal would work. As we know, that hasn't been the case. A new Zogby poll shows that most New Jersey voters are sure that heterosexual marriage will survive if the civil institution is opened to gay and lesbian couples -- and they are ready for that change. From Garden State Equality:
* By 63% to 31%, New Jersey voters say they'd be fine with the state legislature upgrading civil unions to marriage equality.
* By 72% to 21%, New Jersey voters say state legislators would be in no electoral danger if they enacted marriage equality.
* By 61% to 29%, New Jersey voters say they expect the state to enact marriage equality within just a couple of years.
Zogby asked the baseline question - do you favor marriage equality versus civil unions - in two ways. Results are 48% to 45% for marriage equality in one question, 48% to 30% in another.
And a significant 35% of respondents said they would be less likely to do business with a company that denies equal benefits to gay employees. 20% said "much less likely."
What will Rudy Giuliani say about this, considering he thinks New Hampshire has "gone too far" with civil unions? What if "the people" decide to tell their lawmakers to upgrade those CUs to marriage -- is that going too far as well?
One portion of Defense of Marriage Act (the one Hillary Clinton supports retaining), ensures that when you cross state lines, a same-sex marriage could be, depending on what state you're in: 1) null and void, 2) a domestic partnership, or 3) a civil union, with varying rights and responsibilities (or lack thereof).
The pressure worked. United Parcel Service, urged by New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine in a letter last week to extend benefits to partners of employees, will now recognize the state's civil union law, which declares CUs are entitled to equal recognition under the law as civil marriage.
As you will see below, UPS wanted to extend the benefits, but the company read the law as preventing the company from doing so. From Lambda Legal:
"We are pleased to see that UPS has decided to do the right thing in the end and provide benefits to the same-sex civil union partners and families of its employees in New Jersey," said David S. Buckel, Marriage Project Director of Lambda Legal and the attorney who represented the UPS employees. "In a statement, UPS's Senior Vice President of Human Resources said 'Based on initial legal review when this law was enacted, it did not appear that a "civil union" and "marriage" were equivalent.' UPS is joined by hundreds of employers around the state in hearing that civil unions are different from marriage and that is to be expected when people are given second-class status. The consequences to such ongoing mistakes are severe, and rather than going employer to employer and explaining civil unions one by one, the legislature has a quick fix: allowing same-sex couples to marry."
In May of this year, Gabriael "Nickie" Brazier, who is a driver for UPS who requested to have her civil union spouse, Heather Aurand, added to UPS's benefit plan so that the couple would not have to continue paying for a second, inferior, health insurance plan for Heather and could stop paying down a second yearly deductible. UPS responded with a letter outlining why it was denying spousal benefits to Brazier and Aurand, saying, "In summary, you cannot add Ms. Aurand as a spouse because New Jersey law does not treat civil unions the same as marriages,[emphasis added] and the Plan requires a dependent spouse to be a spouse as defined under applicable state law." Aurand is a stay-at-home parent who is raising the couple's three children. The couple has been together for over seven years.
Tom Walton, 42 is also a UPS driver who asked to have his civil union spouse and partner of 15 years with, Mearmon Davis, 44, added to his healthcare plan and was denied as well, but following advocacy by Lambda Legal and a letter from Governor John Corzine, was advised he could now add Davis to his benefit plan.
As I said in my earlier post on this issue, when the legislature was forced by the state Supreme Court to ensure that gay and lesbian couples received equality under the law as married couples, it decided to create a "separate but equal" civil unions rather than open civil marriage to same-sex couples. However, that structure prevents the use of the word "spouse," which companies are using to deny benefits because that term is legally reserved for married couples.
For presidential candidates clinging onto civil unions as a panacea to the "problem" of the demand for marriage equality, they need look no further than the Garden State to see that there will be a legal quagmire from day one.
