THE RIGHT FOR GAYS AND LESBIANS TO MARRY IN NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY CONTINUES
Gay rights activists are renewing their fight to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, hoping a mix of moneyed supporters and celebrity star power will tilt the scales in their favor.
A group called Fight Back New York, created with money from software entrepreneur and openly gay philanthropist Tim Gill, is pledging to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get pro-gay marriage candidates elected to the state Senate in November’s elections.
Advocates aim to bring the issue of same-sex marriage to the Senate floor as early as next year. The legislature voted three months ago to reject a similar bill.
“There is definitely a theme of punishment in our work,” said spokesman Alex Navarro-McKay. The group would target some of the eight Democrats who helped defeat the bill, he said. All 30 Republicans and eight Democrats voted no, defeating the bill 38 to 24. – Source – Reuters
New Jersey gays rights advocates, with the help of New York-based Lambda Legal, are going back to the New Jersey Supreme Court in order to fight for the right to marry in the Garden State.
Lambda Legal and Garden State Equality have scheduled a news conference for Thursday morning in Trenton to announce their action.
It comes barely two months after a stinging defeat in the New Jersey State Senate, when several legislators apparently backtracked on earlier promises and failed to pass a Marriage Equality law.
The advocates are prepared for a tough battle. “It’s hard to tell [how long this will take],” said Lambda Legal spokeswoman Lisa Hardaway in New York.
But the organization will be building on a 2006 decision by New Jersey’s highest court that ordered legislators to pass either a Marriage Equality law or an equivalent Civil Union law that gave gays identical rights. Legislators chose civil union.
Ever since, gay marriage advocates have argued civil union doesn’t work, that it’s not recognized by hospitals, doctors and employers. And in fact, several senators who voted against gay marriage in January admitted that it might not work, but they weren’t willing to go with a law that used the word ‘marriage.’
So now it turns to New Jersey’s Supremes. – Source – NBC4 New York
THREE MEN INDICTED ON CHARGE OF HATE CRIME IN ATTACK OF GAY MAN
Three north suburban men were indicted Wednesday for allegedly harassing and attacking a gay man on a CTA train in January.
Kevin McAndrew and Benjamin Eder, both 23, and Sean Little, 21, all of Evanston, originally faced misdemeanor battery charges stemming from the Jan. 10 incident.
On Wednesday, the three men were each indicted on one count of hate crime and two counts of aggravated battery, according to Cook County State’s Attorney’s office spokesman Andy Conklin. The men will appear for arraignment on March 26.
Little, Eder and McAndrew were riding the CTA Red Line train when Little allegedly began verbally harassing and shoving a gay youth, according to a release from the attorney for Daniel Hauff, a Rogers Park man who tried to intervene.
At that point, Little allegedly began directing anti-gay slurs at Hauff and pushed him. Eder and McAndrew, who had been watching, joined in the assault, calling Hauff a “stupid faggot” and all three began punching Hauff’s face, bloodying him in front of train passengers, according to the release.
Chicago police say the three men “made disparaging comments” to the 33-year-old Hauff, taunted him and punched him on the train at the Argyle station in Uptown.
Another man tried to help and numerous other passengers pushed the train’s emergency button, the release said. A witness confirmed Little had been harassing and shoving a young man for being homosexual.
If convicted, the men face a maximum of five years in prison each.
Source – Chicago Sun-Times/WBBM-TV
CATHOLIC ADOPTION AGENCY IN THE UK CAN TURN DOWN GAY ADOPTION
Roman Catholic bishops have welcomed a high court ruling that will allow a Catholic adoption agency to reject gay couples as parents.
Catholic Care, which serves Leeds, Middlesbrough and Hallam in South Yorkshire, won its appeal for an exemption from sexual orientation regulations that say it must consider applications from gay couples. The agency warned it would abandon its work of finding homes for children, as many others have done, rather than comply with the law.
The bishop of Leeds, the Rt Rev Arthur Roche, insisted there was no homophobic element to the case and claimed that children would have been “seriously disadvantaged” had Catholic Care not won the appeal.
“Our case has not been brought on an anti-gay agenda of any sort. We respect, and would not want to diminish, the dignity of any person,” he said.
The judgment was condemned by the British Humanist Association and the gay rights charity Stonewall. Jonathan Finney, its head of external affairs, said: “It’s unthinkable that anyone engaged in delivering any kind of public or publicly funded service should be given licence to pick and choose service users on the basis of individual prejudice.”
Caritas Social Action Network, the umbrella group for Catholic care agencies, said an important principle had been upheld. – Source – Guardian.co/uk
TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE BEING ERODED BY SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
English law no longer has a clear concept of marriage, a leading family lawyer has said.
Baroness Deech, the chairman of the Bar Standards Board, also believes that human rights law could soon be used to legalise full homosexual marriage.
She said the traditional Christian image of a lifelong union of man and woman is no longer accurate because of the changing nature of relationships and the introduction of legal rights for same-sex couples.
Lady Deech said she believes that human rights law may soon rule that it is discriminatory to ban homosexuals from marrying in the same way that heterosexual couples do.
But she added that some differences between civil partnerships and marriages should be preserved, and criticised recent Labour laws that allow same-sex couples to be named on birth certificates with no mention of a father.
Source – Daily Mail
PAYROLL ERRORS CAN COST SAME-SEX COUPLES THOUSANDS IN TAX MONEY
Filing your own tax returns is confusing enough. But the process can be even more bewildering for gay and lesbian couples in civil unions and marriages. This is doubly true when their own employers aren’t clear on how differences between state and federal tax codes affect their withholdings.
For the last decade, the payroll system for the Vermont State Colleges wasn’t accounting for the fact that some of its 2000 employees are gay or lesbian and provide their partners with health care benefits. Twenty-nine former and current Vermont State Colleges staffers were notified in a February 16 letter from the chancellor’s office that the automated payroll system wasn’t set up properly to process contributions to their partners’ medical and dental policies as a pre-tax withholding.
Those letters were followed shortly thereafter by checks to reimburse them for the state taxes the couples improperly paid during the years their partners received VSC health and dental insurance benefits.
Under Vermont’s civil-union law, which took effect on July 1, 2000, any employment benefit afforded to same-sex partners in a civil union must be treated the same way as those given to heterosexual couples. Vermont’s gay-marriage law, enacted last year, included the same requirement. And, under Vermont’s tax code, health benefits provided to spouses and dependents are treated as nontaxable income.
“We made a mistake,” says VSC chancellor Tim Donovan. “We wish that it hadn’t happened, but we’re glad someone found it.” – Source – 7 Days/Vermont’s Independent Voice
