Press builds before closing arguments
By Julia Rosen
Win or lose this trial has done one thing very well, bring attention to the fight for marriage equality. That is one of the best ways to turn the tide of public opinion and that’s exactly why the defense fought so hard to keep cameras out of the courtroom.
These articles, in three of the biggest papers in the country never would have existed if this trial was not occurring and may not have gotten this high of a profile without the involvement of Ted Olson. Here is the WaPo talking about a recent address he gave to law students at his firm:
But then Olson took the microphone, and began to describe his crusade to overturn California’s Proposition 8 and establish a constitutional right for same-sex marriage. The two gay families he represents are “the nicest people on the planet.” He believes to his core that discrimination because of sexual orientation “is wrong and it’s hurtful, and I never could understand it.” He knows some worry that the lawsuit is premature, “but civil rights are not won by people saying, ‘Wait until the right time.’ “
This fight, Olson told the law students gathered on a spring evening in the luxe D.C. offices of his firm, Gibson, Dunn and Cruthcher, “is the most compelling, emotionally moving, important case that I have been involved in in my entire life.”
Standing O. Another jury persuaded
Ok, so they were gay law students. Maybe Olson didn’t persuade them of anything other than the fact that he is sincerely committed to this case and equality. It isn’t about those students really, it is an article in the Washington Post about one of the biggest conservative legal minds wholeheartedly advocating for gay people’s rights.
This was in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, with a picture from our Testimony re-enactment with Marisa Tomei and Josh Lucas.
Messrs. Olson and Boies said they will argue that their witnesses’ testimony established that gays are harmed by being denied marriage and that the institution wouldn’t be hurt by extending it to same-sex couples. “When you put in your constitution a classification that puts some people in a category that are not entitled to fundamental rights, you are making discrimination institutionalized in its highest form,” Mr. Olson said this past week.
The 29 questions Judge Walker issued this week suggest skepticism towards both arguments. He asked the defense to prove that gay marriage harms society, and to show how prohibiting gay marriage furthers a state interest in having children raised by their married biological mothers and fathers.
Judge Walker also challenged plaintiffs to provide “empirical” evidence that not being allowed to marry harms gays and lesbians. He also asked how the court could find Prop 8 to be unconstitutional without also taking up the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
We heard on our call with Olson, Boutrous and Dusseult that they will also be submitting written responses to the judge’s questions, in addition to addressing them during their closing argument.
Over at the NYT Frank Rich continues to play whack a pinata with Blankenhorn. He impressively goes from the Supreme Court ruling on television to Reker’s Rent Boy in the space of a couple lines.
When the former Bush v. Gore legal adversaries, Ted Olson and David Boies, teamed up to mount the assault on Prop 8, it was front-page news. But you may not know much about the trial that followed unless you made a point of finding out as it unfolded in January. Their efforts in this case, unlike the 2000 election battle, were denied the essential publicity oxygen of television. The judge had planned to post video of the proceedings daily on YouTube, but the Prop 8 forces won a 5-to-4 Supreme Court ruling to keep cameras out.
Their stated reason for opposing a television record was fear that their witnesses might be harassed. But in the end the Prop 8 defenders mustered only two witnesses, just one of them a controversial culture warrior. That “expert” was David Blankenhorn, president of the so-called Institute for American Values. Blankenhorn holds no degree in such seemingly relevant fields as psychology, psychiatry or sociology. But his pretrial research did include reading a specious treatise by George Rekers, the antigay evangelist now notorious for his recent 10-day European trip with a young male companion procured from Rentboy.com. And Blankenhorn’s testimony relies on the same sweeping generalization as Rekers — that children raised by two biological parents are so advantaged that all alternatives should be shunned.
What was the unqualified Blankenhorn doing at the Prop 8 trial? Like Rekers, who had a lucrative history of testifying for pay in legal cases attacking gay civil rights, he also profits from his propaganda. Public documents, including tax returns, reveal that Blankenhorn’s institute, financed by such right-wing stalwarts as the Bradley and Scaife foundations, paid him $247,500 in base salary in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available, and another $70,000 to his wife. Not a bad payday for a self-professed arbiter of American marital values who under oath described his sole peer-reviewed academic paper (from the University of Warwick) as “a study of two cabinetmakers’ unions in 19th-century Britain.” That the Prop 8 proponents employed him as their star witness suggests that no actual experts could be found (or rented) to match his disparagement of gay parents.
Brutal, right? Frank Rich sure knows how to tear into someone.
The reality is that the Prop 8 supporters are resting their legal case on the plaintiffs not proving theirs. They did little to support their experts claims and it’s likely that their witnesses were a net negative for their side. This of course will be exposed during the closing arguments. Blankenhorn in particular self-destructed and ended up proving several points for the Olson/Boies team. He is now quickly becoming a laughingstock and a punchline to a joke.
That is likely why he was so insistent on trying to clarify the record by admitting that he lied to the New York Times. Given the track record of anti-gay zealots he is lucky that he wasn’t writing to defend his straighthood.
But I digress.
Only a few days to go until closing arguments. I for one am excited, as I am sure all of our loyal readers are. But do the cause a favor on Wednesday, when you tune in to the liveblogging, be sure to invite a few friends. It is only by speaking and writing about this trial that we gain points in the polls and increase our chances in the court.
5 comments June 14, 2010
Great call with Ted Olson, Chris Dusseault, and Ted Boutrous
By Julia Rosen
Last night we honored to have part of the American Foundation for Equal Right’s legal team on the phone with hundreds of our members for an hour long interactive call. Ted Olson, Chris Dusseault, and Ted Boutrous took live and pre-submitted questions from people across the country about Perry v. Schwarzenegger.
It was a lively discussion and while Ted Olson enjoyed it so much that he asked to do it again after the closing arguments. If you missed the call, here is the recording.
We live tweeted it @EqualityOnTrial, so go check out some of the highlights.
A couple of quick notes from the call.
Chris Dusseult does not believe that Judge Walker will strike Dr. Tam’s testimony and expects he will rule in their favor.
Ted Olson repeatedly made the point that when minority’s civil rights are voted upon they often lose and that is exactly why we have the court system as a check on those votes.
Olson also was emphatic about the importance of talking about the trial. The more conversations people have, the better for the courts and the movement.
64 comments June 11, 2010
Judge Walker’s Questions for Closing Statements
By Paul Hogarth
Today, Judge Vaughn Walker delivered a series of 29 questions (12 to plaintiffs, 12 to Prop 8 supporters, and 15 to both) that will guide the Closing Statements. You can read them all here. “What follows is by no means an exhaustive list of questions,” he writes, “but is intended simply to assist the parties in focusing their closing arguments.”
But what some of them reveal is where the Judge is going with this case, and what we can expect the verdict to be. I’ve culled the ones that I think are more legally significant:
Plaintiff Question #1: Assume the evidence shows Proposition 8 is not in fact rationally related to a legitimate state interest. Assume further the evidence shows voters genuinely but without evidence believed Prop 8 was rationally related to a legitimate interest. Do the voters’ honest beliefs in the absence of supporting evidence have any bearing on the constitutionality of Prop 8? See Hernandez v. Robles 855 NE2d 1, 7-8 (2006) (“In the absence of conclusive scientific evidence, the Legislature could rationally proceed on the common-sense premise that children will do best with a mother and a father in the home.”)
This, really, is the crux of the plaintiff’s case – and whether we can prevail on a “rational basis” test. To say that Prop 8 authors were motivated by hatred is easy – that’s been proven already.
But how can you say the millions of voters who went “yes” on Prop 8 are bigots? It would be impossible to prove that they are. The way we prevail is to show that those people – while honestly believing they were doing the “rational” thing – were merely acting irrationally. It goes back to San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders testimony, when he said that it took a long time for him to realize his “rational” views against gay marriage and for civil unions were merely opinions rooted in prejudice.
Unless the Supreme Court is willing to take a leap to recognize sexual orientation as a suspect class (and we should not presume it would go that far), that’s the only way we are going to repeal Prop 8 in this case.
The fact Walker asked this question is encouraging. As for the citation to the Hernandez case, that was the New York high court case that said it was “rational” to give straights but not gays the right to marry because straights might “accidentally” have kids.
Plaintiff Questions #3 and #4: Until very recently, same-sex relationships did not enjoy legal protection anywhere in the United States. How does this square with plaintiffs’ claim that [same-sex] marriage is a fundamental right? What is the import of evidence showing that marriage has historically been limited to a man and a woman? What evidence shows that that limitation no longer enjoys constitutional recognition.
In other words, can “tradition” be a “rational basis” for denying someone this right? It reminds me of the old saying that the word tradition means something we’ve been doing for centuries, and have forgotten why. (Images of the “Fiddler on the Roof” musical are now seeping through my head.) This question is practically inviting our side to make the connection with interracial marriage, racial segregation, etc. After all, blacks in the South were never treated equally. Will it work? Probably with this Judge, but keep in mind that courts generally give great deference to tradition — so it’s a tough hill to climb.
Plaintiff #6: What empirical data, if any, supports a finding that legal recognition of same-sex marriage reduces discrimination against gays and lesbians?
I cringed when I first read this – “empirical” seems like quite a limitation, but I think our side can really seize on this question to highlight the social importance of marriage equality. And how the forces behind Prop 8 are the same ones who are against the “anti-bullying” legislative fights we’ve gone through in public schools.
Plaintiff #10: Even if enforcement of Prop 8 were enjoined, plaintiffs’ marriages would not be recognized under federal law. Can the court find Prop 8 to be unconstitutional without also considering the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act?
This, my friends, is the inevitable DOMA question – and why folks like me had qualms about us taking Prop 8 to federal court without mentioning DOMA, and whether we were even putting the cart in front of the horse. After all, even if we get the right to marry in California – that’s only half the battle. We still don’t have any federal rights – Social Security benefits, joint tax returns, immigration rights, etc. Frankly, I have a hard time seeing how a federal challenge to Prop 8 does not implicate DOMA as well.
While we’re having this legal fight here on the West Coast, on the East Coast the civil rights group GLAD has filed a lawsuit in federal court to challenge DOMA. It’s on behalf of several gay Massachusetts couples, who nobody denies are legally married. The question there is whether DOMA denies them the equal rights under law. The federal government’s response in that case is to effectively say, “you have the right to get married – but there’s no constitutional right to the legal benefits of marriage.” How our Prop 8 lawsuit and the DOMA challenge in Boston play on each other is going to be fascinating and (let’s hope) complementary.
Defendant #2: Aside from the testimony of Mr. Blankenhorn, what evidence in the record supports a finding that same-sex marriage has or could have negative social consequences? What does the evidence show the magnitude of these consequences to be?
Essentially, Walker is telling the Prop 8 side to put up or shut up. There’s been a lot of discussion on this blog about how shallow the opposition’s case has been in favor of Prop 8, and how their one expert witness – Blankenhorn – proved to be quite underwhelming. Our challenge will be to link all of their “consequences” to mere bigotry – which will be easy for most of them.
Defendant #7: Assume the evidence shows that children do best when raised by their married, biological mother and father. Assume further the court concludes it is in the state’s interest to encourage children to be raised by their married biological mother and father where possible. What evidence if any shows that Prop 8 furthers this state interest?
This, my friends, is a dynamite question – and can really help destruct the opposition’s case. A “rational basis” is a justification that is “rationally related” to a “legitimate government interest.” The right-wingers always talk about “family” and the need to “protect our children.” But Prop 8 really only did one thing – make it impossible for gay couples to get married. It did not – and could not – help a single child who otherwise would not have been get raised by their biological parents. If the opposition can’t make this link effectively, the Court can’t possibly find a rational reason for denying loving gay couples the right to marry.
Both Sides #6: In order to be rooted in “our Nation’s history, legal traditions and practices,” see Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 US 702, 710 (1997), is it sufficient that a practice has existed historically, or need there be an articulable purpose underlying the practice?
Very encouraging question for our side. ”Tradition” may be a rational basis for certain laws, but not tradition per se - The fact that gay couples have not had the right to marry historically is a fact worth considering, but Judge Walker is effectively asking our opponents to “put up or shut up.” Provide proof – beyond circular logic that “it’s always been that way” – that we should proceed with the traditional definition of marriage. Courts are inherently conservative, and reluctant to overturn traditions – but Walker is injecting an important distinction: traditions that are still justifiable and reasonable, versus those that have no real purpose left.
197 comments June 9, 2010
Equality on Trial: Judge Walker issues series of questions prior to Prop 8 trial closing arguments
By Rick Jacobs
It’s election day in California and several other states. With the exception of one statewide race, (AG) Democrats and progressives won’t be compelled to the polls. Republicans will because of the battle of the billionaires (okay, one billionaire two multi-millionaires). We can only hope that enough of us vote(d) to beat back two odious ballot measures put on by two big corporations.
But there was already big news today in California about “the trial of the century.” Judge Vaughn Walker today issued a series of questions (see document below) for the parties to the federal Prop. 8 trial that began in January and was put on by Ted Olson and David Boies and colleagues and defended by the oxymoronic “Protect Marriage” proponents of Prop. 8.
The questions are stunning in their breadth, complexity and essence. Here are just a few:
What empirical data, if any, supports a finding that legal recognition of same-sex marriage reduces discrimination against gays and lesbians?
What are the consequences of a permanent injunction against enforcement of Proposition 8? What remedies do plaintiffs propose?
If the evidence of the involvement of the LDS and Roman Catholic churches and evangelical ministers supports a finding that Proposition 8 was an attempt to enforce private morality, what is the import of that finding?
The court has reserved ruling on plaintiffs’ motion to exclude Mr Blankenhorn’s testimony. If the motion is granted, is there any other evidence to support a finding that Proposition 8 advances a legitimate governmental interest?
Why is legislating based on moral disapproval of homosexuality not tantamount to discrimination? See Doc #605 at 11 (“But sincerely held moral or religious views that require acceptance and love of gay people, while disapproving certain aspects of their conduct, are not tantamount to discrimination.”). What evidence in the record shows that a belief based in morality cannot also be discriminatory? If that moral point of view is not held and is disputed by a small but significant minority of the community, should not an effort to enact that moral point of view into a state constitution be deemed a violation of equal protection?
What does it mean to have a “choice” in one’s sexual orientation? See e g Tr 2032:17-22; PX 928 at 37
I am not a lawyer, but I can without doubt say that never before has homosexuality been on trial in America in this way. The testimony in January, which I liveblogged, was breathtaking and so sweeping, that the defense (the folks who put Prop. 8 on the ballot) were left with only one argument: marriage has always been between a man and a woman so it should always be between a man and a woman. And Professor Cott and other experts even destroyed that argument. Even so, it’s a bit like saying that some people were always forced to live in a certain place so they should always be forced to live there.
We launched Testimony: Equality on Trial because this court case has already changed history. As we can see from the Judge’s questions – read them and pick your own favorites–the entire scope of the debate has been encapsulated in this trial. But the defense has worked at every juncture to stop you from seeing what happened and will happen in the courtroom. We seek to make this your trial. And soon, we’ll seek to hear your testimony.
For now, as voting for initiatives and candidates across the state and country winds to a close, we can see unfolding the true story of human rights in America.
Watch the court. Whatever the ruling, this trial is history.
Here are all of the questions Judge Walker sent to plaintiffs and the defense.
23 comments June 8, 2010
Ted Olson’s Courage Campaign Conversation
By Julia Rosen
Got a question for Ted Olson? Well you are in luck.
This Wednesday at 6 p.m. PT/9 p.m. ET we are hosting a special conference call with Ted Olson about the closing arguments to Perry v. Schwarzenegger (go RSVP!). It’s free to join the call, but these calls are not cheap and if you can please consider making a donation to help offset the cost.
You can submit a question in advance on the RSVP form, but we will also be taking live calls from participants that day. Rick Jacobs will be moderating and I will be helping with the questions.
This conference call is part of our ongoing series of Courage Campaign Conversations, where leading progressive leaders and authors engage in no-holds-barred dialogue with our community. Guests have included Arianna Huffington, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, Attorney General Jerry Brown, Mayor Gavin Newsom, Markos Moulitsas, Lt. Dan Choi and Jeremy Scahill.
We are proud to have Ted Olson joining us this week and hopefully a few of you regular readers can make it!
12 comments June 8, 2010
FPPC fines Mormon Church
By Julia Rosen
The Mormon Church worked very hard during the Prop 8 campaign to conceal the major role they were playing in the ballot initiatives’ passage. They do not like a lot of attention. The trouble is they went too far and broke campaign finance law.
Back during the campaign they spent a lot of staff time and church resources advocating for Prop 8. Under state law you have to account for the value of that support and report it under campaign disclosure rules. It is what’s known as “in-kind contributions”, but reporting that would have made obvious how much they were doing to help organize all of the field activities and increase fundraising, so they simply didn’t.
But then Fred Karger came along and exposed what they were doing and they filed a late disclosure of their in-kind contributions. Now, a year and a half later the California Fair Political Practices Committee is fining the LDS Church. From HRC’s Back Story blog:
The California Fair Political Practices Committee (FPPC) has proposed a fine [pdf] of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) for failing to report all of its late non-monetary contributions in its efforts to pass Proposition 8 in California in 2008. While the recommended fine of just more than $5,500 for the unreported late contributions of $36,968 to the Yes on 8 campaign may seem inconsequential, it represents a pattern of blatant disregard for California election laws and provides ongoing evidence that the Mormon Church was a significant leader in the campaign to repeal marriage equality, even while it evaded standard reporting requirements and denied its involvement.
The FPPC is notorious for taking for….ev….er to fine violators of the law. This is essentially a slap on the wrist to the LDS Church, but it ought to serve as a deterrent to pull something like this again. Given what transpired the last campaign, it will be difficult for anyone to hide the work they are doing to oppose equality.
Speaking of not disclosing anti-equality donation information… did you see that NOM just lost another court battle today over their attempts to hide their donors to defeat Question 1 in Maine last fall? They’ve vowed to take it to the Supreme Court, but as of now the stay is lifted and they are supposed to be turning over the names/amounts of those who gave them money to defeat Question 1. I for one can’t wait to see who all is in there. There has to be something juicy, or else they wouldn’t have gone to all of this trouble to break the law and then defend their law breaking.
17 comments June 8, 2010
Schedule for closing arguments
By Julia Rosen
The hour by hour schedule for June 16th, the day of closing arguments in Perry v. Schwarzenegger have been released. It is a full day and Walker will doing his best to keep the trains running on time. That said, we have to expect that he will interject and ask questions, which could throw off this schedule. (via LGBT POV)
10:00 AM – 11:30 AM Plaintiffs (argued by Ted Olson and David Boies)
11:30 AM – 11:45 AM City and County of San Francisco
11:45 AM – 12:00 PM Governor, Attorney General and county defendants
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM Lunch
1:00 PM – 3:15 PM Proponents (argued by Charles Cooper)
3:15 PM – 3:45 PM Plaintiffs’ rebuttal
Rick will be liveblogging right here. The posts will be going up simultaneously on the Prop 8 Trial Tracker and the Testimony: Equality on Trial blog.
15 comments June 8, 2010
Blankenhorn lied to the NYT about Rekers
By Julia Rosen
This is bizarre, yet somehow unsurprising. David Blankenhorn, star witness for the defense, who was dismantled by Boies on the stand penned a letter-to-the-editor, kvetching about being tied to George Rekers. Blankenhorn swore that he cross his heart, hope to die, never read any of Rekers’ works.
My expert report to the court — which was written entirely by me, includes a list of scholarly sources and is available for anyone to read — includes no mention of Mr. Rekers. And for good reason: I have never met Mr. Rekers or read any of his writings. I recently learned that a separate, lawyer-generated document submitted to the court apparently does list an article by Mr. Rekers in connection with my testimony, but that document, on this point, is in error.
Turns out he lied. At least he is correcting the record, with yet another letter written to the Times. (h/t Joe.My.God)
In a letter published on May 25, I incorrectly stated that I have never read anything written by the conservative minister George Rekers. In fact, in preparing for my report and deposition in the California Proposition 8 trial, I read one report to the court on a previous California marriage case written by Mr. Rekers, as well as a report to the same court taking a position opposed to Mr. Rekers’s.
Whoopsies…forgot all about that didn’t you. Did you also forget about submitting that article by Rekers to the court? Or are you still trying to blame that on the lawyers?
Too bad Boies doesn’t get to have another go at him on the stand. That would have been entertaining.
This won’t effect the trial at all, just Blankenhorn’s already diminished reputation. And it leaves one question: why did Blankenhorn feel so compelled to send this correction to the New York Times?
33 comments June 7, 2010
Moving Forward Towards Equality
By Rick Jacobs
California’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activist communities expect to return to the ballot in 2012 to overturn Prop. 8. Last time around, both sides spent about $80 million total.
If this Tuesday’s California election is any indicator, there’s little reason to assume the cost for a 2012 fight will be much less. Even in this off year, low turn-out election, we can expect more than $70 million to be spent on the few initiatives that appear, most of it by PG&E and Mercury Insurance. That’s a drop in the bucket compared with spending on November measures. Ballot measures cost a bundle.
Progressives and all fair-minded people in this state abhor Prop. 8 and the lives it has affected along with the divisions it has sewn. We all know that it must be stricken from the constitution. There are only two ways to do that: by ballot box or by federal law suit. It’s worth taking a look at the possible outcomes in each case.
If we go back to the ballot in 2012, we have to expect to spend at least $40 million in addition to whatever is being spent in the run up to the election. The other side will raise and spend whatever they must to hold the line. And they have the advantage of defense, meaning we must get people to vote “yes,” always harder than a “no” campaign. And of course we’ll have to deal with all of the internal politics of who runs the campaign, how it’s run and the other issues that are so important and so difficult. But let’s suppose that we win. The day after the election, we’ll feel great. Interspersed with the presidential and congressional election news about the Obama reelect will be stories about the first victory at the ballot box for marriage equality. It will be a big deal.
And then what? Yes, we will all have the right to marry and the word “marriage” is vital. But even after that, we’ll have the same legal rights that we have today with domestic partnership. We’ll still be second class citizens who cannot avail ourselves of equal protection under the law federally or in most other states.
Within months, the other side will circulate petitions to get a repeal of our repeal on the ballot for 2014. They’ll qualify. And we’ll be at it again. Parental notification for abortion has been on the ballot three times in four years and will be on again this year. The right wing finds the money to qualify and then our side has to spend many times that to defend the status quo. Ballot measures provide the ideal weapon for the right to use against progress. They force us to spend money to keep the status quo.
The other alternative is the federal Prop. 8 trial, the final arguments for which will be heard on 16 June in San Francisco. We’ll have a verdict soon thereafter which could go any which way, from a clean win to a mix to a loss. We’ll have an appeal to the 9th Circuit and then likely an appeal to the Supreme Court. The process could take a few years and the outcome is uncertain.
However, the federal Prop. 8 trial has already altered the fundamentals of this debate. The testimony in the trial devastated completely the thin reeds the other side had for denying equality. We at Courage are working hard to get that story out through our Testimony: Equality on Trial campaign.
If we do win at the Supreme Court, the game is over. Ballot measures in California and likely in the rest of the country will be a thing of the past. No longer will we vote on each other’s rights. States that would not have marriage equality for decades may well join the modern age and rapidly shifting public opinion as a result of one court case.
I do not here advocate for or against going back to the ballot in 2012. Regrettably, we cannot yet rely upon the courts to do the right thing, although this case is the best shot we’ve ever had. So what is to be done?
The answer is pretty straightforward: spend at least $4 million—a tenth or so of the money folks will be asked to shell out for a 2012 California measure—to run a national campaign to change the way people think. The trial gave us the skeleton for such a campaign, debunking the arguments of the right, providing the stories and the impetus for a national effort. Modern communication via television and social media give us the reach. And old fashioned organizing gives us the means.
We need to focus now on engaging America, person by person, friend by friend, family member by family member, to hear the story of the federal Prop. 8 trial testimony and then to tell their own stories. In the process of so doing, we can change the outcome of elections if they must happen, and maybe the outcome of court cases. Judges pay attention to shifts in society’s views. As the New York Times reports, attitudes are already shifting.
55 comments June 5, 2010
Obama clarifies partner benefits
By Julia Rosen
President Obama issued a memo yesterday to clarify another memo from a year ago regarding same-sex partner benefits for federal employees. Last year he asked federal administrations to do a review of the benefits they administer to determine what might be possible for them to offer under current federal law. The Advocate:
“I am proud to announce that earlier today, I signed a Memorandum that requires Executive agencies to take immediate action to extend to the same-sex domestic partners of Federal employees a number of meaningful benefits, from family assistance services to hardship transfers to relocation expenses,” President Obama said in written statement (available in full below).
Same-sex partners and their children will now be taken into account for the purposes of day care, travel and relocation, and employee assistance programs. For instance, children of a federal worker’s partner will now fall under the definition of “child” and be eligible for child-care subsidies. Same-sex partners will now qualify as “family members,” making them eligible for employee assistance programs.
Most same-sex partners are still ineligible for health and pension benefits, according to the administration’s reading of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
These are all concrete benefits that will bring real help to same-sex couples. At the same time, it further reinforces what gay couples have gone without for so many years and what so many couples who do not work for the federal government or a company that does not provide partner benefits go without.
There are still a lot of significant benefits for federal employees that cannot be granted without changes to the law, as the Advocate notes above. It is something that Obama did address, though he did not address DOMA this year, as he had done a year ago.
In Wednesday’s statement Obama also renewed his call for passage of the Domestic Partner Benefits and Obligations Act, which would provide health and pension benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees. The bill has been reported out of the committee of jurisdiction in both the House and Senate and awaits consideration by the full body of each chamber.
“This legislation, championed by Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins and Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, would extend to the same-sex domestic partners of Federal employees the full range of benefits currently enjoyed by Federal employees’ opposite-sex spouses,” Obama said. “I look forward to signing it into law.
We continue to move forward towards equality in small but important steps. The pace of progress can be maddening, but the direction is positive. Big changes only can come when DOMA is repealed. That however is a ways away. There is a lot less support for repealing the law than say repealing DADT. However, the GLAD lawsuit in Massachusetts has an excellent shot at eliminating DOMA, at least in part, through the courts.
28 comments June 3, 2010
