same sex marriage

Justices to Hear Woman’s DOMA Challenge (The National Law Journal)

by Viviane on 12/11/2024

in legal

WASHINGTON – Opening the door to a potentially historic step in the nation’s gay rights movement, the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 10 agreed to decide two constitutional challenges involving same-sex ?marriage.

The justices will review a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit holding unconstitutional a section of the Defense of Marriage Act that defines marriage, for federal government purposes, as exclusively a union between one man and one woman (NYLJ, Oct. 19).

The challenge to DOMA was brought by Edith Windsor, an 83-year-old New Yorker who was forced to pay more than $363,000 in federal estate taxes after the death of Thea Seyer, whom she had married in Canada.

Windsor would not have had to pay any estate taxes if their marriage had been treated the same way as heterosexual couples.

The news was welcomed by lawyers for Windsor who successfully argued her case, first before Southern District Judge Barbara Jones (See Profile) and then before the Second Circuit: Roberta Kaplan of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and James Esseks of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Kaplan, who will argue Windsor’s case at the Supreme Court in March—her first argument before the high court—said her client was “clearly thrilled.”

“She’s had a long fight,” said Kaplan. “She’s been fighting for this for over half a lifetime” of “living with discrimination.”

Read full story: http://bit.ly/T53Vrc

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Love on the March (New Yorker)

by Viviane on 11/11/2024

in gay, politics

new yorker Love on the March (New Yorker) Photo montage from the New Yorker article

Alex Ross, the New Yorker’s music critc has written a reflection of the gay community’s political progress, and its future:

I am forty-four years old, and I have lived through a startling transformation in the status of gay men and women in the United States. Around the time I was born, homosexual acts were illegal in every state but Illinois. Lesbians and gays were barred from serving in the federal government. There were no openly gay politicians. A few closeted homosexuals occupied positions of power, but they tended to make things more miserable for their kind. Even in the liberal press, homosexuality drew scorn: in The New York Review of Books, Philip Roth denounced the “ghastly pansy rhetoric” of Edward Albee, and a Timecover story dismissed the gay world as a “pathetic little second-rate substitute for reality, a pitiable flight from life.” David Reuben’s 1969 best-seller, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)”—a book I remember perusing shakily at the library—advised that “if a homosexual who wants to renounce homosexuality finds a psychiatrist who knows how to cure homosexuality, he has every chance of becoming a happy, well-adjusted heterosexual.”

…By the mid-eighties, when I was beginning to come to terms with my sexuality, a few gay people held political office, many states had dropped long-standing laws criminalizing sodomy, and sundry celebrities had come out. (The tennis champion Martina Navratilova did so, memorably, in 1981.) But anti-gay crusades on the religious right threatened to roll back this progress. In 1986, the Supreme Court, upholding Georgia’s sodomy law, dismissed the notion of constitutional protection for gay sexuality as “at best, facetious.” AIDS was killing thousands of gay men each year.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/11/12/121112fa_fact_ross#ixzz2BsR8ePj5

 

 

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No Deportation for Immigrant in Same-Sex Marriage (NYTimes.com)

by Viviane on 07/01/2025

in gay marriage

In a decision that could have far-reaching effects on immigration cases involving same-sex couples, federal officials have canceled the deportation of a Venezuelan man in New Jersey who is married to an American man, the couple’s lawyer said Wednesday.

The announcement comes as immigration officials put into effect new, more flexible guidelines governing the deferral and cancellation of deportations, particularly for immigrants with no serious criminal records.

Immigration lawyers and gay rights advocates said the decision represented a significant shift in policy and could open the door to the cancellation of deportations for other immigrants in same-sex marriages.

“This action shows that the government has not only the power but the inclination to do the right thing when it comes to protecting certain vulnerable populations from deportation,” said the couple’s lawyer, Lavi Soloway.

The case has been closely watched across the country by lawyers and advocates who viewed it as a test of the federal government’s position on the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law that bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

Link

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Proposition 8 Case Stay Order Denied (Perry et al v. Schwarzeneggar)

by Viviane on 08/12/2024

in gay marriage, legal

U.S. Distrist Court website, Perry et a. v. Schwarzenegger

#728 Final Stay Order:

PERMANENT INJUNCTION. This action having come before and tried by the court and the court considered the same pursuant to FRCP 52(a), on August 4, 2010, ordered entry of judgment in favor of plaintiffs and plaintiff-intervenors and against defendants and defendant-intervenors and each of them, Doc #708, now therefore: IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that: Defendants in their official capacities, and all persons under the control or supervision of defendants, are permanently enjoined from applying or enforcing Article I,  Sec 7.5 of the California Constitution.

…That judgment shall be STAYED until August 18, 2010 at 5 PM PDT at which time defendants and all persons under their control or supervision shall cease to apply or
enforce Proposition 8.

#716 Memorandum in Opposition re 705 MOTION to Stay Pending Appeal filed byEdmund G. Brown, Jr.
#717 Memorandum in Opposition re 705 MOTION to Stay Pending Appeal filed byMark B. Horton, Arnold Schwarzenegger
#718 Memorandum in Opposition re 705 MOTION to Stay Pending Appeal filed byCity and County of San Francisco, Paul T. Katami, Kristin M. Perry, Sandra B. Stier, Jeffrey J. Zarrillo

Perry et al. v. Schwarzenegger opinion (U.S. District Court of California, Northern District)

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