Gay Marriage to Alfred: Your Thoughts

not sure, California doesn't allow common law marriage either ... unless you were common law in a state that recognizes it before you moved to California.

(b) is very weird.

END MAY-DECEMBER DISCRIMINATION NOW

Oh wait, maybe that's a loophole to get elderly relatives onto your health plan? But wouldn't they already be classifiable as dependents, anyway?

Maybe it's a way to make sure that older people who're likely to spend time in the hosp get to have their partner of their waning years qualify as family? It seems like a really weird differentiation, but I guess with the number of "single" retirees, maybe it makes sense?

oic, like retirement home repairings where you are not at all likely to get married

Right, exactly.

I understand, and who knows what sort of process went on to arrive at this decision, but still, it's not like old folks are forbidden from having an official marriage. No harm in it I guess, still odd.

there are lots of reasons old folks don't remarry, almost all of them legal/financial. For ex., if you remarry, you may lose pension benefits of dead spouse, etc.

I don't think pension benefits work that way. Most death benefits don't have remarriage rules from my understanding, but there are undoubtedly other legal/financial issues.

pension benefits from divorce settlements probably have a remarriage clause.

could be, I dunno the niceties of the law in these cases - just speaking from personal experience where my divorced dad has no plans to marry his widowed girlfriend because her dead husband stuck some clause about her being cut off financially from his benefits if she remarried

into his will

My grandfather's will had a remarriage clause...so my crazy step-grandmother has been living with her much younger ex-con boyfriend for like a decade rather than lose the inheritance that pays for her life (and his).

Oooh, a telling xp.

maybe its just me but having that in your will seems like a sign of collosal assholism

Well, it was old fashioned of him. He married her to provide for her -- his responsibility as the man in her life. If she met and loved and married another man after him, that would be her new husband's responsibility. The end result is that she got all his lifetime of savings to put toward her support as a widow, and his children did not. Now she uses the money to support the man in her life.

My grandpa assumed that she would do the "honest" thing b/c he thought she was a person who shared his worldviews. Unfortunately that turned out not to be the case.

Btw fuck you.

haha sorry didn't mean to offend.

I was just thinking of it in terms of wanting your spouse to continue to be happy and cared for after you're gone. I mean, if I die I want my wife to be happy and if that means marrying someone else then hey, more power to her. I'll be dead, what will I care.

Yah. It's weird, I guess, bc they married late under strange circumstances and she didn't raise his family or endure being young and poor and struggling or anything. She was a younger woman who showed up late and walked off with the cash.

The offspring that would have inherited are all over it, it's been like 15 years. Just the injustice bothers me now.

You can't rule constitutional amendments unconstitutional.

Well, sure you can. e.g., if a simple majority of california voters approved a ballot measure amending the constitution to state that Jews could not own property in certain ZIP codes, that would fail the court's equal protection test.

tipsy mothra otm: the ruling effectively says "the initiative can stand (and we want to stay out of the business of overturning initiatives as much as possible) SO LONG AS there is no difference under the law between "marriage" and "whatever it is we call the legal union of a same-sex couple."

Or, sure, you can pass your no-property-for-Jews amendment so long as they can own "stuff."

A no-drama ruling is frustrating and disappointing but probably the right one for this state right now. The people will resolve it, and when they do the court will have demonstrated it's not in the business of challenging the people's will.

Now I've seen everything -- Ted Olson's going to fight against Prop 8 in federal court.

hmm. it seems to me (and a lot of people i've read on the issue) that if/when the supreme court rules on this, the better case to push will be on enforceable contracts, not on a federal "right to marry." i'm not at all confident that the current court is going to establish that right.

(plus i can't get past the sense that olson is looking for a little civil-rights glory in his old age, and this is the last train leaving the station. i can understand not wanting bush v. gore as the only thing in the lead of your obituary.)

enforceable contracts

what does this mean

I wonder what Ann Coultier thinks about Ted Olson now.

jeez ned the comments thread under that story o_0

i'd quote some but they make me too gnaqrr

My favorite obtuse comment, and one that I have read more than a few times: "Homosexual men can marry....women. Homosexual women can marry....men. How are they not equal to heterosexuals?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-thomas/the-big-gay-chip-on-my-sh_b_208183.html

Sorry this isn't about the US but over here in Ireland, did not realise this: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0227/1224241892986.html

A NATIONAL poll commissioned by a group campaigning for gay marriage has found that 62 per cent of respondents would vote Yes in a referendum to extend civil marriage to same-sex couples.

The campaign group MarriagEquality said yesterday the poll results showed the public was ready to accept civil marriage for lesbians and gay men.

Government ministers have ruled out same-sex marriage on the basis that it would require a referendum which, they say, would be the subject of a deeply divisive public debate.

The poll was conducted by Lansdowne Market Research between October 15th and 30th, 2008. A national sample of 1,000 people over 15 years of age were interviewed.

A breakdown of the results shows that support is strongest among younger people and in urban areas. Women were more supportive at 68 per cent compared to 56 per cent of men.

There was slightly less support for same-sex couples being given the right to adopt. A total of 58 per cent of those under 50 believe same-sex couples should be able to adopt, falling to 33 per cent among the over-50s.

A total of 54 per cent believe the definition of the family unit in the Constitution should be changed to include same-sex families.

Gráinne Healy, co-chair of MarriagEquality, said the findings supported the group’s calls for the Government to recognise that equality includes the human and civil rights of lesbian women and gay men to marry.

“There are many different family types in Ireland, including lesbians and gay parents. The Irish public recognise this fact, with seven out of 10 believing that being raised in a loving home is the key determinant in ensuring that children are happy and well.”

A civil partnership Bill is due before the Dáil shortly which will allow lesbian and gay couples to register with the State and avail of privileges in areas such as pensions, inheritance and tax.

Officials say it will stop short of marriage and will not provide any right for same-sex couples to adopt. Groups such as MarriagEquality say this does not go far enough. Moninne Griffith, MarriagEquality’s co-ordinator, said it was within the Government’s power to legislate for civil marriage for same-sex couples.

“Until the Government acts, Ireland is infringing upon the rights of a section of Irish society. There is no time to waste; equality for all people on this island must become a reality,” she said.

That's great. Also, don't apologize, this is not an American thread, it's a gay marriage thread!

Read this earlier

Eamon Farrell will marry his partner Steven Mannion this summer as his proud brother, Colin Farrell serves as best man.

The excited groom-to-be says unfortunately, the nuptials cannot take place in his homeland of Ireland. 'We have to get married abroad. It's absolutely terrible," Eamon Farrell says. "We have to go somewhere legal, which narrows it down to about five countries."

(bastard BBCode won't let me make that a link grumblegrumble http://www.gaywired.com/Article.cfm?ID=22895)

what does this mean

article 4, section 1 of the constitution:

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.

the thinking basically is that it will be an easier sell that contracts made in one state have to apply in others than that the "right to marry" is a constitutional right. several states have laws or state constitutional amendments specifically exempting same-sex marriages from this, which seems blatantly unconstitutional. if the supreme court said that, then any same-sex marriage in any state would have to be honored everywhere.

honest question, and not a lawyer: what is blatantly unconstitutional about that? is "Full Faith and Credit..." a power explicitly delegated to the United States? if it isn't, then the 10th amendment would suggest that the states can explicitly excise same-sex marriages from those public acts or records they feel like honoring. right? i mean, i'm in favor of same-sex marriages, but i'm not sure that that thinking is bullet-proof, or an easier sell.

as a condition of belonging to the union, the states are constitutionally required to recognize each other's "acts, records and judicial proceedings." e.g., wisconsin can't unilaterally decide not to recognize debts incurred in utah. if it did, all the utah debtors would just move to wisconsin. a marriage is a contract (as far as the state is concerned, anyway), and contracts made in one state, under the constitution, have to be enforceable in another. which is exactly why some states have passed laws or amendments carving out same-sex marriages as an exception. there may be a constitutional case for that (i'm not a lawyer either), but the case against it is on the surface pretty straightforward and compelling.

there's a bit about its specific application to gay marriage on the wikipedia faith-and-credit clause page, noting that scalia identified it as the likely chink in the armor.

i don't know if it's come up since then but someone tried this in florida a few years ago and it failed. they just said florida can legitimately decide its state policy is not to have gay marriage, and making them recognize it would mean that massachusetts would be determining what the law is for every state (that seems like if you took that to its logical conclusion the FFC means nothing but i think that's what it says). and by passing DOMA congress is within its power to say what effect the laws of other states have. i don't know too much about the FFC but it's not really a magic bullet.

Which is why when DOMA finally becomes before SCOTUS, a laywer may cite the full faith and credit clause to assert the act's unconstitutionality.

meanwhile the Ted Olson saga gets stranger: Gay groups: We don't want Olson.

the case is wilson v. ake. it wasn't appealed to the 11th circuit though so that's just one district in florida.

it is definitely not a magic bullet, but it's a more hardcore constitutional issue than the "right to marry."

(like, it's very easy for me to believe that a 5-member majority including kennedy would decline to rule for a right to marry. but a constitutional contracts argument could sway at least one of them. maybe even scalia, although he'd probably do some kind of jujitsu to get out of it.)

On an anecdotal sidenote: Jeffrey Toobin's book on the Court describes most of the justices being ok with homos personally. A clerk was touched by a letter Rehnquist wrote him when his partner died. Clerks brought their partners to the annual cocktail hour with the justices, and were introduced as such.

For the I'm Not Surprised File: Clarence Thomas even kept pictures of a lesbian clerk's partner on his desk (!!)

except there is a constitutional right to marry! like you're right the court would definitely decline to extend it to same-sex couples if it came up today but it's not because it doesn't exist. xp

right, yeah, i mean a right to marry that extends to gay couples.

sorry what i meant was i don't feel like either one is more likely to succeed because arguments exist both ways, but still...........gays.

i don't know, i think a ruling on faith-and-credit seems more inevitable, because there are going to start be a kazillion complications from having people married in some states but not in other states.

in other words, the exact kind of legal nightmare that the clause very explicitly intends to obviate.

Um, what explicitly pissed me off with the Irish one is the government saying in advance that marriage isn't going to happen despite the massive support in its favour.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gUUXsl3sakXbS8W1AYb4xSxxEMIgD98JE1IG0

lol this isn't even on CNN.com yet