Top 6 News - May 21, 2004
1-NEWS: Romney asks Reilly to stop out-of-state ssm
2-NEWS: CA appeals court: No child support required by lesbian
3-NEWS: MO gov. Sec of State debating timing of ssm vote
4-OP-ED: M. Boot: Right has lost this one
5-OP-ED: C. Thomas: The foundation has cracked
6-OP-ED: M. Charen on ss parenting
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1-NEWS: Romney asks Reilly to stop out-of-state ssm
Romney turns to AG for halt to licensing
Targets marriage by gay outsiders
By Yvonne Abraham and Raphael Lewis, Globe Staff | May 21, 2004
http://www.boston.com/News/news/local/articles/2004/05/21/romney_turns_to_ag_for_halt_to_licensing/
Governor Mitt Romney yesterday asked the state attorney general to stop municipal clerks from issuing marriage licenses to samesex couples from other states and said Massachusetts would refuse to officially record the licenses of those couples who do not intend to live here.
Romney sent Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly copies of the license applications of 10 out-ofstate same-sex couples who sought marriage licenses in Provincetown and Springfield this week and asked Reilly to take steps to prevent the clerks from issuing licenses to such couples in the future.
Over the next several days, Romney will forward Reilly the names of nonresident couples given license applications in Worcester and Somerville, two other communities where clerks announced their intention to welcome all comers.
Romney said he expected Reilly to urge the clerks to stop issuing the licenses with calls and letters at first. If that does not work, Romney said, a court injunction might be warranted.
But Reilly refused to say whether he would agree to the governor’s request. Reilly, a likely Democratic opponent to Romney in 2006, said, “We have an awful lot of other things going on, so we’ll deal with this as it comes.”
Reilly repeatedly stressed that under Massachusetts law, the governor has the power to prosecute all matters related to marriage without the help of the attorney general. "I want to recognize here and acknowledge that the governor of Massachusetts has special authority and jurisdiction when it comes to the regulation of the issuance of marriage [licenses], and enforcement of the marriage laws and process," Reilly said. "I certainly understand that authority, and I respect that authority. We will take it in that context."
Romney said he has spoken to Reilly personally and that the two officials are "on the same page."
"We all have the same interests," Romney said. "To make sure the law is carried out."
Outlining his legal strategy at a news conference yesterday, the governor said he does not intend to punish the clerks or the couples. He said his aim is to avoid the "export" of same-sex marriage to other states by restricting licenses to gay couples who live in Massachusetts.
However, he also said he would take steps that could make it impossible for out-of-state gay couples to claim many of the benefits associated with marriage. The state registrar, he said, would refuse to record the marriages of the 10 out-of-state residents he identified and all those others who state on their applications that they have no intention of moving here. That step, he said, renders their marriages automatically invalid under a 1913 law that voids Massachusetts marriages if they would be void in the state in which a couple resides.
"He can use whatever tools he has on hand to remind the clerks of their obligations to carry out the law," Romney said of Reilly."I don't expect there would be any kind of punitive effort on [Reilly's] part. I would expect a corrective effort, where he would use the tools he has to ensure the elected officials, and particularly the appointed officials, are following the law as we understand it." As Romney interprets the 1913 law, the same-sex marriages of couples from out of state are null and void because no other state in the union licenses them. Reilly sees the reach of that law differently: He has said that the marriages of out-of-state gay couples would be void only in the 38 states that have laws on the books specifically banning gay marriage.
The documents forwarded to Reilly were copies of 10 applications filed by residents of states that have no specific law banning gay marriage and those that do. Gay-marriage supporters have said that the governor and the attorney general are applying an archaic law inappropriately and unfairly, and are preparing to fight it in court.
The request ends weeks of speculation on what Romney would do to enforce a 1913 law after nearly a week of silence from the governor following his prominent role in the fight to block the beginning of legalized gay marriage in Massachusetts, which began Monday. With yesterday's move, he has lobbed the ball squarely into Reilly's court. Romney asked Reilly to seek, on his behalf, a delay in the May 17 start of those marriages earlier this spring, but the attorney general rebuffed him, saying the matter was settled.
Gay-marriage opponents urged Reilly to act.
"I certainly think there is merit in the governor calling the attorney general to action. Now the ball is in the attorney general's court," said Kristian M. Mineau, acting president of the Massachusetts Family Institute. "We have to see if he, who is supposed to uphold and support the law, is going to carry it out. I expect the attorney general to do his job in accordance with the constitution."
Supporters of gay marriage said they hoped Reilly would respond to Romney the same way now as earlier.
"We would urge the attorney general to reject the governor's invitation altogether, for a simple reason," said Mary Bonauto, civil rights project director of Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, which argued the Supreme Judical Court case that gave gays and lesbians the right to marry. "Massachusetts already allows heterosexual nonresidents to marry and it can't have a different rule for gay people. The governor is picking a fight here, by denying recognition of this legal commitment these people so joyfully assumed."
Yesterday Romney stressed that he would not move to punish out-of-state couples. Their marriages do "no harm to the Commonwealth," he said.
"The consequences of people not following the law unfortunately is falling on the couples that are entering into a relationship," Romney said. "The Commonwealth, I don't imagine, is planning to challenge those marriages. . . . It's instead down the road, where another state might challenge them, or an employer might challenge them, or one of the individuals [in] the marriage itself might challenge the relationship, and that's really unfortunate for those individuals."
With the state registrar not recording the licenses of couples who do not intend to live here, the couples will not hold a valid Massachusetts license, making it unlikely that they would have legal standing to fight for benefits.
According to the documents forwarded to the attorney general and obtained by the Globe under the state's Public Records law, the applications selected by Romney were filed by couples from Maine, Vermont, Ohio, New York, California, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey.
Virginia Purcell, a Maine resident who arrived in Provincetown on Tuesday with her partner, Susan Elias, to apply for a marriage license, said she was troubled to hear that Romney had flagged the couple's application.
The parent of twin 7-year-old children, Purcell said she would gladly join a class-action lawsuit to make sure her marriage is acknowledged in Massachusetts. Only then, she said, could she fight to overturn Maine's Defense of Marriage Act. "Someone has to challenge the DOMA in the state of Maine," said Purcell.
Globe staff writer Frank Phillips contributed to this report.
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2-NEWS: CA appeals court: No child support required by lesbian
STATE APPEALS COURT
No child support owed by lesbian
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/05/21/BAG8V6PGNH1.DTL
A state appellate court refused Thursday to hold members of estranged same-sex couples responsible for child support and other parental obligations on the same basis as heterosexual couples.
The decision by the Court of Appeal in Sacramento overturned a child- support order against a San Francisco woman who allegedly promised to support her partner's twins before the couple broke up. It was the latest in a series of California rulings that have rejected co-parent status for former same-sex couples and recognized only the biological or birth parent as the legal parent.
Like their judicial colleagues in past rulings, the justices said family status was strictly defined by state law and that any changes must come from the Legislature.
"Whether and in what circumstances a person in a same-sex relationship, who is not related to children born during the relationship, should have the rights or obligations of a parent are matters plainly within the realm of legislative policy,'' said Presiding Justice Arthur Scotland in the 3-0 ruling.
The court noted that a new state law, effective next January, gives domestic partners the same parental status as married couples. That law will not apply to a pre-2005 case, the court said, also observing that the couple involved in Thursday's ruling never registered with the state as domestic partners.
Lawyers on both sides said the ruling was an explicit statement that lesbian and gay couples do not have the same legal status in California as opposite-sex couples.
"The state of the law is that same-sex couples and their offspring are not a family,'' said Shelly Hanke, lawyer for Elisa Maria B., the estranged member of the couple who successfully challenged the order telling her to pay child support. "Until the Legislature acknowledges that that entity is a family unit, the nonbiological partners have no rights to the offspring of the other.''
"The court refused to apply the rules that apply to other families to this couple because they're lesbians,'' said attorney Courtney Joslin of the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco. "With heterosexual married couples, when they decide to bring a child into the world using a medical procedure, they're both held to be parents.''
Deputy Attorney General Mary Dahlberg, whose office defended the support order obtained by El Dorado County against Elisa Maria B., declined to comment about whether the ruling will be appealed to the state Supreme Court.
Elisa and her partner, Emily B., began living together in El Dorado County in 1993, exchanged rings and decided to have and raise children together, using the same sperm donor. Elisa gave birth to a boy in 1997, and Emily bore twins, a boy and a girl, in 1998. Joslin said the male twin was born with Down Syndrome and needs constant care.
The women breast-fed all three children and treated them as their own children, the court said. Elisa claimed all three as dependents for tax purposes. With her encouragement, Emily stayed home and cared for the children with a nanny while Elisa worked outside the home.
The couple separated in 1999, and Elisa, who has since moved to San Francisco, agreed to continue financial support "when she could,'' the court said. She stopped making payments after 18 months, saying she could no longer afford them. Emily was on welfare, so the county sued Elisa to recover its support payments.
A Superior Court judge ordered payments of $1,815 a month, reasoning that Elisa, who had intended to bring the children into the world, should be held to the same standard as a man, who would be considered a parent in similar circumstances. The appeals court disagreed.
In Thursday's opinion, Scotland said previous rulings in surrogate-mother cases, which assigned parental rights to the couple who had intended to conceive and raise the child, were irrelevant to a same-sex case. He said a promise of future support might be enforceable, but only if it was clearly meant to be binding even after separation, and there was no such evidence in this case.
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3-NEWS: MO gov. Sec of State debating timing of ssm vote
Governor, election official spar over gay marriage in Mo.
Dispute is seen to affect turnout
By David A. Lieb, Associated Press | May 21, 2004
http://www.boston.com/News/news/specials/gay_marriage/articles/2004/05/21/governor_election_official_spar_over_gay_marriage_in_mo/
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missouri-Gay-Marriage.html
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Missouri's governor and chief election official are sparring over the timing of a vote on a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. It is a dispute that could complicate efforts for Democrats during November's presidential contest.
Governor Bob Holden, a Democrat, has called for an Aug. 3 vote on the amendment, a move that would keep it from affecting turnout in the Nov. 2 general election.
But Secretary of State Matt Blunt, a Republican, has refused to set an election date until he receives the actual amendment from legislators who passed the measure last week.
Blunt is not expected to receive the proposed amendment until May 28, three days after the deadline to notify local election officials of any additions to the August ballot.
The issue is now heading to court. Attorney General Jay Nixon, a Democrat, sued Blunt yesterday, seeking to force him to place the issue on the Aug. 3 ballot.
The timing of the gay marriage vote could have political implications not only for Holden and Blunt, both of whom are running for governor this year, but also for Senator John F. Kerry's campaign against President Bush.
Some political observers believe putting the proposed gay marriage ban on the November ballot would draw enough conservative voters to give Republicans the winning margin in this swing state in November.
"If I were the Republican Party, I would really want this on the November ballot, because I think it would help them all the way up and down the ballot," said Martha Kropf, assistant professor of political science at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. "And if I were the Democrats, I'd be working day and night to make sure it got on the August ballot."
An August election would coincide with Missouri's political party primaries, which have traditionally low turnouts.
Missouri already has a law recognizing only marriages between a man and woman. But supporters of the proposed amendment believe that a constitutional change could better withstand a potential legal challenge.
Under the state constitution, proposed amendments are automatically placed on the November ballot unless the governor schedules a special election earlier
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4-OP-ED: M. Boot: Right has lost this one
I know this is very similar to Cal Thomas’ article below, but that is the point. They are giving up.
Max Boot:
The Right Can't Win This Fight
With gay marriage on a roll, it's time to move on to another battle.
LA Times 5. 20.04
http://www.latimes.com/News/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-boot20may20,1,4017543.column
For decades, social conservatives have been fighting and losing culture wars. Contraception and abortion — once taboo topics — have been enshrined into law. The rates of premarital sex, out-of-wedlock births and divorce have soared since the 1950s (though lately most of these indexes have leveled off or declined slightly). In school, prayer is out; sex education is in. On TV, characters used to say "gee whiz" and sleep in twin beds; now they curse as if they had Tourette's syndrome and flash skin as if they were Gypsy Rose Lee.
This doesn't mean that America is in cultural decline; no one who saw the response to 9/11 can think we are soft or decadent. It does mean there is little mystery about how the latest culture war — over gay marriage — will turn out. Opponents of same-sex marriages may have most of the public on their side for now, but they've already all but lost this battle.
How do I know? Simply by looking at the arguments being advanced by both sides. Advocates of same-sex marriage speak in the powerful language of civil rights and liken their cause to that of African Americans fighting anti-miscegenation laws in years past. And what do opponents say in response? Once upon a time, the case would have been open and shut: Sodomy is a sin, period. Many people may still believe that, but that's no longer a tenable argument in our secularized politics.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy laws last year. The Episcopal Church has appointed an openly gay bishop. Many newspapers carry the equivalent of wedding announcements for gays. Same-sex kisses, once shockingly daring, are now almost as common on TV as commercials for Levitra or Prozac. Given this seismic cultural shift, anyone who makes avowedly moral arguments against homosexuality now gets treated the same way homosexuals were treated only a few years ago — as a sex-mad pervert.
Traditionalists have tried to put forward various nonmoral arguments against gay marriage, but none is particularly convincing. They argue, first, that we shouldn't tamper with thousands of years of tradition that holds that marriage is between a man and a woman. But 141 years ago we tampered with an equally old tradition: slavery. Their second argument is the slippery slope — first gay marriage gets legalized, then polygamy, pederasty, incest and who knows what. But this kind of reductio ad absurdum can be applied to just about anything. If liquor is legal for adults, why not for children? Society always draws the line somewhere.
The final and strongest argument of gay marriage opponents: Don't let courts or a handful of mayors change the law on their own. Let's debate this democratically. Fine. But that will only delay the legalization of gay marriage; it won't stop it in most places. The Massachusetts judges whose diktat led to gay marriages in that state starting this week aren't operating in outer space. They are only slightly ahead of the societal consensus, just as the Supreme Court was only slightly ahead of the societal consensus when it legalized abortion in 1973. Nowadays, no matter what the court says, there isn't a state in the union that would illegalize abortion (though some might pass more restrictions than the justices would allow). In a few years, that may be true of gay marriage as well.
Faced with virtually inevitable defeat, Republicans would be wise not to expend too much political capital pushing for a gay marriage amendment to the Constitution. They will only make themselves look "intolerant" to soccer moms whose views on this subject, as on so many others, will soon be as liberal as elite opinion already is.
The good news, from the conservative point of view, is that it's hard to imagine that legalizing gay marriage will make much difference in the lives of most people. Certainly it will have considerably less corrosive effect on society than the prevalence of divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing.
If conservatives are worried about destigmatizing homosexuality, that's already happening. If they're worried this will lead to hordes of new "recruits" for the "other team" (as "Seinfeld" put it), that's not going to happen. Homosexuality always has been and always will be the preference of a tiny minority; most of us are biologically hard-wired for heterosexuality.
Since the ultimate concern of conservatives is to preserve the institution of marriage, they would probably be better off caving on gay marriage rather than acceding to the most popular alternative: civil union. Gay marriages won't affect straights. But if civil union laws were to catch on, as Jonathan Rauch argues in his provocative new book, "Gay Marriage," many heterosexuals would probably eschew marriage altogether. That would be worse for society than seeing Rosie O'Donnell get hitched.
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5-OP-ED: C. Thomas: The foundation has cracked
Marriage Massachusetts-style
Cal Thomas
May 19, 2004
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/ct20040519.shtml
Cultural tsunamis, like those that begin under oceans, are caused by something deep within. When high water hits the shore, it is the result of a subterranean earthquake. When the state of Massachusetts last Monday (May 17) began offering marriage to people of the same sex, this "wave" was preceded by a seismic shift in the moral tectonic plates.
The Old Testament Book of Judges - part of a wisdom and truth long discarded by the "In Dow Jones we trust" crowd - said it best: "In those days there were no kings and everyone did what was right in his own eyes." Once that shift has taken place in sufficient numbers, once we become indifferent to immutable truths, the floodtide is not a matter of if but when.
Legally, the shift began in 1993 when the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that barring same-sex couples from "marrying" might violate the state constitution's prohibition on sexual discrimination and must be justified by a compelling reason. Morally, the earthquake occurred much earlier.
The shift from personal responsibility, accountability, putting the greater good before personal pleasure, affluence and "feelings," and what once was known as "the fear of God" began following World War II. Consumption and pleasure replaced self-control and acting on behalf of the general welfare. Trying to remind us of the benefits of restraint in 1979 (when it was already too late), the late Bishop Fulton J. Sheen delivered an address in Washington in which he asked how a football field is defined. "By its boundaries," he said. There are now no boundaries in America. Any rule is potentially viewed as oppressive and any law - whether legal or moral - is up for debate, negotiation and overturning if it impedes a single individual from fulfilling his or her desire.
A Utah polygamist challenged his conviction before the state supreme court, employing the "reasoning" behind the same-sex "marriage" law in Massachusetts in arguing his "rights" have been denied.
Who is to say the polygamist, Tom Green, is wrong when the boundaries have been removed? On what legal or moral basis will people who wish to marry more than one person, or a close relative, be denied their wish?
The former governor of Oregon, Neil Goldschmidt, admits to having had sex with a 14-year-old girl when he was mayor of Portland. In most places that's called statutory rape, but the Oregonian newspaper at first chose to categorize it as adultery. Even adultery and statutory rape might soon be up for elimination as "stigmas" because the concepts will be found to be biblically based and, thus, deemed unconstitutional by activist judges who see themselves a demigods.
Does that idea outrage you? Perhaps you think that will never happen. It goes too far. That was once said of same-sex marriage. The International Olympic Committee last Monday cleared transsexuals to compete in the Olympics for the first time providing their new gender has been legally recognized and they have gone through a minimum two-year period of postoperative hormone therapy. Thank goodness some standard remains.
"Pro family" groups have given it their best shot, but this debate is over. They would do better to spend their energy and resources building up their side of the cultural divide and demonstrating how their own precepts are supposed to work. Divorce remains a great threat to family stability, and there are far more heterosexuals divorcing and cohabiting than homosexuals wishing to "marry." If conservative religious people wish to exert maximum influence on culture, they will redirect their attention to repairing their own cracked foundation. An improved heterosexual family structure will do more for those families and the greater good than attempts to halt the inevitable. A topical solution does not cure a skin disease whose source is far deeper.
Paul the Apostle long ago saw what happens when people remove boundaries: "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear" (2 Timothy 4:3).
That day has arrived like a tsunami in Massachusetts and soon in the other 49 states. It's because of the earthquake that cracked our foundation.
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6-OP-ED: M. Charen on ss parenting
Are children of gay parents worse off?
Mona Charen
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/monacharen/mc20040521.shtml
Are children raised by gay parents worse off than other children? As same sex couples line up for marriage licenses in Massachusetts, the question achieves greater urgency.
Two researchers answered when they reviewed the available scholarly literature in the American Sociological Review three years ago. What makes their essay intriguing is that both professors Judith Stacey and Timothy J. Biblarz are emphatically in favor of gay marriage and child-rearing. Being honest scholars, though, they could not accept the tendentious spin that others in their field have put on the available research. They deny that the studies show "no difference" between children raised in gay and lesbian homes and those raised in heterosexual homes.
Biblarz and Stacey begin with the common sense observation that good data on children raised by gay and lesbian parents are difficult to come by. Many of the children studied were conceived in traditional families and lived through a divorce before being raised by one biological parent and his or her gay partner. When comparing these children to those from intact families, the trauma of the divorce would have to be considered.
Then there is the problem of selection. "Most research to date has been conducted on white lesbian mothers who are comparatively educated, mature and reside in relatively progressive urban centers, most often in California or the Northeastern states."
The authors also doubt the conventional wisdom that broader acceptance of homosexuality will increase the number of children being raised in same-sex households. They believe the opposite is more likely. Their reasoning goes as follows: Most children being raised by gays and lesbians were originally born into heterosexual families. The authors believe a significant number of these parents (who would later come out of the closet) would never have entered heterosexual marriages if same sex unions carried less of a stigma.
"As homosexuality becomes more legitimate," they write, "far fewer people with homoerotic desires should feel compelled to enter heterosexual marriages, and thus fewer should become parents in this way."
A countervailing trend is also at work. Lesbian and gay couples are taking advantage of the less censorious social climate to form whole gay families. But Biblarz and Stacey doubt that this will overcome the first trend. For gay men, reproduction is a complicated and expensive affair. They must either adopt or pay a surrogate to carry a baby for them. Besides, as the authors note, men of both sexual orientations are less likely to desire children than are women. For lesbian women, obviously, the process is far simpler. A trip to the local sperm bank is all that is required. But since there are many more homosexual men than women, the authors doubt that the increased number of lesbian couples will add to the total of gay-raised children much if at all in light of the first effect.
Biblarz and Stacey examined 21 studies of "lesbigay" couples' children compared with heterosexual parents' children. While all of the researchers had claimed to find "no difference" in outcomes between the two groups, Biblarz and Stacey disagree. There are statistically significant differences in gender identity, sexual experimentation and promiscuity. The authors are quick to add that these observed differences do not alarm them. They are happy to embrace a variety of family forms. And if gay parenting means more gay offspring, the authors are not alarmed by this.
First, not surprisingly, both boys and girls raised by homosexuals are far more likely to tell researchers that they have experimented with or considered homosexuality themselves. This is no shock. The research further shows that daughters raised by lesbians tend to have a larger number of sexual partners from puberty to adulthood than children in ordinary homes. It also, quite interestingly, shows that boys raised by lesbians have fewer sexual encounters than boys raised by heterosexual parents.
As Biblarz and Stacey observe, the majority of children raised in gay families turn out to be heterosexual in adulthood (bearing in mind the limitations of the research).
Biblarz and Stacey deserve credit for their honesty. But their breezy embrace of gay parenting is highly reminiscent of the cheerful accounts offered in the 1970s for divorce and single parent households. In those days, we were told that whatever made for a happier parent also made for a happier child. We are sadder and wiser now. The children are much sadder.
©2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
