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TOP6NEWS - September 27, 2004 1-NEWS: OR is the big battleground state for ssm this year 2-NEWS: GA judge skeptical court can stop m amendment being on ballot 3-NEWS: Judge widens the meaning of 'dad' 4-OP-ED: New Wolfson book review 5-OP-ED: Let's think about the consequences of ssm narrative 6-FEATURE: Gay teen in Oklahoma narrative (2 parts in WA Post) ________________________________________________________ 1-NEWS: OR is the big battleground state for ssm this year Gay marriage backers focus on Ore. battle Similar measures are being put to voters in 13 states this election season, but proponents of same-sex marriage say they are concentrating extra resources in Oregon, a state where voters have a track record of defeating antigay rights initiatives. The No on Constitutional Amendment 36 campaign has what gay rights activists say is likely to be the best-funded state effort to defeat such an amendment in the nation, out-raising traditional marriage advocates in the state by a 3-to-1 margin so far. With limited resources and even less time, national gay rights groups, believing they have little chance this year of defeating traditional marriage amendments in most states, admit they are engaging in a form of triage. By concentrating funds in Oregon, they hope to eke out a victory, or at least a strong showing, that would buoy the gay marriage movement as the battle expands to other states in upcoming years. ... ________________________________________________________ 2-NEWS: GA judge skeptical court can stop m amendment being on ballot Challenge to gay-marriage ban goes before judge Superior Court Judge Constance Russell ended an hour-long hearing by referring the attorneys to a case neither side had cited in their arguments, an 84-year-old ruling by the Georgia Supreme Court which held that the courts cannot intervene to block legislation or constitutional amendments until after they had passed. She said she was troubled by the ruling and instructed the lawyers: "Tell me why I'm not bound by it or whether I am." They were given until Monday to reply. Sen. Mike Crotts, R-Conyers, who sponsored the proposed amendment in this year's legislative session, said after the hearing he hadn't expected a ruling Friday but praised the judge's conduct of the proceeding. "I think she handled it fairly," he said. The proposed constitutional amendment would declare that Georgia only recognizes the union of a man and a woman as marriage. That's already state law, but advocates who pushed for the measure argued that the standard should be given the enhanced protection of a constitutional amendment to put it beyond the reach of liberal judges. ... ________________________________________________________ 3-NEWS: Judge widens the meaning of 'dad' Meaning of `dad' widened by judge John Huddleston, 49, argued that he was the father because when the child was born in April 2001, he and the boy's mother signed a legal document--called a "voluntary acknowledgement of paternity"--that named him as the father. But the case is unusual in that both Huddleston and the boy's mother, Margaret Torres, 41, of Chicago, signed the document knowing that Huddleston was not the boy's biological father. Ruling in what he called "an incredibly unique case," Cook County Domestic Relations Court Judge Allan Masters said Torres could not complain that the paternity form was wrong, since she participated in the misrepresentation. "Both parties are participants in what the court views as their clear, unambiguous intent to denominate Mr. Huddleston as the parent of this child," Masters said, according to a transcript of the hearing. ... ________________________________________________________ 4-OP-ED: New Wolfson book review The Peculiar Institution Both arguments are central to the political fight. In the platform they approved last month, Republicans associated gay unions with the distasteful recognition of ''other living arrangements as equivalent to marriage.'' They proposed a Constitutional amendment ''protecting'' current marriage laws, which they said were grounded in ''more than two centuries of American jurisprudence, and millennia of human experience.'' ... But Wolfson fears order more than disorder. ''Let's put aside for the time being the objections many of us, gay and nongay alike, probably have to the totalitarian notion that intimate sexual activity should be 'orderly and socially accountable,' '' he writes. In closing, Wolfson defines marriage loosely, calling it ''a relationship of emotional and financial interdependence between two people who make a public commitment.'' He brushes aside the immutability question in a couple of paragraphs. He defends homosexuality as a choice, likening it not to race but to religion and so deserving of Constitutional protection: ''As gay people and as Americans, we want what all human beings deserve: both the right to be different and the right to be equal. We want our freedom to make personal choices in life, to pursue happiness. . . . No American, no human being, should have to give up her or his difference in order to be treated equally under the law.'' Equal treatment regardless of choice. Think about that. In such a country, you would be forbidden to treat others differently based on their behavior. You would be free to express anything but your morals. No privilege or honor could be withheld. Preferential treatment of married couples under family leave laws would be dismissed, in Chauncey's words, as ''inequities.'' Even granting gay couples all the benefits of marriage but using a different word -- a compromise that moves those benefits halfway toward majority support -- would be ruled out under the Massachusetts supreme court doctrine favored by Wolfson, on the grounds that such semantic discrimination fosters ''a stigma of exclusion'' and denies same-sex couples ''social and other advantages.'' No permissible stigma, no permissible social advantage. This is the totalitarianism of the antitotalitarian. This larger menace -- the abolition of moral discrimination -- is what frightens reasonable people into joining the antigay resistance. They worry that marriage is losing its meaning and being supplanted by less stable relationships. Wolfson and Chauncey vindicate their fears. Chauncey welcomes the spread of domestic partnership benefits, noting ''more than half of the Fortune 500 employers -- and more than two-thirds of municipal governments -- providing such benefits made them available to unmarried heterosexual couples as well as gay couples.'' Wolfson praises California for extending ''family protections'' to unmarried heterosexuals (in this case, those over 62). Neither author asks why couples who can marry but choose not to do so deserve such protections. The distinctive gravity of marriage shines through Wolfson's stories of gay couples seeking recognition. But his abstract theory of equality flattens this distinction along with the rest. Thus he demands protection of committed gay couples not because they resemble heterosexual couples in all relevant respects but because it's wrong to discriminate against people because of their ''differences'' -- a term that would apply even more clearly to polygamists and incestuous couples. Wolfson dismisses the idea that gay marriage will lead down this slippery slope, but his do-your-own-thing rationale invites it. None of this radicalism, confusion or fear is necessary. We can absorb gay marriage into our society not because it's gay but because it's marriage. It's compatible with the moral distinctions we already understand and treasure. We don't have to honor every lifestyle we tolerate or treat cohabitation like marriage. It's the enemies of gay marriage who want to make this debate an all-or-nothing, order-or-chaos proposition. Let's not help them. William Saletan, the chief political correspondent for Slate, is the author of ''Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.'' ________________________________________________________ 5-OP-ED: Let's think about the consequences of ssm narrative Measure 36: Oregon's not prepared for the ramifications As a child, while other children were outside playing, I remember saying Kaddish, a Jewish prayer honoring the dead, for my father, although I had no conscious memory of his life. My mother chose to put her energy into raising me and did not remarry. We lived with a relative, a grandmother figure. I learned early on about the value of family, but not how to be in a relationship. My immediate role models were particularly an aunt and uncle, who were in a healthy marriage, but I didn't know on a day-to-day basis about the give and take between a man and a woman because I lived with two women. I viewed the world through my eyes, not how the world is. When I was 20, I married the first man who seriously pursued me. Both of us had grown up with absent fathers -- he through divorce, me through death. He, too, had lived with two women (his mother and great-grandmother). As it turned out, I married the wrong person for me at the wrong time in my life. I had never learned how to be in a relationship. ... Growing up with a single parent along with a grandmother in the household, it took time, personal growth and a great deal of emotional pain to understand what healthy relationships are founded on. Legalizing same-sex marriages will create a new world view. It will impact our educational and social system as well as our criminal justice system. Is it more important that we validate same-sex marriages or that we address the underlying issues? Jacqueline Lerner-Aderman lives in Tigard. ________________________________________________________ 6-FEATURE: Gay teen in Oklahoma narrative (2 parts in WA Post) In the Bible Belt, Acceptance Is Hard-Won Flat on his back, staring into the cylinders and bearings, Michael fixes his truck like he wishes he could fix himself. "I wake up and I try so hard to look at a girl," he says. "I tell myself I'm gonna be different. It doesn't work." While the rest of the country is debating same-sex marriage, Michael's America is still dealing with the basics. There are no rainbow flags here. No openly gay teacher at the high school. There is just the wind knifing down the plains, and people praying over their lunches in the yellow booths at Subway. Michael loves this place, but can it still be home? What if the preachers and the country music songs are right? "Being gay, you'll never have that true love like a man and a woman," Michael says, standing against his truck as Merle Haggard mixes with the backyard whippoorwills. "Hearing all the songs about a man coming home from work to his wife's loving arms, you never hear of gay couples like that." He sets his ratchet down. "Do you?" ******************************** At first, in group therapy, Michael was withdrawn. He'd never discussed being gay with anyone. After a few days, he uncrossed his arms and began talking. No one laughed. No one threatened him. No one said he was going to hell. On discharge day, Michael didn't want to leave. But he couldn't stay forever because real life was waiting beyond the double doors. Now a year later, his initial anguish of awakening to his sexuality has eased. He is making his first bumbling, fumbling attempts at human connection. With a girl, it would be simple. "You just go up to her," Michael says, shrugging. In this new and unknown territory, he has no clue what to do or say. Every calculation is accompanied by a risk: "I could get the crap beat out of me." One night at the mall he sees a clerk at Abercrombie & Fitch who he thinks might be gay. Heart pounding, Michael decides to go for it. He asks the clerk: Are you fruity? ... |
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