While a tribal court recently avoided ruling on the issue, the Cherokee Nation will begin recognizing same-sex marriages under an opinion issued Friday by the tribe’s attorney general, who noted that Cherokees practiced something similar to gay marriage in past centuries.
While agreeing that the tribe, as a sovereign nation itself, was not bound by the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision that made gay marriage legal in all 50 states, Todd Hembree echoed the court’s reasoning, deciding that the tribe’s own constitution “protects the fundamental right to marry” regardless of the genders involved in the relationship. That decision effectively nullifies a law the Cherokee Nation enacted in 2004 to specify that marriages recognized by the tribe had to be between a man and woman.
That law came after two women, Dawn McKinley and Kathy Reynolds, obtained a marriage license from the tribe. Then-Attorney General Dianne Hammons issued an opinion that the license was invalid because Cherokee law, while not specifically requiring couples to be opposite-sex, presumed the traditional definition of marriage. The Tribal Council then quickly passed a bill to make that definition explicit.
Mediaite reports that even Megyn Kelly, Fox News’ own 21st Century’s version of Toyko Rose doesn’t suffer fools like the National Organization for Marriages’ hate group leader Brian Brown lightly.
On the heels of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore‘s order to halt same-sex marriage licenses in the state, an emboldened National Organization for Marriage decided to send a history major to do a lawyer’s job. Fox News anchor and experienced lawyer Megyn Kelly hosted Brian Brown (the NOM president, not the Australian guy from Cocktail) on Wednesday night’s The Kelly File to discuss Moore’s order. Brown was doing pretty well for himself until he started to say words, and then things went all haywire for him.
Remember this is the same Megyn Kelly who practically drools over Tony Per-KKK-ins.
I tell you kids, you just can’t make this stuff up.
GOP Presidential Nominee wannabe Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum who is polling at 0% says he would start fix the Supreme Court by enforcing DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 that banned the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages even though that same Supreme Court in 2013 ruled Section 3 of DOMA unconstitutional. But Santorum disagrees, and says the court’s decision “wholly” was wrong he would still try to enforce the now defunct law.
That’s where I would start,” Santorum says. “This was a decision that was extra-constitutional. That law is good, valid law and I would enforce that law.”
Someone pass Rick some Charmin so he can wipe his mouth because he is talking some crazy idiotic “santorum” once again.
Knowing that they have a snowballs chance of winning the case, the anti-gay hate group the Liberty Counsel yesterday filed a motion in the ACLU’s lawsuit against the four-times-married, dog-napping, anti-gay Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis in which they try to paint her as akin to an anti-war conscientious objector for not issuing marriage licences to same-sex couples.
“Like a noncombatant who cannot shoulder a rifle, a county clerk who cannot issue” same-sex licenses “can still faithfully and devotedly serve this country, and their county,” lawyers for Kim Davis argued in a pleading filed Thursday in U.S. District Court. Asking Judge David Bunning to deny an injunction forcing Davis to begin issuing licenses again, attorneys Roger Gannam and Jonathan Christman from the Orlando-based Liberty Counsel note that Kentucky law allows county clerks an exemption from issuing fishing and hunting licenses. “If Kentucky is able to accommodate personal beliefs and conscientious objection regarding something that is (to some) as trivial as fishing and hunting, surely Kentucky can and must provide similar accommodation for deeply held beliefs about the fundamental nature of marriage,” they said in their pleading.
The ACLU has seven days to respond to the latest motion. (And I am sure it will not take that long)
The final ruling in the case is expected in mid-August. Kentucky’s county clerks are elected and can only be removed by the state legislature, which is out of session until January.
Davis and other anti-gay renegade clerks face fines and jail for contempt of court should the ruling go against them.
The Pitcairn Islands, which is a country in-itself and consists of group of four volcanic islands in the southern Pacific has passed the Same Sex Marriage and Civil Partnership Ordinance 2015, which explicitly allows for same-sex marriages among the island nation’s 56 inhabitants.
The four islands – Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie, and Oeno – are spread over several hundred miles of ocean and have a total land area of about 47 square kilometres (18 sq mi). Only Pitcairn, the second largest island measuring about 3.6 kilometres (2.2 mi) from east to west, and is inhabited by the descendants of the Bounty mutineers and the Tahitians (or Polynesians) who accompanied them, an event retold in numerous books and films.
After hosting rabidly anti-gay Republican Ted Cruz, and his partner Ian Reisner calling gays “cheap” and “entitled” one would think that the quisling multi-millionaire gay owners of OUT NYC hotel and entertainment complex in NYC would know better by now.
But nooooooooooooooooo.
Mati Weiderpass had to open his mouth again in an op-ed for New York Observer playing victim this time and claiming that he and his reputation are the ones being attacked by big bad “gay extremists”
“Since hosting a discussion with Texas Senator Ted Cruz in my home, I have been inundated with hateful, biased social media messages, and attacks from gay extremists (do I dare say the word?) who demand inclusion, but do not believe in dialogue. I know in my heart that these attacks do not represent the rich culture and diversity of the gay community. Yet, in our community, as in so many others, the most vocal often dominate the conversation. I hope this op-ed will help heal wounds and continue necessary progress and discussion. It is amazing that my businesses are being boycotted by some because I hosted a discussion with an elected official. Not a fundraiser. Not an endorsement. A dialogue. What would we say if the Jewish community organized a boycott of a business leader who hosted a private discussion with an important Muslim politician? We know the answer. I am a longtime leader of my community – and proud of who I am and what I have accomplished. Boycotting me for a discussion? Since when have we grown so small and intolerant?”
Yesterday at a yearly event organized by President Raul Castro’s daughter, Mariela Castro; The Eighth Annual March against Homophobia and Transphobia, well over 1000 LGBT Cubans marched through the streets of Havana to protest against LGBT discrimination and call for same-sex marriage to be allowed in the ever evolving country,
Although same-sex marriage remains illegal, dozens of couples took part in symbolic gay weddings presided over by religious leaders from Cuba and the US.
“Same sex marriage is already legal in Argentina and Uruguay and in Mexico City. And we’ve always celebrated their achievements,” said Mariela Castro, who is head of Cuba’s Sexual Health Institute.
“So we’re not interested in being the first. For us, it’s just about achieving it in the first place,” she added.
Two years ago, Cuba did something that the United States has not been able to achieve and enacted a law banning workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Cuba once sent gays to labor camps in the early years after the 1959 revolution have made great strides in recent years with help from Mariela Castro, the daughter of current President Raul Castro and niece of Fidel.
Approximately 0.3% of adults in the U.S. are married to a same-sex spouse, and another 0.5% identify as being in a same-sex domestic partnership. In examining the total population of 243 million U.S. adults, these survey estimates suggest nearly 2 million adults are part of a same-sex couple, of whom 780,000 are married. These data are based on 80,568 interviews conducted on Gallup Daily tracking from Jan. 28-April 19, 2015. Overall, approximately 0.3% of all respondents during this time period both identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) and said they were married, and in a follow-up question, they indicated that they were married to a same-sex spouse. An additional 0.5% of adults identified as LGBT and reported being in a same-sex domestic partnership.
The 780,000 American adults who are estimated to be married to a same-sex spouse translates into approximately 390,000 same-sex married couples in the U.S. Similarly, the estimated 1.2 million adults living in a same-sex domestic partnership translates into 600,000 domestic partnership couples. Thus, there is a total of almost a million same-sex couples in the country, of which nearly four in 10 (39%) are married.
At 990,000, Gallup’s estimated number of same-sex married or domestic partner couples in the U.S. is significantly higher than past estimates derived from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), which in 2013 put the number of same-sex couples at roughly 727,000. Of this group, more than 250,000 reported they were married. The Census Bureau, however, has cautioned that the ACS estimates of married same-sex couples may not be reliable as they have determined that a large portion of recorded married same-sex couples may actually be married heterosexual couples who miscoded the sex of one of the spouses.
And while the right-wingnuts are grasping at the .03% number forgetting that many states don’t allow same-sex marriage and not everyone wants to get married It doesn’t matter even if it is only 0.3%. The Declaration of Independence doesn’t say “99.7% of men are created equal.”
In deep-red states such as Oklahoma, Utah and Kansas, officials probably would waste no time trying to put a stop to same-sex marriages. Groups may attempt to have existing marriages invalidated or may press state officials not to allow state benefits for gay couples who have wed. Arizona state Sen. Steve Smith, a Republican from Maricopa County, predicted an immediate push to reinstate a constitutional amendment, approved in a 2008 voter referendum, defining marriage as between a man and a woman. “I don’t know how much clearer the will of the people can be expressed than by a vote to that effect,” he said.
In states such as Oregon and New Jersey, where the political climate has become more favorable to gay marriage in recent years, there probably would be a scramble to enact legislation to allow same-sex marriages. But the process could be more drawn out in places such as California, whose prohibition on same-sex marriage was part of the state constitution. If that ban was reinstated as a result of a Supreme Court decision, a voter referendum would be needed to get rid of it.
Elsewhere, the battles could be more pitched. In Virginia and Pennsylvania, for instance, freshly minted Democratic governors may resist attempts to revert to old laws, potentially clashing with conservative state lawmakers. And Republican leaders in Florida and elsewhere could find themselves squeezed between their conservative bases and gay rights forces that would label them bigots.
The biggest question: What would become of the thousands of couples who got married in the 22 states during the brief period same-sex marriage was allowed? James Esseks, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, pointed to several recent cases involving same-sex marriage that suggest courts generally think that “once you’re married, you’re married.” But some experts think it could take years of litigation, and perhaps another go before the Supreme Court, to clarify that.
Now before everyone gets rattled by what happened today. Please remember that the Supreme Court could have stopped, or postponed, most of the gay marriage bans from falling if they had chosen to. But they didn’t. Also SCOTUS would have never taken up this issue if the 6th Circuit didn’t vote against its cases. Our occupants wanted this because this really was their last best chance to thwart us, but given how Kennedy voted with us on the DOMA 2 question in the Windsor case, it goes against all precedence to vote the other way this time.
IMO today’s hearing was judicial theater at its best. There was much questioning about the “definition” of marriage. But not much about the “constitutionality” of it in terms of same-sex marriage. And that is where the real verdict lays.
“I am happy to see such passion and energy in support of gay rights. We just need to channel that passion and energy to those who would deny us those rights. The dinner with Ted Cruz happened only because IT WAS NOT A FUNDRAISER. It was about security for Israel, but it also gave me a rare opportunity to address the gay issues for which Ted Cruz has championed against. THREE FACTS WILL MAKE IT MORE DIFFICULT FOR TED CRUZ TO BE THE CHAMPION AGAINST GAY RIGHTS: 1) he had a private dinner (not a fund raiser) at a gay couples home, 2) he is in several pictures at that gay household, and 3) he stated he would love his daughter the same if she were gay. Those facts are difficult to reconcile with his stance on gay issues — Ted’s far right anti-gay supporters are screaming now. We need to be persistent with our message and it will slowly seep thru even to those most vehemently against gay rights.
“Ken Mehlman was the Chair of the Republican National Committee whose platform included several anti-gay positions. Later in life Ken was instrumental in the passage of Gay Marriage in NY State. People’s views can be changed over time. I worked 6 years for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which required many unpleasant conversations with people who opposed Gays in the Military. And it worked! THE GAY MOVEMENT NEEDS YOUR HELP. Tell those people that are against us or just neutral, that gay people have families, friends, some worship in church and we don’t want to be demonized. Light up social media with calls for the SUPREME COURT TO RULE IN FAVOR OF GAY MARRIAGE! #SUPREMESFORMARRIAGE – Mati Weiderpass,
Translation: I got caught being a Kapo, quick backpedal before I lose too much business. After all it’s about the money.
