b****i
发帖数: 137 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 QueerNews 讨论区 】
发信人: miami128 (LOVE), 信区: QueerNews
标 题: 我们不要这满是布丁的美国同婚权法--剑指DOMA
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Thu Feb 9 23:12:09 2012, 美东)
State-by-State Laws on Gay Marriage Produce Patchwork Quilt
同志婚姻权本质是基本人权和公民权,超出了州政府的拥有的民事权管辖范围.联邦政府
必须枪毙DOMA,把同婚权和反性倾向歧视纳入宪法中!
Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The patchwork quilt of U.S. state laws on same-sex
marriage, which Washington is now poised to legalize, leaves gay and lesbian
Americans with different rights depending on geography. To opponents, that
’s just the way things work in a union of self-governing states.
If Washington Governor Christine Gregoire signs the bill passed by lawmakers
yesterday, which she sought, her state would become the seventh in the U.S.
to grant so-called marriage equality.
Still, gay couples who wed there wouldn’t see their marriages recognized by
the federal government or at least 40 other states that either outlaw same-
sex marriage or haven’t addressed it, according to Freedom to Marry, a New
York-based advocacy organization that supports gay marriage. That’s fine
with John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, an
advocacy group working against it.
“We have this system of laboratories called the states where we can try
different experiments and see what works well and what doesn’t, without
imposing a national rule on everybody,” said Eastman, a professor at
Chapman University School of Law in Orange, California.
“We have patchwork laws on all sorts of things” that vary from one state
to another, such as custody laws and third-cousin marriages, Eastman said in
an interview. “It hasn’t seemed to have brought us down yet.”
Up for Consideration
New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and the
District of Columbia allow gay marriage. Lawmakers in Maryland and Illinois
are weighing legalization, while North Carolina and Minnesota propose to bar
the practice through voter referendum. Voters in Maine may decide whether
to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples.
In New Jersey, Democratic legislators who control both chambers have pushed
for legalization in the face of a veto threat from Republican Governor Chris
Christie. Today, Senator Christopher Bateman, a Republican from Somerset,
submitted a resolution to amend the state constitution to redefine marriage
as “the legally recognized union of two persons of any gender,” according
to his spokesman, Adam Bauer.
The amendment would require approval from both the Legislature and voters in
a referendum. Bateman is against gay marriage and voted as such in 2009,
Bauer said.
For advocates like Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry,
the patchwork of laws translates to “a house divided.”
‘One Country’
“We are one country, not 50 separate kingdoms, and we all deserve equal
protection under the law,” he said in an e-mail. “Same-sex couples should
not have to play ‘now you’re married, now you’re not’ depending on which
state they are in, or where their employer sends them, or where their kids
go to college.”
Nor should they be treated as “legal strangers,” he said, by the federal
government because of the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law signed by
President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. The law prohibits the federal government
from recognizing same- sex spouses, even those couples married in states
where it’s legal. The Obama administration said last year it would no
longer oppose court challenges to the law.
Tax Returns
Same-sex married couples, for instance, can’t file joint federal returns,
which have the effect of lowering taxes, because the Internal Revenue
Service defines a marriage for federal tax purposes as “only a legal union
between a man and a woman as husband and wife.”
Washington state lawmakers yesterday approved a bill sought by their
Democratic governor to legalize same-sex marriage. The measure includes an
exemption for religious organizations to decide who qualifies for their
wedding ceremonies and which marriages to recognize.
The law would normally take effect 90 days after the end of the legislative
session on March 8, said Karina Shagren, a spokeswoman for Gregoire. It may
face a repeal campaign, which would put it on hold pending a referendum, she
said.
A day earlier, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco voted 2
-1 to strike down California’s Proposition 8, a voter initiative that
prohibited same-sex couples from marrying. Gay nuptials had begun in 2008
after the state’s top court overruled a ban passed by voters in 2000.
Supreme Court
Carla Hass, an attorney for the Proposition 8 proponents, said her clients
were deciding whether to petition for a rehearing before the full appeals
court or take the case directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A Supreme Court ruling throwing out Proposition 8 wouldn’t necessarily
affect other states because the appeals court’s Feb. 7 ruling specified
that the gay marriage issues in the case are unique to California.
In 2011, a majority of Americans for the first time favored making gay
marriage legal, 53 percent compared with 44 percent a year earlier, a Gallup
poll showed. Political independents and Democrats accounted for the change
as Republicans’ views hadn’t budged, Gallup said.
The state-law quilt will eventually have to be dealt with because it’s
incapable of being maintained administratively at both the federal and state
levels, said Douglas NeJaime, an associate professor at Loyola Law School
in Los Angeles.
The Defense of Marriage Act, which also says states don’t have to recognize
gay marriages performed in other states, could be repealed by Congress or,
more likely, the U.S. Supreme Court could be asked to rule on it, he said.
Either will take years, he said.
--With assistance from Karen Gullo and Alison Vekshin in San Francisco and
William Selway and Andrew Zajac in Washington. Editors: Pete Young, Peter
Blumberg
To contact the reporter on this story: Esme E. Deprez in New York at edeprez
@bloomberg.net |
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