Queer Justice: Nolo's LGBT Law Blog

Tomorrow, Tuesday, March 9, same-sex weddings will begin in the District of Columbia after more than a hundred couples lined up last Wednesday to get their marriage licenses and start the three-day waiting period. Washington, D.C. became the sixth United States jurisdiction to allow same-sex marriage, joining Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

Five other states (California, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington) offer marriage-equivalent relationships for same-sex couples, while Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin all provide certain limited rights and benefits to same-sex couples who register with the state. 

At this point, nearly half of all American citizens live in a place where there is some sort of recognition of same-sex relationships, whether it's marriage, marriage-equivalent, marriage-lite, or simply the recognition of marriages performed in other states. Given how much confusion is created by the federal government's failure to recognize any of these relationships, we can only hope that a repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act will be coming soon. 

Yesterday was the final day of testimony in the federal trial challenging Prop 8, which took away the right to marry from same-sex couples in November of 2008. The plaintiffs put on a powerful case and made a thorough record of the ways that marriage matters and the reality of discrimination against LGBT folks, while the defendants offered...well, not much. There's nothing I could write that would be as articulate and complete as the daily commentary offered by Shannon Minter, Legal Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, at Pam's House Blend blog. The link here will take you to the Day 12 blog post, and at the end of that post are the links for all of the other days. Enjoy. 

New York Governor David Paterson is a stalwart supporter of same-sex marriage rights, and he has the grand marshal chops to prove it -- yesterday, Paterson was the first-ever Governor of New York to serve as a grand marshal in New York City's annual Pride parade. The Governor expressed his disappointment, however, that the Pride revelers weren't able to celebrate the coming of full marriage equality to the Empire State. The problem is with the New York legislature's inability to get just about anything done in the midst of a battle over who controls the Senate. The same-sex marriage bill passed, 89-52, in the Assembly, but the Governor now isn't sure when he will introduce the same-sex marriage bill in the Senate. 

Yikes! How has it been so long since I've posted, when there's so much going on out there? Here's a quick selection of interesting items from the last week.

On the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion, the New York Times ran an article and an op-ed piece about the condition of gay rights in the U.S., both with the same basic premise: the American public is way ahead of the American government on the issue of rights for LGBT people. Adam Nagourney's Political Memo takes President Obama to task for failing to live up to his campaign promises on equality for the LGBT community; Frank Rich's op-ed rightly notes that "It's a press cliché that 'gay supporters' are disappointed with Obama, but we should all be. Gay Americans aren't just another political special interest group. They are Americans who are actively discriminated against by federal laws."

Last week, Representative Barney Frank introduced a new Employment Non-Discrimination Act in the House of Representatives. Read about it at Nolo's Employment Law Blog.

And this morning, President Obama is meeting with gay rights leaders at the White House to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Stonewall. After the disappointments of the past month, that should be an interesting conversation.

It's official: New Hampshire is the sixth state to legalize same-sex marriage. The bill was signed into law by Gov. John Lynch earlier today. Gov. Lynch does not personally support same-sex marriage, and his signing of the bill was predicated on lawmakers' adding a provision which guaranteed that religious groups and churches would not be forced to perform wedding ceremonies or recognize same-sex marriages. He says he would have vetoed any bill without this added language.

Today's ratification of the bill leaves Rhode Island as the only state in New England without legal same-sex marriage. So, Rhode Island, what's the holdup?

I'm off to Book Expo America this week, but here's a post on the latest developments from California's Supreme Court from guest blogger Frederick Hertz, co-author of the upcoming book Making It Legal.

In a decision that wasn't unexpected, the California Supreme Court ruled that Proposition 8 was a valid exercise of the voters' right to amend the state constitution -- and was not a revision, which would have required legislative action to put on the ballot. One disturbing fact is that the decision was 6-1, with only Justice Carlos Moreno dissenting. Another is that the Justices focused on the fact that same-sex couples have access to marital rights and obligations through California's domestic partnership registration system. While technically the Court is correct that the rules of marriage apply now to state-registered domestic partners, this decision backtracks from the 2008 opinion that recognized the larger social meaning of the word "marriage."

Also as predicted, the Court upheld the validity of the approximately 18,000 marriages that were solemnized between June and November 2008. Those couples will be treated as legally married in California and in any other state that recognizes same-sex marriage, and all the rights (and obligations) of marriage will still apply to them.

One major issue the Court did not rule on is the question of whether marriages from other states will be recognized from now on. Given this uncertainty, couples married outside of California should consider registering as domestic partners -- which they can do even if already legally married -- so that if their marriage is not recognized in California, they will still have the protections of marriage as domestic partners.

Attorney Frederick Hertz

Moving quickly, the legislature in Maine passed a same-sex marriage bill this week, and Governor Baldacci, who in the past has opposed same-sex marriage, signed it immediately upon its passage in the Senate today. Baldacci stated that he had changed his mind about allowing same-sex couples to marry and had come to see it as a "question of fairness and of equal protection under the law," and to believe that "a civil union is not equal to civil marriage."

Pretty soon you won't be able to count marriage equality on one hand, and won't that be nice?

Beginning this morning, same-sex wedding bells are ringing in Iowa. A number of couples obtained waivers of Iowa's three-day waiting period and were legally married on the day the recent state Supreme Court decision became effective.

A related MSNBC story describes Iowa's history as a state in the "forefront on social issues," including segregation, slavery, and women's rights. Apparently we should not be surprised that Iowa is now one of only four states offering full marriage equality to its lesbian and gay citizens.

Seemingly out of the blue, the District of Columbia City Council, D.C.'s governing body, voted unanimously on Tuesday to recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in other states. This doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen -- the vote isn't final, and once it is it has to go to the mayor for approval and then to the U.S. Congress for a legislative review and vote, according to this CNN story. But it's a big step forward for D.C. and another positive development in the march toward marriage equality.

Sheesh! Every time you turn around, some state or another is achieving marriage equality! At the rate of two per week, we'll have the country turned around before baseball season's over. 

But I digress. The latest to jump on the marriage equality bandwagon is Vermont, which became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage by legislative action rather than court decision. The legislature passed a bill last week that removed from Vermont's law the requirement that married couples be of the opposite sex, and then overrode Governor Jim Douglas's veto to become the fourth state in the U.S. to offer full marriage equality (following Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Iowa).