Quote:
Originally Posted by Jess
Do you think the trial will discuss the economic discrimination as well as the social aspects? It seems thus far to be mostly based on social issues. Marriage would afford same sex couples equal insurance coverage instead of the scant and unequal plans available today. Not to mention our spouses could receive social security benefits whereas now, the go right back into the pot since we aren't married.
I am also honestly a little surprised that more attention and support hasn't been obvious here. I wonder why.
|
This is where this case gets really tricky. They
can not, and
will not present anything related to FEDERAL marriage benefits, only state benefits. DOMA will
not be addressed in any way. It's the "elephant in the room". Equal insurance benefits, social security, immigration, estate taxes, etc. are all based on FEDERAL recognition of same-sex marriage, not state.
This is why "gay activists" wanted to wait until DOMA is overturned before bringing such a case. And that process has already begun, pre-dating the massive egos of the legal "establishment" that have now taken over "our" movement in pushing this case forward.
From the NewYorker article I recommended above:
"Perry v. Schwarzenegger is not the only federal lawsuit for gay marriage. Another one, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, is thought by some scholars to stand a better chance of success, though it has been overshadowed by Olson and Boies’s effort. Gill was filed last March, by a public-interest law firm, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), in Boston. One of the GLAD lawyers on the case is Mary Bonauto—the attorney who successfully argued the case that legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. "
"Gill is not the damn-the-torpedoes case that Perry is. It challenges a section of the Defense Against Marriage Act which prevents same-sex couples from receiving the many benefits accorded to married couples at the federal level—from joint tax filing to health insurance for federal employees’ families—even though in the state of Massachusetts those couples are lawfully married. Gill insists not on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage but on the unconstitutionality of denying federal benefits to a class of citizens whose marriages are recognized by the state.
“This is not going to be a case that results in more people getting married if we win,” Bonauto told me when I met with her at her offices, across from the Boston Common. A conservative dresser, she has the low, soothingly intelligent voice of a National Public Radio announcer. “But it very clearly presses on the federal government’s double standard,” she added. “Americans don’t like double standards. The federal government recognizes all kinds of marriages once they’re licensed by the state except the ones for gay people. We’re in the legal mainstream here, when you look at cases like Romer and Lawrence, where the federal courts have condemned gay exceptionalism. And that’s what this is.” GLAD could have brought the suit that Olson and Boies did but feared “pushing the ball too far and potentially having a setback.” She added, “We are wishing the Perry folks the absolute best. That said, we can’t help but have concerns about the timing.”
As in the Perry case, the plaintiffs in Gill make for an all-American picture." "... the lead plaintiff is Nancy Gill, who has been a postal clerk in Massachusetts for twenty-two years. Among the other plaintiffs are Mary Ritchie, a state police sergeant, whose wife, Kathy Bush, left her job at The New England Journal of Medicine to stay at home with their eight- and ten-year-old boys..."
"If Ritchie were to be killed in the line of duty, they explained to me, Bush would not be entitled to the federal benefits for spouses of public-safety officers. Bush said, “It’s just so odd that one marriage can be treated one way, and another another way.”
Two other plaintiffs are Al Koski, a retired Social Security claims representative, and his husband, Jim Fitzgerald, who works at a rehab clinic. They’ve been together for thirty-four years, but the federal government does not allow Fitzgerald to be the beneficiary of Koski’s pension or to be covered by his health-insurance plan."
"As seemingly modest as the Gill case is, it could help create a favorable climate for more ambitious challenges, including the Perry case. Thomas Keck, a political-science professor at Syracuse University who is an expert on the Supreme Court, told me, “I don’t think any of us can predict how it’s all going to turn out.
But Gill is a very well-designed case, a well-targeted challenge that has a good chance of winning, and that broader challenges could be built on. If it wins, in a practical sense we would have federally recognized same-sex marriage. At that point, it would be much harder to defend the federal government’s refusal to recognize same-sex marriage in other parts of the country.” Gill could also go to the Supreme Court, and if it makes it there first, and succeeds, it could help Olson and Boies. As Gary Buseck told me, “I haven’t said this out loud even to myself before, but, to the extent that either of these cases is going to get to the Supreme Court, I think it would be better if our case got there first.” (Predicting the trajectory of court cases is, of course, a futile endeavor.) He added, “You have to approach the Supreme Court in an incremental way.” For Buseck, this, and not the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” was the relevant lesson from the civil-rights movement. He recalled that the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund had recognized it would be a stretch to try to desegregate the public schools first—it would be too sweeping and provocative an effort. “So they first won cases about a law school and a university, to make it inevitable that when they brought the case that became Brown the chances of winning would be so much better.”
------------------------
That is why the Prop 8 trial is so focused on social benefits, etc. I agree, Jess, that it is in a sense disingenuous, insulting and misleading even to have a trial on Same-Sex Marriage that cannot and will not bring up, even for purposes of educating the public, the financial, economic and fundamentally civil rights being denied same-sex partners because of FEDERAL discrimination and lack of recognition of same-sex marriages, even those which are LEGALLY SANCTIONED by a state.