This Week in Gay News Roundup: 11/1 - 11/6
The week that brought us the one year anniversary of California's Proposition 8 and the passage of Maine's Proposition 1 was certainly not a celebratory one. Here is what happened this week in LGBT law in case you missed it. For for up-to-the-minute news stories, follow FamilyFairness on Twitter.
- Proposition 1, the Maine bill allowing voters to overturn the legislature's earlier passage of marriage equality, passed with a margin of 53-47. Same-sex marriage was supposed to come to Maine on September 14 this year, but was put on hold pending the results of the veto vote. Maine was the fifth state to legalize gay marriage, and the first to successfully do so legislatively (California's legislature also twice passed a marriage bill that was vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger).
- On the same election day, voters in Washington affirmed the expanded domestic partnership law that had been passed earlier this year. Referendum 71, the voter initiative seeking to affirm legislatively expanded domestic partnerships, was approved on a margin of 52-48. Washington retains its "everything but the name" version of marriage.
- Basic Rights Oregon announced that it was seeking to repeal the state's Constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in 2012. The amendment has existed since 2004, and was passed in response to Oregon's Multnomah County movement to give marriage licenses to same-sex couples. 3,000 licenses were issued until a judge found no right to gay marriage under Oregon laws and invalidated them all. Oregon has had expanded domestic partnership laws since 2007.
- A United States Department of Justice answered Massachusetts's petition to find the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional in that it deprives Massachusetts's married citizens of federal spousal benefits. While the DoJ agreed that DOMA was discriminatory and wanted it overturned, it said that "[t]here is, however, no fundamental right to marriage-based federal benefits." Massachusetts is the first state to issue a challenge to DOMA.
- Tena Callahan, the Texas trial court judge who ruled that her state's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional explained her ruling. In reference to popular support in Texas for keeping gay marriage illegal, Callahan said: "My dad always used to tell me that a billion people can believe in a bad idea, and it's still a bad idea. And that man taught me to have the courage of my convictions and to do what's right." Her opinion is expected to be overruled on appeal.
I hope voters in California, Maine, and any other state in which the people try to turn back civil equality remember Callahan's words.
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