Anyone being affected by Proposition 8?

[Clodfobble]

For some government programs, widowed does matter, because you are given certain benefits that would have gone to your dead spouse instead. But I've seen many forms that go so far as to offer a checkbox for "Separated." WTF business is it of theirs what bed a person sleeps in, if their marriage contract is still in effect?

[Lamplighter]

Associated Press
By ANGELA DELLI SANTI

NJ Assembly passes gay marriage bill

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — The New Jersey Assembly on Thursday passed a bill
legalizing same-sex marriages, setting the stage for an expected veto by Gov. Chris Christie.

The 42-33 vote sends the bill to Christie, who won't take immediate action.

The Republican governor who opposes gay marriage had promised
"very swift action" if the bill passed both houses of the Legislature,
but the Assembly isn't required to send the bill to his desk until the close of business Friday.
The Senate approved the bill Monday.<snip>

The bill would need several Republican votes in each house to override the governor;
Christie himself essentially guaranteed that that won't happen.

NJ is different and interesting because the State's Supreme Court has already reviewed
the State's Civil Union Law, and has:

" instructed the Legislature to provide marriage equality to same-sex couples".

The article also describes strategies of the various parties.

[Lamplighter]

I have rearranged the sequence of paragraphs below to (hopefully) make this post more readable.

msnbc.com
Miranda Leitsinger
7/13/12

Same-sex couple fights to stop deportation, gay marriage ban

DOMA, enacted by Congress in 1996, blocks federal recognition of same-sex marriage,
thereby denying various benefits given to heterosexual couples, such as the right to immigrate.

A Filipino woman who married her American wife in 2008,
when it was briefly legal to do so in the state of California,
should not be denied immigration rights that heterosexual couples receive
and should not be deported, her lawyers are arguing in a lawsuit.

Authorities approved her employer’s application for permanent resident status
for her in May 2006, and she had temporary lawful status until April 2011,
when immigration officials told her she was inadmissible to the country.
They said she had misrepresented her name and marital status
because she had entered the U.S. under the last name of her former
spouse [common law husband],
even though they were not legally married, according to the lawsuit.

The couple attempted to get a waiver based upon the hardship that deportation
would impose upon them and DeLeon’s 25-year-old son, whose immigration status
would also be affected if his mother was deported, but it was denied last November.
Authorities, the lawsuit said, did not reject the request because the couple
failed to prove the hardship claim, but solely because under the federal marriage law
she was married to someone of the same sex who was not recognized as a relative.

The lawsuit alleges that the federal marriage law [DOMA] denies due process
and equal protection under the law in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The couple is asking the court to grant their request to give class action status
to the lawsuit since their challenge affects innumerable others in their situation.

The suit joins several others targeting DOMA, the federal law banning same-sex marriages,
including one filed by binational gay couples in New York.
The Obama administration has asked the Supreme Court to take up two of those cases:
one originating in Massachusetts and another in California, according to scotusblog.

[Lamplighter]

The following is an editorial by Linda Greenhouse,
the NY Times reporter who covers the US Supreme Court.
Usually, her articles are straight reporting, with little to no "editorializing"
For a long time, I have followed her reporting and have respect for her knowledge and expertise.
But here is an article that is strictly her opinions.

I believe it is well worth reading in it's entirety because she speaks to
the Voting Rights Act and voter suppression, to equal rights for gay/lesbians,
and California's Proposition 8 vs the Obama Dept of Justice's
refusal to defend DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act.

NY Times
LINDA GREENHOUSE
11/14/12

Changing Times

When people talked during the presidential campaign about the potential impact
of the election on the Supreme Court,most meant the impact on the court’s membership:
whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney would get to fill any vacancies during the next four years.
The vote on Nov. 6 settled that question, obviously, but it also raised another tantalizing one:
what impact will other developments during this election season,
beyond the presidential vote itself, have on the nine justices?

If time is on the side of preserving the Voting Rights Act, it’s also on the side
of recognizing the right to, and federal recognition of, same-sex marriage.

Note that this observation is something well short of a prediction that the Supreme Court
will declare a constitutional right to marriage equality during its current term.
A vehicle for doing so, the Proposition 8 case from California (Hollingsworth v. Perry)
is sitting on the court’s docket, awaiting the justices’ decision on whether to take it.<snip>

The most likely scenario to emerge from the conference is a grant of review
in one of the DOMA cases, most likely Windsor v. United States,
decided last month by the federal appeals court in New York.
Along with the federal appeals court in Boston, in another case also now pending
before the Supreme Court, the New York-based United States Court of Appeals
for the Second Circuit declared unconstitutional the statute that withholds
the many benefits of marriage available under federal law from same-sex couples
who are legally married in their state of residence.<snip>

Assuming the court grants one of the DOMA cases, I think the justices are likely
to put the Proposition 8 case on hold until the DOMA issue is decided.<snip>

I think there’s an excellent chance that the Supreme Court will overturn DOMA.<snip>

When the history of how same-sex marriage became the law of the land is eventually written,
as it will be in the not too distant future, there will be many turning points to mark.
The Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which held that
gay relationships could not be criminalized, will certainly be one landmark.

But last week’s election results, when voters in four states had the choice
to say yes or no to marriage equality and said yes in all four, will stand,
I think, as the more important development.

It didn’t necessarily tell the justices how to decide the cases now on their docket.
But in showing them that times are changing, it told them a lot.