Online Gay Marriage

The number of states where gay marriage is legal will rise to five on January 1st 2010 as New Hampshire joins Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont. This means that there is now one more option for gay and lesbian couples who want to marry out of state, but two Michigan State University professors believe they have come up with an even better option – that states offering same sex marriage should allow couple to obtain a marriage license online, wherever they are based in the country.

Saying that they believe marriage laws need to be more flexible in meeting the needs of both the couple and the state, Adam Candeub, who is working on the theory alongside fellow law professor Mae Kuykendall, said “states should formalize in their laws what they’ve always been doing in smaller degrees in specific areas, which is, allow people outside their states to use their laws”.

Source Text:

www.gayagenda.com

Washington DC - there's hope!

Today, D.C.’s Council made it official and same-sex marriage is now legal in the district by a final vote of 11-2!

The victory for equal rights prompted public witnesses in the Council chambers to cheer and applaud.

The bill, which may be signed into law by D.C.’s mayor as early as tonight, will go before Congress for a review period of 30 legislative days before it becomes law.

Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) stated:

“Today is the final step in a long march toward equality.”

Source Text:

www.gayagenda.com

Just Married

Last Wednesday, as the New York State Senate voted down a bill that would have legalized same-sex marriage in New York, they were, in essence, voting to require discrimination in the State of New York. That they did it, in part, with the guiding hand of the Catholic Church–who called the defeat, incredibly, “a victory for the basic building block of our society”–only serves to outline both the violation of principle that constitutes religious meddling in U.S. law, and the wider question the measure raises: Why on earth is something as basic to our democracy as full civil rights coming up for a vote at all?

Much like the ham-fisted revision of California’s constitution that took place earlier this year, in which some 52% of voters, via Proposition 8 (call it “Prop Hate”) were able to gut the Golden State’s constitutional protection of equal rights by disallowing legal marriage for its gay and lesbian citizens, the New York ruling throws the greater movement for civil rights in this country back by some forty years, certainly at least to 1967, when it was still illegal in most states for inter-racial couples to marry, because of so-called “anti-miscegenation” laws. This Wednesday’s vote made a very similar kind of legal discrimination mandatory in the State of New York.

Source Text:

www.gayagenda.com

New Jersey

It looks at though same-sex marriage will go up for a vote in the garden state on Thursday, December 10th!

From the NY Times:

A petition in New Jersey signed by more than 2,300 Democratic officials, advocates and residents has helped sway members of the State Senate Judiciary Committee to call for a vote on a bill to legalize same-sex marriage.

But the bill has a long way to go, and recent votes against same-sex marriage in a Maine referendum and in the New York State Senate led opponents of the New Jersey measure to say that the political tide had turned against it.

Still, Senator Raymond J. Lesniak, a Democrat from Union County, said the petition, circulated by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a liberal political advocacy group, produced a strong “momentum change” for the bill after it had appeared to be stalled in recent weeks. Many prominent officials signed the petition, including Mayor Cory A. Booker of Newark; Ronald K. Chen, the state’s public advocate; and J. Frank Vespa-Papaleo, director of the state’s Division on Civil Rights.

Mr. Lesniak is a member of the Judiciary Committee, which plans to vote on the bill on Monday. A large turnout for the vote is expected by those on both sides of the issue; gay couples are planning to testify about what they believe are shortcomings in the state’s civil union law, which was passed in 2006.

Mr. Lesniak predicted that the Judiciary Committee would pass the bill. The full Senate would probably consider the measure on Thursday, and Mr. Lesniak said the vote would be close. The Senate and the Assembly — where the bill is still in committee and no vote has been scheduled — are controlled by Democrats, but some do not support same-sex marriage, so Republican votes would be needed.

The timing is important because the current governor, Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat, supports same-sex marriage, while Christopher J. Christie, a Republican who will assume the office on Jan. 19, opposes it.

Source text:
www.gayagenda.com

Gay marriage rights

From the NY Times:

An Argentine couple’s attempt to unite in Latin America’s first gay marriage was thwarted Tuesday when city officials decided to block the wedding because of conflicting judicial rulings.

Jose Maria Di Bello and Alex Freyre showed up at the Buenos Aires civil registry office despite a national judge’s ruling late Monday that overturned a city court’s decision to permit them to wed. The first judge ruled again Tuesday that they could wed.

The couple, dressed in black suits, silver ties and a red band symbolizing AIDS awareness, waited for hours in the municipal office as officials debated which judge to obey. They were surrounded by supporters and a swarm of media.

”It’s hard to have to spend this day waiting for a right that should have been ours,” said Freyre, as he fought to hold back tears.

In a twist of events, the final decision fell to Mayor Mauricio Macri, who had originally given the green light to the wedding. Among cheers and chants in what felt like the final seconds of championship game, the lawyers came out to announce the news: The city would not allow the marriage until the Supreme Court has ruled on the case.

Gay rights groups expressed anger at the decision and said they would march to city hall in protest.

Source Text:

www.gayagenda.com