GLAD Challenges DOMA

Some people in the community don't understand what all the fuss is about. "Why should the government be in the business of recognizing anybody's marriage, straight or gay? Why not just drop the whole marriage issue for everybody" they say.

Because, dummy, marriage is not about cake and ice cream and oodles of nifty gifts from your adoring friends and relatives. It's about money and property and insurance and pensions and houses and cars and life and death and the equal protection of the laws. It's about all those things that make it possible to have a safe, secure life together.

The legal advocacy group GLAD has just filed suit in federal court in Boston on behalf of 8 married same-sex couples and 3 surviving spouses - including Dean Hara, the widower of openly gay Congressman Garry Studds - challenging the constitutionality of Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which denies to same-sex married couples in any state the rights and benefits of 1,138 federal laws that refer to marital status. Among those rights and benefits are:

* Social Security spousal protections that ground a family’s economic security while living in old age, and upon disability and death;

* protections for one spouse’s essential monetary resources and the ability to stay in the family home when the other spouse needs Medicaid for nursing home care;

* the ability to be included in a family policy of health insurance, and if receiving that family health insurance, to be free of income tax on the value of that insurance;

* the ability to use the “Married Filing Jointly” status for federal income tax purposes that can save families money;

* family medical leave from a job to care for a seriously ill spouse;

* disability, dependency or death benefits for the spouses of veterans and public safety officers;

* employment benefits for federal employees, including access to family health insurance benefits, as well as retirement and death benefits for surviving spouses;

* estate/death protections that allow a spouse to leave assets to the other spouse – including the family home – without incurring any taxes; and

* the ability of a citizen to obtain a visa for a non-citizen spouse and sponsor that spouse for purposes of citizenship.

GLAD was successful in filing court cases that eventually brought about same-sex marriage in both Massachusetts and Connecticut. Let's keep our fingers crossed on this one.