Gaynecticut

[Timber Loftis]

Kudos and Cheers to Connecticut. I'm predicting New York will follow suit, based on the report it asked the bar association to put together regarding the legality of prohibiting gays from marriage.

April 21, 2005
Connecticut Approves Civil Unions for Gays
By WILLIAM YARDLEY

HARTFORD, April 20 - Gov. M. Jodi Rell on Wednesday signed into law a measure allowing same-sex couples to enter into civil unions, making Connecticut the second state after Vermont to approve such unions and the first to do so without pressure from the courts.

"I think that it certainly bodes well for Connecticut that we didn't have to be ordered to do this," said Mrs. Rell, a Republican, who signed the bill about an hour after the Democratic-controlled Senate approved the measure by a three to one ratio. The House passed the bill last week 85 to 63.

Under the law, which takes effect on Oct. 1, couples in civil unions will essentially have all of the rights and protections the state provides married couples, from tax benefits and insurance coverage to hospital visiting rights to family leave from work.

The law also includes an amendment, added last week, that defines marriage as being between a man and a woman.

Mrs. Rell had encouraged the amendment, though she stopped short of saying whether her support for civil unions depended on it.

"I have said all along that I believe in no discrimination of any kind, and I think that this bill accomplishes that while at the same time preserving the traditional language that a marriage is between a man and a woman," the governor said outside her office after signing the bill.

The relative ease with which civil unions became law in Connecticut contrasts with the trend across the country.

Fourteen states have voted to ban gay marriage since last year. Earlier this month, Kansas voted to ban gay marriage and civil unions.

Yet in New England, Connecticut falls cleanly into a countertrend. Vermont approved civil unions in 2000, and Massachusetts last year began allowing gay couples to marry. Vermont and Massachusetts adopted new policies after courts ruled that gay couples were being discriminated against.

Connecticut also faces a discrimination lawsuit, supported by the same gay activists who pushed lawsuits in Vermont and Massachusetts, but the suit could be years from resolution. And many lawmakers said on Wednesday that their support for civil unions was less a defensive act against a potential court ruling than the obvious next step for a state with a 15-year history of expanding gay rights.

In 1990, the state passed a law that included gay people among those protected under a hate-crimes law. The next year, the state added protections in housing and employment laws. In 2000, the state made it easier for gay couples to adopt children.

"This is a different state in many ways," said Representative Michael P. Lawlor, a Democrat from East Haven, who was the bill's lead supporter in the House, which Democrats control 99 to 52. "I think Democrats and Republicans can disagree about the budget, but when it comes to basic human rights issues, we don't disagree that much. There was more evidence of that today."

Public opinion polls also showed support for civil unions. A poll released this month by Quinnipiac University showed that 56 percent of Connecticut voters supported civil unions and 37 percent were opposed. The poll showed that 53 percent opposed gay marriage and 42 percent supported it.

Some viewed the civil unions bill as a compromise. Earlier this year, the state's most prominent gay marriage activist group, Love Makes a Family, opposed the bill for civil unions, vowing to settle only for marriage.

A longtime lobbyist for gay rights, Betty Gallo, eventually broke from Love Makes a Family, saying she could not oppose increased rights for gay couples.

Loves Makes a Family later said it would end its opposition to the bill, and the measure then moved quickly out of committee to the Senate floor two weeks ago.

"We don't want to overplay the rights versus the status and dignity that come with marriage," said Anne Stanback, the president of Love Makes a Family. "But today we celebrate."

Ms. Gallo said on Wednesday that opposition to civil unions was mostly rooted in wariness of a lifestyle foreign to many people.

She said the bill's passage was brought about partly by the activists' strategy of having gay couples invite lawmakers and others into their homes, where such wariness "goes away when you know people and you go into their houses and have coffee and pastries."

The bill passed on the day that Roman Catholic clergymen in the state, and many parishioners, make their annual visit to the Capitol to lobby for their legislative agenda. This year the agenda included one item reflected in the stickers many wore: "Protect Marriage!"

Peter Wolfgang, a lobbyist and the public policy director for the Family Institute of Connecticut, which opposes civil unions, said his group would make them an issue in next year's election.

He and others said that polls misrepresent voter sentiment and that lawmakers are being deceived by lobbyists who support civil unions.

"This is basically the end of one phase and the beginning of another," Mr. Wolfgang said. "It's all about 2006."

[Azred]

*sigh* This is such a non-issue...not to disparage your post, Timber. I am simply tired of hearing about how one group is fighting to have their sexual preference be accepted by others while a second group is fighting to have the first group banned.

The only person's whose sexuality and/or sexual preference matters is your partner's! How simple is that? If you aren't Belle, I don't care what you do, with whom you do it, when/where you do it, or what you do it with.

[Illumina Drathiran'ar]

::runs around, hands over head:: OH NO! Now fire and brimstone will rain forth from the heavens! Or is that when gay marriage is legal?

Azred... It might be a non-issue for you. But it's NOT a non-issue for gays and lesbians. And many heterosexuals don't share your opinion about only your partners' sexuality mattering. Otherwise gay marrige would be legal and nobody would care.

[Morgeruat]

Orson Scott Card had a rather interesting article on this, maybe I'll see if I can dig it up...

here it is: link

[ 04-22-2005, 09:56 AM: Message edited by: Morgeruat ]

[Timber Loftis]

By declaring that homosexual couples are denied their constitutional rights by being forbidden to "marry," it is treading on the same ground. - Do you want to know whose constitutional rights are being violated? Everybody's. Because no constitution in the United States has ever granted the courts the right to make vast, sweeping changes in the law to reform society. - Regardless of their opinion of homosexual "marriage," every American who believes in democracy should be outraged that any court should take it upon itself to dictate such a social innovation without recourse to democratic process. - And we all know the course this thing will follow. Anyone who opposes this edict will be branded a bigot; any schoolchild who questions the legitimacy of homosexual marriage will be expelled for "hate speech." The fanatical Left will insist that anyone who upholds the fundamental meaning that marriage has always had, everywhere, until this generation, is a "homophobe" and therefore mentally ill.

Spoken like a true idiot there, Orson. I piss in your general direction.

Look, you can argue and twist words all you want, but anyone with with 2 brain cells to rub together realizes that giving one couple legal benefits and denying them to another, based solely on the distinction of their genetalia, is a violation of that rule saying we all should get "equal protection" under the law. As I said over at the Oasis Forums,

The whole gay rights issue always includes some reference to activist judges. Pffft. First, here we see no court mandate. Additionally, the fact that gay couples have not been treated equally under the law is a realization of a 150-year oversight, because the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause certainly tells us you can't dole out benefits to one couple and not another based solely on the type of genitals they have.

It's not remaking the law. It's finally following it. 150 years late.

[ 04-22-2005, 10:32 AM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

[Chewbacca]

Originally posted by Azred: *sigh* This is such a non-issue...not to disparage your post, Timber. I am simply tired of hearing about how one group is fighting to have their sexual preference be accepted by others while a second group is fighting to have the first group banned. The only person's whose sexuality and/or sexual preference matters is your partner's! How simple is that? If you aren't Belle, I don't care what you do, with whom you do it, when/where you do it, or what you do it with.

This is misrepresenting the issue at hand. It is not about having sexual preference accepted. In fact, similiar lines of misrepresentation are often used by the people who would be quite happy having gays banned.


It is about having equal rights and priviledges under the law. This goal has not yet been achieved for all gay Americans, so while you may tire of hearing about it, it is not going away. It won't be going away either til equal rights are afforded to all American couples- regardless of their gender.

[Timber Loftis]

Hey, as an aside, who here saw that episode of South Park where the immigrant laborers were coming in from the future and taking the jobs (THEY TUK-ER-JOB!!!!). Remember how they solved the problem in the end?

[Chewbacca]

I think Orson Scott Card would benefit greatly by putting his great imagination at work contemplating the issue at hand. I have read many of his books and consider him a smart, imaginative fellow....until now- I have been given a reason to pause.

I'm shocked that he stooped to the half-logic that since a gay man can marry a woman his rights to marry have not been infringed upon. How he misses the pink elephant in the room, the one with gender discrimination and unequal rights painted on it's side, I don't know.

[shamrock_uk]

Haha, that episode was just trippy...

[Chewbacca]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: Hey, as an aside, who here saw that episode of South Park where the immigrant laborers were coming in from the future and taking the jobs (THEY TUK-ER-JOB!!!!). Remember how they solved the problem in the end?

One of the great Southpark episodes!

"Back to the pile!!!!!"