Moments after a gay marriage bill cleared its final legislative hurdle on Thursday, Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee, an independent, signed it into law on the steps of the State House.
The measure cleared the Senate last Wednesday with the help of all 5 of its Republican members. It returned to a House committee on Wednesday to reconcile some language differences between a version approved three months earlier in the House.
House lawmakers approved the legislation with a 56-15 vote, a better outcome for supporters than the previous 51-19 vote.
In the days after Liam Pursley was born in April, the woman who carried him for nine months barely saw him.
Liam spent most of his time with his mother and father, Jamie and Jacob Pursley. His surrogate mother, Kristen Broome, stayed in a separate hospital room, trying to navigate the swirl of emotions.
“I held him and cried,” Ms. Broome said of the first time she saw Liam, about an hour after he was born. “I cried because I realized he was not mine and I had zero connection. It was an amazing emotion. I did not hold him again until almost 36 hours later; I had zero urge to.”
That made reality easier.
In an essay she plans to publish soon on her blog, Ms. Broome, 24, writes: “I have been asked more times than I can count how I felt when I gave Liam away. My first response is always that I didn’t give Liam away; he was never mine to give.”
A full 87% say that the traditional family has evolved and they are okay with that.
BY Diane Anderson-Minshall – Advocate.com
May 08 2013
Turns out the the critics of Murphy Brown — who had a child out of wedlock on TV and got lambasted by then Vice President Dan Quayle for doing so — were right about one thing: TV does have an impact on how Americans view the concept of family. According to a new study by uSamp and Oxygen Media, a full 87% of Americans believe the definition of a traditional family has evolved and 55% say there is no longer such a thing as a “traditional” family. Society is apparently becoming increasingly more comfortable with how family is defined and judged, as well as changing gender roles in the new family dynamic.
The study finds that Diff’rent Strokes (a ’70s series in which a single white guy adopted two black kids) may have been ahead of its time; it and other shows like Modern Family and The New Normal and even the Oxygen series I’m Having Their Baby (which featured a young mother choosing a gay couple to adopt her child last season) reflect how Americans see the world now.
Oxygen commissioned the study to coincide with their first docu-short film, Untold Stories of Motherhood, director Marilyn Agrelo’s look at the new modern family and how they develop their remarkable bonds of love, from open adoption to same-sex parenting.
The study always revealed that 82% of people define a “mother” as the woman who raised them rather than as the woman who gave birth to them (which was at 53%).
Last week, on the day that Sports Illustrated posted NBA player Jason Collins’s essay announcing his homosexuality, I was walking with Rebekah, our six-year-old. We were going to pick up our car at the auto mechanic’s shop on the corner, when across the street I spotted a neighbor going in the other direction, strolling hand-in-hand with her two-year-old son. They waved to me, and I said hi, and then we walked on. “Who was that?” Rebekah asked.
I hesitated. I could have given a very simple answer: “That was Evelyn’s wife.” (Evelyn, as I’ll call her, is a woman Rebekah has met several times.) But I didn’t. I told her something else, something true but a little bit evasive, something like, “That was our neighbor Claire and her son—they live next door to the O’Malleys.”
My three daughters all know that when they grow up, they can, if they so choose, marry women. They know this because they have schoolmates who have two moms; because my wife and I talk freely about our circle of friends, which includes gay men and lesbians; and because, when Rebekah comes home from school with first-grade talk of boyfriends, who “likes” whom, and whom she’ll marry someday—first grade is, it seems, junior high with training wheels—we occasionally mention that her future spouse could be a man or a woman. Even so, this moment on Jason Collins’s big day was not the first time that I found myself being slippery when a daughter had inquired about a lesbian mother, even in a context that had nothing to do with lesbianism.
Delaware on Tuesday became the 11th state to permit same-sex marriage, the latest in a string of victories for those working to extend marital rights to gay and lesbian couples.
The marriage bill passed the State Senate by a vote of 12 to 9 Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s a great day in Delaware,” said Gov. Jack Markell, a Democrat, who signed it within minutes of passage before an overjoyed crowd of activists. “I am signing this bill now because I do not intend to make any of you wait one moment longer.”
Same-sex couples will be eligible for marriage licenses on July 1.
Adoption of same-sex marriage by Delaware came just five days after a similar decision in Rhode Island and followed ballot-box victories last fall in Maine, Maryland and Washington.
The Iowa state Supreme Court ruled that the state must issue birth certificates to same-sex couples showing both spouses as parents. Lambda Legal reports:
In the decision, Justice Wiggins wrote, “By naming the nonbirthing spouse on the birth certificate of a married lesbian couple’s child, the child is ensured support from that parent and the parent establishes fundamental legal rights at the moment of birth. Therefore, the only explanation for not listing the nonbirthing lesbian spouse on the birth certificate is stereotype or prejudice.”
“The Court meant what it said in the Varnum decision: same-sex couples and their families must be treated equally under the law,” said Camilla Taylor, Marriage Project Director in Lambda Legal’s Midwest Regional Office based in Chicago. “Same-sex couples and their children do not get marriage-lite. Marriage is marriage and equal is equal. We take for granted that a husband is the father of a child born to his wife through reproductive technology – regardless of whether he is his child’s genetic parent. The same marital protection for both parents’ relationships to their child holds true for same-sex couples and their children.”
Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan on Monday reversed course on gay adoption, saying that he regrets a 1999 vote.
During a Wisconsin town hall, Ryan was asked to explain his long record of voting against gay rights. Ryan rates a zero percent by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) for not co-sponsoring any of the 11 gay rights-related bills currently before Congress, including the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and Uniting American Families Act (UAFA).
Ryan said he would undo a 1999 vote against adoption for gay and lesbian couples in the District of Columbia.
“Adoption, I’d vote differently these days. That was I think a vote I took in my first term, 1999 or 2000. I do believe that if there are children who are orphans who do not have a loving person or couple … I think if a person wants to love and raise a child they ought to be able to do that. Period. I would vote that way,” he said.
This has been a good year for gay rights advocates — with public opinion shifting in their favor and same-sex marriage advancing in the states — but not when it comes to immigration.
An 844-page bill introduced in the Senate in mid-April by a bipartisan group of eight lawmakers includes measures to make legal immigration easier for highly skilled immigrants, migrant farmworkers and those living here illegally. It has no provisions that would help foreigners who are same-sex partners of American citizens to become legal permanent residents.
Gay advocates were sharply disappointed to find that same-sex couples were excluded from the legislation, since the Democrats who wrote it included two of their most consistent champions, Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second highest-ranking Senate Democrat. Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, where the bill is under consideration, has offered, since as far back as 2003, a separate measure that would allow immigrants in long-term same-sex relationships to obtain residency with a green card.
But in the lengthy closed-door negotiations that produced the overhaul proposal, the four Republicans in the bipartisan group made it clear early on that they did not want to include such a hot-button issue in a bill that would be a challenge to sell to their party even without it, according to Senate staff members. The Republicans are Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona, and Marco Rubio of Florida.
Many Republicans in both houses of Congress oppose any recognition of same-sex unions.
Now, with the immigration bill scheduled to advance next week toward a vote in the Judiciary Committee, Democrats are in a quandary about whether to offer an amendment that would give green cards to same-sex partners.
Republican sponsors of the overhaul warned on Tuesday that such an amendment would sink the entire measure.
Four-year-old twins Emmet and Gabriel are pretty typical kids. They like to play outside. They like puzzles and toy cars. And they’re curious about new gadgets. They also like to cuddle in their parents’ arms, and sometimes they need extra attention.
Emmet and Gabriel have pretty old-fashioned parents, who tied the knot before they moved in together, who always knew they wanted to have kids, who try to attend church on Sundays, who share dishwashing and laundry duties, and who put the boys to bed by 8 p.m. every night. Except that their parents, Paul Melchert and James Zimmerman … are gay. “On our third date, both of us realized that this was turning into something that was going to last for a long time,” says Melchert, a pediatrician in Minneapolis. “Going into this, I very much wanted to become a parent, and was hopeful that James did too.” Like many parents, watching their children being born was one of the most powerful moments of their lives. In Melchert’s and Zimmerman’s case, a surrogate mom delivered the twins, but needed an emergency caesarian section. Both dads were in the room during the birth. “To hear your son cry for the first time as he came out, and then number two we heard cry,” Melchert recalls, as he points to a framed photo on their mantel of Emmet, just moments after his birth, comforting his crying twin brother Gabriel. “It was really an incredible moment.” Melchert and Zimmerman celebrate the seventh anniversary of their unofficial wedding at the end of April. They held a service on April 29, 2006, at Macalester Plymouth United Church in Saint Paul for approximately 40 family member and close friends. They walked in to the chapel holding hands, and walked out holding hands. “The moment that stands out most for me is just standing with the minister in front of an alter with all of our family sitting there,” Zimmerman recounts. “I particularly remember a beautiful toast speech that my father gave, welcoming James and acknowledging that it was two families coming together,” says Melchert. “How much they cherished James and how much they loved having him as part of their new life. He always said that, as a parent, you love your children, and you also love who your children love. To hear my father say that, and get a little tearful when he said it, was really impactful for me.” On election night last November, they gathered together with opponents of the ballot amendment that would have constitutionally banned same-sex marriage. But like many Minnesota parents, they couldn’t stay out too late because it was a weeknight. “It was really exciting being there with a large group,” says Melchert. “It got late and our babysitter needed to go home, so we came home early. But we watched the returns on TV and on our iPad. We were about to go to bed, and all of a sudden James refreshed the screen and they had checked it.” “In the morning we woke up and got excited again, then we realized we were celebrating that there wasn’t a constitutional ban on our relationship — which isn’t quite the same as celebrating marriage equality, but it was a first step.” In response to a legislative push to legalize same-sex marriage in Minnesota, some Republicans suggested that the state instead enshrine civil unions. But Paul Melchert says, that’s not good enough. “The rights, benefits and privileges that come from a legally recognized marriage cannot be obtained by any other means,” he told journalists during a press conference at the State Capitol earlier this year. “All families benefit from the reassurance that comes from knowing that your family is safe and secure.” “When you’re out in public or when you’re talking about your family and you say ‘my husband’ or ‘my wife’, there’s an automatic acceptance and understanding of the importance of who that is. I don’t think everybody always recognizes that if you say ‘my boyfriend’, ‘my girlfriend’, ‘my spouse’ or ‘my partner’, it doesn’t carry that same important meaning.” Melchert, a pediatrician, adds that years of studies show that kids of gay couples do just as well as kids of heterosexual couples.
By On Top Magazine Staff Published: April 18, 2013
An Australian senator is expected to propose legislation which would recognize the international marriages of gay and lesbian couples.
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said she would introduce the bill next month.
The move comes a day after nearby New Zealand approved a gay marriage bill.
“Australia same-sex couples are now lining up to get married in New Zealand and the sad thing is they are not going to be recognized here,” Hanson-Young told ABC News 24. “They shouldn’t have to leave their marriage at the customs gate. Let’s recognize overseas marriage here in Australia.”
