GLBT Week in Review, November 28, 2012
BY ANN ROSTOW
Christian Lady Lawyers Behaving Badly
I realize that the High Court is about to confer on ten gay rights petitions, including several challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act. I know that we are poised to fight for marriage rights in a number of new states. I heard about some allegedly bad behavior by Elmo. I could tell you about delays in the French marriage law and controversy over whether marriage clerks should be bound by new equality policies.
But let’s set this all aside for now, shall we?
For one thing, I’m in a “holiday” mood; a timeless sensation that sets in from late November through the BCS championship game. My consuming interest in legal and political developments is suspended.
Right now, as I begin this week’s column for example, I am focused, not on the decision by Boeing to ignore Washington State’s new marriage law, but with the ridiculous article in the New York Times food section about how to bury a pot of beans in your back yard with a bunch of heated rocks. What next, Grey Lady? A “how to” on sun-dried mammoth jerky? More on this later, I promise.
But my main reason for leading us off on the road less travelled is the news that a 40-something female Christian conservative New Hampshire lawyer has been nabbed by the feds for running off with an underage teen girl and convincing her to have heterosexual sex with some guy on videotape. Lisa Biron is also suspected of using an array of drugs, keeping an illegal handgun and loading her computer with child pornography.
Our Lisa has helped on at least one religious case with the Alliance Defending Freedom, nee the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal group renowned for its antigay litigation work. She also served on the board of the Mount Zion Christian Schools in Manchester for a couple of years. She is now charged with seven counts of child exploitation, including transporting a child for illegal sexual conduct, as well as manufacturing and using child pornography. Witnesses testified that they saw her in possession of cocaine, ecstasy and marijuana, and law enforcement types found a ton of ammunition in her house.
Woah, Nelly!
Don’t you love stories about Conservative Christians dropping off the straight and narrow? Me too, and particularly when there’s a twist in the tale. Usually, our bad girl stories involve lesbians, while our miscreants on the Christian right are generally male. Thank you Lisa for turning the tables on our stereotypes. Or did you? Is there something else in your metaphorical closet besides girls and guns?
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Where’s The Editor?
Getting back to the bean pot story, I’m actually serious about this. The New York Times is our country’s paper of record. Wednesday is food section day for most major papers. And this is a time of year when many readers are hungry for new ideas for the seasonal table.
So we turn to the Times and what do we find? A lengthy cover piece on the mechanics of digging a pit, messing around with beans on the stove, lighting a fire, tossing in a bunch of rocks and burning the fire to embers, taking the pot off the stove and sticking it in the pit for eight hours, for what? For some beans that could have sat in a low oven overnight. What’s the point? Is it simply an opportunity to show off your (self-satisfied) culinary imagination to your guests? I can think of no other excuse for this pretentious “recipe.”
Nor is this the only source of recent outrage triggered by my daily newspaper reading. There’s something else that I have circled on my “news” list with an exclamation point under the ambiguous title: “Austin American Statesman story!” I’m hoping to remember the content of this provocative line item before I finish this column.
But before we delve into actual GLBT news, did any of you catch the latest episode of The Good Wife?
It’s a great law firm series, but last week’s show presented an off-the-wall scenario involving the Defense of Marriage Act. When a gay man on trial was denied the right to spousal privilege, a famed appellate attorney stepped in to undermine the man’s defense in order to set up a high level test case which would eventually lead the Supreme Court to overturn DOMA.
Who came up with this absurd idea? No famous appellate attorney would imagine that a single DOMA-related incident would be a good test case. No famous appellate attorney would intervene at the trial stage in any event, let alone to damage an individual defendant. And no famous appellate attorney would be totally unaware of the many existing challenges to DOMA. The scriptwriters included references to the government’s decision last year to stop defending the law. But they ignored all the ongoing DOMA cases. When the gay man wins his trial, the appellate lawyer tells everyone that they’ve just assured that DOMA “will continue for another decade.” Say what?
Here’s my point. If you’re going to write plots based on today’s news, you can’t botch the context to this extent. For heaven’s sake! This show aired just ten days before the High Court is going to review no less than eight DOMA petitions!
Plus, the lawyer was played by the same guy who stars as a cop on Rizzoli and Isles. I always find it jarring when TV characters pop up as unexpected guest stars on other shows. It’s hard for me, for example, to accept that the hero in Revolution is the serial killer from The Closer. And readers: who is that guy who plays the newly elected mayor on Vegas? I’ve seen him before! Maybe on Ally McBeal? Perchance I watch too much of this stuff.
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Here We Go!
Okay Okay.I know we have rehashed the big Supreme Court story for week after week, and yet this time it’s really happening! So let’s do it one more time for the record.
On Friday, the justices will decide whether or not to accept one or more challenges to the main section of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. Since this federal law has been struck down by not one, but two federal appellate courts, it’s a certainty that the Court will resolve the national status of the law this session.
There are technically eight DOMA petitions before the Court, but three of them involve related DOMA litigation in Massachusetts, where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit convened the first appellate panel to strike the law. Significantly, Justice Kagan may be obliged to recuse herself from this early litigation because she served as Solicitor General while the Massachusetts cases were rising through the courts.
The most interesting DOMA case is that of New York widow Edith Windsor (two petitions) who sued the government after being forced to pay estate taxes on her own property after the death of her wife. A few weeks ago, a 2-1 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in her favor. Significantly, the panel ruled that sexual orientation discrimination should be evaluated with heightened scrutiny, adding a large and welcome weight to our side of the judicial scale. The Justice Department has asked the High Court to dump the other DOMA cases and focus only on Windsor, a move that would let Kagan stay on the case and would also oblige the justices to take a stand on the key issue of heightened scrutiny for gay plaintiffs.
Two other petitions involve the Pedersen case, a Connecticut case that has yet to be reviewed by an appellate court. Since Connecticut is governed by the Second Circuit, however, the Windsor decision presumably dictates Pedersen as well.
The eighth DOMA petition is another case that has not been reviewed by an appellate court, namely the Golinski case out of Northern California. As with Pedersen, the trial court ruled against DOMA. And as with Pedersen, the case was petitioned to the High Court in order to expand the Court’s DOMA menu, if you will.
So basically, we have Massachusetts, Windsor, Pedersen and Golinski. The Court could take all of them or some combination. I’ve spent too much time in print fumbling around with inept Court speculation so I think I’ll just wait and see what happens here.
Meanwhile, there are two other petitions that address gay couples, but do not challenge DOMA. Here we have no idea whether the Court will accept the cases, reject the cases, or maybe put them on ice until the justices can articulate new gay rights jurisprudence via the DOMA litigation.
Of course one of these cases is the Prop 8 case, decided narrowly in our favor by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Many of us hope the justices will reject review, legalizing marriage in California in short order. If they accept review, danger lurks.
Lastly, the Court will think about another Ninth Circuit gay rights victory, a ruling that stopped Arizona lawmakers from cutting out same-sex partner benefits for state staff for budget savings. Saving money is a fine government interest. But you can’t cut spending by, let’s say, eliminating benefits for African American employees.
So there you go. It’s possible that the Court could announce something on Friday afternoon. But it’s more likely that Monday morning will be the moment we’ve all been waiting for.
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Fight For Marriage Crosses New State Borders
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are not going to bask in our Election Day marriage victories. Instead, we’re going on offense. Or so I read and hope. What states are on our new target list? Quite a few it seems.
You may remember that New Jersey lawmakers passed a marriage equality bill last year, at which point Chris Christie took out his red pen and scratched our hearts out. Nonetheless, we still have a few months to override his veto if we can pull out a few more votes. Plus, we have a lawsuit working its way through the Garden State courts, and I suppose we can pass marriage in the next legislative session and hope Christie thinks twice about the subject.
We won control of state legislatures in Colorado and Minnesota, where new seeds for marriage laws now blossom. Rhode Island, Hawaii and Delaware are also considered fertile ground. Oregon activists are considering a ballot measure in 2014, and progress looks possible in Illinois. I also read about something maybe happening in Nevada, but look. You get the picture. A lovely landscape overflowing with pleasant imagery. Something out of the Hudson River School perhaps.
Indeed, the very idea of more marriage equality states fills me with such good feelings that I am loathe to write about the antigay law in Uganda, or the Alabama lesbian who was beaten to a pulp over Thanksgiving by her girlfriend’s brother.
For one thing, we’ve been talking about this damned Uganda law for years and it still hasn’t passed. As for the lesbian, she looks like she’s been to Hell and back. But it also sounds as if the brother might simply be a violent maniac rather than a homophobe.
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If the Shoe Fits
Speaking of homophobes, the style mavens at the Associated Press are questioning whether the term “homophobia” is appropriate, given that dislike of gay people is more a prejudice than a fear. But I agree with those who point out that the term applies to those who hate out of ignorance, and yes, out of mindless fear.
Look. I’m an arachnophobe even though I’m intellectually aware that, let’s say, tarantulas are perfectly harmless and an important part of Nature’s plan.
That said, would I let a tarantula climb up my arm? No. Would I support civil rights for tarantulas? No. And why is that? Because of atavistic and unreasoned fear! An instinctive revulsion that cedes nothing to logic, science or reality itself.
So when we talk about true homophobes, we use the word accurately. We’re not talking about Chris Christie, much as we reject his political posturing. We’re talking about Tony Perkins, Ugandan lawmakers, Pat Robertson, the Alliance Defense Fund, Peter LaBarbera, and others of this ilk. The obsessed ones.
