Military Couples Join The Fight Against DOMA

Week In Review
October 26, 2011
BY ANN ROSTOW


Military Couples Join The Fight Against DOMA

I think I mentioned the new challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act from the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN). I just got a press release indicating that this lawsuit will be filed in federal court on Thursday, October 27, on behalf of married gay soldiers and sailors who are denied family benefits and marriage recognition.

The military litigation is a welcome addition to our current collection of six or seven major federal DOMA suits. The oldest case, pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, is the one filed by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) on behalf of several married couples from Massachusetts. As you know, we won that case in trial court back in the Paleozoic Age and since then, we’ve been somewhat delayed while the U.S. government withdrew from the case and the House Republicans took its place.

Now, the briefing is coming to a close. GLAD is filing its last brief in the case this week, followed by some friends of the court and a final brief from the House Republicans. Oral arguments could be scheduled as early as next January.

God these federal cases take a long time. Actually, most lawsuits take a long time which is why I’m annoyed by these TV legal dramas where someone meets with the fictional lawyer one day and they all end up in court within a week or two. Before a jury no less. And how do we know that only a week has gone by? Because the side character is, I don’t know, making a Halloween costume in the first scene and trick or treating at the end of the show. It’s absurd. Absurd I tell you!

By the way, I must have missed the Rachel Maddow episode where Rachel exposed the scam behind a photo on the National Organization for Marriage website. The photo shows NOM president Brian Brown addressing a cheering crowd of thousands. In fact, the NOM people just stuck Brian into a shot of one of Obama’s 2008 campaign events.

Really? Really, NOM?
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Fools Rush In

So, did any of you see Rick Perry’s halting speech about his tax plan? The one where he drawled on about the ten thousand pages of federal code and then pulled a postcard tax return out of his pocket as if most tax payers usually fill out thousands of pages?

True, we don’t have a postcard. But, assuming we don’t have itemized deductions, the current tax form requires ten numbers, a bunch of zeroes, and a signature. As for those people who do have deductions or have to hire lawyers and accountants to put together their return, they’re not going to switch to a postcard. The man’s an idiot.

And Herman Cain? What’s with the green fedora with the yellow rope band or whatever it is he was wearing the other day? What’s with the bizarre commercial with the cigarette and the creepy smile? Is he deliberately pushing the envelope or have his poll numbers launched him through a wormhole?

Oh, and I gather Newt’s wife Callista was seen at a Tiffany’s in a Washington suburb the other day while the candidate was having a glass of Cava at the bar next door. I kid you not. According to the Washington Post gossip blog, Gingrich ordered Champagne, but had to settle for inferior sparkles since the bar was out of the real deal. Honestly, these two self indulgent buffoons deserve their own reality show. Plus, do they really think Americans would elect a first family with names out of a Harry Potter book?

Finally, we’ve always disliked Michele Bachman for her relentless attacks on the GLBT community and her strange antics of years past. Maybe you recall the time she accused lesbians in the ladies room of assault or the time she hid from activists in some bushes. So we knew she was crazy, but we didn’t really know that she was a profoundly unpleasant person in general. Her New Hampshire staff members, who recently resigned en masse, describe the national campaign as oblivious, arrogant and cruel.

I’ve never been a fan of Mitt Romney, but the man towers above the rest of the Republican field. I still wonder whether he showers in that Mormon underwear.
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Live Free or Die

Returning to actual news, it was disturbing to see Republicans in a New Hampshire house committee voting out a bill that would repeal marriage rights for same-sex couples and replace equality with a strange partner law. The partnerships would not be recognized as marriage, and would be available to siblings, relatives and, I don’t know, beach volleyball teammates.

I’m not going to worry too much about this bill until it advances further in the legislative process. Even if it passes both houses, Governor John Lynch has pledged a veto. Still, it’s a reminder that even in the few states where we’ve achieved victory in the fight for marriage, the battles continue.

Meanwhile, Brazil’s highest court has ruled that civil unions, available in some Brazilian states, can be treated and recognized as marriages. I know that was a cumbersome sentence, but it took me quite some time to figure out what exactly happened down there without actually boning up on the Brazilian judicial system or teaching myself Portuguese. I guess some states allow civil unions and others don’t. Two women from one of the good states went to court to have their union converted to a marriage, and now they’ve succeeded at the highest level. The ruling doesn’t mandate marriage equality, but it seems like a step in the right direction.

Also, it looks as if Denmark might legalize same-sex marriage sometime next spring. I vaguely thought Denmark had already done so, but apparently not. So much for my image of myself as an expert on all aspects of this, our seminal civil rights issue.
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Bad Judge, No Pension!

In my GLBT web surfing yesterday, I encountered another sleazy sexcapade by some conservative family value type and stored it away as fodder for this week’s column. Now I can’t find it!

I’ll keep looking, but meanwhile, I am happy to report that former Oklahoma judge Donald D. Thompson is back in the headlines. Thompson, one of our favorite malefactors of 2002 or 2003, was the judge who was removed from office for masturbating during trials, an activity that he could not completely hide from witnesses and others who approached the bench during these intimate sessions. His Honor used a penis pump, and left incriminating tissues in his courtroom trash can.

He masturbated during trials! Not in his chambers. Not in the men’s room. Not in the empty courtroom. But in the middle of court proceedings! And he didn’t just grope himself under his robes. He employed a mechanical sex toy that actually made a little whooshing sound.

As I mentioned, Thompson was removed from office for this extraordinary and surreal breach of decorum and charged with a felony. As such, he lost most of his monthly pension of something like $7,000. He sued to get the cash reinstated, but to no avail.

“Court reporters observed the felonious exposure of Mr. Thompson's private parts, and testified to the fact during the criminal trial,” wrote the judge in this case, who presumably was not approaching orgasm at the time. “That trial resulted in conviction of felonies. Those felonies violated Mr. Thompson's oath of office.”

Sorry Donald! And I can’t seem to track down the sex scandal, which suggests that it wasn’t that big of a deal. Still, I’m disappointed. It means I have to move on to something serious, a transition that I instinctively resist.
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Are The Kids Alright?

Today’s emails and gay headlines feature an alarming announcement about how kids of same-sex couples are more likely to live below the poverty line. I didn’t read the study, which was released Tuesday by several gay and progressive groups, but it appears that the trials and tribulations of our families track back to the Defense of Marriage Act.

We know that kids in two-parent families fare better than others as a rule. But part of that phenomenon is the security that follows from the legal embrace of government sanctioned marriage. When you sever the legal ties between two partners and leave the children with only one official parent, bad things happen.

This is also why gays and lesbians have lower incomes and poorer health outcomes. Look, I’m married to a public school teacher, and I don’t have health insurance. I have some kind of policy that I pay a lot of money for, but it doesn’t kick in until I’m three thousand dollars in the red. You can bet I’m not spending $500 to see a doctor unless my life starts flashing before my eyes. And even then, I’d wait until it flashed through the end of the last century.

Speaking of life flashing by, have you seen the AARP ads on Medicare? It’s pretty bad if an ad for protecting Medicare can annoy a staunch supporter, but I for one can’t abide the truculent 60-something man who warns lawmakers not to touch benefits because “we’ll be watching” and “we’ll be voting” come November. He’s such a jerk that it makes you want to see his benefits go down the drain with Judge Donald D. Thompson’s judicial pension.

Oh, not really. But come on AARP. You’ve got a lot of money. Could you not afford to run your expensive national ad campaign through a focus group or two?
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En Garde!

Now what? We’re not in the mood for lawsuits. We’re not in the mood for people posting mean things on Facebook. We’re not in the mood for Ugandan politics.

I suppose we can talk about the Canadian pastor in Ontario, who was taking some kids to a coffee shop when he noticed a couple that he says were making out and shoving their hands down their pants at an outside table. The pastor, who thought the couple was a young straight pair, asked the manager to ask his customers to tone it down. But when it became clear that the lovebirds were two women, the matter threatened to become a GLBT cause celebre.

According to the women, they were out having coffee with family members and merely exchanged a “peck.” Based on this scenario, activists are planning to protest at the coffee shop on Thursday, October 27.

But another news report quotes a gay man and a transwoman who say the incident has been mischaracterized in the interests of GLBT politics and threatens to undermine the community’s ability to fight real cases of homophobia.

I was reluctant to cover this item because I have no idea whether the women were wallowing in a sloppy French kiss (get a room!) or simply exchanging a harmless gesture of affection (get lost homophobe pastor!). Also, I feel as if I’ve covered half a dozen kissing or holding hands in public stories in the last month and I’m just tired of them.

But, I had to choose between the Canadian kissers or the lawmakers in Nashville who are trying to undermine the legal challenge to the recently passed statute against local gay rights rules. I think I made the right decision. I also had something on my list that read: “teachers?” I have no idea what that was about, but I suppose you could Google “gay” and “teachers” and see what comes up.

Oh yes. I think that involved a professor somewhere who told her graduate students that homosexuality was an abomination. That didn’t sit well with one of the lesbians in the class and, well, I forget the rest of the story. I think the student filed a complaint of some sort.

You know what? We should bring back duels to resolve some of the confrontations that don’t seem to rise to the level of the courtroom. Just swords of course. What do you think?
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Ann’s column appears every week at sfbaytimes.com. She can be reached at arostow@aol.com