Civil & Human Rights

The fall of DOMA: federal benefits now available to same-sex marriage partners

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

EqualAfter the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in June, ending the federal government's ability to discriminate against legally married same-sex marriage partners from states that recognize same-sex marriage, the Obama administration has had the agencies of the federal government conducting a review to amend rules and regulations to comply with the law.

Yesterday, the IRS and Medicare announced a policy which uses the “place of celebration” rule, rather than the place of residence of legally married same-sex marriage partners. This policy change will have a profound effect on undermining Section 2 of DOMA (states do not have to recognize the status of legally married same-sex marriage partners from states that recognize same-sex marriage — in violation of the Full Faith and Credit Clause, Article IV, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution), because so many states use the federal adjusted gross income from Form 1040 as the basis for factoring state income taxes. The IRS and Medicare will now recognize same-sex marriages. All of them.:

According to a big new announcement
from the IRS and the Treasury Department, if you’re a legally married
gay couple, the federal government will recognize your marriage — even
if you live in a state where your marriage isn’t legal.

The statement, released by the Treasury Department Thursday, says that department and the IRS will use a “place of celebration” rule in recognizing same-sex unions (recognition that was illegal before the Supreme Court struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act last month). That means that the U.S. government recognizes a marriage if the union was legally recognized in the place where it occurred, where it was celebrated. That’s true even if the married couple then lives in a state where gay marriage is illegal.

Poverty, Hunger, Inequality, Violence: American Women Are Being Screwed

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Era58-sm72by Pamela Powers Hannley

It's time for a status update…

93 years after American women won the right to vote,

90 years after the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the US Constitution was proposed,

53 years after The Pill,

50 years after The Feminine Mystique awakened middle-class housewives from the slumber of the 1950s,

47 years after the creation of the National Organization for Women (NOW),

40 years after Roe v Wade legalized abortion in the US,

and 31 years after the ERA died because it fell short of state ratification by 3 state legislatures…

Where are we? Find out after the jump.


Marriage Equality breaks out in New Mexico

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Something remarkable is happening in New Mexico over the past week. After a state court judge ruled last week that the state's constitution prohibits discrimination against same-sex couples, several counties in New Mexico have begun issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. N.M.
judge orders county to issue same-sex marriage licenses:

An Albuquerque judge on Monday ordered the clerk of New Mexico’s most
populous county to join two other counties in the state in issuing
marriage licenses for gay and lesbian couples.

State District Judge Alan Malott ruled that New Mexico’s
constitution prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual
orientation.

The Bernalillo County clerk’s office in Albuquerque plans to start
issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples at 8 a.m. Tuesday.

Laura
Schauer Ives, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of New
Mexico, called it a “monumental ruling” and said the group didn’t expect
such a broad decision by the judge.

The ‘Freedom Budget’ from the Civil Rights Movement

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Kathleen Geier wrote an important post at the Political Animal blog about the forgotten history of the Civil Rights Movement. After all, the March on Washington was The March on Washington was a march for “Jobs and Freedom” (excerpts):

MarchOnWashingtonAmericans remember the march as an historic step forward in the
battle for civil rights. But feel-good media celebrations of the march,
and the civil rights era in general, often focus on the less
controversial parts of the civil rights project: equal accommodations
and the like. What they leave out is the more radical, still unfinished
business of Dr. King’s and the civil rights movement’s agenda: the part
that involved, in the words of Harold Meyerson, “massive structural changes to the economy.”

Meyerson has a wonderful piece
in The American Prospect this week about the economic progressives who
helped plan the March on Washington. Among them were activists Bayard
Rustin and Ella Baker and labor leader A. Philip Randolph. Like MLK
himself, they were democratic socialists. As Meyerson notes, as early as
1962, democratic socialist and writer Michael Harrington was worried
about “the declining number of African Americans in manufacturing jobs.”
He believed that ensuring the government’s commitment to full
employment was crucial. Activists such as A. Philip Randolph raised
similar concerns. Meyerson picks up the story:

An organization that Randolph chaired, the Negro
American Labor Council, began discussing what action it could take to
address the plight of urban black workers in 1961. Rustin started taking
soundings for some kind of national demonstration in 1962, and in
December of that year, he and Randolph began talking about a march on
Washington. Randolph asked Rustin to write a prospectus for such a
march, and with Kahn and Norman Hill, an African American socialist
activist, he co-authored a paper calling for an “Emancipation March for
Jobs” that he presented to Randolph in January 1963 (the 100th
anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation).

Ultimately, the focus of the march expanded beyond economic
rights to include civil rights and voting rights. But economic rights
remained an important feature of the march and a linchpin of the civil
rights struggle in the years ahead.

A Call to Action: President Obama marks the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

From the Washington Post, Transcript of Obama’s speech (excerpts):

Because they marched, America became more free and more fair, not
just for African-Americans but for women and Latinos, Asians and Native
Americans, for Catholics, Jews and Muslims, for gays, for Americans with
disabilities.

America changed for you and for me.

And the
entire world drew strength from that example, whether it be young people
who watched from the other side of an Iron Curtain and would eventually
tear down that wall, or the young people inside South Africa who would
eventually end the scourge of apartheid. (Applause.) Those are the
victories they won, with iron wills and hope in their hearts. That is
the transformation that they wrought with each step of their well-worn
shoes. That's the depth that I and millions of Americans owe those
maids, those laborers, those porters, those secretaries — folks who
could have run a company, maybe, if they had ever had a chance; those
white students who put themselves in harm's way even though they didn't
have to — (applause) — those Japanese- Americans who recalled their
own interment, those Jewish Americans who had survived the Holocaust,
people who could have given up and given in but kept on keeping on,
knowing that weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the
morning — (cheers, applause) — on the battlefield of justice, men and
women without rank or wealth or title or fame would liberate us all, in
ways that our children now take for granted as people of all colors and
creeds live together and learn together and walk together, and fight
alongside one another and love one another, and judge one another by the
content of our character in this greatest nation on Earth.

To
dismiss the magnitude of this progress, to suggest, as some sometimes
do, that little has changed — that dishonors the courage and the
sacrifice of those who paid the price to march in those years.
(Applause.) Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael
Schwerner, Martin Luther King Jr., they did not die in vain. (Applause.)
Their victory was great.

(Video below the fold.)