Gutting Progress with a Cynical Smile, by Shanikka Book review: Eve Ensler's "In the Body of the World," by Susan Gardner Tell the Roberts Court Five—the Civil rights movement is still alive, by Denise Oliver-Velez The political impact of the Roberts Court, by Armando Think globally, act locally: The case for paying a heck of a lot more attention to state legislative races, by Steve Singiser "Meet the Press" vs. Snowden. Who's more crooked, by Hunter A new progressive champion is born deep in the heart of Texas, by DarkSyde
Nineteen firefighters - all members of an elite response team - were killed Sunday battling a fast-moving wildfire in Arizona, marking the deadliest single incident for firefighters since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, officials said.
New York City’s 44th annual gay pride parade featured the woman who killed DOMA — 84-year old Edie Windsor, who was the parade’s Grand Marshal.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy turned down at midday Sunday a request to stop same-sex marriages from occurring in California. Without comment, and without seeking views from the other side, Kennedy rejected a challenge to action by the Ninth Circuit Court on Friday implementing a federal judge’s ruling allowing such marriages. The plea had been made on Saturday by the sponsors of California’s “Proposition 8,” a voter-approved measure that permitted marriage only between a man and a woman.
With the advent of last week’s Supreme Court decision striking down DOMA, and legalizing gay marriages in California, marriage suddenly became ‘real’ for the first time for many gay couples across America, even those already married. Why “real” now? Because in some ways, without the over 1,100 federal benefits that accrue to marriage, gay couples, even in states that permitted gay marriage, were married in name only. For federal tax purposes, and for Social Security, Medicare, and one thousand other federal services, gay couples were considered single, even if they were legally married. That meant that the opportunity cost of working in an anti-gay, anti-marriage-equality state was simply the state benefits you were losing, not federal benefits – since no married gay couples in any state got federal benefits. Now they do. And that makes the cost of working in an anti-gay-marriage state that much higher for gay employees, and it’s one they may no longer be willing to accept. While most federal federal marriage benefits define your marriage by the state you were married in, some, most notably Social Security and taxes, define your marriage by the state in which you live.
That meant that the opportunity cost of working in an anti-gay, anti-marriage-equality state was simply the state benefits you were losing, not federal benefits – since no married gay couples in any state got federal benefits. Now they do. And that makes the cost of working in an anti-gay-marriage state that much higher for gay employees, and it’s one they may no longer be willing to accept.
While most federal federal marriage benefits define your marriage by the state you were married in, some, most notably Social Security and taxes, define your marriage by the state in which you live.