946 replies to this topic

[TAP]

Mathew Sheppard comes to mind.

Dead people can't sue?

[Mr. Roboto]

Dead people's family maybe?

[TAP]

Dead people's family maybe?

Maybe, but that's not really the context of what you quoted. They did get sued by a family but it got thrown out by SCOTUS I think. I dunno, there's something fishy about that whole thing, I'm sure some of the hate is genuine, but they aren't crazy in an out-of-control kind of way.

[Mr. Roboto]

I believe part of it for sure. They are lawyers and he knows how to work it and like lawsuits. I also believe he's a religious nut who sincerely believes what he is saying....I think.

[Zimbochick]

Edie Windsor vs. DOMA May Be Best Chance To Strike Federal Gay Marriage Bar

Edith "Edie" Windsor, 83, never really thought she would be suing the government. But just to be safe, she and her late wife, Thea Spyer, always kept extensive records. "We needed to make sure that everything was perfectly well defined and in order," Windsor said. "Because I had no idea that this might happen, and yet all our lives we knew that it was going to happen." When Spyer died, she left her entire estate to Windsor. But because the federal government did not recognize their marriage under the Defense of Marriage Act, Windsor was hit with a bill for $363,000 in federal estate tax. If Thea had been a Theo, Windsor likes to say, she would have received her spouse's estate tax-free.

Like a handful of other plaintiffs across the country, Windsor is now hoping the U.S. Supreme Court will take her case in order to overturn DOMA, the 1996 law signed by President Bill Clinton that defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman.
As more states have legalized same-sex marriage -- leading to more than a dozen suits challenging the constitutionality of the federal law -- and public opinion continues to shift in favor of expanded gay rights, legal experts expect a ruling from the high court to come soon. But at 83, with a heart condition, Windsor is not sure it will be soon enough. On June 6, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York sided with Windsor. This week, her lawyers filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to take her case and let her skip what would be the usual next step of going before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. This is the second attempt by Windsor's legal team to speed up the case. On June 13, after Congress' Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group filed a notice of appeal to the 2nd Circuit -- Congress has defended DOMA ever since President Barack Obama decided his Justice Department would not -- Windsor filed a motion to expedite that appeal.
Windsor's lawyers -- many of them from the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Project -- argued in their Supreme Court petition that her case is the best vehicle for challenging DOMA because it is so clear that Windsor suffered financially as a direct result of the policy.

Attorney Roberta Kaplan said in a statement Monday, "Edie and Thea were together for more than four decades and truly lived the words 'in sickness and in health, until death do us part.' Solely because of DOMA, Edie had to pay more than $363,000 in federal estate tax, which is one of the most significant adverse impacts of DOMA. Edie, who just turned 83, suffers from a chronic heart condition. The constitutional injury inflicted on Edie should be remedied within her lifetime."

In a way, Windsor said, that estate tax bill gave her a reason to live. After Spyer's death, Windsor had a heart attack and was very ill. "My feeling was, we had a wonderful life together and I could die now," she said.
But once she decided to sue the government, arguing that DOMA is unconstitutional because it violates the equal protection clause, she had fresh motivation to keep going, even without the woman she describes as the love of her life. "Once I started the pursuit of this, it did become a reason for living, a great reason for living," she said in a recent phone interview with The Huffington Post from the Hamptons home she once shared with Spyer. The two women met in 1965 at a West Village restaurant where lesbians went on Friday nights, Windsor recalled, and were engaged in 1967. Windsor was a computer systems consultant for IBM, and Spyer was a clinical psychologist. They finally wed in Toronto in 2007, just two years before Spyer died after years battling advanced multiple sclerosis. Their New York Times wedding announcement served also as a coming-out announcement to many friends and colleagues whom they'd never told about their relationship.

Since Windsor first filed suit in 2010, the fight for marriage equality has advanced, with New York state legalizing same-sex marriage, the Obama administration declaring it would no longer defend DOMA, and the president announcing his personal "evolution" on same-sex marriage in an interview on ABC News. But the estate tax bill and the financial difficulties she faced from liquidating assets to pay it off still infuriate Windsor. "I was anguished about the money, but it was more about the indignation," Windsor recalled. "The government was not recognizing us, and we deserved recognition." If the Supreme Court accepts Windsor's case -- or any of the other cases challenging DOMA -- it could be heard as early as next spring. The justices could also choose to hear another potentially broader-reaching case: a lawsuit challenging Proposition 8, the 2008 California ballot initiative that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Katherine Franke, a professor at Columbia Law School and director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, hopes the Supreme Court chooses to hear one of the DOMA challenges, which ask the court a relatively narrow question: whether the federal government can override states' decisions about same-sex marriage laws. In contrast, the argument against Prop 8 is that people have a fundamental, constitutional right to marry. "I think putting that argument off until longer is a good idea," Franke said. As activists learned in the civil rights battles of the 1960s, she noted, "If the litigation gets out ahead of where the people are, the backlash can set us back even further than the victories could take us forward."

While the country has made broad strides on gay rights over the past decade, there is still strong opposition in many areas, such as North Carolina, where citizens recently voted for an amendment banning same-sex marriage by a broad majority.
But for Windsor, the potential backlash is far from her mind. "All those years, we never dreamed that we would question the law like this," Windsor said. "But at Pride [New York City's Gay Pride parade], people kept stopping me on the street and thanking me. I'm really thrilled out of my skull that I could do this."

http://www.huffingto...nk3&pLid=180442

[*D*]

I think a big part of it is the "Chuck and Larry" angle where two close friends who aren't interested in getting married pose as gay to take advantage of all the benefits etc.

I figured separation of Church and State should automatically not discriminate against marriage.


Plus see my Leviticus thing on FB.

[Mr. Roboto]

Sad story. Reminds me of my buddy whose Mom is a lesbian and recently lost her long time partner. In comes the long lost daughter to swoop in and claim property rights etc.

Messy.

[Mr. Roboto]

Plus see my Leviticus thing on FB.

You should point out that polygamy is already advocated in the bible, so your buddy can cross that off his list already. That and it kinda takes away from the argument of "the bible says one man/woman = marriage."

[Mr. Roboto]

[Zimbochick]

I think a big part of it is the "Chuck and Larry" angle where two close friends who aren't interested in getting married pose as gay to take advantage of all the benefits etc.

The same could be said if a man and a woman posing as married for the benefits. It happens all the time.

[Zimbochick]

Sad story. Reminds me of my buddy whose Mom is a lesbian and recently lost her long time partner. In comes the long lost daughter to swoop in and claim property rights etc.

That's terrible.

[Mr. Roboto]

Had anybody heard of this before? This is an outrage:

A bill aimed at ending bullying has passed in the Republican-controlled Michigan Senate, but ignited a somewhat emotional wave of criticism among Democrats, TIME's Swampland reports.

The staunch opposition stems from the fact that the law allows harassment by teachers and students as long as they can claim their actions are rooted in a "sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction." Those who truly believe homosexuality is wrong, for example, are free to torment classmates consequence-free.

On the floor, Senator Gretchen Whitmer gave a harsh criticism dripping with emotion, WWMT reported.
"You may be able to pat yourselves on the back today and say that you did something," she said. "But in actuality you are explicitly outlining how to get away with bullying," Whitmer said.

In her speech, Whitmer went on to outline the irony in naming the bill "Matt's Safe School Law," after a Michigan teen who committed suicide in 2002 from falling victim to bullying.

Matt's father Kevin Epling told the Detroit Free Press that the law makes him "ashamed" and called it "government-sanctioned bigotry."

The bill's sponsor Republican Sen. Rick Jones told the paper that while the motion "may not be perfect" he believes it's a step in the right direction.

[PERM BANNED]

I'm sorry. I don't see it that way. What I see are so called progressives trying to ban speech they don't agree with. Bullying is wrong. And those who do it, should be punished. But the left wants to completely redefine bullying. Some devout Muslim telling a child of a same sex couple, that he believes their parents are living in sin, is not the same as beating up the poor kid with acne because he can't afford designer clothes. And that's what bullying has been defined as. And what the left wants to do, is punish anyone who doesn't toe the line with their viewpoints as bullies.

So if Mary is a member of the pro-life club, and chants that abortion is murder. Susan can claim bullying because she had an abortion after having unprotected sex with the star quarterback. What this bill does in my mind, is continue to protect free speech from the encroachment of the left by labeling anything they dislike as hate speech.

I can't believe that we're at the point where essentially saying "I disagree with your point of view and think you are wrong" is being categorized as being physically assaulted and verbally berated for being "different."

[wedjat]

I thought I had posted that article awhile ago. And Flagg, I don't think you get it. In essence, as long as someone says "hey, it's all in the name of religion", bullying is a-ok. That's bullshit. Surely even you aren't that thick.

[PERM BANNED]

http://health.yahoo....le-to-hiv-study

FRIDAY, July 20 (HealthDay News) -- New research pinpoints a major reason why gay and bisexual men remain so vulnerable to the AIDS epidemic: When it comes to the transmission of HIV, a man who has unprotected anal intercourse is at especially high risk.

In fact, if that kind of intercourse was only as risky as vaginal intercourse, researchers report, HIV cases among gay and bisexual men would shrink dramatically. It would go down even more, they added, if their rates of casual sex declined.

The reality, however, is much different. "Everywhere we looked, HIV is expanding both in high- and low-income countries among men who have sex with men," said study author Dr. Chris Beyrer, director of the Johns Hopkins Fogarty AIDS International Training and Research Program.

The experts were quick to note that, worldwide, it is heterosexual men and women who are by far the majority of those who are infected with HIV. Still, more than 30 years into the AIDS epidemic, gay and bisexual men remain especially vulnerable to infection despite a heavy emphasis on condoms and HIV testing; these men make up the bulk of HIV cases in the United States and other Western countries.

According to UNAIDS, HIV is more common among gay and bisexual men than adults in general in all areas of the world, even Africa. In North America, an estimated 15 percent of gay and bisexual men are infected with HIV; the rate is the highest, 25 percent, in the Caribbean.

Previous research has shown that being on the receiving end of anal intercourse is equally risky whether you're a man or a woman. The risk was estimated at 1.4 percent per sex act with an infected person -- about 18 times more risky than male-to-female vaginal intercourse.

The study authors estimate that if receptive anal intercourse were only as risky as vaginal intercourse, HIV cases would fall by 80 percent to 98 percent among gay and bisexual men over five years. They also estimate that cases would fall by 29 percent to 51 percent if more gay and bisexual men had sex in long-term relationships instead of casual encounters.

The findings appear in the July 20 issue of The Lancet, along with several other studies that examine the prevalence of HIV -- the virus that causes AIDS -- in gay and bisexual men and offer suggestions about prevention.

Two studies examined the higher risk of HIV infection among black men.

One study found that black gay and bisexual men outside Africa are much more likely to be HIV-positive than the general population and other blacks. The other found that black gay and bisexual men in the United States were more likely to be infected with HIV than other gay and bisexual men, but less likely to have a history of substance abuse. If infected, they were also less likely to have started to take life-extending drugs that fight HIV.

There were other differences: black men were less likely to have access to medical care and more likely to have sex with other black men.

What to do? Another study suggests the greater use of prevention approaches -- such as condoms, more medical treatment for those who are already infected and use of medication that prevent infection -- could shrink new HIV cases among gay and bisexual men by one-fourth over the next decade. "But it's not simple as choosing the best ones. There are existing technologies, but we need to put them together" and expand them, said Dr. Patrick S. Sullivan, an associate professor at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health.

It's also important, he said, to change societies that stigmatize homosexuality and turn it into a criminal offense.