I know gay marriage is a very controversial issue now. And it is where all the country’s attention is focused now, concerning gay rights. But my question is, how are gays doing otherwise when it comes to their civil rights? Specifically, how many states outlaw discrimination against gays in their place of employment? How what percentage outlaw it in housing? What states won’t allow discrimination, if gays want to eat in a restaurant, for example? And of course, the same questions apply to how many individual local governments do this as well.
There must be someone who keeps track of all this. And please feel free to provide a link if you have the answer to these questions.
Gay and Transgender Anti-Discrimination. Wisconsin was the first state in the nation to have an gay anti-discrimination statute (1982), signed by a Republican governor no less.
Gays are losing civil rights as various states pass “Defense of Marriage” acts which have more to do with putting the squeeze on a minority than they do with preserving marriage. From Ohio:
As much as I deplore Ohio’s “Super-DOMA” it doesn’t make visiting an ill partner in the hospital illegal. The havoc wreaked by all the various DOMAs is bad enough without exaggerating it.
No, it just prevents a locality from mandating that domestic partners who have not memorialized that relationship with marriage have right of access. It makes it illegal for a locality to decide that it wants to grant more rights than the state feels is appropriate.
Ohio’s Super-DOMA is virulently wrong. It ought to be considered unconstitutional on the same logic that Colorado 2 was found unconstitutional in Romer v. Evans, but I don’t expect the current Court, which has the backbone of a jellyfish, to actually rule that way.
New Zealand is looking more and more appealing every day.
www.lambdalegal.com needs to update its list of states that register same sex domestic partners. NJ has just signed on to the homosexual agenda of overturning society by allowing gays to register to become stable, monogamous, taxpaying households. The horror.
Won’t somebody think of the anonymous unsafe sex perverts?
Well in 1997 I got bashed and had 9 teeth broke. And the cops did nothing. In 1999 I was fired for being gay. In 1987 I was fired for being gay. I can’t donate blood. I was refused insurance in 1999. (High risk group – Even though I do not have HIV or Aids nor ever had any STD and outside of some borderline high blood pressure I am healthy) Fortunately my employer got me insurance thru someone else.
I believe gays should be allowed to marriage. I understand how people think it is an affront but let’s face it with Brittney Spears making a joke out of it how is that any LESS offensive and no one is passing any amendments to prohibit that.
Personally I feel companies may save money by gay marriages. Most men (straight or gay) aren’t all that marriage crazy. The only reason most companies offer domestic partnership is that if they give it to gays they feel they should give it to unmarried straights. So now they can elimnate that all together.
As they younger generation takes hold I find them to have an attitude “who cares” when it comes to homosexuality. One person I worked with (23 years old) when I told her I was gay she said “Oh that is so cool.”
But I am 39 and I haven’t seen my family since 1980 when my mother died. So those days of cutting you out of the family still go on to some degree.
In another few decades it will become a non issue. Like when I was in kindergarten, 1969 my mother actually got a call because I was playing with a black girl. She was the only one in the class who was black. We were segregated (this was in Chicago Suburbs). But now we’d all laugh at that.
I was surprised to read that the Red Cross can’t accept donations from you if “you are a male who has had sex with another male since 1977, even once” because the FDA classifies such people as high risk for HIV. I don’t know anything about the medical aspects of it, so I’m curious whether this is generally accepted as a legitimate measure, or are there people who view it as unjustified discrimination on the part of either the FDA or the Red Cross?
There are some people who view it as discrimination; I’m one of 'em. Based on the research I’ve seen, it’s an entirely unnecessary measure. Searching for Truth is the one who introduced me to the topic, so she might have some more information on-hand than I do.
Not all of Canada currently recognizes SSM. The supreme courts of British Columbia and Ontario have ruled that the common-law definition of “marriage” limiting it to mixed-sex couples is a violation of the Charter (Canadopers, what’s the right terminology? Do you say it’s “unconstitutional”?) and the federal government chose not to appeal any further. Quebec may become the third province to recognize SSM under a case its supreme court heard in January. The federal government has submitted legislation to the Supreme Court of Canada for an advisory opinion. Initially the legislation was a straightforward legalisation of SSM and the feds wanted the court’s opinion that the draft legislation wouldn’t impermissibly burden anyone’s religious freedom. The feds have since, in a move widely seen as an attempt to take SSM off the front burner as an election issue (the ruling party wants to schedule an election for this spring, right when the court was originally expected to issue its opinion), petitioned the court to consider whether civil unions would pass muster. This has the effect of pushing off the possibility of nationwide SSM in Canada until the fall.
