A wrap of news, issues and events which may impact or affect the GLBT segment of society.

The  issue of same-gender relationships and legal status continues to loom  as the major story for those who are GLBT. Three states have filed  "friend of the court" briefs in a case to be heard by the 2nd US Court  of Appeals.

According to an article in The Christian Science Monitor, the 3 states are Vermont, New York and Connecticut, which all provide for same-gender marraiges.

The CSM tells the story this way:

Three  states where members of the clergy and justices of the peace today  marry gay couples argued on Friday that it’s a violation of states’  rights for the federal government to then “unmarry” those people under  the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

In an amicus brief to a  New York case involving a lesbian widow, Vermont, Connecticut, and New  York argue that the federal government had no right, despite the federal  designation of marriage as being between a man and a woman, to demand  $350,000 in estate taxes when Edie Windsor’s partner died. That would  not have happened under a marital tax deduction that lets other married  couples pass their assets to their spouse without penalty.

The  three states who filed amicus briefs argue that states regulate marriage  and family relationships and that Congress doesn’t have constitutional  authority to interfere with that license at any level.

Several  federal and state judges have struck down parts of DOMA, but it was only  earlier this year that a federal appeals court in Boston, called it  discriminatory regarding partner benefits, saying the law “fails the  test” when looking at its “disparate impact on minority interests and  federalism concerns.”

The First Circuit panel, however, did not  rule on the most controversial aspect of the law, and perhaps its  ultimate federalist test: Whether gay marriages are legal, or  reciprocal, in states that have laws against the practice.

Meanwhile, the fight between Congress and the Obama administration over  how to defend DOMA has added more questions about how far Congress is  willing to go to exert its will on the states.

The House  Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), led by Speaker John Boehner (R),  has taken over defending the law after President Obama said his  administration would not – a refusal that DOMA defenders have written is  an “unprecedented deviation from the historical norm.” At the same  time, 145 House Democrats have signed an amicus brief in support of Ms.  Windsor, the New York widow.

So is the constitutional rationale  for DOMA fading? Many Americans clearly don’t think so. But even those  who wrote the law say a major problem is how the law, in practice,  weighs the powers of the federal government against the rights of the  states.

The author of DOMA, former Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia,  repudiated the law in 2009, saying that federalism provisions that he  and his Republican colleagues put into the law to keep it from being  used as a cudgel have largely failed.

The problem, he wrote in  the Washington Post, is that it created “one-way federalism” since DOMA  “protects only those states that don’t want to accept a same-sex  marriage granted by another state.” The National Conference of State  Legislatures says 38 states have passed legislation barring same-sex  marriages while six states, including the three involved in the New York  case, currently allow such unions. Washington and Maryland also passed  gay marriage laws, but they have not yet taken effect.

As  arguments in the Second Circuit Court are expected to begin Sept. 27,  pressure is rising on the US Supreme Court to settle the issue.

http://csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/0908/In-looming-federalism-fight-three-states-say-feds-can-t-unmarry-gay-couples

From  the Cornfield, step-by-step, day-by-day, living life as one's self and  not in a militancy of in-your-face, acceptance, tolerance and equality  will one day come to all people no matter one's sexuality.