For the most part I try to keep this blog centered on music, but every once in a while I like to throw my viewers a glimpse of my personal life. In order to do that, especially with the title of this post, here is some back story. Two of my dad’s brothers are gay. One of the two has been in a relationship with his partner for around 25 years. A couple years ago at a family gathering, which happened to be when the same-sex marriage debate took off, my uncle’s partner explained to me why it was such a big deal.
According to a post on about.com, under current laws a same-sex couple is denied benefits given to man-woman couples, such as assumption of spouse’s pension, automatic inheritance, automatic housing lease transfer, bereavement leave, child custody, divorce protections, domestic violence protection, exemption from property tax on partner’s death, immunity from testifying against spouse, insurance breaks, joint adoption and foster care, joint parenting (insurance coverage, school records), medical decisions on behalf of partner, certain property rights, sick leave to care for partner, visitation of partner’s children, visitation of partner in hospital or prison, wrongful death (loss of consort) benefits, among others.
There are also 1100 Federal benefits that man-woman marriage recieve that same-sex couples did’t get even if they are legally married because of DOMA, or the Defense of Marriage Act, which was signed by President Clinton in 1996.
As my uncle’s partner explained it to me, he said “if, god forbid, (my uncle) was in a car accident and on life support all of the decisions would go to next of kin and not me, and we’ve been together since you were a little boy.”
For me, I love to see everyone around me happy and treated equally. On June 26, The Supreme Court of the United States declared DOMA unconstitutional based on “the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and federalism.” However, neither the ability of states to maintain their own versions of DOMA or parts of it were addressed.
I asked my uncle about what it all means and what happens next and he responded with this:
“The fact that DOMA has been overturned means that when gay couples get married in the States where marriage is legal, the Federal government will recognize them. So gay married couples will have all of the rights that straight married couples get. There are still open questions about what happens when the gay couples move to States where gay marriage has not been enacted yet.”
He also mentioned that “they get all of the 1100 rights we talked about last time…..we think. There are different definitions of marriage pertaining to those rights.”