Posted on 02/01/2012 11:24:24 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
A federal lawsuit was filed Wednesday challenging the Veterans Affairs Department for refusing to recognize legally married gay and lesbian military couples and denying them the same family benefits as their heterosexual colleagues.
With the repeal last year of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell allowing gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military, activists have now turned their focus to gaining full benefits for legally married same-sex active duty and veteran service members and their families.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and the law firm WilmerHale filed the lawsuit Wednesday in Los Angeles on behalf of military veteran Tracey Cooper-Harris and her spouse, Maggie Cooper-Harris.
The VA denied Tracey’s request for her partner Maggie to receive veterans’ benefits as her spouse since the statue currently states that a spouse is “a person of the opposite sex who is a wife or a husband.”
The complaint charges that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional for discriminating on the basis of gender and sexual orientation, and also challenges the Veterans Affairs Dept.’s definition of spouse as solely a person of the opposite sex.
“The government’s refusal to grant these benefits is a slap in the face to the gay and lesbian service members who put their lives on the line to protect our nation and our freedoms,” Christine Sun, deputy legal director for the SPLC, said in a statement. “Especially given the recent repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, it’s shocking that the federal government continues to demean Tracey’s years of service and the service of many others in this way.”
Sun said in an interview that it’s “hard to predict” when the case will make it before the Supreme Court.
“The earliest it gets to the Supreme Court would be three to four years,” she said. “The Ninth Circuit is notoriously slow, but who knows?”
This isn’t the first lawsuit seeking equal benefits and family support for same-sex spouses in the wake of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’s repeal — in October 2011, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network filed a challenge to DOMA in federal court in Massachusetts on behalf of legally married current and former service members.
“One of our cases will make it to the Supreme Court eventually,” Sun said.
And this is one of the main reasons I detest Mitt Romney:
His refusal to support re-instating DADT.
With this one issue position, Mitt Romney, probably without realizing it, has telegraphed to anyone being observant, that he is completely weak on the Social Issue Agenda.
Furthermore, any words to the contrary he might have, are like most of his issue position statements, more lies.
Ack pingout tomorrow.
You are setting your sights way too low. You want to reinstate DADT?
That was a nightmare. You've allowed the Overton window to shift!
How was that policy better?
DADT was a major shift away from what our founders envisioned for this Country after it was founded! Not to mention 216 years worth of solid moral standing for our military.
Why not set policy that enhances readiness, or just get a moral reality check?
The LDS has long claimed to be made of sterner stuff than that — HOWEVER, Mitt is a bishop and he apparently gets to shape LDS policy.
Not just Ack. AckPht!
I was going to say Gack or Feh. But it’s much worse than Feh.
Ack is the hairball. Pht is the cat hiss after it’s barfed up. At least I think that’s how the cat (by Berke Breathed and which had one giant eye and one teeny eye) carried on. As fit a reaction to this as anything. As for SPLC’s part in this, talk about mission creep if they ever had a worthy mission at all (cleaning up remnants of Jim Crow was about all there could have been in that category). Now they’re not even poverty pimps, just pimps (it’s an open secret that gays as a group are richer than normals as a group — because NO KIDS, duh).
Overload the system in order to destroy it...Is there anyone who doesn’t think this was the goal all along?
That lady with OWS who married the building they occupied ought be able now to apply for compensation.How long will it take before her spouse/the building files for divorce?Hey if there is such a thing as same sex “marriage” and DOMA suddenly “unconstitutional” Then why can’ta chick marry a building— or a guy his television Like that good ol’boy said on Jerry Springer?
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Our tax money, pushing the homo-nazi perverted agenda on everyone else, especially offensive to veterans and their families.
this crap pisses me off to no end, it’;s just got me in a right bad mood just after me calming down too.
Now we have frigging Romney who will do jack sh@@ or obama who will and is the same.
pisses me off.
Romney gives to his church which in turn uses the money to fight homosexuals but he support homosexuals
yea the man is full of brains and principles ARF
I want the policy of openly serving homosexuals and cross dressers overturned in the first week but with numbnuts and the socialist then it will never happen and another 4 years and it will always stay.
Most new laws feed the corruption in the legal system: Making money for lawyers, keeping corrupt judges in power, and crapping on the masses struggling to make a living. How many more useless laws are needed? Will the judicial system eventually make every citizen a criminal thereby giving them power to selectively enforce laws against those the state seeks to detain?
Many people are getting royally p/o’ed, manc. Royally. Why have a Republican party with no spine, no courage, no principles (other than being Dem-lites)? There’s no point to it at all.
you know how I feel but recently I have really become pissed off with the establishment, the MSM and some on our side.
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