Tag: civil unions

State establishment political progressives, including the staff at gay rights group OneColorado, seem cool on Aurora college student Mark Olmstead's plan to introduce a 2012 ballot initiative that would overturn the state's gay marriage ban. There's a sense that financial and human resources would be better spent pressing lawmakers to pass legislation securing equal rights for LGBT citizens here. Lone actor Olmstead's initiative, however, might force the issue, drawing on the energy of New York's big gay-marriage win this month and on the sea change shift among the U.S. population generally on the matter of gay equality.

Lambda Legal, a New York-based organization committed to winning gay civil rights through the courts, announced in a press release Tuesday that it would challenge New Jersey's 2006 same sex civil unions law for failing to bring full equality to gay residents of the state. Lambda, which is teaming with New Jersey LGBT group Garden State Equality, will refer to government studies and press investigations that document the way employers have failed to recognize couples entered into a civil union and how civil unions have been ignored or misunderstood by authorities, often in instances involving critical medical decisions.

This past spring, debate in Colorado over a same-sex civil unions bill raised questions about citizen equality, child and family protections, religious freedom and anti-gay bigotry. News coming out of Illinois, where a civil unions bill that passed in the fall is now taking effect, resurfaces those same issues. Catholic Charities of Rockford, a city just northwest of Chicago, announced it would no longer provide its state-funded foster care and adoption services. Organization representatives said they would not place children with unmarried couples and that the law now exposed them to litigation for that stand.

Colorado hosted an intense proxy gay marriage debate around a same-sex civil unions bill during the state legislative session that ended two weeks ago. The bill was narrowly defeated pretty much along party lines. All Democrats voted for it, joined by a few Republicans. That's roughly what happened in recent weeks in Minnesota, where lawmakers voted to include a referendum on voter ballots in the next election that would add a ban on gay marriage to the state constitution. Much of the Minnesota clash has been captured on YouTube. It echoes the debate last month in Colorado and foreshadows the debate sure to rise again here next year, when sponsors of the civil unions bill have vowed to bring it back.

In Colorado, civil unions was too scary a concept to even be allowed the light of day that would come with a floor vote in the Republican House. The tough guys of the Judiciary Committee just said no. In New York, the campaign for marriage equality now has the toughest of tough guys for a spokesman.

A survey of more than 1,000 Republicans by Public Policy Polling shows that self-identified members of the party support legal rights for same-sex couples even if they aren’t backing gay marriage.

Conservative state Senator Shawn Mitchell voted against the same-sex civil unions bill introduced this legislative session in Colorado, and there was nothing surprising about that. He did surprise, however, with his silence on the chamber floor during debate and with his absence in the media coverage around the bill. Turns out Mitchell, a high-profile opponent of gay rights in the past but also a strong libertarian and no prude, was waffling.

Rob Witwer, a former state Representative and today's Republican appointee to redraw the redistricting lines for the Legislature, has published an editorial detailing his support for civil unions.

Teenagers who live in politically conservative parts of the country are more depressed and suicidal than teens who live in politically progressive parts of the country, according to a study by Columbia University psychologist Mark Hatzenbuehler published this week. The study comes as the nation, spurred by media coverage of recent tragic youth deaths, reckons with the fact that school harassment drives gay young people in particular to depression and suicide. It also comes in the wake of competing days dedicated to drawing attention to school bullying, the Day of Silence organized by gay rights groups and the Day of Dialogue organized by Colorado Springs-based Christian group Focus on the Family.

Reporting the story of recently defeated Colorado civil unions bill SB 172, National Catholic Register reporter Steve Weatherbe Monday called a poll showing popular support for civil unions in the state "specious." But Weatherbe got the facts wrong on pro-civil unions polling in Colorado and he leans instead on an alleged "recent poll" conducted for Christian politics group Colorado Family Action by a company called Advantage Inc, which the Washington Post reportedly describes as a "Republican fundraising and marketing firm." Colorado Family Action says it shared its polling results with Republican members of the state House Judicial Committee who voted to kill the bill at the end of March.