My latest Patch columnhttp://southbrunswick.patch.com/articles/marriage-equality-the-time-is-now is on what I hope is a renewed push for marriage equality in New Jersey.
The Human Rights Campaign issued a statement about two hours ago that shows that not all NBA players are callous homophobes.
NBA legend Steve Nash has partnered with HRC in a new video for the group’s New Yorkers for Marriage Equality campaign. In the video, Nash talks about the growing number of professional athletes who are speaking out in support of marriage equality, saying, “I’m proud to be one of them.” The video can be viewed at www.hrc.org/NY4marriage.
Nash stands out from the rest of his league for his progressive impulses — which he has never shied away from. As much as Kobe Bryant and Joachim Noah deserve the opprobrium sent their way, Nash deserves gratitude and respect.
Henri Velandia and Josh Vandiver of Princeton should not have to prove the stability and strength of their relationship in court, but that is what they still have to do.
Velandia, a Venezuela native, faces deportation even though the 27-year-old Velandia got legally married to Vandiver in Connecticut last year. At today’s hearing, the immigration judge delayed a decision on Velandia’s fate until December, saying that federal marriage laws could change.
So, good news today, but not all that good. In the wake of the self-congratulatory response much of the nation had to the killing of a terrorist proved we can do what we set out to do, the president said — it underscores the incompleteness of our national project.
We are a classless society that is badly divided into classes — gay and straight, black, white and other, rich and poor — and class matters greatly. Gays, lesbians and the transgendered do not have the same rights as the rest of us — not in the military, not in marriage and not in immigration.
And that must change and change quickly.
President Obama is finally doing the right thing on the Defense of Marriage Act, at least in part
After two-plus years of allowing his administration to defend the indefensible anti-civil rights law, he has ordered it to back away from its constitutional defense of Section 3 of the statute, “which limits the definition of marriage to opposite-sex partners, precludes spouses in same-sex marriages from receiving certain federal benefits to which spouses in traditional marriages are entitled.”
While the president and Attorney General Eric Holder, who announced the decision, did not go so far as to call for DOMA’s full repeal or say that the administration would remove itself from all challenges,
Holder noted that Obama had “concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny.”
It is an issue of discrimination for the administration, which means that the debate has been altered. The administration very specifically backed away from conservative attempts to define this as a debate about traditional marriage. I wish he would have gone farther — to declare without reservation that DOMA should be repealed — but Obama’s decision is an important step forward for gay rights.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is history and gays and lesbians can serve in the military — not a great choice, but one that confers on them the full rights of citizenship. Well, all but one right — it’s time to move forward and legalize same-sex marriage.
Hank Kalet 