The 50 Spot: Historic Discrimination Lawsuit Against U.S. Filed

This week's hearing on Proposition 8 (March 5) isn't the only lawsuit making news this week.  Today, fifteen gay and lesbian individuals in Massachusetts are filing a discrimination suit against the U.S. government, challenging a federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.  How big is this?  It's the first serious challenge to the Clinton-era "Defense of Marriage Act."  We're also hitting up news in Washington, DC today where a group of George Washington University students are protesting "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and to California, where an editorial from The Desert Sun says everything we feel about Proposition 8: It should be invalidated.

Massachusetts: Six same-sex couples and three men whose partners have died (including the spouse of former Massachusetts Rep. Gerry Studds) will file a lawsuit against the U.S. government today, alleging discrimination and saying that the 1996 "Defense of Marriage Act" law signed by President Bill Clinton treats gay and lesbian individuals as second class citizens.  Mary L. Bonauto, an attorney from Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) who argued the historic Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health case that made same-sex marriage legal in Massachusetts, told the Boston Globe: "This is a case that should go to the Supreme Court and in all likelihood will go to the Supreme Court."  The case isn't pushing to make marriage legal in all 50 states.  Rather, it would require the federal government to offer benefits to same-sex couples in states where same-sex marriage is legal.  So far, the Obama administration hasn't commented on the case.

District of Columbia: Last semester, a freshman at George Washington University was dismissed from Naval ROTC on campus because he was caught kissing another male student.  This past weekend, GW's Allied in Pride organized a rally in front of the White House to protest the military policy.  And their timing was perfect.  Just yesterday, California Rep. Ellen Tauscher announced that she plans to introduce legislation in Congress that will overturn the discriminatory policy (another holdover, like the Defense of Marriage Act, from the Clinton administration).

California:  As editorials on Proposition 8 come out this week, we'll include some of our favorite.  Today we're snipping a chunk from the Desert Sun's editorial commentary.  In one word: Invalidate.  In several words, "Proposition 8, the voter-approved initiative to ban same-sex marriages, only serves to allow the fundamental constitutional rights of one group of people to be stripped away by a majority vote....While we realize the voters have spoken, we've never had a situation in which one minority group had to go to the ballot box to get the same rights as everyone else. If that were the rationale we always followed, interracial couples wouldn't have been granted the right to marry, schools would not have been segregated, women wouldn't have the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, and they certainly wouldn't have been allowed to vote. Major issues like abolishing slavery could have been repealed at the ballot box."  Damn, that's good.