A Pentagon surveillance unit has been spying on gay rights groups at several American universities, NBC News revealed last week. According to an outraged press release from the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, military investigators monitored Don’t Ask Don’t Tell protests at the State University of New York in Albany last April, as well as a similar demonstration at William Patterson College in New Jersey.

According to press reports and gay advocates, sections of a secret Pentagon database show the military considered these and other protests “suspicious,” or “possibly violent.” A gathering at the University of California in Santa Cruz was evaluated as a “credible threat” of terrorism. That event featured a gay kiss-in.

“Students have a first amendment right to protest, and Americans have a right to expect that their government will respect their constitutional right to privacy,” said C. Dixon Osburn, head of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. “To suggest that a gay kiss-in is a ‘credible threat’ is absurd, homophobic, and irrational.”

Osburn’s organization announced plans to file a Freedom of Information Act request to determine if any other gay groups have been targeted by the Defense Department.

Virginia Governor Bans Gay Bias in State Workplace
In a stealth move last Friday, Virginia governor Mark R. Warner issued an executive order banning state agencies from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation in hiring and promotions. According to the Washington Post, the order took effect immediately. Warner codified his order by adding “sexual orientation” to discrimination clauses in the budget that he delivered to the legislature on the same day.

Warner is leaving office Jan. 14, but Governor Elect Timothy M. Kaine said he supports the policy and will sign an identical order when he takes office. Both Warner and Kaine are Democrats.

Warner, who reportedly has 2008 presidential aspirations, was inspired by learning that 60 percent of Virginia’s state lawmakers have instituted protections against discrimination on behalf of their gay and lesbian staff. According to his spokeswoman, Ellen Qualls, that discovery sent “a powerful message” to the governor, signaling to him “that even what has been considered a traditionally conservative statehouse is ready for this change.”

The Virginia General Assembly is indeed conservative, passing some of the most anti-gay legislation in the country. The “Marriage Affirmation Act,” passed in the summer of 2004, voids legal rights between same-sex couples and may jeopardize private contracts, although it has yet to be tested in court. The Marriage Affirmation Act was meant to bolster Virginia’s law against same-sex marriage with a specific ban on civil unions and other ties.
Reacting to Warner’s order, as well as the budget language, Republican Delegate L. Scott Lingamfelter said he expects his colleagues will strike the discrimination protections and conduct “a fairly lively discussion about all of this.”

Falling Through the Cracks in New Jersey
In New Jersey, where the legislature launched a statewide domestic partner registry last January, the cheers and congratulations from the gay community have quieted.

The registry provides benefits to the partners of state workers, as well as hospital visitation, the right to file joint taxes and a few other features. It also opened the door for local governments to set up their own partner benefit plans. But to date, only four out of 21 counties have done so, leaving the majority of the state’s gay and lesbian couples with little more than symbolism. Further, New Jersey partners lack many of the central legal elements of marriage, including the right to inherit without a will, the right to sue for wrongful death, automatic parental rights, and with the exception of state workers, the right to pension and death benefits.

The problem is personified by Lt. Laurel Hester, a 24-year veteran of the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office, who is dying of inoperable lung cancer. With under six months to live, Hester has asked the County to authorize benefits and a pension for her partner, Stacie Andree. But county authorities have repeatedly refused, citing the costs. Hester’s situation has become a cause celebre in the state, and received national press as well.

Over in Perth Amboy, Betty Price is suing the state of New Jersey after her registered domestic partner died suddenly without a will. Together for two decades, the couple had a house, two cars and a bank account with a balance of $9,000. But the assets were all under the name of Rene Price, who dropped dead of a heart attack at 61 last summer. Jordan, 66, argued her case on Oct. 17.

For all its faults, New Jersey is well ahead of the rest of the country, where only four other states recognize same-sex couples through a formal, statewide institution. In Massachusetts, that institution is marriage. Vermont civil unions offer all the benefits of marriage under state authority, while California does the same through its domestic partner registry, and Hawaii’s reciprocal benefits program offers a lower status.

With a statewide program in place, New Jersey lawmakers have a vessel that can be gradually filled with additional rights and responsibilities, much as California grew its own registry into what now resembles marriage in most respects.

But activists hope that the state supreme court will render the issue moot by legalizing marriage equality in a year, maybe less. The justices have received written briefs in a lawsuit filed by Lambda Legal Defense on behalf of seven couples in June, 2002.

Finally, it bears repeating that a marriage ruling by the Washington Supreme Court is expected any week, and should be handed down on a Thursday. The justices finished arguments and began deliberating on the case in early March.

Three’s Company
The far right’s latest tactic in the marriage wars is to insist that the world is already halfway down the slippery slope from same-sex marriage to polygamy, as evidenced mainly by the notarized “cohabitation contract” signed in September by a man and two women in Holland.

The whole affair was a private deal, not a state-sanctioned three-way marriage. But the trio went on to conduct a ceremony, throw a party, and head off on a honeymoon, creating an international media storm that barely touched American shores—most likely due to our insular national news character more than any intrinsic lack of interest. Since the press seems incapable of making the distinction between, say, a symbolic wedding in someone’s living room and full-fledged equal marriage rights, it’s no wonder that this incident was hailed as a “polygamous marriage.”

Now, our favorite intellectual on the other side of the marriage divide, Stanley Kurtz, has written a lengthy article in The Weekly Standard, arguing that the social and legal arguments in favor of polygamy will arise naturally from the bisexual community, and will piggyback on growing respect for sexual orientation. Meanwhile, Focus on the Family is issuing dark warnings and South Dakota lawmakers have deliberately written a constitutional amendment to limit marriage not just to a man and a woman, but to no more than two people. That amendment is up for a vote next November.

You know what? Polygamy will become legal if, and only if, our society is deluged by polygamous families living their whole lives on the margin. We’re not talking about a few menages in Utah, a commune in the woods somewhere, or a trendy set of amorous roommates in Manhattan. I said DELUGED. Wait until we read story after story about men and woman who have spent 40 years with another couple and are barred from their dying partner’s bedside. Let’s see a thousand or so cases where only one member of a polygamous marriage gets to inherit the family property, after 25 years of polydevotion. Then we’ll talk.

Same-sex marriage didn’t drop out of the sky last year. This cause arose over decades from the plight of several million couples trying to make a life together in a hostile clime. As for the bisexual theory, just because you’re attracted to both men and women doesn’t mean you MUST have one of each, any more than a man who is attracted to both blondes and brunettes must have two wives.

Oh, I heard that. Keep your pants zipped down there in San Antonio. I heard you in Houston too.

Around the World in 235 Words
What else is going on? I didn’t intend to wallow in polygamy for a third of my column inches. Speaking of imprecision in media accounts of same-sex union schemes, the United Kingdom’s Civil Partnerships Act has gone into effect, offering “most” of the rights of marriage under another name to gay and lesbian couples. Call me a stickler for detail, but while it might be a nice deal, it’s not marriage, and it should not be heralded as such. Elton John is not “getting married.” He’s signing up for a civil partnership.

We’ve also seen a weak domestic partner registration bill pass the lower house of the Czech parliament, on the heels of an anti-discrimination bill two weeks earlier. Those laws, the latter being a required ticket to admission in the European Union, must pass the senate and be signed. I don’t know why I’m grousing about these advances, given my lowly legal status here in the Lone Star State, but I feel like it, so there.

What I don’t feel like doing is reporting on marriage news in Spain (high court upholds marriage law on technicality), Latvia (President just signed an anti-marriage constitutional amendment), New Zealand (bad marriage bill rejected), Austria (justice minister proposes national partnership plan), or Canada (too complicated for parenthetical synopsis).

Do You Know the Way to New Rochelle?
So instead, we’ll return to the Homeland, where Indianapolis has just added sexual orientation to the city Human Rights Ordinance, protecting gays and lesbians against the full range of discrimination. Too bad the Colts lost. Had I known this was coming, I would not have rooted for San Diego last weekend. In New Orleans, a state appellate judge has tossed a Christian conservative law group out of court, ruling that their meddling clients had no standing to stick their noses into the city’s domestic partner program. And in the Bay Area, the San Jose Mercury News reports that a county judge has thrown out a San Jose ordinance recognizing legal same-sex marriages from Canada or elsewhere. I guess San Jose, like San Francisco, does not have the authority to violate state marriage policy. Tant pis, as we say in Topeka.

Oh, and let’s not forget the buttinskis in New Rochelle, who are suing the New York City bedroom community in federal court to whine about “tax dollars” going to the same-sex partners of city employees under the town’s six-month-old program. Presumably, these jokers have about as much standing as the fools in New Orleans, who also tried and failed to leverage their positions as “taxpayers” into intervenor status before the court.

Microsoft wants me to change the word “intervenor,” which may or may not be a real term, into “interferon.” Didn’t the characters on the old Dick Van Dyke Show live in New Rochelle? The answer to that question, after a sizable amount of time just wasted in cyberspace, is yes! And while we’re at it, “intervenor” is just fine by the Oxford Illustrated Dictionary, although it is not one of the nouns selected for an illustration. There is, however, a lovely depiction of the structure of the human intestine just down the page. A complicated mechanism indeed. (And they say there’s no such thing as intelligent design!) If I’m not mistaken, interferon is one of the treatments for Hepatitis C, and the liver is right next to the intestines, so we’ve come full circle.

Got Milk?I think I’ll junk the rest of the actual news, and tell you instead about James Leininger, a filthy rich San Antonio businessman who injects vast sums of cash into the war chests of Texas conservatives. Leininger, who helped bankroll the campaign for an anti-marriage constitutional amendment that passed last November, is apparently the owner of Promise Land Dairies, a high-end company that sells top-of-the-line milk to a number of grocers, including Whole Foods here in Texas. The cream vine tells me that Whole Foods has stopped selling Promise Land at some stores under pressure from progressive activists, but apparently the stuff is still on the shelves at other outlets, and Whole Foods uses the product for its own milk brand.

Pardon me while I pause to spit out my Whole Foods “365”milk in a sputtering spray of spatulence. I am only passing along gossip, but the ideology and political activities of James Lieninger, a Christian reconstructionist, are a matter of public record, as are his many business holdings, including Promise Land. So, let’s go check out our local Whole Food stores and see if the nefarious mark is on display. In an amusing little detail, every bottle of Promise Land milk apparently has a Bible verse inside the cap.
—TXT Newsmagazine