Marriage & Relationships

Same-Sex Marriage Won’t Be Overturned

by on

Despite the scare-mongering by the left (Big LGBTQ+ now joined by Hillary Clinton) and the fever dreams of the anti-gay right, it’s not going to happen. There are huge legal and moral differences between marriage equality and abortion, as well as the justices’ differing past positions on these two issues (i.e., Roe critics who supported marriage equality in Obergefell).









0 Comments

RFMA: A Bipartisan Step Forward

by on

More from Andy Craig, on why the prosecution of small business owners being forced to provide expressive services for same-sex marriages is a consequence of anti-discrimination laws, not marriage equality.

7 Comments

Anti-Narrative

by on

More. Progressive Yale professor Greta LaFleur disdains Buttigieg’s marriage as insufficiently rad.

5 Comments

Changing Times

by on

Related, this study concludes that “Consequently, same-sex marriage and similar reforms come at no “welfare” cost to society at large—if anything, the opposite appears to hold. We further build on previous research showing positive effects of economic freedom on happiness and on tolerance towards gay people and interact our rights measure with economic freedom.”

Yes, there are pockets of “resistance,” but that’s always true with social advancements. The Texas decision won’t survive appeal to the federal courts.

Sometimes, of course, we’re our own worst enemy:


1 Comment

For the Surrogacy Revolution, Thank Free Markets and Voluntary Exchange

by on

Reprinted from the Chicago Tribune in the Duluth News Tribune (talk about the heartland): Gay men increasingly turn to surrogates to have babies.

Yes, they are, and it represents a sea change in the lives of gay men who are, increasingly, married with children.

The surrogacy revolution is premised on free enterprise and the voluntary exchange of a market economy, made possible when government and its army of bureaucrat regulators get out of the way.

Government’s role here is limited to enforcing contracts, when necessary, as adjudicated by the courts.

20 Comments

Let’s Celebrate the End of DP Benefits

by on

Some LGBT advocates can’t recognize a sign of victory, or feel it’s not in their organizational interest to do so.

As the Washington Blade reports in Future of domestic partner benefits uncertain, “the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic ruling in June legalizing same-sex marriage in all 50 states…has prompted more private sector employers as well as public employers…to drop domestic partner benefits for their employees.”

Remarked Camilla Taylor, an attorney with Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, “that’s unfortunate because we believe people should not have to get a legal marriage in order to be respected as a family.”

But this isn’t about “respect”; it’s about reasonably limiting employer-provided benefits to spousal relationships with a commitment to permanency, as demonstrated by becoming a legal family unit with mutual obligations and responsibilities toward each other.

Moreover, the Blade reports:

Lambda Legal and several other national LGBT rights organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign, have issued statements calling on employers to retain domestic partner benefits for unmarried employees.

Some LGBT rights advocates have said forcing employees in a same-sex relationship to marry as a condition for receiving partner benefits such as health insurance coverage could subject them to discrimination in states where anti-LGBT discrimination remains legal.

News flash: If you’ve signed up with the HR department to receive same-sex domestic partner benefits, your employer already knows you’re gay.

While the activists want to paint the ending of DP benefits as a retrenchment, it’s just the opposite. And the employers ending these stop-gap programs haven’t suddenly turned anti-gay. As the Blade noted, according to corporate benefits attorney Todd Solomon, “the companies he knows that have dropped domestic partner benefits have a record of being LGBT supportive due, in part, to their earlier decisions to promote those benefits to same-sex couples that were barred by law from marrying.”

Which, of course, makes sense.

In a companion story, State Dept. considers phasing out DP benefits, the Blade reports that a gay entry-level Foreign Service officer said:

the State Department’s domestic partner program “was the thing that really made” him “feel welcomed” in the agency.

“While it’s great that we can get married much more easily now, my partner and I are not looking forward to being forced into a shotgun marriage due to a policy change that takes away the benefits we were promised.”

Sorry, but absent a contract, benefits are subject to change. And an employer doesn’t owe your boyfriend or girlfriend subsidized health care.

15 Comments