What The Hobby Lobby Decision Means For Us

This week, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow family-owned or other closely-held businesses to opt out of a Federal requirement to pay for contraceptives as part of an employee's health coverage.


In the media and public consciousness, it has come to be known as the Hobby Lobby case, after the chain of arts-and-crafts stores whose founder and CEO claimed that his religious rights were being violated when his company was required to pay for birth control.


Perhaps not surprisingly, the five judges who voted for this ruling were all appointed by Republican presidents, while the other four--including the three women on the bench--were appointed by Democrats.


I am not a Constitutional (or any other kind) of lawyer.  But, from what I understand, this ruling will affect far more than whether employers will include contraception in their employees' health insurance plans.


It almost goes without saying that the decision could open the door for employers to deny benefits to same-sex partners of employees if same-sex unions violate the religious beliefs of the employer.  And, of course, the ruling also means that such employers won't even have to think about whether or not to cover therapy, hormones, surgery or other treatments for transgenders.


Even if you don't care about LGBT equality, you should be concerned.  For example, if you should need a blood transfusion, your employer could refuse to cover it on the basis of his or her religion.  Or, I'm guessing, he or she could refuse to pay the cost of your office visits or treatments if, say, your gynecologist is male.


What do you do if your employer is a Christian Scientist or Scientologist?  The latter actually has the same tax-exempt religious status in the US that every mainstream church enjoys.

Overturning Same-Sex Marriage In The Name Of "Diversity"

"Well, it was great while it lasted."

It's easy to think something like that after the Supreme Court halted same-sex marriages in Utah--barely two weeks after the first ones were consummated in the Beehive State.

On the surface, it almost seemed surprising that Utah allowed same-sex unions even for such a brief period.  After all, when you say "Utah" to most people, the first word that comes to their minds is "Mormons."

The Church of Latter-Day Saints, not surprisingly, does not want to encourage same-sex unions.  But, as I mentioned in an earlier post, in Salt Lake City--the State's capital and largest city--a higher percentage of same-sex couples raise children than in any other city in the nation.  Ironically, it is a result of the city's and state's social conservatism:  People there come out later in life, often after siring or birthing a child in a heterosexual marriage.  

Judge Robert Shelby--a conservative Republican--ruled that the state's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.  He consulted with a number of professionals, including clergy people, who assured him that allowing same-sex marriage has absolutely no effect on whether opposite-sex couples consummate their unions in marriage before having children.  Nobody could have been more succinct when he said "no one is harmed" when people marry others of the same sex.

State officials succeeded in having his ruling overturned by abandoning their earlier claims that heterosexual marriage encourages "responsible" sex and procreation.  Instead, they made one of the most bizarre arguments I've ever heard.

In essence, they drew upon earlier Supreme Court decisions supporting "diversity" as a criteria in deciding who may attend public universities.  They said, in essence, they were pursuing "diversity in marriage."

It's almost funny to read that such an argument was made in one of the whitest states in the Union. Perhaps someone else--say, a Supreme Court judge--will see it that way and Utah will follow California in legalizing gay marriage, overturning it and re-instating it.  Perhaps the last part of that process won't take as long in the Beehive State as it did in the so-called Golden State.

 

What Does The Supreme Court Ruling On Proposition 8 Really Mean?

Last night, I volunteered with the Anti-Violence Project.  Two fellow volunteers and I were doing an outreach in the Village. At the end of it, we found ourselves by the Stonewall Inn.  Exactly 44 years earlier, on the night of 28 July 1969, drag queens, street hustlers and other patrons of the bar resisted an NYPD raid on the premises.  

A crowd commemorated that event.  They also celebrated the Supreme Court ruling that, in essence, rendered Proposition 8 null and void.  Some proclaimed  that there was indeed "marriage equality".

I didn't want to be a party-pooper.  So I didn't tell anyone what I was thinking:  "Not so fast!"  Yes, same-sex marriages can resume in California. But it still means that only fourteen states allow such unions.  Admittedly, those states include two of the three most populous, and all of New England. Still, we cannot talk about "equality" at this point for a number of reasons.

Same-sex couples who are married in New York, California or any other state that allows such unions still have to think about what they would do if they were to move to a state that doesn't even have civil unions.  If one member of the couple has a job with benefits, he or she probably would not be able to name his or her partner as a beneficiary.  Also, what if one of them gets sick? Would the other be able to visit him or her in a hospital?  

Actually, the couple wouldn't have to move to face the hospital visitation dilemma:  All they'd have to do is take a vacation or other trip to one of those states.  Or, what if they have a kid and that kid manages to get lost or otherwise separated?  Would authorities in such a state rule that the couple weren't really the kid's parents and not return that kid to them?

Things are even more complicated for us transfolk.  Idaho, Tennessee and Ohio only recognize the gender to which people are assigned at birth:  They will not even amend a birth certificate (let alone issue a new one) to ratify a gender "change."  Not surprisingly, those states don't allow same-sex marriages (or even civil unions).  So, what if I were to marry a man and one of us were to get a job in, say, Columbus or Memphis?  For all intents and purposes, we'd be nothing more than roommates. So, for example, if I were to get a job in a university, my husband could not be a beneficiary on my health insurance policy.  Or, if he were to buy or rent housing, my name could not be on the deed or lease.

And what if we had a kid?

In brief, the Supreme Court decision, while an important step, doesn't even come close to bringing about equality.  I believe it will be achieved one day, but I'm not sure of how.  Will the Federal government grant same-sex couples all of the same benefits and privileges enjoyed by heterosexual married couples?  Will it recognize gender identity in the same way as, say, New York now does?  If so, could the Supreme Court rule that all states have to adopt the same standards?  If the Court were to do that, I can imagine some states putting up quite a fight.

On Abortion And Same-Sex Marriage

As the Supreme Court hearings on same-sex marriage are taking place, I've read and heard more than a few comparisons between that issue and abortion.  I guess it was to be expected, as the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade has just passed.  

Once upon a time (well, all right, in the days of the so-called Moral Majority), Evangelical Christians and various other social conservatives opposed both same-sex marriage and abortion rights.  However, they were more concerned with the latter, as Roe v Wade had  become the law of the land (which they were trying to repeal) and there wasn't as much of a movement for same-sex marriage as there has been in the past few years.  Also, in those days, even most people who favored legal abortions opposed same-sex unions, whether on religious or other grounds.  So there really wasn't much reason for Jerry Falwell and his friends to get worked up over Adam marrying Steve.

The fact that Evangelicals were against abortion and same-sex unions was really about the only thing those two issues have in common.  And, oh, yeah, they both involve sex, which is probably the reason they got Jerry and his friends all hot and bothered.

But more recent polls show that younger people--even the children of those fundamentalist Christians who helped Ronald Reagan and scores of state and local officials get elected--support, or are willing to entertain the idea of allowing, same-sex marriage.  And many of those same young people want to overturn Roe v Wade, as their parents did or do.

Part of the reason is simply that younger Evangelicals have grown up in a different world from what their parents knew in their youth.  But, more to the point, I think, is that abortion and same-sex marriages aren't just apples and oranges, or even apples and onions.  They are, simply, profoundly different issues.

First of all, for all of the controversy it has created, abortion is still mainly a private issue.  The girls and women who end their pregnancies do so, for the most part, alone.  Their boyfriends, husbands and families may be involved in the decision, but no one else is--save, perhaps, for the abortion provider, if the procedure should go wrong and he or she faces a malpractice suit.  Most girls or women who go through the procedure get on with their lives because, well, for most of them, that's the point of getting an abortion. The few exceptions are those who have to end their pregnancies for medical reasons.

On the other hand, getting married is the most public action most people ever take.  The union of two people affects themselves, their families and many other people in their community, mostly in positive ways.  In contrast, almost nobody is happy about an abortion.  The woman terminating her pregnancy as well as other people in her life might feel relief, or at least that the least bad choice is being made.  But almost no one who has ended her pregnancy will tell you that it's a cause for celebration.

Also, there are many legal ramifications to marriage.  They include tax benefits, inheritance rights, health care, insurance, hospital visitation rights and custody over children and, in a few cases, other relatives.  

Those consequences (both in the positive and negative sense of the word) last as long as the marriage does.  Most people, when they get married, want their unions to last for the rest of their lives.  And, if they don't, ending their marriages certainly has little, if anything, in common with ending a pregnancy.

Finally, let's just say that the kinds of people who want to enter into same-sex unions aren't, generally speaking, the same people who get abortions.  If same-sex couples want to have children, and they don't want to adopt, they have to find surrogates: One to impregnate one member of a lesbian couple, or one to carry a child for a gay male couple.  Somehow, I don't imagine that  very many people in those circumstances think about having abortions!  In fact, about the only way abortion might intersect with the life of anyone in, or who wants to enter, a same-sex union is if he or she is bisexual and has a heterosexual relationship outside the marriage, or has had such a relationship before getting married.

All of those things being said, I will reiterate a position Hillary Clinton articulated when she was First Lady:  Abortion should be safe, legal and rare. And, as I've mentioned in other posts, I support same-sex marriage because it's the best we can do for same-sex couples until the state and churches lose whatever power they have to determine whether or not people are married, and until there are no longer any tax or other benefits to marriage.  That is why I support both the right to same-sex marriage and abortion, and my support for one is not tied to the other.

The Supreme Court, Immigration And LGBT people

Yesterday's Supreme Court ruling on Arizona's immigration policy got me to thinking about someone in a weekly support group I attended early in my transition.

Fahrida (not her real name) had a smile that made people feel that everything was going to be OK.  As I came to know her, I realized that her smile didn't belie her experiences; rather, it was a kind of reward, like the rays of sun you see after a terrible storm.

No one who met her outside of that group would have guessed she had ever lived as male, or that she ever had so much as a male cell in her body.  She was so beautiful that when we were shopping, two other women sighed about what kinds of clothes they could wear if they had her body, and about what their lives would be like if they had her face.

I always wondered why someone with her looks, and her mind, was driving a gypsy cab.  Don't get me wrong:  I don't look down on such work.  But it's not work that many other women do, and I worried about her safety.  Then again, at least she wasn't doing sex work, I told myself.

Well, after knowing her about a year, I found out why she was driving that gypsy cab:  Her pay was "off the books."  That meant, of course, that she didn't pay taxes.  But more important, it meant that she didn't need a Social Security Number or any other documentation certifying that she could work in this country.

The next-to-last time we met, I found out why she needed such work.  You guessed it:  She entered this country illegally.  She couldn't have afforded to enter any other way, she told me:  She was so poor that she couldn't afford the papers she needed, which cost about half a worker's yearly pay in the country of her birth.  She got to this country, she said, by hitchiking across a two continents and stowing herself away in a transoceanic freighter. 

By the time of our penultimate meeting, she was facing deportation.  Going back to the country of her birth would have been, in essence, a death sentence:  She had no way of supporting herself there, save through sex work, and she would have faced almost certain violence.  Plus, all of her family had disowned her.

The last time we met, she told me she was going to a third country.  She hoped to re-apply for asylum in the United States, she said, because she had found a "community" here.  However, if that failed, she said, she believed that she could stay in the third country, where she had some ties and laws about immigration and LGBT people are, arguably, less restrictive than they are in the United States.

I mention Fahrida because I suspect that there are many other cases like her. Contrary to what people think, not all LGBT people are rich.  In fact, very, very few T's are.  That is one reason why they, like many other immigrants, come to this country illegally:  They can't afford to do so legally.  So they are forced to live "in the shadows," doing all sorts of low-paid work that doesn't offer any security:  that is, if they can get such work.  Others, who are less lucky, end up in sex work and other kinds of illegal and dangerous occupations.

On top of what I've mentioned, there's another issue:  Many LGBT couples are split up because of immigration policies.  I know of illegal immigrants who entered into sham heterosexual marriages so they could stay here, but why should anybody have to resort to something like that?  Even if they live in states that allow same-sex marriages (including New York, where I live), they could still be split up if one of them is here illegally because same-sex marriages are still not recognized under Federal law.

In fact, even if both members of the couple are here legally, immigration policy can still split them up.  That is what happened to my former doctor:  Her partner, a native of Scotland, came here to study and eventually started a business that employed other people.  She paid her taxes and never ran afoul of the law.  However, four years ago, the State Department would not renew her visa and the United Kingdom (of which Scotland is a part) is not eligible for the so-called "Green Card Lottery."

My former doctor went to Scotland with her partner.  She has since earned an additional degree in public health policy and has attained a position with a local ministry.  She says she and her partner are happy there, although they think about what could have been. 

To me, it seems such an appalling waste.  Think of the education, skills, talent, experience and ambition my former doctor and her partner have.  What country wouldn't (or shouldn't) want those things?  I could say similar things about Fahrida:  Though she doesn't have the formal education or credentials of my former doctor, she is very intelligent and self-taught in a number of areas.  And she's more than willing to work.  Plus, any country would be graced by her sheer presence. 

Her story, and that of my former doctor and her partner, show how immigration policies are inequitable on so many levels--particularly for LGBT people.