You might be asking yourself: What does Modern Family have to do with an upcoming landmark Supreme Court case about the freedom to marry? Well, the ACLU launched a campaign today urging Modern Family's producers to script a wedding episode for popular gay characters Mitchell Pritchett and Cameron Tucker. The campaign comes as Americans await the Supreme Court's decisions on two important LGBT equality cases challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act and California's Prop 8. The ACLU is direct counsel in the DOMA case, United States v. Windsor. Additionally, a stream of states have recently passed marriage equality measures.
Yesterday, Minnesota became the 12th state in the country to approve a law allowing same-sex couples to marry. This comes on the heels of Rhode Island and Delaware approving freedom to marry laws in the last two weeks, and historic victories at the ballot box in Maine, Maryland, and Washington last November. Momentum is building across the country, and Illinois is poised to become the fourth state this month to affirm the dignity of all committed couples.
I am a high school senior at Red Lion Area High School in Pennsylvania. As a student who happens to be transgender, my life isn’t all that different from other students in my class, except that I came out the summer before my junior year and have been going by my male name ever since. I try hard to make good grades, work at a part –time job, and have a wonderfully supportive family and an awesome girlfriend. My high school, like any other, has a senior prom. Our prom always has a king and a queen, and every senior gets a spot on the ballot for royalty. This year was my turn to get a chance at king like every other boy in my class.
This is the story of two couples; two couples who come out of the same post-war generation, and who built their lives around the same emotional core of love, commitment, and devotion to one another. And yet, their relationships were marked very differently by history and by the laws that governed their lives.
By Ian S. Thompson, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 12:18pm
At an event hosted by BuzzFeed on Monday night, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said that he totally supports the concept of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) because, "This is about discrimination in the workplace. And there should be no discrimination and there ought to be a law in place, in my view."
Same-sex couples have had the freedom to marry in Iowa since 2009. Melissa and Heather Gartner are among the thousands of same-sex couples who have married there. But when Heather gave birth to their daughter Mackenzie in 2010, the Gartners discovered that there were some loopholes in the "marriage equality" they thought their home state of Iowa had achieved. The Iowa Department of Public Health refused to list Melissa Gartner as Mackenzie's parent on her birth certificate. That left Melissa in the awkward position of lacking legal proof of her relationship to the baby, should she need to travel with Mackenzie or arrange medical care for her when her wife isn't on hand to sign paperwork.
By Ian S. Thompson, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:08am
On Thursday, the Los Angeles Times published a powerful editorial arguing that a blank check for religiously affiliated organizations – far beyond houses of worship – to discriminate in employment against LGBT people should not be the price paid to enact the long-sought and critically important Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).
