Williams Institute demographer Gary Gates begins his new article in National Council of Family Relations [pdf] by indicating that the gay parents in the hilariously funny Modern Family (okay- the hilarious part is my editorializing, not Gary's analysis) are decidedly not the typical same-sex couple raising children.

The most important conclusion from Gates's review of census data and several other large scale surveys is that large numbers of children of same-sex couples almost certainly are the product of previous heterosexual relationships. ...

There is other, fascinating, evidence supporting the likelihood that most lesbians raising children have a child from a previous heterosexual relationship. In the 2009 California Health Survey, which asks respondents to identify their sexual orientation (unlike census data, which can only report numbers of same-sex couples raising children, thus exclusing gay men any lesbians raising children without living with a partner ), 22.4% of heterosexual women reported having a child before age 20, while 37.9% of lesbian and bisexual women reported having a child before age 20. (Does denial about one's sexual orientation lead to riskier behavior? less likelihood of using birth control? The data doesn't give us the "why," only room to speculate...)

In this article, Gates repeats information he has provided elsewhere, for example that the greatest percentage of same-sex couples raising children is in the south. Also, couples with less than a high school education are almost three times as likely to be raising children as couples with a graduate degree. (This discrepancy does not exist for heterosexual couples). Furthermore, African-Americans in same-sex couples are 2.4 times more likely than their White counterparts to be raising children. On the other hand, looking at adopted children only, White same-sex couples are almost twice as likely to have an adopted child when compared with couples where at least one partner is not White, and the couples with adopted children are more likely to have completed higher education.

Nineteen percent of same-sex couples with children have an adopted child, almost double the percentage in 2000. Yet the percentage of all same-sex couples raising children has decreased. It looks like lesbians and gay men are less likely to have children in heterosexual relationships now -- hence the more recent decline, perhaps because they are coming out earlier -- and that for all the attention to the "gayby boom," the actual number of children deliberately born or adopted into gay or lesbian families cannot make up the shortfall.

Labels: adoption, children, class, culture, donor conception, gay couples, gay parenting, gay/straight differences, lesbians, race

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It works for some people. There has never been a scientific study of the success rate of open marriages, because different couples work out their arrangements in different ways. ...

According to psychologist Lisa Diamond of the University of Utah, gay men are more likely than any other group to practice polyamory. For a forthcoming study, she asked 120 cohabiting couples in the Salt Lake City area whether they had explicitly agreed to have sex outside of their relationships. Almost one-quarter of the gay male couples said they had a polyamorous arrangement. That’s compared with about 7 percent of the heterosexual couples and 3 percent of the lesbians. Previous studies have suggested similar proportions, although none is large enough to state the prevalence of open marriage with any certainty. The character of the arrangement also differs between the groups. Among gay men, polyamory most often involves discrete sexual trysts. (Some of these arrangements are very specific, for example, allowing sexual infidelity only when one of the partners has crossed an ocean.) Lesbians are more likely to have a long-term second partner. The polyamorous couples in Diamond’s study reported the same level of relationship satisfaction as those who were monogamous.

Labels: culture, gay couples, gay/straight differences, heterosexual couples, lesbians, Marriage, men, monogamy, open relationships, polyamory, women

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When more than 100 same-sex couples lined up outside the H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia on the morning of March 3, 2010, to apply for marriage licenses on the first day of implementation of the city’s Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment of 2009, celebration filled the air – and D.C. small business Hello Cupcake distributed a box of cupcakes to each couple. ...

Council testimony and media reports during consideration of the modern marriage bill touted extraordinary local economic benefits to come once gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in Washington.

Unfortunately, although no commercial benefit was — or should be — required to justify the expansion of the civil right to marry, those projections have proven overstated and the level of anticipated revenue for local businesses has not materialized.

The shortfall is due to both unrealistic economic forecasting by some marriage equality advocates and a notably lower number of same-sex marriages performed in the District than projected.

The most widely ballyhooed and referenced analysis was provided by the Williams Institute, a privately financed think tank focusing on sexual orientation law and public policy at the UCLA School of Law that has released similar reports for a number of states and is the national media go-to source on the subject. D.C. Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi also issued a report with similar findings. ...

However, the resulting estimated number of same-sex couples married in D.C. during the initial 12 months represents only approximately 60 percent of the Institute’s projected total of nearly 5,500 in the first year.

Labels: culture, DC, economics, gay couples, gay marriage

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...I don’t have children yet, but plenty of others in my cohort — the first in which nontrivial numbers were born hyphenated — do. And reproducing while hyphenated brings inevitable quandaries. I was curious to see how my peers have handled them. So I asked around. What I found was a whole gamut of solutions. The name-blending pioneers now have grandchildren whose names embody an intriguing mix of the traditional and the maverick.

I encountered several women who kept their own hyphenated names when they married, but gave their children the father’s surname. This scenario seems to deviate the least from the mainstream: after all, many other women with single surnames do the same. ...

Same-sex couples face their own quandaries, since there is no tradition to follow. Cora Jeyadame (née Stubbs-Dame), 37, a first-grade teacher in Newton, Mass., was determined to share a name with her child, and to think ahead more than her own parents had.

“It’s a one-generation solution,” she said of hyphenation. She and her wife, whose surname was Jeyapalan, spliced their names together into an entirely new, hyphenless amalgam.

How did they decide on the name? “I actually put it out on Facebook,” she said: “ ‘I challenge you to come up with good combinations.’ ” The winning entry, Jeyadame, is the legal surname of Cora and her 4-month-old; her wife uses it socially.

Naming decisions raise novel questions for hyphenated men. There is little precedent of husbands changing their names at marriage or giving up the prerogative to pass their names on. Traditional practices grew out of a male-dominated culture and a need for simple rules. But there is another, less obvious motive: to hold men accountable for their offspring.

“How do you attach men to children?” said Laurie K. Scheuble, a senior lecturer at Pennsylvania State University who has done several studies on naming practices. Names are “a very functional and practical way” to do so.

But perhaps, in an age when men wear BabyBjorns, it is no longer always necessary. When Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, 32, an English professor who lives in Portland, Ore., married Laura Rosenbaum, he toyed with the idea of a creative synthesis.

Labels: children, culture, Fathers, feminism, gay couples, heteronormativity, men, parenting, women

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The Williams Institute, a prestigious gay-legal think tank located at the University of California Los Angeles, has just released some fascinating statistics. In a comprehensive study, researchers Lee Badgett and Jody Herman surveyed the number of same-sex couples that married or state-registered in civil unions or domestic partnerships. They also looked at the gender and age of those who did so. And most interestingly to me, they also looked at the number of couples that are formally ending their relationships, in comparison to the divorce rate for straight couples. The study can be found on Williams Institute website [pdf].

Here is a summary of what these researchers concluded:

1. Nearly 150,000 same-sex couples have either married or registered civil unions or domestic partnerships, which constitutes about one-fifth of same-sex couples in the U.S. (or rather, a fifth of those who acknowledged themselves as such in recent United States Census reports).

2. About 1% of the total number of currently-married or registered same-sex couples get divorced each year, in comparison to about 2% of the total number of married straight couples. Note that the percentage of couples that get divorced eventually is close to 50%, but only 1% or 2% of them get divorced in any particular year.

3. Couples are more likely to legally formalize their relationship when marriage is an option, as opposed to a marriage-equivalent domestic partnership or civil union registration in states where only those options are allowed.

4. Nearly two-thirds of registered or married same-sex couples are lesbians, and only about a third are gay men.

5. A smaller percentage of same-sex couples register or marry in comparison to straight couples, but if current trends continue the marriage/registration rates will be similar in about ten years.

Labels: civil unions, culture, divorce, gay couples, gay marriage, gay/straight differences, gender differences, men, relationship dissolution, women

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As a girl, Andrea Grimes assumed that she would take her husband's last name when she grew up and got married. But at 27 and newly engaged, the Dallas journalist and feminist blogger now has no interest in switching her surname.

But not everyone has caught up: Both Grimes' mother and her fiancé's stepmother have already referred to her with her fiancé's last name. Those assumptions aren't surprising, given that decades after the feminist revolution, most women still take their husband's last name upon marriage. While no national statistics exist, some recent studies suggest that women keeping their own name is actually becoming less popular. And a recent nationally representative survey found that half of Americans support women being legally required to take their husband's name upon marriage. These traditional attitudes persist even as divorce, remarriage, gay marriage and blended families make naming more complex. ...

Regardless of which side you come down on, the push and pull of identity is at the core of the naming debate, according to Powell. He and his colleagues surveyed a nationally representative sample of 815 Americans, asking them not only yes-and-no questions about name-change choices, but also why they felt the way they did.

The researchers found that more than two-thirds of Americans in the study said that it's best if a woman takes her husband's name upon marriage. The researchers expected that a majority of Americans would feel this way, Powell said, but they were more surprised to find that 50 percent supported a law requiring women to take their husband's name.

As for people's reasons for advocating that women change their names, family identity was a reoccurring theme, Powell said.

"One key theme was this idea that marriage is about shifting your identity from an individual identity to a collective or family identity," Powell said. "What they don't explain is why it is that women should change their names as opposed to men, or both the husband and wife shifting [to a new name]."

Some people cited the importance of having the same name for the couple's children, while others said tradition or convenience made women changing their names the best option. Several harkened back to the traditions of coverture, with one person responding, "Women should change their names so there's a connection there, just a connection to let you know that she belongs to him."

Among the 30 percent of people who didn't think that women should change their name, their reasoning was rooted in another type of identity: personal identity. Like Grimes, many people think of their name as core to their identity, Powell said, and associate name changes with a loss of identity. ...

When the researchers asked their participants how they felt about men changing their names, 50 percent said that a man taking his wife's name would be okay. But that response rate didn't seem to reflect much gender liberation based on how the participants answered the question, Powell said.

"They were incredulous," Powell said of the respondents' responses. "They would laugh at it. One quote was, 'Sure, if he wants to be a woman.'"

Labels: children, culture, divorce, gay couples, gay marriage, gender, heteronormativity, heterosexual couples, Marriage, men, parenting, religion, remarriage, women

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I am reminded each day I park my car that the pressure will never subside. A billboard from a storage company cries out to couples tying the knot: "IF YOU DON'T LIKE GAY MARRIAGE, DON'T GET GAY MARRIED."

It's not the political message that's killing me. It's the marital call to arms.

The pressure began on a subway platform the day our daughter Luna, 6, and her best friend, Jackie, 7, saw a newspaper with drawings of double brides and double grooms. The state of New York had saddled same-sex couples with the same stress long available to everyone else: the pressure to marry. And they were starting with our kids.

Jackie to Luna: Are your mommies going to get gay married?

Luna: Mama, are the mamas getting gay married?

Me: (Silence) ...

Mafe called me while I was on a reporting trip for CNN to tell me the New York State Legislature had voted to allow gays to marry. I reminded her she has been saying she wouldn't marry me for the last 10 years.

"That's not the point," she said. "It's big news."

Labels: children, Colombia, culture, donor conception, gay couples, gay marriage, gay parenting, Hispanic/Latino, parenting

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The first federal count of same-sex married couples in the USA shows 131,729 gay or lesbian couples who say they're married. That's far fewer than earlier data suggested, according to revised estimates issued Tuesday by the U.S. Census.

These statistics mark the Census' first release of state numbers of same-sex marriages and paint a clearer picture of the 646,464 same-sex couple households in 2010. (In 514,735 same-sex households, partners don't call themselves married.) ...

"We now know there are far fewer same-sex marriages than we thought we had because of understandable difficulties with the Census forms," says William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

Peter Nicolas of Seattle, co-author of The Geography of Love: Same-Sex Marriage & Relationship Recognition in America (The Story in Maps), says many same-sex couples are confused about their legal status due to various state and federal tax laws. In addition, he says many won't identify their sexual orientation on these forms.

Labels: culture, gay couples, gay marriage

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...RAY SUAREZ: Among the newly-released studies is a first-of-its-kind Census Bureau analysis of marriage and divorce rates by region. The report, published last week, found that the South and West had the highest rates of divorce, while the Northeast ranked the lowest of the four regions.

At the same time, the number of unmarried Americans has reached a historic high, as the census also found that 30 percent of Americans have never been married, the largest percentage in the past 60 years. And yet another census snapshot released by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that same-sex couples have dispersed from urban enclaves to other parts of the country.

Joining us now to look at what all this may mean for the institution of marriage and its role in American life are David Blankenhorn, founder of the Institute for American Values, and Elaine Tyler May, professor of American studies and history at the University of Minnesota.

David Blankenhorn, are we in the midst of a redefinition of American marriage, why people get married, when they do it in their lives, even where they do it and what they think it's for?

DAVID BLANKENHORN, Institute for American Values: Yes.

I think the shift in broad terms is toward -- for marriage as an institution to marriage as a private relationship, an option for a private relationship. You know, in our parents and grandparents' generation, when you got married you were joining an institution that had authority, told you the rules. You were supposed to act in accord with its procedures.

Now the shift is toward private ordering. Each individual couple defines the relationship for themselves. One way to think about it is, in an earlier day, the marriage vow defined the couple. And now it's really the couple defining the marriage vow.

Labels: class, culture, David Blankenhorn, divorce, economics, gay couples, Marriage, out-of-wedlock births, poverty

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When birth control pills were making Megan’s sex drive almost nonexistent, she told her boyfriend, Colin, what many gay men in a similar position might say to theirs: “If you want to have sex, feel free to sleep with someone else; just don’t tell me about it.”

Last year, after six years together and a year and a half of marriage, Colin’s chronic back pain was making sex less than fun. So he returned the favor: “Sleep around all you want,” he said. “Just don’t do anything stupid, and don’t tell me about it.”

That’s how Megan, now 25, and Colin, 26, college sweethearts who live in Minneapolis, came to fashion a committed, nonmonogamous marriage. They don’t flaunt their unconventional lifestyle (they requested that their last name not be used), but they are hardly alone. By designing a relationship that doesn’t fit a typical married couple, Megan and Colin have joined a small but growing number of straight couples who are looking to gay male relationships as the model for long-term, nonmonogamous unions.

Anti-equality right-wingers have long insisted that allowing gays to marry will destroy the sanctity of “traditional marriage,” and, of course, the logical, liberal party-line response has long been “No, it won’t.” But what if—for once—the sanctimonious crazies are right? Could the gay male tradition of open relationships actually alter marriage as we know it? And would that be such a bad thing? With divorce rates at an all-time high and news reports full of famous marriages crumbling at the hand of flagrant infidelities (see: Schwarzenegger, Arnold), perhaps now is the perfect time for the gays to conduct a little marriage makeover.

Welcome to Queer (Roving) Eye for the Monogamous Straight Couple Lie, brought to you in part by writer Dan Savage, who coined the term monogamish to signify committed relationships in which the partners are, he explains, “mostly monogamous, but there’s a little allowance for the reality of desire for others and a variety of experiences and adventure and possibility.” ...

Even many gay male couples, who Savage describes as having “perfected nonmonogamy,” fear disclosing that their relationship is anything but one-on-one. Gary (not his real name) is out in every area of his life, and his family is completely supportive. “But I don’t tell my family, even my brother—who I’m incredibly close with—that I have sex outside of the relationship with Ben,” his partner of 14 years, he says. “I have never said that to him.”

Labels: culture, gay couples, gay/straight differences, heterosexual couples, Marriage, monogamy, open relationships

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An estimated one-quarter of all same-sex households are raising children, according to U.S. Census data, providing one of the first portraits of gay American families.

For the first time ever, the census counts same-sex couples and their children, and as data trickles out state by state, more gay families are being tallied in the South.

Just last week, reports from Hawaii and Alabama -- two very different states geographically and socially -- revealed that 27 and 23 percent of same-sex couples were raising children, respectively, according to an analysis by the Williams Institute, a UCLA School of Law think tank that focuses on lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender issues.

Data released today on five more states showed that 28 percent of families in Wyoming are raising children. In California, the percentage is 21 percent; Delaware, 19 percent; Kansas, 26 percent; and Pennsylvania, 20 percent. ...

An estimated 42 percent of all heterosexual couples are raising children in Alabama and 42 percent in Hawaii, according to the census.

Hawaii has a substantially larger concentration of same-sex households, but child-rearing by these couples is higher in Alabama.

Higher rates of child-rearing by gay couples is also seen in rural states like Wyoming (28 percent) and Kansas (26 percent).

"Those patterns are not new," said Gary J. Gates, a Williams Institute demographer who analyzed the data.

"Same-sex couples who live in places with relatively high concentrations of same-sex couples tend to be less likely than other same-sex couples to be raising children," he said. "Child-rearing among same-sex couples is more common in conservative states like Alabama than in more liberal states like Hawaii." ...

Gates noted that the number of same-sex couples who are adopting has doubled, from 8 percent to 19 percent, even in states where they cannot legally marry, according to research by The New York Times.

Still, more than 80 percent of the children being raised by gay couples are not adopted, according to Gates. And the largest number of children in same-sex families are a result of previous heterosexual marriages.

The Alabama data reflects a growing trend: a large number of children being raised by gay families in the socially conservative southern states, according to the Williams Institute.

Gays and lesbians tend to come out later in life in communities where they are stigmatized, according to Gates. By then, partners may already have children from earlier heterosexual marriages.

Labels: children, culture, divorce, gay couples, gay parenting, gay/straight differences, parenting

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On a leafy drive in west Los Angeles, at a newly renovated home with cathedral ceilings and a backyard pool, 4-year-old Kate Eisenpresser-Davis' friends have been known to pose an intriguing question: "Why does Kate have three mommies?"

Lisa Eisenpresser, 44, and her partner, Angela Courtin, 38, share custody of Kate with Eisenpresser's ex-partner.

When asked to describe their life, Eisenpresser and Courtin respond with the same word: "Normal." Days are spent searching for the right balance between work and home, and zigzagging through Mar Vista to meetings, school and gymnastics.

Courtin is pregnant. Kate will soon have a sister, Phoebe, conceived from Eisenpresser's egg and sperm from a donor — the same 6-foot-1 Harvard grad, who scored a 1580 on the SAT, who served as Kate's donor. ...

New census figures show that the percentage of Californians who live in "nuclear family" households — a married man and a woman raising their children — has dropped again over the last decade, to 23.4% of all households. That represents a 10% decline in 10 years, measured as a percentage of the state's households.

Those households, the Times analysis shows, are being supplanted by a striking spectrum of postmodern living arrangements: same-sex households, unmarried opposite-sex partners, married couples who have no children. Some forms of households that were rare just a generation ago are becoming common; the number of single-father households in California, for instance, grew by 36% between 2000 and 2010. ...

The Times interviews also suggest that the state's stagnant economy has contributed to the erosion of traditional family models.

Marriage typically carries a host of financial benefits — a facet of traditional households touted by both social conservatives and gay rights activists pushing for the right to wed. But in Culver City, 49-year-old Xaime Casillas has declined to marry Claudia Bracho, the mother of his 16-month-old son and his partner of nearly 10 years, because he owns two properties that have fallen into foreclosure.

But, said Casillas, "I couldn't see my lady, my partner, marrying into a financial mess."

Labels: California, cohabitation, culture, economics, family structure, gay couples, gay parenting, Marriage, more than two parents

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...Salon spoke to Larry Kramer in his New York apartment about the importance of "The Normal Heart," iPhone's Grindr app and the problem with young gay men.

[KRAMER:] There are these issues now. It's just that you don't think of them as galvanizing, mainly because they're not so life and death. I cite marriage, although I'm sort of fed up with how long it's taken and I think we've gone about it the wrong way. I'm 76, and my partner is 64. I'll obviously die before he does, and the way the laws are written it's very hard to leave him anything of substance compared to what I have to leave. It all goes to taxes because we're not legally federally married and that's not fair, that's just not fair. You don't care about it at your age, but I care about it at mine, and there are a lot of older gays who should care about it as well. That should be a galvanizing issue. Anything that keeps us from being unequal should be galvanizing. I want what they have. I do. And everybody should. But again, people don't think that way. ...

The play suggests that one of the reasons there was so much meaningless sex in the gay community in the 1980s was because there was no gay marriage. Now that state marriages exist, do you think there's been a cultural shift away from that meaningless sexual culture?

I think there's still an awful lot of meaningless sex going on and the infection figures are still much too high and going up, so obviously there's still too much careless sex going on. ...

Are you familiar with Grindr, the iPhone gay sex app?

What?

It's an iPhone application that shows you how far away other gay men are, so you can have sex with them.

No. I'd be happy to use it now if I thought it would do anything. I get horny just like anybody else, and David [Webster, Kramer's partner] and I have been together a long time, so our relationship is now something else. I joined Daddyhunt or Manhunt and all those things, and posted my pictures, and filled out my questionnaire. And I got absolutely no response from anyone and it led me to wonder: What do older men do? It's very sad that suddenly there's no way to partake in all of this.

Labels: AIDS, culture, gay couples, gay marriage, homosexuality, open relationships, sex, STDs

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It's been 10 years since Ton Jansen and Louis Rogmans joined three other couples in Amsterdam City Hall to say “ja, ik wil,” triggering an international revolution for gay rights.

On April 1, 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to carry out legal same-sex weddings. Since then nine other nations have legalized gay marriages. Uruguay moved to be the next in early April when a bill legalizing gay marriage was introduced in parliament.

“Gay marriage is Holland's best export product because we have shown that it is possible,” said Vera Bergkamp, head of the Dutch gay rights organization, COC.

In the country that pioneered the movement toward same-sex marriage, however, gays haven't exactly been rushing to tie the knot.

Data from The Netherlands' national statistics agency showed 15,000 gay couples have married since 2001. That means just 20 percent of gay Dutch couples are married, compared to 80 percent of heterosexual couples, the agency says.

Bergkamp sees three main reasons for the lack of nuptial enthusiasm among gay couples: less pressure from family and friends, fewer gay couples marrying to have children than their straight counterparts, and a more individualist, less family-orientated mindset among many homosexuals.

Labels: gay couples, gay marriage, gay/straight differences, Netherlands

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They cupped each other's hands and shifted their body weight ever-so-slightly. I had practiced the line a dozen times, but I couldn't believe what I was about to say: "By the power vested in me through the state of Massachusetts, I now pronounce you… married!" The room exploded with a cacophony of applause and clinking Champagne flutes. It was 2009, and I had just officiated the wedding of two of my gay friends.

But something felt off.

For a brief moment, as I stared out at this joyous crowd comprised of the brides' family members and friends, I had the sensation that I was at a rally—because it wasn't just a marriage that was happening here. It was a gay marriage. It was something ground-breaking, something to be celebrated, for sure. But as proud as I was to have played some part in these two women's legal union, I couldn't help but wonder, could I ever go through with this myself?

Last week, President Obama declared the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional and instructed the Department of Justice to stop enforcing it. It was a moment to exalt—the second such gay-rights milestone in only two months, coming on the heels of landmark legislation to repeal the military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy. But lost in the euphoria was an awkward truth that gay people don't like to talk about: Gay marriage feels weird. In fact, many of us, myself included, don't feel very comfortable with it at all.

A few years ago, before California, before Iowa, when in early 2004 Massachusetts was all set to blaze this improbable trail, I had gay and straight friends congratulating me left and right. They all wanted to know how excited I was about the news. I could only shrug and reply, "That's great, but I don't think marriage is for me." People reacted to my ambivalence as if I had just burned an American flag. How could I turn my back on the centerpiece of the modern gay-rights movement? My personal relationship choice had suddenly become a political stand.

Labels: culture, gay couples, gay marriage, Marriage

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U.S. tax and property laws are so complex that unintended consequences are common. Here is one: Thanks to a 1996 federal law aimed at preserving traditional marriage, thousands of same-sex couples in California, Nevada, and Washington state could get big tax bonuses on their federal returns starting this year.

The bonuses are off-limits to heterosexual married couples—a sharp reminder of the "marriage penalty" that often dings two-earner couples.

What's going on? The affected same-sex couples are benefiting from unusual interactions between state and federal laws.

All three states recognize domestic partnerships and also have what is known as community-property law. Community property refers to a system of ownership in nine states that usually attributes income and property acquired during marriage equally to both partners, regardless of who earned it. (The nine states are Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin.)

The three states also now apply community-property laws to registered domestic partners. So the Internal Revenue Service—which must follow state property laws—has ruled that these couples should figure their total community income and split it down the middle, starting in 2010.

That is where the benefit comes in. Although domestic partners must divide their income equally, the federal Defense of Marriage Act prevents the IRS from treating these couples as married joint filers. So for 2010 and after, each partner will claim half the community income but still file as single or head of household.

The result, in many cases, is a federal tax savings because a couple will avoid the marriage penalty that often raises taxes for two-earner heterosexual married couples. ...

The law has changed many times since, and the current system contains both marriage penalties and bonuses. The bonuses often favor married couples with disparate earnings, because their combined income benefits from lower brackets.

Labels: domestic partnership, gay couples, Marriage, marriage penalty, tax policy

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...Briefly, describe the Michigan case, Ward v. Eastern Michigan University. What led to the lawsuit and what are the key legal issues involved?

In March 2009, Julea Ward, a student at Eastern Michigan University (EMU), was dismissed from her graduate-level counseling program when she refused to counsel a gay man about a same-sex relationship. The program, run by the University’s Department of Counseling and Education, aims to give students real world experience by requiring them to counsel several clients, who pay a small fee, over the course of a semester. After reading this client’s file, Ward asked a supervisor to refer him to another student counselor and to assign her another client. In making this request, Ward stated that her Christian beliefs about homosexuality would prevent her from affirming the client’s relationship with another man. The supervisor claimed that Ward’s refusal violated the ethical obligations of a counselor not to discriminate against clients based on sexual orientation or to impose one’s personal beliefs on clients. Based on this judgment, the school expelled Ward from the counseling program.

Ward filed suit in federal district court in the Eastern District of Michigan, alleging that the school violated her constitutional rights to free exercise of religion and freedom of speech. ...

Are we likely to see many more conscience-related disputes that involve sexual orientation? If so, how are these cases likely to be resolved?

As illustrated by the Michigan and California cases, future health care-related cases are likely to involve counseling for those clients who seek advice with respect to same-sex relationships and medical treatment on matters of fertility and reproduction. These are the areas in which some professionals who are religious may have difficulties because they do not want to facilitate or promote same-sex intimacy. In contrast, we do not expect to see cases in which medical professionals refuse to treat a patient for physical ailments or psychological problems solely on the ground of the patient’s sexual orientation.

Labels: culture, discrimination law, donor conception, gay couples, professional associations, religious liberty

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Among opponents of gay and lesbian adoption who base their opposition on the welfare of children, only 22% say they would change their mind if shown convincing empirical evidence that children raised by gay and lesbian couples are just as likely to be healthy and well-adjusted as children raised by heterosexual couples. This is just one statistic in the report [PDF] recently released by the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School.

Cultural cognition, according to the project's website, refers to "the tendency of individuals to conform their beliefs about disputed matters of fact (e.g., whether global warming is a serious threat; whether the death penalty deters murder; whether gun control makes society more safe or less) to values that define their cultural identities." The project's objective is "to identify processes of democratic decisionmaking by which society can resolve culturally grounded differences in belief in a manner that is both congenial to persons of diverse cultural outlooks and consistent with sound public policymaking." ...

Meanwhile, this first report has some sobering data. My nominee for most disturbing statistic: 81% of respondents strongly agree, agree, or mildly agree that "we should do everything we can to encourage the ideal of children being raised by their biological parents." Even the most strident right-wing "marriage promotion" ideologues have been forced to articulate their support for not all marriages, but for healthy marriages. Yet somehow the public at large (as represented in this study) overwhelmingly imagines, without qualification, that it is ideal for children to be raised with their biological parents.

There's majority support for allowing lesbians and gay men to adopt and be foster parents; but almost the same majority agrees that "the law should encourage that children be raised by heterosexual couples wherever possible." 48% agree that "gay parenting undermines the family in our society;" 45% agree that "because chldren raised by homosexual couples are taught that homosexuality is morally acceptable, they will have trouble learning right from wrong in other areas of life as well;" and, shockingly, 33% believe that children raised by gay or lesbian parents are more likely to be sexually molested than other children. There's much more here, and so I encourage readers to check out the report itself.

Labels: adoption, children, culture, gay couples, gay parenting, parenting

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Debra H. is the mother of her six-year-old son, a child she raised with Janice R,. her ex-partner who is the child's biological mother. So ruled the New York Court of Appeals today (and that's the highest court in NY, so their decision is final). For that reason, press reports, at least the early ones, refer to the opinion as expanding the rights of gay parents.

Not so fast. What the court actually did was limit the rights of children of same-sex couples to a relationship with only one parent, unless the parents married each other (or entered a civil union or a domestic partnership comferring all the rights of marriage) or completed a second-parent adoption. (Debra H. and Janice R. were in a Vermont civil union.) This is not good news. Children are not supposed to suffer for the decision of their parents not to marry. That has been an elemental principle of family law for more than four decades. Yet suffer they will, those New York children, because apparently that principle goes out the window when it comes to lesbian couples raising children.

New York is not an isolated case. In Massachusetts, where same-sex couples have been allowed to marry for six years, a child born to a married lesbian couple is the child of both parents, but a child born to an unmarried couple, under identical circumstances (such as conception using an unknown donor) has only one parent, unless the nonbiological parent completes a second-parent adoption. Such adoptions take time and money, both often in short supply. (In a New Jersey cases a few years back, the couple made the economically sensible decision to have their second child and then go through one adoption proceeding for both of them. Unfortunately, the nonbio mom died unexpectedly before any adoption took place, and the child was unable to collect social security survivors benefits because under the law he had only one parent.) I have said repeatedly (and it's the title of my new Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties article), A Mother Should Not Have to Adopt Her Own Child.

Labels: civil unions, custody, de facto parenting, gay couples, gay marriage, gay parenting, Massachusetts, New York

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A marriage guidance counsellor's bid to challenge his sacking for refusing to give sex therapy to homosexuals has led to a serious clash between the Christian lobby and the judiciary.

In a powerful dismissal of the application to appeal, Lord Justice Laws said legislation to protect views held purely on religious grounds could not be justified. He said it was an irrational idea "but it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary".

The former archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey had sent a statement to a judge hearing the appeal application by Gary McFarlane. The senior church figure called for a special panel of judges with a "proven sensitivity and understanding of religious issues" to hear the case.

Lord Carey said recent court decisions involving Christians had used "dangerous" reasoning and this could lead to civil unrest.

Lord Justice Laws's ruling said: "We do not live in a society where all the people share uniform religious beliefs. The precepts of any one religion – any belief system – cannot, by force of their religious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other. If they did, those out in the cold would be less than citizens and our constitution would be on the way to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic."

Labels: Christianity, culture, discrimination law, gay couples, gay marriage, homosexuality, Marriage, professional associations, religion, religious liberty, United Kingdom

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