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MikeLazzaro&fiance-Danny_100806_StLouis

The poster says it all.

Commit to working until same-sex couples are allowed to marry all across America.

This week’s landmark decision in the Prop 8 case is a huge victory for LGBT Americans. In Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Judge Vaughn R. Walker of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco ruled that Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that excluded same-sex couples from marriage in the state, is unconstitutional.

The ruling holds for the first time that the due process clause of the United States Constitution guarantees same-sex couples the freedom to marry and that denying same-sex couples this freedom also violates the equal protection clause.

We don’t yet know what the impact of this historic ruling will be, as it will first go up on appeal to the 9th Circuit—and is likely to eventually end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. But what we do know is that our work on relationship recognition is by no means done. In fact, in order to give this case the best possible chance of success as it moves through the appeals process, we need to show that America is ready for same-sex couples to marry by continuing to seek marriage and other relationship protections in states across the country.

click here for PDF copy of the court ruling

The August 17th chapter meeting will be held from 8pm to 10:00pm, with an earlier session (7:30pm) for newcomers. 

For more info, email meetings@BergenPFLAG.org

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128536587

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/lt_argentina_gay_marriage

August 19 thru 22, 2010  (4 days, 3 nights)

For GLBT youth ages 15 to 17

Sponsored by the Reformed Church of Highland Park, NJ

For details and flyer, click here

For registration application form, click here

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128393886

A U.S. judge in Boston has ruled that a federal gay marriage ban is unconstitutional because it interferes with the right of a state to define marriage.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro on Thursday ruled in favor of gay couples’ rights in two separate challenges to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA.

The state had argued the law denied benefits such as Medicaid to gay married couples in Massachusetts, where same-sex unions have been legal since 2004.

Tauro agreed, and said the act forces Massachusetts to discriminate against its own citizens.

“The federal government, by enacting and enforcing DOMA, plainly encroaches upon the firmly entrenched province of the state, and in doing so, offends the Tenth Amendment. For that reason, the statute is invalid,” Tauro wrote in a ruling in a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Martha Coakley.

Ruling in a separate case filed by Gays & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, Tauro found that DOMA violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

“We’ve maintained from the very beginning that there was absolutely no basis for this law treating one class of married Massachusetts couples different from everybody else and the court has recognized that,” said Gary Buseck, GLAD’s legal director.

The Justice Department argued the federal government has the right to set eligibility requirements for federal benefits — including requiring that those benefits only go to couples in marriages between a man and a woman.

The law was enacted by Congress in 1996 when it appeared Hawaii would soon legalize same-sex marriage and opponents worried that other states would be forced to recognize such marriages. The lawsuit challenges only the portion of the law that prevents the federal government from affording pension and other benefits to same-sex couples.

Since then, five states and the District of Columbia have legalized gay marriage.

Read The Decision (PDF)

Later this summer, Garden State Equality will be holding an event on the importance of marriage equality to children being raised by same-sex parents. If you’re a same-sex couple raising a child or children – or who have raised a child or children who might be of adult age now – and would like your family to participate, please email the following information to Families@GardenStateEquality.org:

Your name, your partner’s name, your child/children’s name(s) and age(s), your hometown and the best phone number at which to reach you.

Please put simply FAMILIES in the subject line of your email.

If you know a same-sex couple in New Jersey who are raising or have raised a child or children, please be so kind as to forward this email to them.

Thank you so much from all of us at Garden State Equality.

Garden State Equality is New Jersey’s largest civil rights organization.  Since Garden State Equalty’s founding in 2004, New Jersey has enacted 211 LGBT civil rights laws at the state, county and local levels.  That represents more LGBT laws enacted in less time than in any other state in American history.

McCarter Theater in Princeton, NJ has special shows scheduled…