Box Turtle Bulletin

Delaware Senate Passes Civil Unions Bill

The vote was 13-6. It now goes on to the House, where it is also expected to pass. The House vote is scheduled for April 13.

Tax time and total confusion

It is tax time and across the country individuals and families are finalizing their income tax returns and trying to makes heads or tails out of Alternative Minimum Tax and Capital Loss Limitations and Net Operating Loss Carrybacks and Itemized Deduction Phase Outs and a whole host of other intricacies of adherence to the federal tax code.

But for same-sex couples, the confusion starts with Box One, filing status. What is the filing status of a same-sex legally married couple?

Well, that depends. There simply isn’t a clear answer.

Due to DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal government currently takes the position that you are roommates – legal strangers – who share residency but not lives. Theoretically, one might expect to see rental income or gift tax or other such items on returns, though, to their credit, the IRS does not apply such rigidity to either gay or straight cohabiting couples.

So the final answer (so far) is that you file as single (or as head-of-household if you qualify). But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you report your income as though you were single.

Because the IRS, while not recognizing your marriage, may recognize your legal right to your spouse’s income. And that depends on where you live.

If your state has community property laws, then you have a claim on half of the income of your heterosexual spouse. But some states have also applied community property laws to same-sex relationships, whether called marriages, civil unions, or domestic partnerships. In California, for example, one half of a same-sex couple has a legal claim on half of her partner’s income whether she is in a domestic partnership or got married in the 2008 window.

And the IRS is now taking the position that if you have a claim on it, you need to report it. So in California, for example, each half of the partnership would claim half of the partnership’s community property income (being careful to exclude income that does not fall into this category) and prepare income tax returns as “Single” to report their share. In Massachusetts, not a community property state, the same couple would segregate their income and prepare “Single” income tax returns reflecting only their own income.

All of which is thrown out the window for state return preparation. Each state defines who is or who is not married and requires those couples which they recognize as married to file as “Married”. Some, like California, require that domestic partnerships or civil unions prepare “Married” returns.

But that isn’t the extent of it. Most states don’t duplicate the entire return calculation process but instead start with the federal numbers and make adjustments. So while you cannot file a joint federal return, in order for the state to have a starting point, you must prepare a joint federal return so as to come up with the numbers you would report were you allowed to do so.

Thus, depending on where you live, your income tax return for the state could be filed with a different status than your federal income tax return, your state return could be based on a federal return which will never be filed, and your federal return may or may not recognize a portion of your income as jointly earned though reported as though single.

Confused? You should be.

So now a group of married same-sex couples have started a campaign to Refuse To Lie about their marriage status. As they are legally married in the eyes of their state, they find it offensive – legally and morally – to be forced to say that they are not. And just as there is an inherent indignity to being forced to annually tick a box labeled “I’m inferior”, so too is in unconscionable to force citizens to tick a box that is premised in that concept. (New York Times)

“More people are refusing to lie on those forms, even though the government is telling them to,” said Nadine Smith, executive director of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender advocacy group Equality Florida, who plans on filing a joint return with her wife, Andrea. “It would be both dishonest and deeply humiliating to now disavow each other or our marriage and declare ourselves single on our tax form.”

This is not a new concept. I’ve heard of tax rebels who have, for years, flouted the tax code and took a stand for equality. Such efforts tend to be ineffective and costly. The IRS is not a compassionate or forgiving institution.

But this year may be different. The Defense of Marriage Act has been declared to be in violation of the US Constitution, the Justice Department has determined it to be indefensible, and there is no presumption that the SCOTUS will uphold the law. So it is not unreasonable to act accordingly (though the campaign notes that you must act in a manner that is in conformity with the IRS’s procedures for challenging positions, not haphazardly).

My best guess is that if and when DOMA is overturned, it will not be retroactive. In other words, for 2010 you will most likely be required to file as strangers even if DOMA is tossed out. But those who challenge the provision probably will not face punitive action or be accused of tax fraud.

Should you decide to prepare your taxes using Married status, the smartest action would be to place the difference in taxes in a trust account to be released upon determination of the DOMA challenges and be very very careful. And don’t expect your tax accountant to go along with you; accountants are increasingly being held liable for their client’s positions.

But there are other options that I find both safe and smart.

The “Refuse to Lie” Web site warns same-sex couples of the risks of filing jointly, and explains different options to both adhere to the law while expressing that they disagree with it. One way to do that would be to put an asterisk by the “single” box, and then indicate at the bottom of the tax form that you are “only single under DOMA.” Another option, the site says, is to attach a note with a similar message.

They can’t punish you for “providing a full disclosure” and such a stand can give you something to talk about around the water cooler. (And never underestimate the world-changing power of water-cooler conversation)

Arkansas Supreme Court Overturns Adoption Ban

The Arkansas Supreme Court today ruled that a voter-approved initiative banning unmarried cohabiting couples, including gay couples, from adopting or serving as foster parents. The court found that because the law singles out cohabiting couples for the ban while allowing single individuals to adopt or foster children, it encroaches on a key right to privacy:

Act 1 directly and substantially burdens the privacy rights of “opposite-sex and same-sex individuals” who engage in private, consensual sexual conduct in the bedroom by foreclosing their eligibility to foster or adopt children, should they choose to cohabit with their sexual partner. The pressure on such couples to live apart, should they wish to foster or adopt children, is clearly significant. In Jegley, the burden perpetrated by the State was criminal prosecution for sodomy, although the act took place in the privacy of the bedroom. In the case before us, the burden dispensed by the State is either to remove the ability to foster or adopt children, should sexual partners live together, or to intrude into the bedroom to assure that cohabitors who adopt or foster are celibate. We conclude that, in this case as in Jegley, the burden is direct and substantial.

In 2002, the Arkansas Supreme Court struck down that state’s sodomy law in the case of Jegley v. Picado, nearly a full year before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws nationwide in Lawrence v. Texas. A state judge struck down Arkansas’ adoption ban last April. The attorney general then appealed to the Supreme Court, which led to today’s ruling.

Because the court found that Act 1 infringes on a key right to privacy, the court determined that heighened scrutiny rather than rational-basis was the appropriate standard for the ruling:

We have held in this case that a fundamental right of privacy is at issue and that the burden imposed by the State is direct and substantial. We now hold, as an additional matter, that because of the direct and substantial burden on a fundamental right, the standard to be applied is heightened scrutiny and not a rational-basis standard. Using the heightened- scrutiny standard, because Act 1 exacts a categorical ban against all cohabiting couples engaged in sexual conduct, we hold that it is not narrowly tailored or the least restrictive means available to serve the State’s compelling interest of protecting the best interest of the child.

Utah and Mississippi are the only states remaining with adoption bans affecting gay people. Utah, like Arkansas until today, bans cohabiting couples from adopting but allows single adults to adopt when married couples aren’t available. Mississippi law allows unmarried and married adults to adopt regardless of cohabitation status, but contains a separate clause stating, “Adoption by couples of the same gender is prohibited.”

Gender challenging caveman

Questions about gender and gender roles are certainly not new ones. A recent excavation in the Czech Republic illustrate that atraditional sexuality was recognized 3,000 5,000 years ago. (Mail Online)

During that period, men were traditionally buried lying on their right side with the head pointing towards the west; women on their left side with the head facing east.

In this case, the man was on his left side with his head facing west. Another clue is that men tended to be interred with weapons, hammers and flint knives as well as several portions of food and drink to accompany them to the other side.

Women would be buried with necklaces made from teeth, pets, and copper earrings, as well as domestic jugs and an egg-shaped pot placed near the feet.

The ‘gay caveman’ was buried with household jugs, and no weapons.

Whether gay, transgender, intersexed, or for some other reason, exceptions to very rigid gender rules suggest a knowledge of divergence and perhaps even an acceptance.

Ssempa, Oyett Press Uganda’s Parliament on Anti-Homosexuality Bill

Pastor Martin Ssempa (pointing) and Julius Oyet at Uganda's Parliament House (VOA / M. Onyiego)

The Voice of American is reporting that Ugandan pastors Martin Ssempa and Julius Oyet led a group of anti-gay activists to demand that Parliament pass the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. According to VOA:

Lead by Pastor Martin Ssempa, a charismatic and vocal opponent of homosexuality in Uganda, the group asked Ugandan Parliamentary Speaker Edward Kiwanuka to fight the emerging “homo-cracy” in Uganda and enter the bill for debate.

“We as religious leaders and civil society are distressed that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill is being deliberately killed largely by the undemocratic threats of western nations,” he said. “These same nations who promote democracy don’t want our representative to discuss laws to protect our children from the human trafficking of recruiting our children into homosexuality.”

Ssempa leads the Inter-Religious Taskforce Against Homosexuality. During the session with Speaker Kiwanuka, the Task Force presented a portion of over 2 million signatures it said were gathered from around Uganda in support of the bill.

The group trotted out Paul Kagaba, an “ex-gay” associate of Martin Ssempa who alleged that he had been “recruited” into homosexuality at the age of seventeen by murdered LGBT advocate David Kato. Kagaba has been implicate in at least two vigilante outing campaigns, the most recent of which is suspected of having been orchestrated by Ssempa himself.

George Oundo

Another putative ex-gay, George Oundo, re-appeared in this latest episode with his own allegations of foreign recruitment. Oundo has also participated in vigilante campaigns as well, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the infamous March 2009 anti-gay conference put on by American activists Scott Lively, Don Schmierer and Caleb Lee Brundidge. Oundo himself appears to have a great deal of difficulty deciding which side he should be on, but for now he appears to have cast his lot with Ssempa once again.

Julius Oyet’s appearance here is notable. Oyet and Ssema were present in the gallery when the Ugandan Parliament first considered the indroduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Oyet, who is President of the Ugandan branch of the U.S.-based College of Prayer (which itself is a ministry of Rev. Fred Hartley’s Lilburn Alliance Church in Atlanta), was made a member of M.P. David Bahati’s staff to lobby Parliament for the bill’s passage. While Bahati is the bill’s author and sponsor, Oyet played a crucial role in its drafting. He repordtedly told a documentary filmmaker:

I was there. I have been part of the brains behind it. We worked on it. We planned who should propose it. It is the Ugandan’s bill. It is the culture of Uganda to keep purity. It is everybody’s voice. I worked with Bahati on this.

Two weeks ago, Information Minister Kabakumba Masiko spoke on behalf of President Yoweri Musevini’s government to announce that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill would not be voted on by Parliament. Bahati however insists that the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, where the bill currently resides, will still hold hearings. The bill will automatically die if it does not come up for a final vote before the current Parliament ends on May 20.

Update: Daily Monitor picks up the story and adds a couple of interesting items. First, Daily Monitor quotes Parliament Speaker Edward Ssekandi:

“The mover of the Bill (David Bahati) is still a member of the 9th Parliament and even if the current Parliament doesn’t debate it, the new Parliament will do it,” Mr Ssekandi said.

This, I believe, indicates that he expects the bill to be reintroduced into the next Parliament after the current one ends.

And finally there’s this: a group of students from Makarere University had earlier met with Steven Tashobya, chairman of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, and told him that ” recruitment of gays was rampant at the university campus“:

That’s about US$340, which is more than the average annual per-capita income in Uganda. Where’s my US$340? Nobody told me about this!

Prop 8 Trial Judge Makes It Official

U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker, who struck down California’s Proposition 8 as unconstitutional, has officially come out. Anticipating charges that Judge Walker’s decision was influenced by his sexual orientation, he said that he would never consider his sexual orientation as grounds for recusal.

Former U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who retired from the bench at the end of February, said it would not be appropriate for any judge’s sexual orientation, ethnicity, national origin or gender to stop them from presiding over a case.

“That’s a very slippery slope,” Walker said.

Indeed. If such a standard would apply, then six of the nine Supreme Court Justices would have to recuse themselves should any case involving the Catholic Church or Catholic-affiated institution appear before the bench.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported last year that Judge Walker is gay, although Walker himself refused to address the issue.

Delaware Senate Schedules Vote on Civil Unions

Delaware’s Senate Administrative Services Committee approved SB 30, which would provide Civil Unions for same-sex couples, after a two hour hearing earlier today. The full Senate has scheduled a vote for tomorrow. According to the Washington Blade:

SB 30 would give gay and lesbian couples access to the responsibilities and rights of marriage; partners in a civil union would be included wherever terms like “dependent,” “next of kin” and “family” are used in Delaware regulations, codes and court decisions. If passed, Delaware would also recognize civil unions performed in other states.

If the bill passes the Senate, it would then go on to the House.

New inductees into the community: add an X to the alphabet

Considering that BTB’s comments section has had recent discussion about who is, or isn’t, or should be, part of our community and what nomenclature should be considered, it is a fittingly timely announcement that the LGBTQQIA community has a new letter: X, as in Malcolm X.

According to a new biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Columbia University historian Manning Marable, X had during his life been involved in a number of not-strictly-heterosexual encounters including hustling the streets and a relationship with a white businessman.

Of course, engaging in same-sex relations for money does not make one gay. Or even bisexual. Lord knows that there are more than a few gay-for-pay porn actors who regularly – and convincingly – utilize their assets in pursuit of a few bucks before going home to the wife. And every major city has a population of young men who will happily engage in whatever sexual act you desire if it will pay for their next meal, next room, next fix.

As Rev. Irene Monroe puts it,

I am not heterosexist apologist, but if we, as LGBTQ, use this era of Malcolm’s life to claim him as gay, we misunderstand the art and survival of street hustling culture.

Similarly, if we, as African-Americans, use this era of Malcolm’s life to dismiss that he engaged in same-sex relationships, many will miss the opportunity to purge ourselves of homophobic attitudes.

But, as Monroe’s comments acknowledge, for the young Malcolms out there today, those who dance on the line of sexuality, their orientation (should it be heterosexual) does not excuse their sexual transgression. They are not “the same as” those in their family, church, community, society who have not had such relations. Heroes simply can’t have done homo things, and vice versa.

So, as the greater community of The Respectable may often reject the membership of these not-gay-but-doing-it-anyway folk, let us open our community to include them. Of course I’m kidding about adding an X. I don’t even use the letters after T, and most of the time just go with “gay community.”

But the invitation is real. The gay community – that community of gay, lesbian, bisexual, two-spirited, same-gender loving, transgender, questioning, queer, intersex, asexual, friendly heterosexual, political ally, and elderly Russian Jewish women who wander down to Santa Monica Boulevard to watch Gay Pride every year – certainly has room for any who want to belong.

Scott Lively’s Sixth Sense: “I See Gay People”

Who knew we’ve been so invisible all this time? Like, you know, in San Francisco:

“They’re really the driving force behind all the different elements of what we call ‘the culture war,'” he shares. “They haven’t been visible in doing this, but they’ve been the driving force — because their essential goal as a movement is the overthrow of the biblical model of family.”

Lively explains that the city of San Francisco has a high concentration of homosexual power, and the city has taken direct action against the Catholic Church and against businesses that do not support homosexuality. He expects the same radical agendas to be prevalent throughout the state in the near future.

Goodness! Far be it for us to decide not to patronize businesses and religions we don’t like.

In a separate post on his own web site, Scott Lively sounds downright despondent over the invisible homosexual hand. And when he gets despondent, he goes even more unhinged:

Consider the magnitude of what our generation is witnessing. Neither the four millennia of legal precedent, nor the opinions of the vast majority of the people of the world, nor the power or the authority of the worlds religions across the globe, nor the painful lessons of secular history of the consequences of sexual perversion to civilizations have proved sufficient to stop a relatively tiny group of sodomites from taking the reins of Western power and creating new rights for themselves at the world’s expense.

It is insanity, and I am afraid that it may be terminal. When the “right” to spread sexual disease and dysfunction supersedes the right to discourage such things in the courtrooms and legislatures of the world’s ruling powers their end is likely near.

And yet, Lively is apoplectic over the notion that anyone could possibly consider his Abiding Truth Ministries a hate group. Go figure.

GOP Names Focus Officer to Debate Committee

Tom Minnery, director of Focus On the Family’s CitizenLink has been selected to serve on the GOP’s committee to determine what role the Republican National Committee will play in primary Presidential debates. Says Minnery:

They wanted someone who represents social conservatives, who is not a member of the (Republican National) Committee,” he said, “and that’s why they asked me.

“The party wants the candidate forums to be driven by party activists and grassroots representatives, and less by the national media that televise these events. The idea is that the party ought to be able to have some say over who poses questions to the candidates running for the party’s nomination for president.”

Kinda explains the GOP’s sudden shift back toward social issues, doesn’t it?

RNC Attacks Obama Over Gay Issues

President Barack Obama officially announced today that he would seek a second term in 2012. The Republican National committee responded with a web site, “Hope Isn’t Hiring,” where we ‘mo’s made three of the GOP’s top ten social issues:

1. Despite It Being The Law Of The Land, Obama Refused To Continue To Defend The Defense Of Marriage Act In Court.

2. Obama Repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell While U.S. Troops Are Still On The Battlefield.

… 6. Obama Opposed California’s Prop 8 And Has Expanded Government Recognition Of Same-Sex Couples.

Also, writing in sentence case is so elitist.

Threatening Phone Calls to Prop 8 Plaintiffs Made Public

“Marriage is between one man and one woman only. That’s the way God arranged it, set it up. Two people of the same sex cannot procreate. And no, getting yourself artificially inseminated is not procreation in God’s eyes…”

…Marriage is between one man and one woman only. God set it up that way, and that’s the way its going to be. And anybody who’s living in a homosexual or lesbian relationship shall burn in the depths of hell for all eternity.

Well, you have to hand it to Gergory Guisti, he and Robert George’s philosophical arguments are very well aligned indeed, even if Guisti’s manner is a bit more direct. Guisti even brought out Romans 1:26-29 — twice. Angry dude, although, to be fair, he did promise to throw Prop 8 plaintiffs Kristin Perry and Sandra Stier a party if they leave the state of California.

The Advocate reports that Perry and Stier were subjected to more than a dozen angry voice mails during the trial from Guisti. The 49-year-old San Francisco resident used an unlisted cell phone with a Newport News, VA area code. He’s now in jail on a 21-month sentence for having made at least 48 calls in February and March, 2010, to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Guisti’s threats to Pelosi were more explicit: “If you pass this freaking health care plan, don’t bother coming back to California, ’cause you ain’t gonna have a place to live.”

Reply to George: XIII. Marriage Equality Threatens Religious Freedom

[This post is part of a series analyzing Robert George’s widely-read article, “What is Marriage“, which appeared on pages 245-286 of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. You can view all posts in the series here.]

Pages 263-265: In which George accidentally suggests the First Amendment is a threat to religious freedom.

A digression

I’m going to put Robert George on hold for a moment. Instead, I’ll talk about Owen and Eunice Johns, the latest “victims” of homofascist intolerance of religion.  NOM and other anti-gays have taken up their cause.  Here’s the news report:

A Pentecostal Christian couple have lost their high court claim that they were discriminated against by a local authority because they insisted on their right to tell young foster children that homosexuality is morally wrong.

Eunice and Owen Johns, who are in their sixties and have fostered children in the past, claimed they were being discriminated against by Derby city council because of their Christian beliefs, after they told a social worker they could not tell a child a “homosexual lifestyle” was acceptable. The couple had hoped to foster five- to 10-year-olds.

First, note the couple is British. Examples from other countries simply don’t count in the US. America has its own body of law around religious freedom. When our American opponents insist on citing foreign cases, they’re simply demonstrating the dearth of evidence about what’s happening in the US.  Never forget that.

However, let’s pretend this is an American case. Would it represent some sort of new assault on religious freedom?

No.

The issue here isn’t about religious freedom. It’s not about discrimination against one group or another. It’s about the welfare of the child. The only issue, for me, is this:   Read the rest of this entry »

CO Civil Unions Defeated In House Committee

The crazies came out again in Colorado last night to defeat the Senate Bill 172, which would have provided Civil Unions and other protections for LGBT Coloradans. The bill died in the committee on a 6-5 strict party-line vote. All Republicans voted no, including Rep. Brian DelGrosso (R-Loveland) whose uncle is gay. “It was tough,” said DelGrosso. As tough as it is for his uncle?

Rep. B.J. Nikkel (also R-Loveland), after voting no herself, thanked members of the committee and the bill’s sponsor for “a very thoughtful, civil dialogue about the issue of civil unions.” That “civil dialogue” not only included the “anus lady,” but last night featured the testimony of Paul Cameron.

To give you some perspective about where Cameron gets these crazy ideas, as recently as five years ago, the head of the Eastern Psychological Association publicly denounced Cameron for fraudulently passing off a paper he wrote as having been presented before the assembled association at a meeting in Philadelphia. Cameron has been removed from the rolls of the American Psychological Association for ethical violations in his fraudulent “research”, and his he has also been denounced by the Nebraska Psychological Association, the American Sociological Association (twice), and the Canadian Psychological Association, all for consistently misinterpreting and misrepresenting research on sexuality, sexual orientation, and the gay community.

You would think that were bad enough, but it gets worse. In a March 1999 edition of his newsletter, Cameron wrote glowingly of how the Nazis “handled” homosexuality. Specifically singling out the policies of Rudolf Höss, the mastermind behind Auschwitz. This echoes what Cameron said in 1985 at a CPAC conference, in which he proclaimed, “Unless we get medically lucky, in three or four years, one of the options discussed will be the extermination of homosexuals.” Cameron’s manifesto calls for the recriminalization of homosexuality and the denial of private domestic partner benefits to anyone who is HIV-positive. He would ban LGBT people from teaching or working at schools or day care centers, and mandate that all course material present homosexuality as “a public health hazard.”

To the shame of Coloradans everywhere, arguments like Cameron’s carried the day.

Update: ThinkProgress has more audio.

Huckabee Proposes the Re-education of the American Mind

Former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential Mike Huckabee spoke at the Rediscover God in America conference in Iowa last weekend. Before launching into his speech, Huckabee gave a shout-out to Christian historical revisionist David Barton. Barton, who is touted as a “historian” at the conference despite having no discernible credentials, holds that America was founded as an explicitly Christian nation and presents what he calls a “holy history” of America. Last October, Barton called on the U.S. government to “regulate homosexuality.”

Barton introduced Huckabee at he Rediscover God in America conference. Huckabee thanked Barton for his introduction and said, “I just wish that every single young person in america would be able to be under his tutelage and understand something about who we are as a nation. I almost wish there would be like a simultaneous telecast, and all Americans would be forced — forced, at gunpoint no less — to listen to every David Barton message. And I think our country would be better for it.”

I seem to recall North Vietnam doing something along those lines…

Okay, I know that he appears to be joking — the audience is laughing as though he were. But remember, this is the guy who defended the suggestion that gay men with HIV should have been rounded up and quarantined back in the day. And when he said that, he definitely wasn’t joking. In fact, he carefully parsed his message in order to try to make himself clear. So let’s just say that I haven’t the capacity for giving him even the smallest smidgeon of the benefit of doubt on this one.

Huckabee went on to call for “spiritual warriors” in a battle that “pits good against evil.” Among those evils: marriage equality:

Other possible GOP contenders speaking at the conference included former House speaker Newt Gingrich, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), and Mississippi governor Haley Barbour.