Federal judge to issue Proposition 8 decision Wednesday

Lesbians sue to force Catholic hospital to provide same-sex benefits, undermine DOMA

Thu Jun 21, 2012 12:28 EST
Comments (63)
Tags: bill donohue, catholic hospitals, doma, same-sex 'marriage'



NEW YORK, NEW YORK, June 21, 2012 - A New York lesbian couple has sued to force a Catholic hospital to provide them with insurance benefits by challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

The same-sex couple has filed a lawsuit against Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield and St. Joseph’s Medical Center because one of St. Joseph’s divisions, St. Vincent’s Westchester, denied them spousal benefits.

The plaintiffs, who have chosen to remain anonymous, are seeking past and future benefits and a declaration that they are entitled to receive them.

Though New York recognizes same-sex marriage, self-insured employers such as St. Joseph’s may still refuse to recognize them because they are governed by federal regulations, rather than state regulations.
Bill Donohue, Catholic League president, defends marriage.
Bill Donohue, Catholic League president, defends marriage.

The lawsuit alleges that the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman for the purposes of federal regulations, is discriminatory and unconstitutional, and therefore cannot justify the hospital’s policy.“It’s just not socially fair,” the employee told the New York Times.

Catholic League President Bill Donohue strongly condemned the lawsuit on Wednesday in a statement e-mailed to LifeSiteNews.com , calling it an infringement on the hospital’s rights made possible by “sleuth, deception, and a wholesale disregard for the democratic process” and suggesting homosexual activists were the ones trampling on diversity.

“It is not the Catholic Church that is seeking to impose its agenda on others” Donohue said.“It is homosexual activists who voluntarily join a Catholic institution and then seek to upend its strictures.” He noted the employee “surely knew all along…the teachings of Catholicism” on the issues of marriage and homosexuality before coming to the hospital.

DOMA has long been a high-priority target for advocates of redefining marriage. The federal Department of Justice has come under fire for refusing to defend the law in court throughout President Barack Obama’s time in office.

In July 2011, the administration called for the law to be overturned, arguing that the bill signed by President Bill Clinton was “motivated in large part by animus toward gay and lesbian individuals.”

Last month, the First Circuit Court of Appeals struck down DOMA’s federal marriage definition, ruling that benefits could not be denied to gay couples in states that recognize same-sex marriage. However, the court upheld the section of the law protecting states’ right to define marriage for themselves.

The opinion, written by a judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush, specifically denied the bill was motivated by prejudice.

Critics said at the time that the rest of his ruling was severely flawed. Liberty Counsel senior counsel Harry Mihet noted the inconsistency of ruling that “states remain free to decide the meaning of marriage for themselves and to ban homosexual ‘marriage,’ as 31 states have already done, but somehow the federal government does not have that same freedom to decide for itself…what marriage means.”

Alliance Defense Fund legal counsel Dale Schowengerdt observed that the federal government’s authority to exclude polygamy from marriage’s definition has historically been recognized, while Family Research Council President Tony Perkins argued that DOMA should be subjected to the “rational basis test,” a commonly-accepted legal standard that would recognize government’s rational interest in fostering unions that provide children with a mother and a father.

Blair wrote:

Lesbians sue to force Catholic hospital to provide same-sex benefits, undermine DOMA
Thu Jun 21, 2012 12:28 EST
Comments (63)
Tags: bill donohue, catholic hospitals, doma, same-sex 'marriage'
NEW YORK, NEW YORK, June 21, 2012 - A New York lesbian couple has sued to force a Catholic hospital to provide them with insurance benefits by challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
The same-sex couple has filed a lawsuit against Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield and St. Joseph’s Medical Center because one of St. Joseph’s divisions, St. Vincent’s Westchester, denied them spousal benefits.
The plaintiffs, who have chosen to remain anonymous, are seeking past and future benefits and a declaration that they are entitled to receive them.
Though New York recognizes same-sex marriage, self-insured employers such as St. Joseph’s may still refuse to recognize them because they are governed by federal regulations, rather than state regulations.
Bill Donohue, Catholic League president, defends marriage.
Bill Donohue, Catholic League president, defends marriage.
The lawsuit alleges that the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman for the purposes of federal regulations, is discriminatory and unconstitutional, and therefore cannot justify the hospital’s policy.“It’s just not socially fair,” the employee told the New York Times.
Catholic League President Bill Donohue strongly condemned the lawsuit on Wednesday in a statement e-mailed to LifeSiteNews.com , calling it an infringement on the hospital’s rights made possible by “sleuth, deception, and a wholesale disregard for the democratic process” and suggesting homosexual activists were the ones trampling on diversity.
“It is not the Catholic Church that is seeking to impose its agenda on others” Donohue said.“It is homosexual activists who voluntarily join a Catholic institution and then seek to upend its strictures.” He noted the employee “surely knew all along…the teachings of Catholicism” on the issues of marriage and homosexuality before coming to the hospital.
DOMA has long been a high-priority target for advocates of redefining marriage. The federal Department of Justice has come under fire for refusing to defend the law in court throughout President Barack Obama’s time in office.
In July 2011, the administration called for the law to be overturned, arguing that the bill signed by President Bill Clinton was “motivated in large part by animus toward gay and lesbian individuals.”
Last month, the First Circuit Court of Appeals struck down DOMA’s federal marriage definition, ruling that benefits could not be denied to gay couples in states that recognize same-sex marriage. However, the court upheld the section of the law protecting states’ right to define marriage for themselves.
The opinion, written by a judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush, specifically denied the bill was motivated by prejudice.
Critics said at the time that the rest of his ruling was severely flawed. Liberty Counsel senior counsel Harry Mihet noted the inconsistency of ruling that “states remain free to decide the meaning of marriage for themselves and to ban homosexual ‘marriage,’ as 31 states have already done, but somehow the federal government does not have that same freedom to decide for itself…what marriage means.”
Alliance Defense Fund legal counsel Dale Schowengerdt observed that the federal government’s authority to exclude polygamy from marriage’s definition has historically been recognized, while Family Research Council President Tony Perkins argued that DOMA should be subjected to the “rational basis test,” a commonly-accepted legal standard that would recognize government’s rational interest in fostering unions that provide children with a mother and a father.

pfft... They can go ahead & file, doesn't mean they're gonna win...

Military Industrial Complex--------- Howard McKeon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Howard Philip "Buck" McKeon (born September 9, 1938) is the U.S.
Representative for California's 25th congressional district, serving since 1993. He
is a ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_McKeon - 104k -

Seth Adams wrote:

It is about time that the filthy citizen scum were taught a lesson that cowering in the corners as radical anarchists become judges comes at a very high cost to American citizen families. The will of the people be damned.

Washington Times Headline June 29, 1989 | NowPublic Photo ...
Mar 2, 2005 ... Washington Times Headline June 29, 1989 by salsa. Original file can be found at
http://www.iapprovethismessiah.com/spence.htm... ...

http://www.nowpublic.com/washington_times_hea... - 42k -

Must have been another STUPID REPUBLICAN owned company.

Most of the Hallandale Beach, FL lifeguards who were either fired or quit after a fellow lifeguard lost his job for leaving his assigned area to help save a life say they are not going back.

Fire the company providing Life Guard services, get a new one!

Obama the Prince of the Queerdom and the traits of his disciples!

.

Feces Consumption Leads High Incidence of Intestinal Parasites Among Gays

.
San Francisco -- San Francisco public health authorities have detected an unusual increase in cases of shigellosis, an unpleasant intestinal bug that can cause cramps, fever and bloody diarrhea for as long as a week.

So far this year, 205 cases of the bacterial infection, which is also know as bacillary dysentery, have been reported. That is nearly double the 113 cases reported during all of 1999. Of particular concern are the 50 cases reported in July and 60 cases in August -- the highest monthly rates since the city began tracking the disease in 1993.

A majority of the cases reported this year have been among gay men, who can be exposed to shigella bacteria through oral-anal contact. Day care workers also are at higher risk of contracting the illness.

``Because of the sharp increase in cases, it means people are engaged in behavior that puts them at risk for the disease,'' said Dr. Susan Fernyak, San Francisco director of communicable disease prevention.``It takes very few bacteria to transmit shigellosis. It's very infectious.''

There is no vaccine to prevent shigellosis, but it is readily treated with antibiotics. A similar illness, hepatitis A, does not respond to antibiotics, but cases of that illness have dropped sharply since a vaccine to prevent it became available.

Fernyak said those who are infected should not handle food. The bacteria may still be present in the body for as long as a week after symptoms of the illness are gone. It is possible for someone to contract a mild case of the bug and show few symptoms of the illness, but still be capable of transmitting it to others.

Dr. Tomas Aragon, director of Community Health and Epidemiology, said that there is a chronic low-level form of shigellosis in San Francisco's gay community and that periodically the number of cases will rise, particularly during the summer months.

Of the cases recorded this year, 82 percent were among men, and 63 percent of those volunteered information that they were gay or bisexual. Six men who contracted the diseases reported that they were heterosexual.

There were 17 cases of shigellosis among children under the age of 5 -- a rate that has not changed in recent years. Seven out of 10 cases reported this year involve a strain of shigella bacteria called sonnei, which tends to show up when the number of cases of the illness increases sharply. Another strain of the shigella, known as flexneri, is more common at chronic low levels of infection in the population.

Aragon said the number of cases reported so far this year put San Francisco on a pace to meet or exceed the 326 cases reported in 1995.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi...
High Incidence of Intestinal Bug Among Gays

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi...

nice

Pro-homosexual ‘equity’ policies amount to ‘ethical cleansing’: Catholic Civil Rights League

Thu Aug 18, 2011 16:28 EST
Comments (16)



BURNABY, British Columbia, August 18, 2011 - Equity policies purporting to combat “homophobia” amount to “ethical cleansing” that aim to eliminate opposing moral views, says the Catholic Civil Rights League of British Columbia.

In a July 6th letter, CCRL BC Director Sean Murphy criticized the BC Civil Liberties Association’s support for an equity policy that passed in the Burnaby school board in June. The policy aims to combat “heterosexism,” which it defines as the “assumption that all people are heterosexual and that heterosexuality is superior and more desirable for all people than any other sexual orientation.”

Murphy invited the BCCLA to join them in signing a new Declaration on the Authority of Parents and Guardians in the Education of their Children, which they say is a non-denominational statement of principles offered to all people of good will.

“The Declaration is not specific to the Catholic Church or Catholic teaching,” said Murphy.“It cites numerous international conventions and declarations that have been signed by many nations, including Canada.”

The Declaration affirms that “the authority of parents and guardians to direct the education of their own children must be fully respected and accommodated by the state and by all those involved in education.”

In his letter to the BCCLA, Murphy said that by their urging the Burnaby school board to adopt a policy to combat heterosexism and homophobia, they appear to support “the use of state schools to inculcate acceptance of what you believe to be morally superior views of sexuality, and to eliminate or at least silence and marginalize opposing moral views.”

“What is sought is not just the safe educational environment desired by all reasonable and compassionate people, but ethical cleansing,” he added.

Murphy also observed that government-run education has “provided the state or other powerful interests the means to bring their power to bear on fundamental freedoms. Unlike law, education is intended to get directly at interior dispositions, opinions, and beliefs of citizens.”

Under equity policies like that in Burnaby, he says,“persons in authority are to use their considerable influence and power over minors in their care not only to suppress language and behaviour deemed ‘unacceptable’ by a state institution, but to inculcate what the state institution considers to be ‘acceptable’ attitudes and ideas.”

“It is now time to recognize that parents are the first line of defence against the abuse of state power in education, and the first protectors, not just of children, but of civil liberties,” he asserts.

Find the Catholic Civil Rights League’s Declaration here, and their letter to the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association here.

How Meg Whitman Failed Her Way to the Top at eBay.

Collecting Billions While Nearly Destroying the Company

Former CEO Whitman's record of gross incompetence, massive waste and personal enrichment is still talked about.

Cookie Gate wrote:

How Meg Whitman Failed Her Way to the Top at eBay.
Collecting Billions While Nearly Destroying the Company
Former CEO Whitman's record of gross incompetence, massive waste and personal enrichment is still talked about.

Will obama stand trial for the murder of brain terry?

Give a double hoot, give Willard Mitt Romney twice as many kicks with the boot to launch him over the moon.

Cookie Gate wrote:

Give a double hoot, give Willard Mitt Romney twice as many kicks with the boot to launch him over the moon.

Will obama stand trial for the murder of brain terry?

We will just call Willard Mitt Romney and his followers th "evil cookie monster" from now on!

Cookie Gate wrote:

We will just call Willard Mitt Romney and his followers th "evil cookie monster" from now on!

That would be fast and furious.

Willard Mitt Romney is a flip-flopper, like a fish out of water.

Willard Mitt Romney can't operate outside his element of greed and sin.

RiccardoFire wrote:

<quoted text>Will obama stand trial for the murder of brain terry?

Probably not. Will RickyRetardo (one of Topix's LEADING "gay issues" trolls) ever post an ON TOPIC comment here?

WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME OVER a SIMPLE CASE OF HERPES?

ELH LOVER wrote:

WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME OVER a SIMPLE CASE OF HERPES?

I lied. It wasn't the herpes, or even you nasty yellow toe nails, I just told you that to spare your feeling. Sorry

Keep floating away on your personel water craft, Willard Mitt Romney.

Since you always float two answers to ever quyestion, problem is; they are both wrong!

And?

Just Think wrote:

<quoted text>
A marriage is a government sanctioned contract between two people. Nothing sacred about it. You don't even need to step inside a church if you don't want to.