The Senate Judiciary Committee met Thursday to discuss legislation that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, but after a procedural holdup the legislation has been delayed until next week for a vote, according to ABC News. Passed in 1996, DOMA defines marriage as “a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.” The Respect for Marriage Act, which was introduced in March of this year, would provide federal protection to couples married in states that recognize same sex marriages. “DOMA has created a tier of second-class families who are not treated equally under the law,” said Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “This runs counter to the values upon which America was founded.” The bill would redefine marriage to be determined by the states, as it historically has been. “The Respect for Marriage Act would restore the power of states to define and determine ‘marriage’ without the federal government imposing its restrictive definition of marriage on the states,” said Leahy. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) echoed Leahy’s remarks. “It has been firmly established over decades, that family law, including marriage,” is a law handled by the states. Six states and the District of Columbia have legalized same sex marriages. “When DOMA passed, no state had passed a same sex marriage bill,” Feinstein said during the meeting. “Where now, today, there are 131,000 same-sex couples in the United States. They are real people. They’re our family members, our friends, our neighbours. They made a solid commitment of marriage to each other.” Leahy and Feinstein, who are two of the cosponsors of the bill, were quick to point out that nothing in the bill would force any state or religion to perform same-sex marriages, simply recognize the “1100 federal rights and benefits provided to every other legally married couple in the country,” said Feinstein. Some of the rights that are not awarded to same-sex marriages include filing joint income taxes, veterans’ benefits, employment benefits and immigration laws. “All married couples deserve the same clarity, fairness, and security under our Federal law,” said Leahy. “The time has come for the Federal Government to recognize that all married couples deserve the same legal protections.” Republicans on the committee today requested that the vote be delayed until next week. However, the legislation is expected to pass the panel when it comes to a vote, as it is supported by all ten Democrats on the committee. After that the legislation will go to the full Senate for consideration.
Public acceptance of same sex marriage has grown at an accelerating pace, with approval jumping by nine percentage points in the past two years and the nation now evenly divided on the issue, according to a new Pew Research Center survey released Thursday. The Los Angeles Times reports that the poll, conducted in late September and early October, showed 46-percent of Americans surveyed support legalizing same-sex marriage and 44-percent are opposed. The survey among 2,410 adults has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. It is one of several released this year showing the public evenly divided or very narrowly favouring same sex marriage rights. Since the mid-1990s, support for same-sex marriage had been growing by a couple of percentage points each year, according to polls by Pew and others. Younger voters support legalizing same-sex marriage considerably more than their elders, and the gradual shift in public acceptance occurred as younger people entered the voting population and older ones died. But in the last few years, as states have begun to legalize same-sex marriage, people at all age levels have shifted position on the subject. That has driven a much more rapid change in overall public opinion, the new polling shows. Members of the baby boom generation (aged 47-65), for example, opposed same-sex marriage in 1996 by more than 2 to 1. But in the latest poll, the margin had narrowed to 42-percent to 48-percent. Similar shifts have taken place among Americans older than 65. Among those younger than the baby boomers, same-sex marriage has majority support. Among Americans aged 18-30, support for legalization is now at 59-percent. Nonwhites remain considerably less supportive than whites of same-sex marriage, however. Among whites in the survey, 50-precent said they supported legalization. Among nonwhites, the figure was 39-precent. That held true across age levels. Among Americans under 30, for example, 67-percent of whites supported legalization compared with 48-precent of nonwhites.
New York Magazine reports that at a screening Wednesday night of Rampart, director Oren Moverman talked about a new project he's scripted: an adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novel Queer, which will star Guy Pearce, Ben Foster, and Kelly MacDonald for director Steve Buscemi. "Steve is one of the first people I worked with in the film business, and he's a great director. I love him as a director," Moverman explained. If you don't remember Queer, let Moverman catch you up: "Queer was written with Junkie, which was the first Burroughs book, but it was never published because the publisher said, you know, 'I've got Junkie, you want to put Queer in there? How far can I push this thing?'" laughed Moverman. "So it wasn't published until 1984. It was written in 1952. And once it was published, it was really the story of William S. Burroughs kind of discovering himself as a writer by being obsessed with this boy. And there's very little in it about the wife, but what's happening at the same time is it's the time where [Burroughs] killed his wife, you know, during the whole famous William Tell routine. So that's sort of the incident that we started working with and built this whole movie around." Moverman says he first wrote the script ten years ago, and he can barely believe that it's actually becoming a reality. Still, he cautioned, "It's still in the early stages of the actual making because Steve, as you know, is a little busy with his show he's doing on HBO. But once he has his hiatus next time around, after the next season, we're going to go shoot this movie. God willing."
0 comments:
Post a Comment