Court finds US marriage law unconstitutional
"Businesses call Defense of Marriage Act unfair; Filing for top court says same-sex couples suffer" by Beth Healy | Globe Staff, February 28, 2013
Nearly 300 companies and business groups across the country, including many prominent Massachusetts firms, are asking the US Supreme Court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, saying it forces them to discriminate against married gay employees.
A who’s who of corporate America signed on to a friend-of-the-court brief filed Wednesday. The group of 278 businesses includes the Bay State’s EMC Corp., State Street Corp., Akamai Technologies Inc., and a number of law firms and health insurers.
“The federal law forces an employer to put its employees in two different castes,” said Sabin Willett, a partner with the Boston law firm Bingham McCutchen, which wrote the brief. “DOMA is bad for business.”
The stand is the latest sign that gay marriage is gaining greater acceptance in mainstream America, just 10 years after Massachusetts became the first state to legalize it.
The Obama administration last week asked the Supreme Court to side with a lower court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act — known as DOMA — which defines marriage as between one man and one woman.
That was followed by Wednesday’s filing by businesses, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, adding their legal objection to DOMA. The new court brief was the most sweeping of its kind yet, as a major swath of corporate America stood up to argue that treating married employees differently based on whether they are gay or straight is unfair and a cost burden.
Nationally, companies that signed the brief included high-tech giants Google Inc. and Apple Inc., Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs Group, and the Walt Disney Co.
The group also included Bain & Co., the Boston consulting firm that launched Mitt Romney’s career before he started Bain Capital. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, opposed gay marriage when it became legal here in 2004 and opposed it in his campaign for president last year....
Who?
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case of Windsor v. United States on March 27....
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Related:
White House urges justices to end ban on gay marriage
The administration has been under pressure from gay rights groups and others to enter the Proposition 8 case.
"3.4 percent of American adults identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender."
I though it would have been a lot more given the attention and politically-correct sensitivity they are shown.
Document gains GOP support
It is a separate issue from marriage; however, it occurs to me that gay people were never denied the vote like women and blacks.
