The case of Indonesian citizen Handi Lui and American Michael Ernest has been dismissed by a federal judge who relied upon a homophobic and outdated court ruling from 1982 rather than contemporary information regarding same-sex marriage.
Lui and Ernest married in Massachusetts in 2009, and the two sued the government after US Citizenship and Immigration Services denied the couple’s marriage-based petition for permanent residency for Lui. The lawsuit argued that the USCIS violated the Immigration and Nationality Act’s wording regarding discrimination on the basis of sex and that the immigration officials interpreted the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional.
House Speaker John Boehner’s pet anti-LGBT lawyers moved to dismiss the case. Judge Stephen V. Wilson dismissed it saying that immigration officials did not err in their decision. The problem is that he went further. He relied upon a 1982 case involving a gay male couple that were denied immigration sponsorship rights. In that case, the rejection of the petition was based upon the fact that the attorneys for the couple had “failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two faggots.”
Click here for gay wedding resources.
To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right, or use the form at right to join our email list. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com. Or find us on Facebook. We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.
I just re-read Adams v. Howerton, the 1982 case at issue, and it nowhere uses the f-word seemingly attributed to it by this story. Maybe this was someone’s characterization of the decision, but that is not a natural reading of what lezgetreal wrote and purpleunions copied.
I’m told that the “f” word quote above, from the original article on Lez Get Real, is apparently not actually part of the original decision. FYI! –Scottt
The “f-word” quote was from a letter by the INS regarding the initial petition. (Quoted in ABA Journal, Volume 70, Aug. 1974