Mark Reed and Dante Walkup had been together for 10 years when they decided to get hitched. There was one problem: they wanted to be wed at home, in Texas, where gay marriage is illegal. So they fired up Skype.
Determined to marry amongst friends and family in Dallas, Reed and Walkup turned to technology to make their dream wedding come true. They traveled to Washington DC, where they applied for and received a Certificate of Marriage. Then they found Officiant Shiela Reid-Alexander to preside over the ceremony back in Dallas.
On their big day, the Dallas banquet hall had all the usual trappings of a wedding, but it also had an AV system and an internet connection. On a screen behind the grooms, Reid-Alexander appeared via Skype to officiate the ceremony remotely from D.C., where gay marriage is legal.
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The only anti-gay ballot initiative that passed this week that I know of was in El Paso, Texas. Surprise surprise, it was poorly-worded and now everyone’s getting benefits cut:
By a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent, voters passed an initiative saying, “The city of El Paso endorses traditional family values by making health benefits available only to city employees and their legal spouse and dependent children.”
In response, the city attorney’s office released a statement Wednesday saying there could be legal challenges, but the city will eliminate health coverage of:
Gay and unmarried partners of city employees.
Children such as foster kids who are not dependents under the federal tax code.
Grandchildren of city employees.
Retirees who are eligible for health coverage through another employer.
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 – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.
A Texas court of appeals has reversed a lower court’s ruling allowing a gay couple to divorce. The court ruled Tuesday that the state’s ban on gay marriage does not violate the Texas Constitution, the AP reported.
The Fifth Texas Court of Appeals overruled a ruling by District Judge Tena Callahan that allowed two Dallas men – known only as J.B. and H.B. – married in Massachusetts to divorce. The court concluded that Callahan did not have the proper jurisdiction to make such a determination.
Callahan’s ruling also declared Texas’ ban on gay marriage unconstitutional. The appeals court disagreed. Attorney General Greg Abbot appealed the ruling, arguing that the marriage should be “voided,” which essentially nullifies the marriage as invalid.
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 – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.
Some might call it a step in the right direction for gay rights. Two Borderland women are now legally married right here in the state of Texas.
When El Paso county refused to give them a marriage license, they turned to a judge in San Antonio, but what does the Attorney General have to say about the situation?
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 – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.
Voters in El Paso, Texas will be asked to decide if the domestic partners of city employees will be eligible for health benefits provided by the city. Last year the El Paso, Texas City Council voted 7-1 to grant health benefits to the domestic partners of the city’s employees. However, Many against the decision claim the city is endorsing “homosexual lifestyles”, and have been fighting to overturn council’s decision ever since.
A group calling itself El Pasoans for Traditional Family Values has been trying to overturn that decision since its passage and last week managed to get the 1,500 signatures on a petition it needed to force a citywide vote on the issue on Nov. 2.
“City Council wants to waste taxpayers’ dollars – really basically pick pocketing the taxpayers to endorse a homosexual lifestyle choice. I think it is just the wrong time, and in our view it’s just wrong no matter what the time is,” said pastor Tom Brown of El Paso’s World Life Church, who has been leading the charge to have his “traditional family values” ordinance passed in the city council.
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 – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.
The 2010 GOP platform in Texas supports laws that criminalize sodomy and suggests that straight people who support same-sex marriage should be penalized with jail time.The GOP platform was quoted as openly stating:
“We oppose the legalization of sodomy. We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy,” the GOP platform reads. Meaning that even though the U.S. Supreme Court overturned sodomy laws last decade (ironically in a case that stemmed from Texas), Texas Republicans would like the state to have the power to criminalize LGBT folks for having sex.
“We support legislation that would make it a felony to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple and for any civil official to perform a marriage ceremony for such,” reads the GOP platform.
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 – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.
A fitness center owned by Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas won’t allow same-sex couples to sign up for family memberships, a possible violation of the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance that’s prompted calls for a boycott of the facility.
Steven Johnson said he’s been a member of the Baylor Tom Landry Fitness Center, at 411 N. Washington St. in downtown Dallas, for the last eight months. On Tuesday, May 4, Johnson tried to add his partner of 23 years, Roland Crago, to his membership, but the gym refused.
“I have had numerous health clubs,” Johnson said, “and all of them have accepted us as family members. So add Tom Landry Fitness Center to your list with Exxon and all the other companies we can not support with our dollars.”
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 – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.
There’s a fascinating little case out of El Paso in which a male-to-female transgender person is seeking to marry another woman. The Texas Tribune reports that the El Paso county attorney is requesting an opinion from AG Greg Abbott about whether the trans woman can marry another woman, given that the trans woman was technically born a male.
Now I’m no expert, but I do believe that in the infamous 1999 case of Littleton v. Prange, a Texas appeals court refused to recognize a marriage between a man and a male-to-female transsexual, saying that you have to go by the birth certificate of the trans person.
But according to the Tribune, lawmakers changed the Family Code in 2009 to allow a sex-change court order to nullify a birth certificate for the purpose of marriage licenses. And it would certainly seem to me that the bottom line here is, you can’t have it both ways.
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 – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.
A man seeking to end his same-sex marriage in Dallas County is arguing an ironic point in a state that doesn’t recognize his nuptials: Grant the divorce and there will be one less gay marriage in Texas.
“My client is a married man and he needs a divorce,” said the man’s attorney, Jody Scheske, who argued that granting the divorce promotes the state’s policy against gay marriage. “But for the actions of the attorney general, there would already be one less same-sex marriage in Texas.”
That argument came Wednesday before a three-judge panel in the Fifth District Court of Appeals in Dallas that is hearing arguments after Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott appealed a state district judge’s ruling in October to grant the divorce. In her decision, Judge Tena Callahan also ruled that the state’s ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional.
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 – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.
A Texas judge has refused Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s attempt to intervene in a gay divorce case, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Abbott filed a motion to block the divorce of Sabina Daly, 41, of San Antonio, and Angelique Naylor, 39, of Austin, on February 10, a day after Travis County District Judge Scott Jenkins had granted the couple a divorce. The women married in Massachusetts in 2004.
At the time, Abbott said he was concerned that the divorce would force the state to recognize the existence of gay marriage. “A divorce is an ending or a termination of a valid legal marriage,” Abbott said. “In this instance there was no valid legal marriage recognized by the state of Texas. Texas can’t have a faulty precedent on the books that validates an illegal law.”
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 – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.
