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With human rights abuses all over the world, including here in America, it is a huge victory for the civil rights movement in general to hear good news. Currently 17 states allow same-sex marriage, 10 states recognize unions and partnerships, while 33 still have it banned. Although these 33 states ban it, this news is significant for equality for anyone who is LGBT. Because it applies to all federal employees, federal programs, and judicial systems, it thereby includes the states that still discriminate based on sexual orientation. The people affected in the states which ban same sex marriage are still allowed these equal civil rights under national law. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 is really an extension of the Civil Rights Acts and more specifically the 1969 federal hate crime law, which did not specifically cover sexual orientation based hate crimes. This news from the Justice Department is a step in implementing the laws. This shows a willingness to uphold the Civil Rights Acts and commitment to the fairness for all values which these laws are based on.
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Justice Department to give married same-sex couples equal protection:
Key excerpts from The Washington Post article:
Last summer, the Office of Personnel Management announced that federal employees in same-sex marriages could apply for health, dental, life, long-term care and retirement benefits. The Department of Health and Human Services said that legally married same-sex seniors on Medicare would be eligible for equal benefits and joint placement in nursing homes.
The Social Security Administration will pay death benefits to survivors of a same-sex marriage. The Department of Homeland Security will treat same-sex spouses equally for the purposes of obtaining a green card if the spouse is a foreign national. And the IRS has begun treating same-sex marriages equally for tax-filing purposes.
“We are, right now, in the middle of marking a number of 50-year anniversaries of key milestones in the civil rights movement,” Holder said Saturday night. “And yet, as all-important as the fight against racial discrimination was then, and remains today, know this: My commitment to confronting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity runs just as deep.”
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| -Picture from Human Rights Watch |
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