Updated: Commissioner Adams & Eddie v. The State of Oregon

All you're trying to do is legalize something that has already been voted on. NO TO SAME SEX MARRIAGES or anything that remotely comes close to it. We weren't created or evolved or whatever to be with the same sex, otherwise a man could get a man pregnant or a woman get a woman pregnant. Get a clue or go away! --- MORON

Thank you Commish Sam! My family and myself greatly appreciate your dedication, as well as the city councils, to continue the fight for equality.

Hey, same job, same hours, why not same benefits. Who care's who lives with or loves who? Its none of our business. Everyone deserves equal treatment under the law. Good luck Sam.
My brother fought Rutgers University for years for equal health care benefits for him and his partner...which were finely granted by the state. He changed his title to "2nd Class Apartheid Professor," and when he retired the letter congratulating him from Rutger's then homophobic president was addressed to..."2nd Class Apartheid Professor..." We had some laughs.

I understand the Tanner ruling requires that health insurance and other employer sponsored benefits be provided equitably to all State Employees and their spouses (of any gender). Does it cover pension benefits?

That said, Oregon's State Constitution prohibits same sex marriage. If you accept that premise, doesn't it follow that same sex divorce would also be prohibited?

If an employer sponsored pension plan is only available to legally married couples, it seems logical that the division of pension assets would only be available to legally married couples.

If the constitutionality of Oregon's marriage statute is not the subject of this lawsuit, how can you assert a right to divorce?

If gay couples are proscribed from getting married, it seems logical they can't be divorced. If the division of pension assets is predicated on divorce, then the State is not discriminating against homosexual couples any more than they are discriminating against heterosexual couples that are unable to divorce.

To put it another way: more than 50% of all marriages end in divorce. If you assume the average person has 10 sex partners (and fewer than 2 marriages), it follows that 80% to 90% of all "couples" never got married. Should the State be obligated to divide pension benefits amongst all the heterosexual unions that each straight employee enters into during their employment?

Is the division of pension assets really an employer sponsored benefit, or mere compliance with the divorce court's decrees?

Sam and Greg,

Thanks for putting up with all this BS -- what you are standing up for is what is right.

HK

Saturday, February 24, 2007
Ward and June Cleaver R.I.P.!

Ah the Cleavers. Ward went to work, June put on the apron and they together raised two boys. This was our vision of the American family. Most families were actually some version of that nuclear family and our government wrote laws to benefit nuclear marriage. Long gone are terms like "illegitimate children" "bastards" and "shacking up". For better or for worse our culture now openly includes single parenting, gay relationships, couples living together etc. etc. etc.
O.K. This is not about family values. Rather a look at the outdated laws concerning
marriage.
Some say our government needs to affirm marriage as between a man and a woman. Some say the definition now needs to be expanded to include gays. In reality both sides promote discrimination.
Recently Portland City Commissioner Sam Adams filed suit for the right to split his retirement benefits with his partner of twelve years. If they are entitled than wouldn't it be discrimination to deny unmarried straight couples who live together?
How about a couple in a committed platonic relationship? Or two sisters living together? Commissioner Adams is fighting for equal rights. Ironically what he will gain is the right along with married couples to discriminate. What a mess! There is a very simple solution. Get government out of the marriage business altogether and leave the definition of marriage to individuals. Wouldn't your marriage have more meaning if you were free to define your own marriage rather than government mandating a one definition fits all in our ever diversifying society? Government could be freed from legislating morality by simply replacing discriminatory marriage licenses with simple civil unions to any couple which could be used as a fair basis for benefits.

Roy says, "Wouldn't your marriage have more meaning if you were free to define your own marriage rather than government mandating a one definition fits all in our ever diversifying society? "

Let's see. Roommates could be married then and get benefits, like health insurance. Old folks in a nursing home-one gets the VA benefits that the other has qualified for. You best friend can get health benfits from your employer. Boy, this sounds good!

Sexual deviance like all other profoundly human and irrational instincts is potentially disruptive to the social mechanism; the social mechanism, therefore, must do all in its power to prevent against the existence of any such destabilising forces. This punishment, as is here evidenced, is not limited only to the committers of unimaginably heinous crimes. However, the more substantial barrier to our acceptance of Utopia