Equality On Trial

Recapping the week of June 18 – 22 at Prop8TrialTracker.com

June 24, 2012

Community/Meta

By Jacob Combs

What you may have missed over the past week at Prop8TrialTracker.com…

On Monday, June 18, I started out our coverage with a post on the proposed ballot language for Maine’s upcoming marriage equality referendum, in which voters will consider whether or not to bring equal marriage back to the state.  Scottie analyzed BLAG’s opening brief in the DOMA Golinski v. OPM in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that DOMA is constitutional, and also brought us an equality news update featuring Montana Senator Max Baucus’s newly announced support for marriage equality.

On Tuesday, I covered marriage equality updates in Maine, France and Australia, while AFER’s Matt Baume covered a newly released and deeply flawed study about gay parenting that challenges the firmly established academic consensus that gay parents are as good for children as straight parents.  Scottie analyzed the National Organization of Marriage’s amicus brief in the DOMA case of Golinski v. OPM, and ended the day’s coverage with an equality news round-up featuring a letter signed by nine urging the Senate HELP Committee to advance the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to a full floor vote.

On Wednesday, I started the day off with positive new polling and fundraising from Washington and Minnesota, where marriage equality could win two important ballot victories in November.  Scottie covered a newly announced DOMA trial filed by a lesbian employee of St. Joseph’s Hospital, the first suit to be filed against a Catholic hospital for denial of coverage, and also posted another news round-up that included more positive polling out of Colorado.

On Thursday, I wrote about BLAG’s filing in the DOMA case Pedersen v. OPM asserting that the government group would appeal the First Circuit’s decision striking down DOMA to the Supreme Court by the end of June.  Scottie covered the next steps for both the Prop 8 and DOMA trials, and ended the day with a news round-up that featured an Illinois judge’s decision to consolidate two marriage equality cases that were recently filed in the state.

Friday morning, I began our coverage by analyzing the brief filed by Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval seeking to dismiss the marriage equality case Sevcik v. Sandoval, a Prop 8-like case seeking to bring equal marriage rights to Nevada, which currently offers only domestic partnerships.  Later in the day, Scottie broke the remarkable news that David Blankenhorn, one of the key witnesses who testified against Prop 8 in court, had written a New York Times op-ed announcing his support for equal marriage rights for gay couples.

As always, remember that Quick Hits can always be found to the left of the main blog posts (and if someone’s interested in rounding up Quick Hits for the week like this, drop us a line!). And don’t forget to follow Equality on Trial on Facebook and on Twitter for more coverage and updates! All P8TT posts are published on Twitter immediately after they go up, so you can get word that way too. We’re tweaking the e-mail subscriptions tool, so that’ll be in better shape soon as well. And of course, if you like the coverage we do here and the work we’re doing to bring you all this news, it ain’t free. Please consider tossing a few bucks in the hat to help us do it — or better yet, become a small monthly donor. We’re working hard to cover these issues and we appreciate your support so we can keep doing so.

Pro-Prop 8 witness David Blankenhorn now supports... Proposed bill in California would reiterate...