North Dakota Human Rights Coalition
Working to effect change so that all people in North Dakota enjoy full human rights
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North Dakota Human Rights Coalition Working to effect change so that all people in North Dakota enjoy full human rights |
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North Dakota Human Rights CoalitionPosition onProposed Constitutional Amendment to Prohibit Gay Marriage or Civil Unionsin North Dakota
The North Dakota Human Rights Coalition opposes the proposed North Dakota constitutional amendment to prevent the recognition of marriage or civil unions for same-sex couples.
The NDHRC supports full civil rights for all residents of North Dakota, including gay/lesbian/transgender/bisexual residents of our state. Neither enshrining discrimination in our Constitution nor stripping families of basic protections would serve our state’s best interest. The North Dakota Constitution protects and ensures equal treatment for all people. It should not be used to single out a group of people for harmful and detrimental treatment.
############################### Text of proposed North Dakota Constitutional Amendment
Marriage consists only of the legal union between a man and a woman. No other domestic union, however denominated, may be recognized as a marriage or given the same or substantially equivalent legal effect.
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Below is the information that the NDHRC Board of Directors used to adopt this position. Please note that the NDHRC position is regarding the status of marriage in our civil society; this will not affect how religious bodies view gay marriage within their theologies.
The NDHRC views this as a civil rights issue, squarely within the civil rights issues of recent times, including those of black Americans and Native Americans. It is on that basis that this position was adopted.
Excerpts from:Human Rights Campaign“Answers to Questions about Marriage Equality”
Currently in the United States, same-sex couples in long-term, committed relationships pay higher taxes and are denied basic protections and rights granted to married heterosexual couples.
Among them:
Hospital visitation.
Married couples have the automatic right to visit each other in the hospital and make medical decisions. Same-sex couples can be denied the right to visit a sick or injured loved one in the hospital.
Social Security benefits.
Married people receive Social Security payments upon the death of a spouse. Despite paying payroll taxes, gay and lesbian partners receive no Social Security survivor benefits — resulting in an average annual income loss of $5,528 upon the death of a partner.
Immigration.
Americans in binational relationships are not permitted to petition for their same-sex partners to immigrate. As a result, they are often forced to separate or move to another country.
Health insurance.
Many public and private employers provide medical coverage to the spouses of their employees, but most employers do not provide coverage to the life partners of gay and lesbian employees. Gay employees who do receive health coverage for their partners must pay federal income taxes on the value of the insurance.
Estate taxes.
A married person automatically inherits all the property of his or her deceased spouse without paying estate taxes. A gay or lesbian taxpayer is forced to pay estate taxes on property inherited from a deceased partner.
Retirement savings.
While a married person can roll a deceased spouse’s 401(k) funds into an IRA without paying taxes, a gay or lesbian American who inherits a 401(k) can end up paying up to 70 percent of it in taxes and penalties.
Family leave.
Married workers are legally entitled to unpaid leave from their jobs to care for an ill spouse. Gay and lesbian workers are not entitled to family leave to care for their partners.
Nursing homes.
Married couples have a legal right to live together in nursing homes. Because they are not legal spouses, elderly gay or lesbian couples do not have the right to spend their last days living together in nursing homes.
Home protection.
Laws protect married seniors from being forced to sell their homes to pay high nursing home bills; gay and lesbian seniors have no such protection.
Pensions.
After the death of a worker, most pension plans pay survivor benefits only to a legal spouse of the participant. Gay and lesbian partners are excluded from such pension benefits.
Why civil unions aren’t enough.
Comparing marriage to civil unions is a bit like comparing diamonds to rhinestones. One is, quite simply, the real deal; the other is not.
Consider:
Couples eligible to marry may have their marriage performed in any state and have it recognized in every other state in the nation and every country in the world.
Couples who are joined in a civil union in Vermont (the only state that offers civil unions) have no guarantee that its protections will even travel with them to neighboring New York or New Hampshire — let alone California or any other state.
Moreover, even couples who have a civil union and remain in Vermont receive only second-class protections in comparison to their married friends and neighbors.
While they receive state-level protections, they do not receive any of the more than 1,100 federal benefits and protections of marriage.
In short, civil unions are not separate but equal — they are separate and unequal. And our society has tried separate before. It just doesn’t work.
“I believe God meant marriage for men and women. How can I support marriage for same-sex couples?”
Many people who believe in God — and fairness and justice for all — ask this question. They feel a tension between religious beliefs and democratic values that has been experienced in many different ways throughout our nation’s history. That is why the framers of our Constitution established the principle of separation of church and state.
That principle applies no less to the marriage issue than it does to any other. Indeed, the answer to the apparent dilemma between religious beliefs and support for equal protections for all families lies in recognizing that marriage has a significant religious meaning for many people, but that it is also a legal contract. And it is strictly the legal — not the religious — dimension of marriage that is being debated now.
Granting marriage rights to same-sex couples would not require Christianity, Judaism, Islam or any other religion to perform these marriages. It would not require religious institutions to permit these ceremonies to be held on their grounds. It would not even require that religious communities discuss the issue. People of faith would remain free to make their own judgments about what makes a marriage in the eyes of God — just as they are today.
Consider, for example, the difference in how the Catholic Church and the U.S. government view couples who have divorced and remarried. Because church tenets do not sanction divorce, the second marriage is not valid in the church’s view. The government, however, recognizes the marriage by extending to the remarried couple the same rights and protections as those granted to every other married couple in America. In this situation — as would be the case in marriage for same-sex couples — the church remains free to establish its own teachings on the religious dimension of marriage while the government upholds equality under law. It should also be noted that there are a growing number of religious communities that have decided to bless same-sex unions. Among them are Reform Judaism, the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Metropolitan Community Church. The Presbyterian Church (USA) also allows ceremonies to be performed, although they are not considered the same as marriage. The Episcopal Church and United Church of Christ allow individual churches to set their own policies on same-sex unions.
“What would be wrong with a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union of a man and woman?”
In more than 200 years of American history, the U.S. Constitution has been amended only 17 times since the Bill of Rights — and in each instance (except for Prohibition, which was repealed), it was to extend rights and liberties to the American people, not restrict them. For example, our Constitution was amended to end our nation’s tragic history of slavery. It was also amended to guarantee people of color, young people and women the right to vote.
The amendment currently under consideration (called the Federal Marriage Amendment) would be the only one that would single out one class of Americans for discrimination by ensuring that same-sex couples would not be granted the equal protections that marriage brings to American families.
Moreover, the amendment could go even further by stripping same-sex couples of some of the more limited protections they now have, such as access to health insurance for domestic partners and their children.
Neither enshrining discrimination in our Constitution nor stripping millions of families of basic protections would serve our nation’s best interest. The Constitution is supposed to protect and ensure equal treatment for all people. It should not be used to single out a group of people for different treatment.
“Can’t same-sex couples go to a lawyer to secure all the rights they need?”
Not by a long shot. When a gay or lesbian person gets seriously ill, there is no legal document that can make their partner eligible to take leave from work under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act to provide care — because that law applies only to married couples.
When gay or lesbian people grow old and in need of nursing home care, there is no legal document that can give them the right to Medicaid coverage without potentially causing their partner to be forced from their home — because the federal Medicaid law only permits married spouses to keep their home without becoming ineligible for benefits.
And when a gay or lesbian person dies, there is no legal document that can extend Social Security survivor benefits or the right to inherit a retirement plan without severe tax burdens that stem from being “unmarried” in the eyes of the law.
These are only a few examples of the critical protections that are granted through more than 1,100 federal laws that protect only married couples. In the absence of the right to marry, same-sex couples can only put in place a handful of the most basic arrangements, such as naming each other in a will or a power of attorney.
And even these documents remain vulnerable to challenges in court by disgruntled family members.
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North Dakota Human Rights Coalition P.O. Box 1961 Fargo, North Dakota 58107-1961 Phone: (701) 239-9323 Fax: (701) 478-4452 Email: humanrights@ndhrc.org
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