Issue 26 Volume 41
Celebrating 40 Years!
FRIDAY June 28, 2013 FREE! 25¢ in bookstores & newsstands
Seattle Gay News
DOMA is dEAD!
SEATTLE’S LGBT NEWS & ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
Prop 8 appeal dismissed!
by Mike Andrew SGN Staff Writer
STATES’ RIGHTS INVOKED DOMA also intrudes on the states’ traditional role defining marriage, Kennedy said. “DOMA undermines both the public and private significance of state-sanctioned same-sex marriages; for it tells those couples, and all the world, that their otherwise valid marriages are unworthy of federal recognition,” he wrote. While their rejection of DOMA see doma page 25
Marvin Joseph / The Washington Post
In a pair of historic decisions issued June 26, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down DOMA and declined to rule in the Prop 8 case, giving same-sex couples the federal benefits of marriage and clearing the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California. The decision on DOMA was close, as expected, with Justice Anthony Kennedy joining the court’s so-called liberal bloc to produce the 5-4 majority. Writing for the majority, Kennedy laid out a very sweeping criticism of DOMA, concluding that it “violates basic due process and equal protection principles applicable to the federal government …” He said that the law “instructs all federal officials, and indeed all persons with whom same-sex couples interact, including their own children, that their marriage is less worthy than the marriages of
others.” “The federal statute is invalid,” Kennedy concluded, because “no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom that State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.”
Gay rights advocate Vin Testa waves a flag in front of the Supreme Court.
courtesy ron sims
Former King County Executive and HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims
by Mike Andrew SGN Staff Writer The early morning e-mail from State Sen. Ed Murray’s campaign promised that a “special guest” would make “an announcement … that will have a major impact
on the mayoral race” at 10 a.m. on June 27. The special guest turned out to be four-term King County Executive and former HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims, announcing his endorsement of Murray for mayor of Seattle.
GETTY IMAGEs
Ron Sims endorses Ed Murray for Mayor
Reactions to this week’s historic Supreme Court marriage equality decisions
Sims had once been touted as a potential candidate for mayor, and early polling showed him leading the pack, but he ultimately decided not to run. He has been a fixture of King County politics since the mid-1980s and remains hugely popular among union members, progressives, and communities of color. Sims’s seal of approval is a major coup for Murray’s campaign. CITES SHARED VALUES Saying he was “enthusiastic” about Murray’s candidacy, Sims acknowledged that as county executive he’d had differences of opinion with the senator. “We called them ‘exchanges,’ but other people called them ‘clashes,’” Sims grinned. “It’s because we’re both strong-willed people.” Nevertheless, Sims said, he respects Murray as a skilled coalition-builder who could assemble the necessary forces to realize his political goals. “Ed Murray is the right person at the right time to lead Seattle into a new era of progress and prosper-
President Barack Obama
BARACK OBAMA President “I applaud the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act. This was discrimination enshrined in law. It treated loving, committed Gay and Lesbian couples as a separate and lesser class of people. The Supreme Court has righted that see sims page 7 wrong, and our country is better
off for it. We are a people who declared that we are all created equal – and the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. “This ruling is a victory for couples who have long fought for equal treatment under the law; for children whose parents’ marriages will now be recognized, rightly, see reactions page 24