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FRIDAY October 18,2013
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bendbulletin.com TODAY'S READERBOARD
SHUTDOWN
Federal workers are back on the job
RuSSian meteOr —A fragment thought to be from the
February fireball tips the scales at more than half a ton.A3
Plus: Buriedsecrets
— Archaeologists discover a
By Lauren Dake
rare prehistoric ritual site.A3
The Bulletin
Jne Bell —Friends remember the La Grande
man who died /
whil e walking
acrossthe U.S. against bullying and in memory of his son.BS
Modern dayslavery — Nearly 30 million people live
in subjugation.A6
Online comments —The solution for spammers and trolls? Sweet silence.A5
SALEM — It's still illegal forsame-sex couples to marry in Oregon, but the state will start recognizing the marriageofsuch couples who were legally wed in other states. A memo was sent out to all state employees stating: "Oregon agencies must
recognize all out-of-state marriagesforthe purposes of administering state programs," Michael Jordan, the state's chief operating officer wrote. "That includes legal,
same sex-marriages performed in other states and countries." The move comes in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision overturning
the federal Defense of Marriage Act. With the federal government now recogniz-
ing same-sex marriage, Jordan asked the Department of Justice if any policy changes needed to be made at the state level. Now, "we have directed all state agencies to treat samesex couples with a legal marriage from another state the
same way they would treat any other couple that had a legal marriage," said Matt Shelby, a spokesman with the Department of Administrative Services. The justice memo looks at other marriages that are legal in other states, but not Oregon, such as common law marriages. SeeMarriage/A5
Gay marriageovertheyears The state of same-sexmarriage in the United States is sometimes unclearand ever-changing. For most of the past two decades, thefederal government by law recognizedonly heterosexual unions and let states refuse to recognizegay marriages or similar unions from other states. In 2012, most of that law was deemed unconstitutional, and recognition of marriage rights expanded. While some states prohibit most marriage-like rights for gays, by statute or constitutionally, others (including Oregon) have constitutional
amendments prohibiting same-sexmarriagebut also allow most marriage-like rights by law, intheform of domestic partnerships or civil unions. Still other states mayrecognize only somerights, or the unions performedlegally in other states orcountries. (Oregonhas now becomeoneof the latter.) While it might appear to be a march toward full legalization nationwide, court decisions and ballot measures have also gone the other way. Critics of
And a Web exclusive-
gay marriagehavescored othervictories, most recently in North Carolina, wherevoters approvedthe latest constitutional ban in 2012.
Lobbyists' lobbying group
where such lawsareclear:
in D.C. wants new name that
doesn't mention lobbying. bendbnlletin.com/extras
EDITOR'5CHOICE
Studentsface increasing poverty
These maps show how the patchwork of state marriage laws have evolved since 2000. The maps group states into the following categories,
• Gay marriage andsimilar unions are illegal For years, manystate statutes havedefined marriage as"one man, one woman" but mostly left marriage-like rights for gaysunaddressed. The states in red, however,are explicit in excluding same-sexcouples.
• Gay marriage is legal
2000
2004
2007
No state allowed gay marriage, but only a few explicitly banned it. Some states, starting with
By year's end, more than half of the states
Vermont, began to offer limited benefits for
Following a court order, Massachusetts began recognizing marriage rights for gays; later, gay marriage becamelegal. Other states expanded
had bannedgay marriage. lowa's banwas struck down. Washington andOregon
partners, as did the District of Columbia. By 2000, the federal Defense of Marriage Act
partnership rights. But, during the presidential election, 11 states amended their constitutions
created domestic partnerships; civil unions began in other states. Both categorizations
had been onthe books for four years. ln Oregon,state law defined marriage as a civil contract between"males at least17 years of ageandfemales at least17 years of age."
By Lyndsey Layton The Washington Post
A majority of students in public schools throughout the AmericanSouth and West are low-income for the first time in at least four decades, according to a new study that details a demographic shift with broad implications for the country. The analysis by the Southern Education Foundation, the nation's oldest education philanthropy, is based on the number of students from preschool through 12th grade who were eligible for the federal free and reduced-price meals program in the 201011 school year. Children from those low-income families dominated classrooms in 13 states in the South and the four Western states, including Oregon, researchers found. See Poverty/A5
• Most or all marriage rights are granted
to ban marriageand/or marriage rights. in Oregon,Multnomah County officials began marrying gay couples in March2004. Amonth
recognize arelationship but may not offer
full marriage benefits.
in Oregon,the partnerships that were
later, a judge put a stop to it but ordered the
approved will extend most marriage
state to recognizethousands of unions already performed. (Theywerevoided ayear later.)
the state constitution, as it is today.
benefits. Gaymarriagewasstill banned by
INDEX
2008
2011
2013
California's high court legalized gay marriage — but at the end of the year, voters passed
Three starkly different situations appeared on the map: Of the six states that recognized full
The U.S. Supreme Court has since struck down the federal ban on marriage-like
Proposition 8, which bannedit. More states
marriage for same-sexcouples, five were in
rights. Gaymarriage is legal in13 states-
recognized civil unions. A Connecticut court
the Northeast. A vast swath of the country's midsection prohibited gay marriage. And the
14, if weddings begin Monday as expected in New Jersey — and in D.C. Full bans exist in 26 states, with additional restrictions in eight more states — but many federal
said gays canmarry. lowa's court order was put on hold. Arizonavoters approved aban. ln Oregon,the domestic partnership law providing most marriage benefits to
registered same-sexpartners took effect in February 2008.
West Coast states allowedmarriage-like rights — but not marriage. Meanwhile, two important cases — on the federal restrictions
and California's voter-approved ban —were making their way through the courts,
eventually up to the U.S.Supreme Court.
agencies haveextended marriagebenefits to couples legally married somewhere regardless what the law is where they live. Now, Oregon will do the same.
ln Oregontoday It's still illegal for gays to marry in Oregon. But we learned Thursday the state Justice Department is saying same-sex couples legally married elsewhere are now eligible for the same benefits that any other married couple can get. Meanwhile, a measure seeking to overturn the 2004 constitutional ban
had collected morethan100,000 signatures asof Thursday, morethan 80 percent of what's neededbyJuly to qualify for the fall 2014 ballot. Sources: "Gay marnage chronology" from the Los Angeles Times, Greg Stoll apps, OregonLaws.org, Oregon United for Marnage, Procon.org, Bulletin research
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The Bulletin An lndependent Newspaper
Vol. 110, No. 291, 62 pages, 6 sections
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: IIIIIIIIIII III o
88267 02329
Chris Anderson walked out of the Deschutes National Forest headquarters Thursday afternoon with a smile on her face and a mushroom-picking permit in her hand. Inside "I'm so • Walden g lad t hey are explains back," she vote said. a gainst A nder s o n ending 65 of Bend shutdown, said she B3 wasn't able to purchase her permit during the 16-day federalgovernment shutdown. Now with the permit she plans to go pick chanterelles this weekend. Central Oregon offices for the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management were closed during the shutdown and only skeleton crews of law enforcement officers and maintenance workers were on the job on public lands. Thursday, more than 200 federal workers were back at work in the headquarters building in Bend, which also houses offices for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service. More than 100 federal workers in Prineville also returned to work. SeeWork/A4
be slowafter shutdown
Sunny Page B6
The Bulletin
StartLlp may
TODAY'S WEATHER High 64, Low 32
By Dylan J. Darling
By Laura Litvan, Jim Snyder and Allan Holmes Bloomberg News
WASHINGTON — The emails went out to federal employees shortly after President Barack Obama signed the bill funding the government: Report to work. For some departments, however, starting up will be harder than shutting down, and it may be weeks or even months before the government resumes issuing loans, payments and contracts at a normal pace. "This has been very disruptive," Larry Allen, president of Allen Federal Business Partners, a contract consulting firm in McLean, Va., said in an interview. "The shock wave will last for months." SeeStartup/A4
David Wray i The Bullet>n
Correction
Fossil raisesquestions about human evolution By John Noble Wilford New Yorh Times News Service
After eight years spent studying a 1.8-million-year-old skull uncovered in the republic of Georgia, scientists have made a discovery that may rewrite the evolutionary history of our human genus Homo. It would be a simpler story
with fewer ancestral species. Early, diverse fossils — those currentlyrecognized as coming from distinct species like Homo habilis and othersmay represent variation among members of a single, evolving lineage. In other words: Just as people look different from one another today, so did early
hominids look different from one another, and the dissimilarity of the bones they left behind may have fooled scientists into thinking that they came from different species. This was the conclusion reached by an international team of scientists led by David Lordkipanidze, a paleoanthro-
pologist at the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi. The key to this revelation was a cranium excavated in 2005 and known as Skull 5, which scientists described as "the world's first completely preserved adult hominid skull" of such antiquity. SeeFossil /A4
A story headlined "Figuring outhow schoolsmatchup," which appearedThursday, Oct. 17, onPageA1,contained incorrect information supplied to The Bulletin by the Oregon Department of Education. The correct low-income rate for Bend charter school REALMS is 40 percent. Due to this error, all ODE comparisons between REALMS and "like schools" in the article are invalid. The Bulletin regrets the error.