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The Social Security Administration has agreed to fully recognize the marriage of Arlene Goldberg of Fort Myers - one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Florida, and Stephen Rosenthal of the Podhurst Orseck law firm challenging Florida's ban on marriages for same-sex couples - and her late wife Carol Goldwasser. As a result, Goldberg will now receive the Social Security survivor's benefits to which she was entitled.
The Social Security Administration has agreed to fully recognize the marriage of Arlene Goldberg of Fort Myers - one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Florida, and Stephen Rosenthal of the Podhurst Orseck law firm challenging Florida's ban on marriages for same-sex couples - and her late wife Carol Goldwasser. As a result, Goldberg will now receive the Social Security survivor's benefits to which she was entitled.
"I am so grateful to finally have this done," stated Goldberg. "Carol and I were married, same as anybody else, and I've had to fight to have that marriage recognized. I am glad that the fight to have our relationship recognized is over, and that because of this case future couples won't have to fight for that recognition."
Arlene was one of seventeen people who, along with SAVE, a South Florida-based LGBT rights organization, are represented by the ACLU in a federal lawsuit challenging the state's ban on marriage for same-sex couples. Arlene had married Carol Goldwasser in New York in October 2011. They had been together 47 years when Carol passed away on March 13, 2014 - the same day that the ACLU of Florida announced its lawsuit challenging the marriage ban in Florida. Because the state did not recognize their marriage, Arlene was unable to receive Carol's Social Security survivor's benefits that would have helped her remain financially secure following Carol's death.
In August 2014, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle issued an order in the case striking down Florida's marriage ban. The order went into effect in January 2015, bringing marriage equality to the state of Florida. A request for final judgment in the case is still pending.
Even after the order compelling the state to legally recognize their marriage, however, Goldberg still struggled for over a year to receive the Social Security survivor's benefits to which she was entitled. With the assistance of the ACLU, Goldberg petitioned the Social Security Administration to have her marriage recognized. She will now receive the full benefits going forward and has just received the past benefits she was previously denied following Carol's passing.
"We are very happy that we were able to get this resolved for Arlene," stated Daniel Tilley, LGBT rights staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida. "However, this is just one case. Social Security survivors' benefits are just one of the many federal protections and responsibilities that come with marriage that most people take for granted. Now that the Supreme Court has held that states banning loving same-sex couples from marriage is unconstitutional, we look forward to future guidance from the Social Security Administration making clear that all surviving spouses whose marriages were wrongfully not recognized by their home state should be treated the same as anyone else."
More information about the ACLU of Florida's federal marriage equality lawsuit is available here: https://aclufl.org/issues/lgbt-rights/marriage-equality-lawsuit/
Today, June 26, 2015, the United States Supreme Court issued a historic, sweeping ruling in favor of the freedom to marry in Obergefell v. Hodges. The unprecedented decision, decades in the making, will soon bring the freedom to marry to same-sex couples across the country, ending marriage discrimination once and for all. Follow our Live Blog HERE for up-to-the-minute updates on what's going on in the states.
Today, June 26, 2015, the United States Supreme Court issued a historic, sweeping ruling in favor of the freedom to marry in Obergefell v. Hodges. The unprecedented decision, decades in the making, will soon bring the freedom to marry to same-sex couples across the country, ending marriage discrimination once and for all. Follow our Live Blog HERE for up-to-the-minute updates on what's going on in the states.
The ruling means that same-sex couples throughout the entire nation will no longer be banned from the rights and responsibilities of marriage guaranteed by the Constitution.
Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry, celebrated joyously with the thousands of Americans couples who will finally be able to share in the fundamental freedom to marry the person they love. He said:
Today's ruling is a transformative triumph decades in the making, a momentous victory for freedom, equality, inclusion, and above all, love. For anyone who ever doubted that we could bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice, today the United States again took a giant step toward the more perfect union we the people aspire to. Today the Liberty Bell rings alongside wedding bells across an ocean of joy.
With the ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, the justices affirmed what a super-majority of Americans had come to understand: the freedom to marry is a precious, fundamental right that belongs to all, and that same-sex couples and our families share the same dreams and needs as any others.
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Freedom to Marry has long worked toward winning marriage nationwide, always with the ultimate goal of winning at the United States Supreme Court. The decision today was issued in cases brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, Lambda Legal, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, as well as local counsel from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee. Learn about each of the cases here.
Why are reproductive rights losing while gay rights are winning? Indiana's attempt to enshrine opposition to gay marriage under the guise of religious freedom provoked an immediate nationwide backlash. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has allowed religious employers to refuse insurance coverage for birth control--not abortion, birth control--to female employees; new laws are forcing abortion clinics to close; and absurd, even medically dangerous restrictions are heaping up in state after state. Except when the media highlight a particularly crazy claim by a Todd Akin or Richard Mourdock, where's the national outrage? Most Americans are pro-choice, more or less; only a small minority want to see abortion banned. When you consider, moreover, that one in three women will have had at least one abortion by the time she reaches menopause, and most of those women had parents, partners, friends--someone--who helped them obtain it, the sluggish response to the onslaught of restrictive laws must include many people who have themselves benefited from safe and legal abortion.
The media present marriage equality and reproductive rights as "culture war" issues, as if they somehow went together. But perhaps they're not as similar as we think. Some distinctions:
SS Marriage equality is about love, romance, commitment, settling down, starting a family. People love love! But marriage equality is also about tying love to family values, expanding a conservative institution that has already lost most of its coercive social power and become optional for millions. (Marriage equality thus follows Pollitt's law: Outsiders get access when something becomes less valued, which is why women can be art historians and African-Americans win poetry prizes.) Far from posing a threat to marriage, as religious opponents claim, permitting gays to marry gives the institution a much-needed update, even as it presents LGBT people as no threat to the status quo: Instead of promiscuous child molesters and lonely gym teachers, gays and lesbians are your neighbors who buy Pottery Barn furniture and like to barbecue.
Reproductive rights, by contrast, is about sex--sexual freedom, the opposite of marriage--in all its messy, feckless glory. It replaces the image of women as chaste, self-sacrificing mothers dependent on men with that of women as independent, sexual, and maybe not so self-sacrificing. It doesn't matter that contraception is indispensable to modern life, that abortion antedates the sexual revolution by thousands of years, that plenty of women who have abortions are married, or that most (60 percent) who have abortions are already mothers. Birth control and abortion allow women--and, to a lesser extent, men--to have sex without punishment, a.k.a. responsibility. And our puritanical culture replies: You should pay for that pleasure, you slut.
SS Same-sex marriage is something men want. Lesbian couples account for the majority of same-sex marriages, but even the vernacular "gay marriage" types it as a male concern. That makes it of interest to everyone, because everything male is of general interest. Though many of the groundbreaking activists and lawyers who have fought for same-sex marriage are lesbians, gay men have a great deal of social and economic power, and they have used it, brilliantly, to mainstream the cause.
Reproductive rights are inescapably about women. Pervasive misogyny means not only that those rights are stigmatized--along with the women who exercise them--but that men don't see them as all that important, while women have limited social power to promote them. And that power is easily endangered by too close an identification with all but the most anodyne version of feminism. There are no female CEOs pouring millions into reproductive rights or threatening to relocate their businesses when a state guts access to abortion. And with few exceptions, A-list celebs steer clear.
SS Marriage equality has cross-class appeal: Anyone can have an LGBT child, and parents across the political spectrum naturally want their kids to have the same opportunities other children have. Any woman might find herself needing an abortion, too, but she may not realize that. Improvements in birth control mean that prosperous, educated women with private doctors can control their fertility pretty well--certainly better than women who rely on public clinics--and if they need an abortion, they can get one. It's low-income women who suffer the most from abortion restrictions--and since when have their issues been at the top of the middle and upper classes' to-do list?
SS Marriage equality costs society nothing and takes no power away from anyone. No one has been able to argue persuasively that your gay marriage hurts my straight marriage. But reproductive rights come with a price tag: Government funding is inevitably involved. ("If you want to have a party, have a party, but don't ask me to pay for it," said one New Hampshire lawmaker as he tried to cut funding for contraception.) Also, contraception and abortion give power to women and take it from others: parents, employers, clergy, and men.
SSIn marriage equality, there is no loser. But many, including some who call themselves pro-choice, feel that abortion creates a loser: the embryo or fetus. You have to value women a lot to side with the pregnant woman, with all her inevitable complexities and flaws, over the pure potentiality of the future baby.
SS Marriage equality is a wonderful thing, an important civil right that brings dignity to a previously excluded group. Over time, it may subtly affect the gender conventions of straight marriage, but it won't fundamentally alter our social and economic arrangements. Reproductive rights, though, are inescapably connected to the larger project of feminism, which has already destabilized every area of life, from the bedroom to the boardroom. What might women demand, what might they accomplish, how might they choose to live, if every woman had children only when and if she wanted them? "Culture war" doesn't begin to describe it.