Insurance Benefits for Same-Sex Partners Violates Michigan DOMA - 4 Dec 2003
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...A Michigan-based public-interest law firm says providing insurance benefits to the same-sex partners of public school employees violates that state's Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) -- but two Michigan universities and the ACLU don't agree. Earlier this fall, the Thomas More Law Center filed a lawsuit against the Ann Arbor Public Schools, claiming that public funding of insurance benefits to same-sex partners is an attempt to institutionalize same-sex "marriage" -- which the Center is contrary to Michigan's DOMA, which was passed in 1996. But the University of Michigan, Wayne State University, and the American Civil Liberties Union have requested permission to file briefs in support of such public funding. Richard Thompson of the Law Center says citizens of the Great Lake State "should be outraged that their hard-earned money paid out in taxes is being used to fund the homosexual agenda in their state." The school district's same-sex domestic partnership policy, he says, "has all the trappings of marriage except the title" and is "an incremental strategy to legitimate same-sex marriage." The county circuit judge in the case was to hear arguments from both sides Wednesday afternoon. |