Boy Scouts membership declines
The Boy Scouts of America said Wednesday that it lost 6 percent of its membership in 2013, a year in which it announced it would accept openly gay boys for the first time, over the objections of some participants who eventually left the organization. The organization’s national leadership voted in May to accept openly gay boys for the first time, while continuing to exclude gay leaders. That policy change, while lauded by gay-rights groups, angered conservatives and some members who consider homosexuality a sin and a violation of Scouting values. With nearly 2.5 million youth and almost 1 million adults, Scouting remains a significant force in communities across the United States, even though its membership has slowly, but steadily declined over the last decade.
Associated Press
A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Kentucky must recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, part of an unprecedented barrage of marriage-equality lawsuits in states where voters have overwhelmingly opposed recognition of gay and lesbian couples.
U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn II struck down part of the gay-marriage ban that Kentuckians had approved in 2004, saying it treated gays and lesbians “in a way that demeans them.”
“Assigning a religious or traditional rationale for a law does not make it constitutional when that law discriminates against a class of people without other reasons,” wrote Heyburn, an appointee of Republican President George H.W. Bush.
His decision coincided with legal attacks Wednesday on gay-marriage bans in three other socially conservative states — Texas, Louisiana and Missouri — and was issued just a few weeks after federal judges in Utah and Oklahoma struck down the voter-approved bans in those states.
According to the advocacy group Freedom to Marry, there are now 45 pending marriage-equality cases in 24 of the 33 states that do not allow same-sex marriage. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have legalized such unions, while three other states — Colorado, Nevada and Oregon — grant marriage-like rights though civil unions or domestic partnerships.
The stage for the current wave of litigation was set by the U.S. Supreme Court last June, when it ordered the federal government to recognize valid same-sex marriages, but stopped short of striking down state laws banning them. Gay-rights activists hope that one or more of the lawsuits filed since June or planned for the near future will reach the high court and lead to nationwide legalization.
The Kentucky decision came in lawsuits brought by four gay and lesbian couples seeking to force the state to recognize their out-of-state marriages.
The ruling only requires Kentucky to recognize such marriages. It does not deal with the question of whether the state can be required to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
The ruling drew the ire of religious leaders who said Heyburn’s decision takes away Kentucky’s right to determine its policies regarding marriage.
Among the developments elsewhere:
• In Texas, a lawyer representing the state asked a federal judge to reject pleas from two gay couples to suspend the state constitution’s definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. Mike Murphy, an assistant solicitor general, told District Judge Orlando Garcia that if he lifted the voter-approved ban on gay marriage, he would be injecting himself into a social and political debate that should be left to lawmakers.
Garcia did not immediately rule or indicate when he might release a written decision but predicted the case, or a similar one in another state, will reach the Supreme Court.
• In Missouri and Louisiana, gay-rights advocates filed lawsuits similar to those in the Kentucky case, seeking to force the states to recognize same-sex marriages performed in places that allow them.
The Louisiana suit was filed in federal court by a state gay-rights group, the Forum for Equality Louisiana, on behalf of four gay couples. It says state revenue department policy essentially requires married same-sex couples who file joint federal tax returns to falsely claim they are single on state returns — a violation, the Forum says, of free speech.
The lawsuit also challenges the state’s refusal to recognize both members of a same-sex union as parents of a child born to them or adopted.
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