Gay people missing from recent GAO report on Social Security

Shortly after posting about the flaws in the upcoming "Rock for Equality" action, I came across a post on the Elder Law Profs Blog about a Government Accountability Project report released last month. The report, Social Security: Options to Protect Benefits for Vulnerable Groups When Addressing Program Solvency, acknowledges and addresses the way Social Security currently deals with families. It

LA Gay and Lesbian Center and NGLTF lead misguided action about Social Security

As a long-time champion of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, it pains me to have to criticize that organization, as well as the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, for its just-unveiled Rock for Equality action. The premise of the action is simple -- and misguided: that same-sex couples, who, even if they marry, cannot have their marriages recognized under federal law, are discriminated

The cost of being a gay couple... the New York Times tells just one part of the story

You know I'm going to respond to any article that says:"Nearly all the extra costs that gay couples face would be erased if the federal government legalized same-sex marriage."Well, that's what the article in today's New York Times concludes. It purports to be a study based on the differences between a married heterosexual couple and a same-sex couple (who, if married in their state, is still not

Important elder law publication...with a caveat

I was so excited to see the National Center for Lesbian Rights' new publication, Planning with Purpose: Legal Basics for LGBT Elders, available on line here. Basically, I love any publication that explains the law to people in a clear and useful way.So why the caveat? Well, the section on relationship recognition begins with a section entitled "Federal Law Discriminates Against Same-Sex Couples

Lambda Legal gets big win for children of disabled parent...but the case shows the risk of parentage orders

Lambda Legal announced this week that the Social Security Administration has agreed to grant child benefits to the two children of a father receiving social security disability benefits. The issue concerned recognition of the parent-child relationship based on two California parentage orders declaring Gary Day the father of his two children. Day now lives in Florida.SSA never issued a ruling on

How about the whole story on taxes and same-sex married couples?

Gary Gates does amazing work. He is singlehandedly responsible for the wealth of knowledge we have about same-sex couples from census data. I turn to him for data for my own work. But his co-authored Huffington Post piece today doesn’t tell the whole story about same-sex couples and taxes.What he writes about is the unfairness of treating married same-sex couples as unmarried for purposes of

The hidden inequalities behind the anti-DOMA litigation

I don't like the Defense of Marriage Act. It's an anti-gay measure, pure and simple. As a political matter, GLAD's lawsuit seeking to overturn one part of the statute on Equal Protection grounds may turn out to be brave, or it may turn out to be reckless. But I've got a complaint whichever way it goes.The equality denied some of the plaintiffs in GLAD's case is the equality to be treated as