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Senior Couple Among Winners in Maryland Same-Sex
Marriage Case
Former minister, retired Social Security employee
have been together 27 years
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Glen Dehn and Charles Blackburn |
Jan. 21, 2006 – Two senior citizens were among the
winning plaintiffs this week, when a Maryland circuit court ruled that
it is a violation of the state constitution to deny same-sex couples the
numerous protections provided to married couples. Charles Blackburn, 73,
and Glen Dehn, 68, were among nine same-sex couples and a surviving gay
partner filing the suit.
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Blackburn and Dehn have been together for more than
27 years, according to biographies released by the American Civil
Liberties Union and Equality Maryland, who filed the suit.
The gay seniors said they participated in the suit
because, as senior citizens, they are facing all the end-of-life issues
that older couples face, but without the many safeguards that the state
provides married couples.
"We are concerned about being separated in a
nursing home," Blackburn says. "We are so grateful to have each other;
we'd hate to be alone as gay seniors. But we fear we might end up alone
if we can't protect our relationship."
Blackburn retired after working for 25 years as a
fundraiser for institutions in the Baltimore area, including the
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
Ordained a Unitarian minister in 1962, Blackburn
was heavily involved in the civil rights movement in Alabama in the mid
60s and then became an organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union
in ten southern states. He was at one time jailed for these efforts.
Dehn is retired after 31 years of legislative
planning and analysis for the U.S. Social Security Administration. They
live in Baltimore and have been together for more than 27 years.
As senior citizens, Blackburn and Dehn are healthy
and active, according to the ACLU documents. They enjoy traveling
around the world and share interests in art, theater and classical
music.
They are living their "golden years" to the
fullest, but worry about what will happen to them when the time comes to
slow down. Without the benefits and protections of marriage, the
decades Blackburn and Dehn have spent together could be at risk.
As a retired federal employee, Dehn has excellent
health benefits and coverage that he cannot share with Blackburn. Now
that Blackburn is in his 70's, he wonders what will happen if he becomes
ill and the protections of marriage are not available to him, , the
statement said
Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Brooke Murdock
found that denying same-sex couples the ability to marry violates the
state constitution’s Equal Rights Amendment, which protects against
discrimination based on sex. She also found that there is not a
rational basis for denying same-sex couples the ability to marry.
The court ruled, “When tradition is the guise under
which prejudice or animosity hides, it is not a legitimate state
interest.”
The opinion further noted, “The Court is not
unaware of the dramatic impact of its ruling, but it must not shy away
from deciding significant legal issues when fairly presented to it for
judicial determination. As others assessing the constitutionality of
preventing same-sex marriage note, justifying the continued application
of a classification through its past application is ‘circular reasoning,
not analysis,’ and that it is not persuasive.”
“Same-sex couples need the same protections for
their families that opposite-sex couples do,” said Ken Choe, a senior
staff attorney with the ACLU’s Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, who
argued the case. “The court was right to conclude that preventing
same-sex couples from marrying is sex discrimination. The only reason
Lisa Polyak can’t marry her partner of 24 years, Gita Deane, is because
she is another woman and not a man, which as the court recognized, is
unconstitutional.”
The ACLU filed the lawsuit on July 7, 2004, in
partnership with Equality Maryland, charging that it is a violation of
state constitution to deny same-sex couples the ability to marry and the
many family protections that come with marriage. The case was argued
before Judge Murdock on August 30, 2005.
More than 100 religious leaders from across the
state signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the right of
lesbian and gay people to marry. State civil rights organizations and
one of the state’s leading child welfare organizations also filed briefs
supporting marriage for same-sex couples.
"It's inherently unfair to me that members of my
congregation who attend services every Sunday with their children are
forced to go without protections that my wife and I take for granted,"
said Andrew Foster Connors, Minister of Brown Memorial Park Avenue
Presbyterian Church, where a gathering of religious leaders was held in
August to support the suit.
The event was attended by more than 40 religious
leaders representing wide range of religions and denominations,
including Baptist, conservative rabbis, Methodist, Lutherans and
Catholics.
The state is expected to appeal the
decision. Maryland’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, will almost
certainly have the ultimate say over the issue. The case will likely
continue for well over a year, perhaps much longer.
In addition to Choe, the legal team includes David
Rocah, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Maryland, Art Spitzer, Legal
Director of the ACLU of the National Capital Area, and Andrew H. Baida
and Caroline D. Ciraolo of the Baltimore law firm Rosenberg Martin Funk
Greenberg, LLP.
More information is available at
www.aclu.org/caseprofiles,
www.aclu-md.org and
www.equalitymaryland.org
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