IN THE NEWS Gay American couple sues Trump's State Department over daughter's citizenship

Remember earlier this year that Pres. Trump issued an order saying that Children from out of the U.S. or born through surrogates out of the U.S.  and adopted by Gay couples "WILL NOT BE GIVEN U.S. CITIZENSHIP"?  Well, there are already a couple of law suits for this horrible, vicious, hateful anti-family and anti-LGBT law. Here's one from July 24, 2019 from theHill.com in Washington,DC:

 Gay American couple sues State Department over daughter's citizenship

By Rebecca Klar - 07/23/19 04:03 PM EDT 1,104

A gay U.S. couple is reportedly suing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for discrimination after the State Department denied citizenship to their daughter, who was born in the U.K. with help of a surrogate.

The New York Times reported that James Derek Mize and his husband Jonathan Gregg filed a lawsuit Tuesday after their daughter, Simone, was denied citizenship even though both of her parents are American citizens.

Simone was born in the U.K. last year using the donor egg of a British friend and Gregg’s sperm. She was reportedly denied citizenship when the family submitted an application after returning home to the U.S. Her tourist visa will expire at the end of July. 

“I try not to think about ICE coming to our door and deporting our baby,” Mize told the Times, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “That is a pretty hard thing to think about.”
The State Department has a policy requiring that children born abroad through assisted reproductive technology and surrogacy must show biological parentage in order to obtain citizenship.

At least two other same-sex couples are suing the agency for similar reasons and nearly 100 congressional Democrats last month urged Pompeo to reverse the “cruel” policy, according to the Times.

The State Department told The Hill it would not comment on ongoing litigation.
The Times reported that in court documents the department has argueed that the policy does not discriminate and applies to opposite-sex and same-sex couples alike.
Under the State Department policy, cases where the source of the sperm and egg do not match married parents are treated as “out of wedlock” and require a higher bar to transmit citizenship, the Times reported.

Gregg, a U.K.-born citizen to an American mother, does not meet the five-year U.S. residency requirement, but the newspaper said the couples’ lawyers argue that would not matter if the couple had been treated as married.
Under the Obama administration, after same-sex marriage was legalized, the State Department policy was adjusted, according to the Times, so that biological connection could be tied to supplying the egg or the sperm as well as giving birth to a child, allowing same-sex couples to have a child “in wedlock.”

But under the Trump administration, the State Department is fighting the lawsuits in courts in what critics are saying is discrimination against same-sex parents.

Gay Husband Not Allowed to Claim his Husband's Body

If you think that gay couples don't face discrimination since gay marriage became the law of the land, think again. The Washington Post just published a story about a gay Husband Not Allowed to Claim his Husband's Body.  (BTW, it also happened to a couple here in the Washington, DC area 2 years ago after they were married and one passed).
   Our christian friends say "Christians should Never do such horrible things," and they're right. But Christians, especially in the Southern U.S. do this ALL THE TIME and they are the face of christianity in the southern U.S. It's inhumane, it's appalling, it's disgusting, it's evil. Just imagine not being allowed to claim your spouse's body after they pass in a hospital or having a funeral home refuse to have services for your deceased spouse. That's the reality of many christians in the Southern U.S., whether people want to believe it or not.

They lived as a gay couple in Mississippi for 20 years. The worst indignity came in death, lawsuit says.

Source: WASHINGTON POST

For most of the 52 years he was in a relationship with Robert Huskey, Jack Zawadski doesn’t remember much in the way of anti-gay discrimination.

A decoration in the home of Robert Huskey, left, and Jack Zawadski, featuring old pictures of the married couple. Zawadski is now 82, and Huskey died last year at age 86. (Veronica Hayyar)

Not while they were trying to grow apples on a farm in Wisconsin. Not during the decades they spent as special education teachers. Not even when they moved to Mississippi 20 years ago to retire someplace warmer and more lush, or after they married in 2015, when the Supreme Court declared that gay couples have as much of a right as heterosexuals to marry.

But in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Pearl River County, Miss., Zawadski said that prejudice finally reared its head when he was most vulnerable: last May, when Huskey died at age 86 after a long illness.
In a 14-page complaint, Zawadski, 82, said the funeral home that had been prearranged to pick up and cremate Huskey’s body refused at the last minute, telling the nursing home that they don’t “deal with their kind.”

 

In a response filed with the court in March, the owners of the Picayune Funeral Home in Picayune, Miss., deny the events as described by Zawadski and his nephew, who made the arrangements and is co-plaintiff.

Silas W. McCharen, an attorney for the owners of the funeral home, Ted and Henrietta Brewer, said in an email that the firm has never discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation. Henrietta Brewer denies she made reference to not serving “their kind,” he said, and the firm never refused to pick up the remains. But he declined to elaborate further.

Zawadski is being represented by Lambda Legal, an LGBT rights law firm and advocacy organization based in New York. Because neither Mississippi law nor federal law explicitly forbid discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, the suit is relying on “other state laws that hopefully will provide a remedy for the terrible actions that happened here,” said Beth Littrell, the attorney handling the case.
“The essence of the claim is that they both breached a contract and denied services at the last minute to a grieving family based on the fact that the man who had passed away was gay and was married to a man,” said Littrell, whose organization is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages from a jury.

 

For Zawadski, the suit is a rare activist moment. He said he and his husband lived unassuming lives and were rarely open with their friends and neighbors about their sexual orientation. “We lived our lives quietly,” he said in an interview. “We didn’t hit the bars or anything like that.”

The pair met in 1965 in California. After moving around and traveling to indulge their interest in Civil War history, they decided to settle down in the small town of Picayune, not far from the Louisiana border. Zawadski grew camellias, and Huskey served for a time as president of the homeowner’s association.
“And that’s how we lived,” Zawadski said. “We just enjoyed each other.”

They never mentioned their sexual orientation, and nobody asked, he said — not even after the two were married by a judge in nearby Hancock County on Aug. 17, 2015.

 Then, Huskey’s health took a turn, and he underwent bypass surgery, the complaint said. “Jack cared for Bob through his surgery, recovery and as his condition deteriorated,” it said. “By August, 2015, Jack was helping Bob with all the daily functions of life, including eating, walking and personal hygiene.” Huskey moved into a nursing home, and last April it became clear that he would soon die.

The couple’s nephew, John Gaspari, made the arrangements ahead of time with Picayune Funeral Home, the only funeral home in the county with an on-site crematory, according to the complaint. Zawadski had hoped to hold the funeral there so the couple’s local friends could pay their respects. On May 11, 2016, Gaspari contacted the funeral home to let them know Huskey had died. But after filing the paperwork, including a document naming Zawadski as next of kin, Gaspari got a call from the nursing home.

“The Nursing Home relayed to John that once received the paperwork indicating that Bob’s spouse was male, PFH refused service because it did not ‘deal with their kind,’ ” the lawsuit stated.

 

Gaspari and Zawadski were left scrambling to find another funeral home that could cremate Huskey on-site, according to the complaint. They found one in Hattiesburg, about 90 minutes away. But because the nursing home did not have a morgue, it refused to hold Huskey’s remains until the Hattiesburg facility could retrieve it. So Gaspari and Zawadski had to enlist a second, closer funeral home to pick up his body until then.

“The turmoil and exigency created by Defendants in causing Plaintiffs to find alternative arrangements, as described above, permanently marred the memory of Bob’s otherwise peaceful passing,” the complaint said. Zawadski said his motives for bringing the suit are not financial but rather to ensure that no one else goes through what he experienced. In a video produced by Lambda Legal, Zawadski said through tears that the funeral home had shown disrespect toward his husband.
“This, I hope, brings him some honor,” he said.

 

In the News: Minn. Gay Teen Gets Death Threats After Coming Out

I just heard about this teenager in Minnesota who is dealing with torment from so-called "religious" kids in his class, (I say "so called" because they're obviously not religious) who have vandalized his home and given him death threats. Just this week in North Carolina another gay teen hung himself because of all the bullying from so-called "religious" kids. Is THIS what religion in Minnesota is teaching kids?  If so, then the religions or churches (likely it's local backwards churches) need to be wiped out of society to achieve harmony. There is something wrong with religions when they promote hatred and intolerance and condone violence, suicides and allow death threats to people who are different. I can't tell you how disgusted I am with right-wing nuts who teach their kids this behavior. - Rob
 
 Noah Ratgen, Minnesota 8th Grader, Says Driveway Was Vandalized With 'God Hates Fags' After Coming Out

HUFFINGTON POST:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/noah-ratgen-gay-teen-vandalism-_n_4740520.html


Just days after a Minnesota teen claimed to have received death threats after coming out on social media, another gay student in the same school district has come forward with similar claims.
As local news channel Fox 9 reports, 8th grader Noah Ratgen says his family's driveway was vandalized with "God hates fags" in large letters about a week after he came out on social media last fall.
"It hurt -- just like calling someone fat or ugly," Ratgen, who attends junior high school in the Centennial school district in Circle Pines, Minn., told the news station. Ratgen's parents reported the incident to police, but no arrests have been made to date, according to the report.
"There's no reason to do it at all," he added. "I just don't understand why we're such a big problem."
Ratgen's claims follow those of Ryan Eichenauer, a high school senior who said he received two anonymous letters which contained death threats in class earlier this month. Eichenauer shared a videotaped coming out message on Facebook just before the start of 2014.
 KMSP-TV
  Much like British Olympic diver Tom Daley, Eichenauer refrained from using the terms "gay" or "bisexual" in his coming out video, but nonetheless admitted being attracted to boys.
     In 2012, 17-year-old Jay 'Corey' Jones of Rochester, Minn. commited suicide after allegedly being tormented by his classmates for being gay. That same year, Minnesota's Anoka-Hennepin School District had to fight back after a controversial Rolling Stone article drew attention to its treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students in the wake of a rash of teen suicides in the region.