Good plan Michigan! If you keep letting homosexuals have access to reasonable insurance, what's next? The flood gates of reason could open and people might start expecting available health care for children. Or worse yet - affordable health care for everyone! That would be tragic indeed!

This story makes me want to get really get involved in judicial elections in my state, but it is really is difficult to tell in state elections what the political leanings or lead foot of a judge is when they are not allowed to run on any political platform. i kind of wish they could just say-yep, i am a homophobe, and will interpret everything in accordance with that agenda, vote for me.

Thanks Michigan Supreme Court. You just made it that much more difficult for me to think about moving back after grad school.

Sigh. Not that it wasn't exactly what we expected. But you can always hope.

The blame here doesn't fall on the courts, but on the voters who passed the measure in the first place.

And ooooh how I blame them.

The blame here doesn't fall on the courts, but on the voters who passed the measure in the first place.

And ooooh how I blame them.

Wow. This is going to kill the Michigan college's ability to recruit faculty. I lot of very smart people are going to boycott on principle, whether they're gay or not.

You'd be surprised how active the gay and lesbian professors are in Michigan; hopefully they're thinking of ways to fight this right now. (I know, for instance, that they fought for the rights of gay and lesbian faculty members at Michigan State's Dubai campus.)

It makes me really sad. Two of my professors that I know of have domestic partners; one has children with disabilities. Do we know if this extends to children?

What's also interesting in this is the fact that this rather contradicts the official policy of the Cool Cities initiative -- they want to gentrify certain cities to retain young people, and that includes creating Gay and Lesbian neighborhoods.

Stupid Michigan; stupid auto industry.

I read this in the Detroit Free Press this morning. It is absolutely ridiculous! This is why people like me leave the state and are leaving next week!

astraevirgo-yes...boohoo to the auto industry!

I read this in the Detroit Free Press this morning. It is absolutely ridiculous! This is why people like me leave the state and are leaving next week!

astraevirgo-yes...boohoo to the auto industry!

That's just appalling. It's one thing not to offer that sort of thing (which is bad enough), but forbidding private companies from providing additional benefits if they choose to do so?

God humanity makes me sick so often. I cannot accept people's close-mindedness but I can block it out. But why the fuck do these people always have be so... vindictive? It doesn't effect you for homosexual couples to be together, and it sure as hell doesn't effect you for them to have employee benefits. Arseholes *fuming*

It's the "can't" that makes no sense to me. "Don't have to"---that fits. I don't particularly like it, but given the constitutional amendment, there's no way they could be forced to provide benefits.

But not allowed to? Insane.

This is not surprising in this state (my home state.) However, I'd like to give props to the University of Michigan who, by determining that I am an "other qualified adult" not a domestic partner, allows me to recieve my partner's benifits. Essentially they saw this coming and took pre-emptive action. I suppose someone may try to fight it, but that would have to go the courts again and may take years.

some anonymous person (who I don't necessarily trust, being anonymous) left a comment on my blog (see above) saying that this may not actually be the result of the ruling. I don't know enough about law to say for sure, if someone else knows, maybe they could fact-check?

That's funny, I seem to remember the anti-gay groups insisting that they weren't going to take away anything with the Michigan law, just "protect marriage" with it.

So much for honesty.

Do you hear the giant sucking sound pulling people away from U of M and MSU? Recruitment, schuitment

I don't know much about US Constitutional Law, but can this ruling be appealed to a Federal Court, or even the US Supreme Court, based on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment?

Karmakaze, I might be reading it wrong, but it looks like it only affects public-sector employees, not private companies. Still horrible and stupid, but I think private business can still choose to be decent.

Bethany, I got hit by the same drive-by cut 'n' paste artist. Some of the workarounds being explored by various institutions (like UM, referenced by Evelyn above) may be bullet-proof, while others (like MSU's DP benefits as long as they're not CALLED domestic partners) might not. The fact that we even have to look for ways around this god-awful amendment and the spiteful anti-gay lawsuits it prompted pisses me off to no end.

Like Dan Savage said in a recent Savage Love, where were all these Marriage = 1 Man + 1 Woman shitheads during the whole Texas Polygamy busts?

I would like to give every one of these shortsighted, bigoted, anhedonic motherfuckers a kick in the SOUL.

astraevirgo - This will effect children's coverage if the child has no legal link to the employed parent; if they were covered under their birth/adoptive mom or dad's domestic partner's policy, they're SOL now.

Our anti-equality amendment in Pennsylvania has been tabled -- for now. There was a hearing about it a month ago and we had conservative legal types tripping all over themselves to proclaim how "protecting marriage" wouldn't affect benefits for the families of public employees or domestic violence laws or anything else but we see it time and time again and there's no reason to think that this won't continue to happen when someone gets a hair and says "wait, this is fundamentally like marriage" and sues.

That is so mean and small. Unbelievable.

I realize that I'm in violation of Godwin's law, but Michigan is taking a play right out of 1930's Germany's playbook.

In a time of economic collapse, widespread unemployment and foreclosure, and political disenfranchisement, they are singling out a minority group for special persecution as a means of feeling like they're accomplishing something.

Michiganders I've talked to have described how friends and families have actually bought the whole "this will hurt straight marriage" line... worried that stormtroopers will burst in on Sunday morning Mass and force the priest to marry two men at gunpoint.

All of this is the work of the state Republicans, Dick DeVoss and his wife Betsy -- two vile, disgusting human beings who have literally made their fortune off of lying to and exploiting people.

As other people have pointed out, liberal bastions like the University of Michigan are actively pursuing workarounds that go exactly as far as the letter of the law requires and not a millimeter further. They KNOW that they will lose talented, valuable employees if they don't.

The sad, sad thing is that U of M is also currently engaged in another "letter of the law but no more" compliance battle. That one is over affirmative action, AFTER the university already completely overhauled its admission process to meet the Supreme Court standards. Conservatives got a ballot proposition to ban affirmative action wholesale and it passed by an appalling margin.

Just goes to show once AGAIN that racial discrimination and homophobia are part of the same disgusting agenda and use the same strategies.

great post.. i love it Herpes Remedies