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denim · 05-02-2004, 06:58 PM

Quote:

Virginia just passed the "Marriage Affirmation Act." Not only does it ban gay marriage or civil union, and ban recognizing gay marriages or civil unions performed in other states, but it bans any "partnership contract or other arrangements that purport to provide the benefits of marriage."

What benefits are those? Well, the bill's pretty clear about that. ETA: Reading through it again, it's not actually out on the table in plain English. But this particular language probably means the following, according to the lawyers looking at the bill:

Powers of attorney. Custody arrangements. Health insurance coverage for same-sex domestic partners. Joint ownership of property. And--most sickeningly--wills leaving property to a same-sex partner.

It means that starting July 1, when this bill goes into effect, anyone who dies with a will that leaves their property to their same-sex partner can be treated as if they died without a will. Their property goes to their blood relatives. Don't have any? Sorry, your property's forfeit to the state of Virginia.

ETA: Not that the last is necessarily likely--it would probably be legal under this law, but the state's lawyers may not be quite that ready to start a legal battle. Wills being invalidated in favor of blood relatives is very, very likely.

The last time we had laws about who you could leave property to in a will, those laws were to forbid people from leaving property to slaves. That's not a part of our history I'd particularly like to revisit.

Anyone living in Virginia with a child they've adopted in a second-parent adoption? Sorry, you're a legal stranger to your kid in Virginia. If your partner dies, your kid goes to your partner's relatives or becomes a ward of the state. Have a custody order from another state? Thrown out. Have an order to pay child support to your ex's biological child? Probably thrown out too.

Anyone have a power of attorney for your elderly or disabled partner? Sorry, those decisions have to be made by a "real" relative. Or a court-appointed guardian, if you don't have one. Get in a wreck on the Virginia side of the state line, with a health-care power of attorney from another state authorizing your partner to make medical decisions for you? It's probably a worthless piece of paper, and, personally, that scares me to death. We live in Maryland. All our relatives live south of here. It's not like we can avoid driving through Virginia. We could fly, but the airport's in Virginia.

ETA: Whether to honor wills, custody orders, or powers of attorney is going to be up to individual judges. Some of them, in more liberal areas, are likely to say that these don't constitute "benefits of marriage." Many of them, in the majority of Virginia, are likely to say that they do, and throw them out. It's a big, scary question mark. And it leaves people who've made these legal documents to protect their families with no better answer to "Are they still valid?" than "There's a chance that they will be, if you get a good judge."

artaxastra's been getting calls all week from people who are going to have to leave the state. There's the couple who just moved into their new house in Virginia two months ago, the house that come July can't legally be in both their names. There's the national credit card company that may have to move its headquarters if it wants to continue to issue joint credit cards to same-sex couples. There's the professor leaving his tenured position at a university because if he stays his partner won't get his pension.

And there's the one that made her nearly cry at the dinner table telling me about it, the old lady in southern Virginia who lives with her partner. She's sixty-five, disabled, and blind. If her partner can't have her power of attorney anymore, she doesn't know how she'll get her bills paid or her banking done or her prescriptions filled at the drugstore. She asked artaxastra what to do, and the best she could say was, "Move across the state line into North Carolina."

This is just. Plain. Wrong.

And why are they doing this? Well, one legislator was kind enough to provide an explanation: to drive homosexuals in the state of Virginia into a legal limbo, so that they'll either have to become heterosexual or leave, and to break the power of homosexuals in state business and politics.