Saturday, May 22, 2004

More on the press and the Virginia anti-same sex partnership law

This article is a bit more focused as it says there are two constructions of the anti-gay partnership statute:

"Rebecca Glenberg, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in Virginia, believes the law can be interpreted in two ways. If it's read to protect exclusive rights accorded to married couples, such as filing joint federal income tax returns or immunity from testifying against a spouse, gays and lesbians would largely be unaffected because they don't have these rights now. However, Glenberg said a broader interpretation could include any legal arrangment that married couples are allowed to enter into, such as powers of attorney, property arrangments, wills and medical directives."

The articles I have read about this law in the last day or two are mostly lousy. I don't know what other people mean by the term "media bias," but the stories on this topic seem to be planted by interest groups and emphasize unlikely interpretations of the new law, when the real story, I think, is whether the law is unconstitutional even if it is construed no more broadly than in the manner first indicated by the ACLU lawyer, the same manner as what Delegate Marshall intended.

No comments: