Connect with us

Nebraska Still Fighting Same-Sex Marriage 11 Months After Obergefell

Published

on

State Won’t Let Married Couple, Who Are Lesbians, Have Both Parents’ Names on Birth Certificate

Nearly 11 months after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of nationwide marriage equality, Nebraska still isn’t allowing same-sex couples to be listed as parents on birth certificates. 

Kristin and Katie Collins-Henderson of Omaha (photo) are expecting their second child next month. But because the state hasn’t updated its birth certificate forms to reflect the high court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, Katie Collins-Henderson can only be listed as “friend” on the document. 

“It’s kind of like a kick in the gut. I’m not a friend. This is my child, too,” Katie Collins Henderson told WOWT-TV.  

The Collins-Hendersons, who traveled to Iowa to have their first child so they could both be listed on the birth certificate, said they recently learned from hospital officials that the state still hasn’t updated its birth certificate forms. 

The state Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) agreed to update the forms last November, as part of the ACLU’s original lawsuit challenging the state’s marriage ban. Due to concerns about implementation of the changes, the ACLU obtained an injunction from a federal judge this February, ordering Nebraska officials to treat same-sex couples equally, including on birth certificates. 

However, more than three months later, state officials say they need to hold a hearing — scheduled for today — to take input from the public on what the updated birth certificates will look like. 

“This is an important step in the process before changes to the birth certificate are made,” said Taylor Gage, a spokesman for GOP Gov. Pete Ricketts. 

Asked whether it normally takes a year to change state documents after a court ruling, a DHHS official told the station: “The time from when legislation is passed to implementation varies.”

After the hearing, the proposed changes must be signed off on by both the attorney general and governor — but that isn’t likely to happen in time for the Collins-Hendersons. 

Katie Collins-Henderson questioned why the public should even have a say in how the new forms look. 

“I believe they don’t want to change it and they’re dragging their feet.” she said.  

 

EARLIER:

Nebraska GOP Governor: Bill Protecting LGBT Citizens ‘Unnecessary’ (Video)

GOP Lawmaker Pushes ‘Religious Freedom’ To Kill Bill Allowing Gays Equal Adoption Rights

Nebraska Woman Sues All ‘Homosexuals’ In Federal Court, Because Jesus (Literally)

 

Image via Facebook

Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

News

Trump Pledges to Concede ‘Fair’ Loss Before Quickly Casting Doubt on Election Integrity

Published

2 hours ago

on

November 5, 2024

By

Four years after losing the 2020 presidential election that he has never formally conceded, Donald Trump on Election Day claimed he will concede this year’s election if it’s “fair,” before attempting to sow doubt on how secure America’s elections are. The Republican presidential nominee also insisted he did not need to tell his supporters there should be no violence, despite the January 6, 2021 insurrection that Trump was impeached for inciting.

Told by a reporter at a polling station that some Americans are “concerned that if you lost this election, you wouldn’t concede again,” Trump was asked, “what do you say to those people?”

The Republican presidential nominee replied, “I think they’re crazy.”

“If I lose an election, if it’s a fair election, I’d be the first one to acknowledge it,” Trump said (video below), a claim he also made in 2020. “And I think it’s, well, so far, I think it’s been fair. I think there’s been a lot of court cases, both sides are lawyered up. Thousands of lawyers are involved, you know, thousands, can you imagine?”

READ MORE: Trump Closes Campaign With Misogynistic Slur, Violent Rhetoric Against Women

“And part of that is because we have too complicated a process,” Trump alleged, before touting the sophistication of watermarking paper ballots. “If we had a piece of paper, watermarked, you know that paper is more sophisticated now than computers. It’s watermarked paper.”

Trump then moved on to criticizing computers, saying, “hopefully they’ll be able to get these expensive computers going.”

“You know, the reason you use computers is to make time, so that it’s like fast. You don’t use them so that you have to come up with an answer three days later, and that’s a little scary when they say, what what are they doing? You use a computer because it calculates quickly. And you use paper because you save costs, but the paper turns out to be much quicker than the computer. There’s something wrong with that, so we don’t like that.”

Amid concerns in 2016 that he would not concede if he lost, Trump said: “I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters and to all of the people of the United States that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election, if I win.”

Early in 2020 Trump began to lay the groundwork to contest that election, which his own Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Chris Krebs, would come to tell Americans, “was the most secure in American history.” He did so again this year.

Asked if he should tell supporters there should be no violence if he loses, Trump quickly snapped (video below), “I don’t have to tell them that, that they’ll be no violence. Of course there will be no violence. My supporters are not violent people.”

“I don’t have to tell them that. I certainly don’t want any violence, I certainly don’t have to tell — these are great people. These are people that believe in no violence, unlike your question. You believe in violence.”

READ MORE: ‘A Lot of Empty Seats’: What Reporters Are Seeing and Saying About Trump’s Final Rallies

Critics lashed out at Trump.

“He needs to leave out the qualifier. If he loses, he loses. The damage he has done to our fundamental American institutions and processes, including democracy itself, will not be easily repaired. The sooner he is gone, the better for us all,” remarked professor of political science Jeff DeWitt.

Justin Kanew, founder of the progressive website The Tennessee Holler, responded to Trump’s remarks about violence: “That part at the end gives big ‘I know you are but what am I?’ Vibes. Also: last time happened, bro.”

Watch the videos below or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump ‘Bat Signals’ Proud Boys as Extremist Groups Deliver ‘Harbinger of Potential Chaos’

Continue Reading

News

Trump Closes Campaign With Misogynistic Slur, Violent Rhetoric Against Women

Published

4 hours ago

on

November 5, 2024

By

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his vice-presidential running mate JD Vance closed out their run for the White House by targeting powerful women leaders with name-calling, a misogynistic slur, and surrounding them with violent imagery.

Monday night, with a young child sitting just a few feet away, Donald Trump went on a misogynistic rant attacking House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, the first and only woman to serve as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, which she did twice.

“She’s a crooked person,” Trump said of the Democratic U.S. Congresswoman from California. “She is a bad person. Evil. She’s an evil sick, crazy. B—. Oh, no. It starts with a B, but I won’t say it.”

READ MORE: ‘A Lot of Empty Seats’: What Reporters Are Seeing and Saying About Trump’s Final Rallies

“I wanna say it,” he declared, pleading, riling up the audience who cheered him in.

When Trump said “B—,” he appeared to mouth the word “bitch,” according to multiple reports including HuffPost.

Also on Monday, Trump asked his supporters if he is allowed to “hit” Democratic former First Lady Michelle Obama, after she accused him of “gross incompetence,” and alleged an “obvious mental decline.”

READ MORE: Trump ‘Bat Signals’ Proud Boys as Extremist Groups Deliver ‘Harbinger of Potential Chaos’

And, after praising boxer Mike Tyson, Trump on Monday, surround by women holding “Women for Trump” signs, responded to a supporter by saying it would be “interesting” to see one of the world’s best heavyweight boxers in a ring with his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

Earlier in the day, U.S. Senator JD Vance, the freshman Republican from Ohio, told supporters Vice President Harris is “trash.”

U.S. Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) responded, writing: “Dear JD Vance: Have you found that calling a woman trash has worked for you Because we generally don’t forget that shit.”

Last week, Trump was flooded with tremendous criticism after appearing to suggest Republican former U.S. Congresswoman Liz Cheney should face a firing squad. While there was disagreement as to what the top-line meaning of his remarks were (some said it was a call for execution, others that she should face a firing squad, others that she was too much of a coward to fight,) historian and professor Heather Cox Richardson wrote on her popular Substack: “Trump’s suggestion that Cheney should face a firing squad seems to be a general expression of the anger of white men accustomed to dictating the terms of public life when faced with the reality that they can no longer count on being able to cow the people around them.”

David Rothkopf, the foreign policy, national security, and political affairs analyst and commentator, Tuesday morning wrote: “Yesterday Donald Trump ended his campaign calling a strong woman a bitch and his VP candidate called the actual vice president of the United States ‘trash.’ They are the worst ticket for women in the history of the country. Reject their misogyny today.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Dire Implications’: Trump’s Possible Vaccine Ban Could Spark US, Global Health Crisis

 

 

 

Continue Reading

News

‘A Lot of Empty Seats’: What Reporters Are Seeing and Saying About Trump’s Final Rallies

Published

23 hours ago

on

November 4, 2024

By

Win or lose on Election Day, it’s unlikely the 78-year old Donald Trump will ever hold another presidential campaign rally again, and yet some of his supporters over the past week have stopped showing up for his final tour, leading reporters on several networks to mention there are “a lot of empty seats.”

Who will win the presidential election is anyone’s guess, but for the Republican nominee coming to the end of his third campaign, some expected more people would be out to get one last rush of the MAGA experience.

“Very low energy,” is how Mother Jones’ D.C. bureau chief David Corn described Trump’s rally Monday in Reading, Pennsylvania—a must-win state both candidates have been focusing on.

READ MORE: Trump ‘Bat Signals’ Proud Boys as Extremist Groups Deliver ‘Harbinger of Potential Chaos’

NBC News’ Vaughn Hillyard, who says he’s been covering Trump since 2015, notes Trump’s first rally on the last day before Election Day is just 70 percent full—and Trump was 40 minutes late.

And he talked about the “far smaller crowds” they’ve been seeing, including this one in North Carolina.

“I wanna show you guys real fast what this crowd looks like,” Hillyard told MSNBC viewers. “We’re looking at about a capacity, about 70% full here, and for nine years … we have talked about the enthusiasm in the masses that have come out for Trump’s rallies, time and again, even at his politically lowest points, including in 2022.”

“I can’t tell you exactly why, but in this final week we have seen far smaller crowds. We were in Greensboro, North Carolina, where just a few thousand people. Macon, Georgia, just a few thousand people yesterday. What does that mean ultimately, you can only discern so much from what crowd sizes look like, but interestingly, for the first time since I’ve been covering Donald Trump since 2015, there’s been us in the press that have been looking around questioning why the crowd sizes have been less than what we are accustomed to.”

Biden White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt, from his personal account on X responded: “The act got old.”

READ MORE: ‘Dire Implications’: Trump’s Possible Vaccine Ban Could Spark US, Global Health Crisis

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein posted video from Trump’s Sunday rally in Macon, Georgia.

Revealing just how tired Trump’s supporters have become, the comedy team of The Good Liars, who frequently go to Trump rallies and interview his supporters, on Monday caught several people holding Trump signs but leaving his rally early.

The Lincoln Project posted a video, originally posted by Hillyard, remarking, “This is how the MAGA movement is dying, like a bad club when the lights come on.”

Another Trump rally today with “a lot of empty seats.”

A CNN rep-orter for that same rally agreed: “a lot of empty seats.”

Democratic former U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill noted that a Trump rally on Saturday also had “a lot of empty seats.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Embarrassing’: JD Vance’s Story About How He Responded to Trump Shooting Sparks Concerns

 

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2020 AlterNet Media.