Same-Sex Marriage: Does National Strategy Trump Private Citizens’ Right To A Trial Decision?
Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
A federal judge yesterday was expected to hear and rule on a same-sex marriage and adoption case that could have found Michigan‘s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Instead, the judge, who had scheduled the hearing of the case at a Michigan law school because he thought it would be instructional for the Wayne State University students, quickly announced he was delaying his ruling until after the Supreme Court had decided the Prop 8 and DOMA cases, which surprised most people in the room.
READ:Â Same-Sex Marriage Might Be Legal In Michigan By The End Of The Day Today
But as it turns out, some were likely not surprised, namely, state and national LGBT organizations that filed an amicus brief that offered support — albeit somewhat tepid, one could argue — for overturning the Michigan ban on same-sex marriage and for finding in favor of the couple’s right to jointly adopt their three toddlers, aged three and four, two of whom have special needs.
In fact, as Chris Geidner at Buzzfeed reported, the LGBT organizations that signed the amicus brief “wrote that before resolving the Michigan couple’s case, ‘this Court may determine that it is prudent to await decision’ in the California Proposition 8 case at the Supreme Court.”
“Although the LGBT groups’ moves have been out of the spotlight as the DOMA and Proposition 8 cases took center stage,” Geidner added, “they shed light on the careful approach LGBT legal advocacy organizations have taken in the past couple of years. Although courtroom successes have been plenty in challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act, more direct marriage-rights cases have met with mixed results. Although courts in the Proposition 8 challenge have found the California amendment to be unconstitutional, federal marriage equality lawsuits in Hawaii and Nevada were rejected by trial courts.”
Regular readers of The New Civil Rights Movement are very familiar with this Michigan case. Jayne Rowse and April Deboer are a lesbian couple, together more than ten years, both nurses, who have singly but not jointly been allowed to adopt three toddlers, Nolan, Ryanne, and Jacob, (one of whom, frankly, was expected to not live) and sued the state at first only for the right to adopt their children as a couple. When the federal court judge suggested they amended their case and ask the court to overturn as unconstitutional Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriage, they took some time to consider it, and ultimately decided to move forward to challenge the marriage ban.
“The case, initially filed in January 2012, came only after several LGBT organizations declined to participate, Dana Nessel, one of the couple’s attorneys, told BuzzFeed Thursday,” Geidner reports:
“What they told us is that they refuse to touch anything in the Sixth Circuit [Court of Appeals].”
The fear: they would lose.
Jay Kaplan of the ACLU of Michigan told BuzzFeed Friday that Nessel’s assessment was accurate, saying, “If you’re going to bring a marriage equality claim, you want to be sure that you’re going to be successful at all stages of the process.” Of the Sixth Circuit, he said, “There is not a progressive majority on the court.”
At issue here is strategy. And rights — not the right of the couple to adopt and to marry (which should be a foregone conclusion, and hopefully someday soon will be,) but the right of LGBT organizations who have contributed absolutely not one penny to support the case, and almost zero support otherwise, with the exception of the amicus brief.
(In fairness, Equality Michigan has publicly expressed support of the couple’s case in the Huffington Post and elsewhere.)
The brief easily could be seen as not wildly supportive — and perhaps that’s a legal strategy too. It hems and haws and is written in a manner that might lead someone to conclude the signatories are nervous.
But most if not all of the LGBT organizations who drafted and/or signed the amicus brief are pros in the field: the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Fund of Michigan, Equality Michigan, the Human Rights Campaign Fund (HRC), Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., National Center for Lesbian Rights, Family Equality Council, Affirmations Community Center, Ruth Ellis Center, and KICK.
And there was an option: say nothing. Or, a better option: say something to argue unequivocally and unwaveringly.
April, Jayne, Nolan, Ryanne, and Jacob desperately need help, support, and relief from the state. (Try raising three special needs toddlers on the salaries of two unmarried nurses.)
The LGBT organizations are tasked with strategizing and ultimately securing equality for all. But has their long-term strategy hurt or harmed the chances of a short-term win for Jayne and April?
Imagine what would have happened had the judge struck down as unconstitutional Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriage, less than three weeks before the Supreme Court took up two landmark same-sex marriage cases?
We’ll never know, but it certainly can be said that there are many who felt optimistic about where the judge was headed.
“This court may find that denying same-sex couples the ability to obtain second parent adoptions is unconstitutional without addressing the question of whether Michigan may deny same-sex couples the ability to marry because these two claims are separate,” part of the amicus brief reads.
“Second parent adoptions are at the core of the relief sought by the plaintiffs, and can be granted regardless of whether ams-sex couples are allowed to marry in Michigan,” reads another section.
Here’s the amicus brief. You decide. Did April Jayne, Nolan, Ryanne, and Jacob deserve unfettered support?
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Adoption Amicus Curiae Motion and Brief by davidbadash
http://www.scribd.com/embeds/129357946/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-1dmlrbn3jjbt981ajxl5
Editor’s note:Â The New Civil Rights Movement reached out to several of the LGBT orgs who signed the brief. Only one responded before publication.
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For more, read The New Civil Rights Movement’s Jean Ann Esselink‘s reports:
On Our Radar – Do Children In Same-Sex Families Have A Right To Be Equal?
Federal Judge Encourages Lesbian Couple To Take On Michigan’s Same-Sex Marriage Ban
Michigan Couple Take Judge’s Suggestion To Challenge State’s Same-Sex Marriage Ban
Oakland County Refuses To Defend Michigan’s Ban On Same-Sex Marriage And Adoption
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You can help support April and Jayne through the Deboer Rowse Fund, which is also on Facebook.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
