N.J. Judge Rules Gay Couple Can Sue For Loss Of Sex

[davidinalameda]

okay, this just goes to prove we are now in the mainstream!

http://www.365gay.com/newscon05/05/051505njCourt.htm

A New Jersey judge has ruled that a lesbian couple can sue the employer of one of the women for creating a work so hostile it ruined the couple's sex lives.

The claim is part of a whistleblower suit against the Saint Barnabas Health Care System, Clara Maass Medical Center and five individuals.

Linda Henry was a paramedic at Clara Maass in Belleville, New Jersey. The suit says that when she complained to management that she was subjected to homophobia by her fellow workers the hospital embarked on its own campaign against her.

[BR_Parkway]

1. Special rights, special rights.....oh, wait - straight folks can already

do this, but I'm sure our Radical Cleric Fristians are already warming up the microphones and newsletters. There's "donations flowing" just screaming off the page with this one.

[benburch]

2. RIGHT ON.

You know, once we DO have gay marriage legal in all 50 states, I think we should consider legalizing triads and group marriages.

I have friends who are members of the Church of All Worlds who practice group marriage, and I would love to see them be able to have a legal union if they chose to do so.

Long ago (1989) I helped the elder priest of CAW marry two really nice guys from Chicago at a pagan festival in upstate NY. It was a wonderful experience. I was the Northern Guardian in that ritual.

[htuttle]

3. Actually, I think those ARE different

A marriage is basically a legal instrument between two people combining their finances, responsibilities, etc... There are also tons of legal arrangments in society at large that are based on this concept of two people sharing a 'legal' household.

Once you add more than two people to it, everything changes, like health insurance, custody, etc...How many people could you add to your health insurance if they allowed legal group marriages? Could people marry half a city block to someone with a decent job to all get health coverage?

Not that all of the things based on "households" necessarily SHOULD be done that way -- we should all be covered for medical care, for example, but the issues involved for multi-person marriages are much more complicated (financially and legally), than for couples of any sex, mixed or not.

on edit:
Legally, a better route for groups larger than two who wish to share finances and responsibilities might be to simply incorporate. This is already done in the case of housing coops (not the hoity-toity NYC kind -- I mean "university town"-type housing coops), for example. Whether all the people in the house are having sex or not (generally, they are not), is beside the point.

This would be much easier to deal with legally than a 'group marriage' based on a marriage contract. For example, what to do when one person out of a group of 4-6 wants to leave the 'marriage'? It's not exactly a divorce, since the rest of the group remains. It's far easier to deal with if you handle it more like a 'corporation' or a cooperative.

[benburch]

4. And indeed they do form S-corps.

But for things like medical decisions and end-of-life care and visitation in the hospital, those things do not count.

Of course, the right answer is for EVERYBODY to have health benefits. Then much of issue disappears.

Even if there need to be special rules for group marriages that take those factors into account, I would support legalization.