Gays Get New Rights Today

[ruggerson]

http://www.365gay.com/Newscon06/01/010106newLaws.htm

Gays Get New Rights Today
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff

<snip>

(Washington) LGBT communities in several states gain new rights today.

In California four laws went into effect at midnight, including the
nation’s first law prohibiting discrimination against transgender
individuals in health coverage.

The Insurance Gender Non-Discrimination Act, which prohibits insurance
companies and health-care service plans from discriminating on the
basis of gender in the creation or maintenance of service contracts,
or the provision of benefits or coverage.

The Civil Rights Act of 2005 also goes into effect. The law adds
sexual orientation, gender and marital status to California’s public
accommodation non-discrimination laws. Some of the businesses that are
subject to the law include shopping centers, mobile home parks, bars
and restaurants, schools, medical and dental offices, hotels and
motels, and condominium homeowners' associations.

The third piece of legislation, the Death Benefits Rights for Retired
Public Employees Act, allows domestic partners of public employees who
retired prior to Jan. 1, 2005, when California's comprehensive
domestic partnership law (AB 205) went into effect, to receive death
benefits if the retiree dies before their partner.

And the fourth law is the Property Tax Reappraisal Exclusion for
Domestic Partners. It provides that a change in the title of property
between domestic partners will be treated the same way a change in
title of property between spouses is treated for property tax
purposes. As a result, domestic partners will no longer face
potentially enormous increases in their property taxes when their
partner dies.

<snip>

[Flabbergasted]

1. Go Arnold!!!

[Maat]

2. Ummm ... the credit for these laws, in my humble opinion,

goes to Mark Leno and the Democratic members of California's two legislative bodies, in addition to the pro-GLBT advocacy groups in California.

Arnold shouldn't get credit for any of these things.

[Flabbergasted]

3. I know

I'm being facetious

[Maat]

4. Ooooh .. my bad (and I mean it - I apologize).

For a minute, I thought an alien had come down and sucked your brain out, and replaced it with a Freeper brain.

Oh, I am TRULY relieved. It didn't happen. Flabbergasted is O.K.!!

Again, I'm sorry.

I thought what had happened to my in-laws had happened to you.

I'm so glad it's not true!

[Flabbergasted]

5. Or I'm lying about being facetious?

[Maat]

6. You mean ... as if the aliens really got you?

And you're just pretending!

Oh, no!

:o

Actually, my hubby says my in-laws were absorbed by the Borg (I don't know if you are a sci-fi fan or not).

[Flabbergasted]

7. Could be never know

Sci fi predictions of the future are amazing

[Maat]

8. Well, I think that Cheney is a body possessed by a Gaould.

That's an alien who takes over a human body.

See Stargate, the sci-fi show.

It's the only explanation for how a being could be so arrogant and so evil, and callously send 2,100 young U.S. troops to their deaths, not to mention about 100,000 Iraqis. He cannot be human.

(said in a half-kidding kind of a way)

[Flabbergasted]

9. This is getting confusing

[Maat]

10. Sorry.

I was just joking about Dick Ch*n*y and aliens being an explanation for poor behavior.

This thread can now die a natural death.

Take care!

[ruggerson]

11. Was that you who just flew by the house?

it's raining, the window of your spaceship was rather fogged.