NEWS FLASH

The Downside Of Same-Sex Marriage | Katherine Franke, the director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School, argues in today’s New York Times that New York’s quest for same-sex marriage could undermine alternative domestic arrangements. “Winning the right to marry is one thing; being forced to marry is quite another. How’s that? If the rollout of marriage equality in other states, like Massachusetts, is any guide, lesbian and gay people who have obtained health and other benefits for their domestic partners will be required by both public and private employers to marry their partners in order to keep those rights. In other words, ‘winning’ the right to marry may mean ‘losing’ the rights we have now as domestic partners, as we’ll be folded into the all-or-nothing world of marriage.”