Massachusetts Town To Pay Married Gay Employees To Offset Tax

Marriage gay city employees of Cambridge, Massachusetts will become the first in the nation to be paid a small stipend to cover a federal tax that their heterosexual colleagues don't have to pay.

Like many people, these 22 school and city workers chose to put their spouses on their employer-provided health insurance. Because they're in a homosexual relationship, the value of that health coverage is considered taxable income by the federal government. But starting this month, Cambridge will become what is believed to be the first municipality in the country to pay its public employees a stipend in an attempt to defray the cost of the federal tax on health benefits for their same-sex spouses. The city employees hit by the extra tax pay an additional $1,500 to $3,000 in taxes a year and officials estimate the stipends would cost the city an additional $33,000. "This is about equality," said Marjorie Decker, a Cambridge city councilor. "This is a city that models what equality really means."

Betty Ford Dies At 93

The New York Times has posted a wonderful tribute. An excerpt:

Few first ladies have been as popular as Betty Ford, and it was her frankness and lack of pretense that made her so. She spoke often in support of the Equal Rights Amendment, endorsed legalized abortion, discussed premarital sex and revealed that she intended to share a bed with her husband in the White House.

Tony Perkins Takes Credit For The End Of Kevin Jennings' Department

"It took 18 months of protest, but FRC can finally celebrate a major victory at the Office of Safe and Drug-free Schools. The agency, which (until two weeks ago), was headed by radical homosexual activist Kevin Jennings, has been eliminated. Starting this summer, its duties will be absorbed by another program--knocking the Office's LGBT indoctrination campaign down several rungs on the Department's ladder. For more than a year, FRC had fought the administration on Jennings's appointment, which seemed to be a front for advancing the homosexual agenda in American classrooms." - Tony Perkins, taking credit for a government-wide budget cut resulting in the end of Jennings' position. Jennings had already announced a new gig in the private sector.

RELATED: Another hate group, MassResistance, also yesterday claimed credit for the budget cut.

CNN On Gay Deportations

And the recent good news on that front.

Feds Drop Deportation Case For Gay Man

In what the New York Times says may be a precedent-setting decision, the federal government has dropped its deportation case against a gay Venezuelan legally married to an American man.

The announcement comes as immigration officials put into effect new, more flexible guidelines governing the deferral and cancellation of deportations, particularly for immigrants with no serious criminal records. Immigration lawyers and gay rights advocates said the decision represented a significant shift in policy and could open the door to the cancellation of deportations for other immigrants in same-sex marriages. “This action shows that the government has not only the power but the inclination to do the right thing when it comes to protecting certain vulnerable populations from deportation,” said the couple’s lawyer, Lavi Soloway. The case has been closely watched across the country by lawyers and advocates who viewed it as a test of the federal government’s position on the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law that bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

U.S. Senators - It Gets Better

Thirteen U.S. Senators for the It Gets Better Project!

The Narrowing Food Tree

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