honey not even on your best day could you take on JB and myself....so please wake up and get into reality.

You did not even have to do that. Everybody here knows Feral would not do that.

Tiffany, seriously, see a doctor. You have serious problems. I am not trying to be sarcastic or mean. I really care that you get the help you need.

JB

1. No.
2. Yes. That's the pesky "created equal" thing...

Hello? I am new to this site, but it seems very intersting.

welcome

Welcome and have fun.....I wish this wasn't the first one you went into....as there was a lil nasty...so don't let it deter you...and just have a blast...lots of good people on jsh.

1. If "YOU" feel the nature of a poster is obvious, it is doubtless obvious to others as well.

2. Those who have been here the longest, know those who have been here the longest.

3. Those who are new, are not aware of the complex community that JSH encompasses. Enemies, perhaps there are some, as far enemies in a community can go.

4. Watch, listen, and don't be afraid to be silent - even enemies can have dignitiy and honor, those that do are not in need of your defense against the obvious path of a newcomer.


let it go now, before you become the thing you defend against.

Feral


sighhhhh - my attemps at humor are still not understood. My apologies for the misunderstanding. I was not being smug, I was attempting to be ironic - turning a situation around, so to speak. Ah well, another point down for bad humor.

Madamx - (and I don't use emoticons generously!)

(that was humor) geez, maybe I should just stop trying to be funny.


Anyway, I'm sorry I wasn't here to ask - I KNOW you were just WAITING for someone to promt you in telling your side of the story. A very good one too, I am SO glad that others can hear the wonderful stories of LONG LASTING love between partners.

awww Redy now I feel like a creep....Im sorry sweets...truly I did not know this.......please forgive my stupid....lol

(((redy)))

people are people...who cares who you love...the point is that you CAN love. thats just my opinion

JB mentioned that partners should be cautious and have legal paperwork done to protect themselves. Madamx thought this was a good idea.

A great many couple feel that way, but there are two issues. First, the cost of these legal documents if very prohibitive and many of these documents have not held up in a court of law, most especially when family fights them.

Even children that are conceived by a lesbian partner or adopted by one person in the partnership, are never considered to be the child of the other partner. And even though they raise the child or children toegher the natrual parent or other natural family always got custody. Recently some court battles have been won but not without extreme cost.

Setting up legal documents about ownership of property, inheritence and even living wills are possible, but why should some have to pay huge sums to lawyers, when the law is already set up for that purpose, it's just kept from those who cannot marry.

Social Security, Government pensions, even the paycheck of service personnel, cannot be sent to a domestic partner, and certainly domestic partners are NEVER issued visas or military id to visit their partners or be with thier partner on base.

There are so many laws that are entrenched in the right to marry that they cannot all be addressed here, and in some instances, one issue leads to many others.

That is the nature of the laws that are being sought. Nothing special, nothing that is not granted to others, just the same thing that makes life easier, more secure and equal to what each other person begins with, as a citizen of this coutry.

One other thing - so that I'm not accused of being a dreamer, partnerships fail just like marriages fail. And partners are sometimes at fault, sometimes not, again just like marriages. but just like marriages that fail, a partnership that fails should be included under the same guidelines of the law surrounding divorce (or failed partnership).

A tragic love story:

After 25 years together, gay couple had plenty of love, limited rights


They became lovers in a different time than today,
Russell explained, when gays referred to each other as merely friends and when lives built together were largely kept under cover.

In the 25 years they were together, the two men never discussed tying the knot — not even when doing so became possible late in their relationship. They weren't the marrying kind.

But they talked, as couples do, about their families, their future and even their deaths.

Russell F. O'Geen, who is 57 and called Rochester his home until a few months ago, says his lover wanted to be buried near his father and two brothers in Minnesota.

And that's where O'Geen took his lover's body earlier this year, he says, after watching him die of a massive coronary at the home they shared in the city. He tried to help and called 911, in between checking his pulse and trying to perform CPR.

Now he's cleaning out the house he and his lover shared in the city, because the house was in the lover's name and the lover's family wants it sold.

O'Geen, who owns the Lily Farm in LeRoy and sells flowers at the Rochester Public Market, says he's taking the Chinese dogwood and Chinese oak trees he bought and planted when his lover purchased the house 15 years ago. He's also moving the hostas he planted, the Japanese waterfall he constructed and the rare lilies he tended.

"When they sell the house, the next person who gets the house will not take care of (the garden)," he worries.

O'Geen says he consulted two lawyers after his lover's death. He told them he and his lover had agreed that when the other died, their respective homes would go to the survivor: O'Geen would get the lover's city house, which they shared during the week; his lover would get O'Geen's LeRoy house, where they spent weekends.

The lawyers told O'Geen that because his lover had no will with instructions on what he wanted, O'Geen had no rights. The two men had talked about putting something in writing but never got to it.

So now O'Geen is packing up his things — the dishes, the pretty vases, the outdoor furniture they bought together.

"We lived a very comfortable, secretive life," he tells me. "Yes, we did. In those days, that's what you did. We didn't live the way gays live now."

When it came to money, they kept theirs separate, O'Geen says. Even his lover's life insurance and other accounts he left behind were intended for his blood relatives. O'Geen, who has a married daughter and three grandchildren, was fine with that.

"This has nothing to do with money," he says. "This has to do with love and what I grew up with. We were together for 25 years."

He has not followed the recent headlines, the ones about New York Gov. Paterson's executive order directing state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages performed out of state or other news about such unions being allowed in California starting next week. That state is changing the words on marriage certificates to read Party A and Party B rather than bride and groom.

But the story O'Geen tells, of a couple who watched television together and picked out furniture together, offers all the more reason to recognize that gays are not asking for anything different than what everyone wants. Cheers to Paterson for recognizing that.

O'Geen says the hardest part is missing his lover, who was 56 when he died. They spoke on the phone five times a day.

"No one calls me anymore," he says. "That's been devastating."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i just feel its a tragedy to have two people no matter who...not have the same rights because of their sex. is that not discriminatory? descrimination is based on sex, religion, race, etc....

hell i dont know...thinkin outloud here

every one deserves to be happy no matter what,no one deserves to get crap just cause someone else dont like it.

I had to go and search to find this letter from a friend about his friend; This story is told by his friend.

A civil marriage contract - and that's what the law addresses, civil
contracts - is an agreement between two persons and the government that those two persons are seen as a single unit, and are given certain additional rights in exchange for those two persons accepting additional responsibilities. For instance: For agreeing that either person is 100%
responsible for the debt incurred during a marriage, either person is given the additional right to make medical decisions for the other person in the event of that person's incapacity. By being seen as a "single unit," the government saves time and expense in such areas as tax collection, and the persons in the marriage receive additional tax relief for allowing a joint taxation.

Procreation is not now, nor has it ever been, a component of the civil contract of marriage. If it had been, a couple would need to provide proof of fertility to obtain a civil marriage license, and would have had to produce offspring within a specified time to continue validity of their marriage contract.

Religious marriage is a completely different thing, and I respect a church's right to limit access to their idea of "marriage".. . but if a couple undergoes a religious, ceremonial, marriage and doesn't also have a civil marriage contract - they're not, legally, married.

My partner and I have been together 13 years on June the 25th; we are former residents of California. I was born with a defective heart, and for the last ten years have lived in Congestive Heart Failure and am, frequently, hospitalized. In order for my partner to have the same rights/responsibilities he would obtain if he were, legally, my spouse, we had to retain a lawyer, have a Durable Power of Attorney for Health
Care Purposes created, and file that with each and every doctor, nurse or hospital every time I am admitted or see a doctor. In Arizona, such POAs are not permanent, but, instead, per occurence.

And then, it is up to each medical professional whether they follow the POA or not; at Thunderbird Banner, I've walked out of their ICU/CCU unit, against medical advice, when the nurse assigned to me flat-out refused to acknowledge the POA - even telling me she would not inform my partner I was in the hospital (I was taken there by ambulance after
collapsing in a local grocery), nor would she permit him to visit me, if she was on shift, because he "isn't really family now, is he?"

My condition is terminal. Everything we own is in my partner's name. If, however, something should happen that he predeceases me, in a civil marriage, all ownership would immediately revert to me, for the most part, tax-free. As it stands now, if I were to inherit everything, via a Last Will and Testament, I would have to pay taxes on everything and any blood relative of my partner's could contest the will - and, nationally,
in over 83% of the cases where "blood family" have contested the inheritance of a same-gender partner, the blood family has won, leaving the partner with nothing.

If something should happen to my partner, I automatically lose all my health benefits from his employer; if we were civilly married, those benefits would remain intact. His pension simply vanishes, as does his Social Security. Because of my health, I've not worked in ten years, and am not medically cleared to work.

In the 13 years we've been together, the majority of our heterosexual friends have married and divorced; in one case, a friend of ours has been married three times and divorced twice. For her, marriage has no significance at all - she just doesn't want to be seen as "shacking up".
For us, marriage has a significance we can not even begin to recount... and it's denied us.

With California's Supreme Court recognizing the system discriminates, and ordering an end to that discrimination, I actually feel the possibility that before this life of mine ends, I may be able do something that's important to me, personally, that so many people seem to do for themselves rather flippantly: I may be able to marry the person I love.

Now, what's really important: My comment was published on page 3, so far there's over 20 pages of commentary, and the "God will strike everyone down! Homos are sick child molesters! Bestiality's next!" commentators are definitely in the minority... overwhelmingly in the minority!

Kat, great posts, appreciate them very much.

I find it difficult to recount the stories of my friends, and acquaintances. Most of them have been so secretive and have had to live so quietly, silently, obscurely. For that reason I dislike bringing their lives, to others view. But I am always most gratified to see one speaking for themself, even if it might be through a reporter.

Tomcat3 - sorry, forgot to say Hi - welcome!

my sister hid it for years...so well that her and her first partner lived togehter for years and i would spend weekends with them and had no idea!!! i was raised in small town indiana...gay/lesbian...what the hell is that? lmao.... then when i was 13 my mother sat me down and told me....my sister came to me crying...asked if i hated her...heck no i said...i loved you then, i love you now..you are still my sister right? ive always supported her in her pursuit of happiness. i have even told my daughter...i dont care who you are with as long as you love each other and are good to each other...i went thru all that you better not bring a black man home thing...blah! people are people...you cant help who you love. its just important that you love!!!

my grandfather found out and never spoke to my sister again, it broke her heart...was sad to see...i always felt so badly for her. but she finally came out and began to be happier because she felt free...free to be herself...i was proud of her for it.

Sweetie , I see homosexuality as an act outside nature laws .
When a man and a woman have sex ; they will have children ...etc . What does a man gets when he has sex with a man like him ?. Some ....call it what you want . What does a woman gets when she has sex with another woman ?....call it ....
.. what you want . When you put kids in a gay relationship home , you influence them to be gays . This is reality the same way we see the sun above us and screw all statistics and let logic and common sense rule for once and for all . Add to that this non sense homosexuality education for kids in schools :
I have no idea why these kids have to learn about a life style that billions of people disapprove of it all around the world .
I saw a program on CNN where pedophiles in jails were saying it is their right to have sex with children . As a majority are we going to give in to every minority who comes with new life style ?. Laws are made from common sense and logic . If nature approves of a homosexual behaviour then how come we had men and women for all these years . If we have only homosexuals , it will be the end of the world : a man can not make a man pregnant
and a woman can not make a woman pregnant .