Subject:     GAO report on laws that benefit married couples
Sent:        2/23/97 1:25 AM
Received:    2/22/97 10:18 PM
From:        by way of summers@rt66.com (Bob Summersgill), Fenceberry@aol.com
Reply-To:    New Mexico Queer Net, nmqn@laplaza.org
To:          New Mexico Queer Net, nmqn@laplaza.org

Washington Blade 2/21/97
http://www.washblade.com/

1,049 laws benefit married couples, GAO says
by Lou Chibbaro Jr.
   At least 1,049 federal laws provide benefits, rights, and privileges based
on a person's marital status, according to a newly released report by the
General Accounting Office, an arm of the U.S. Congress.
   The report, commissioned to assess the possible ramifications of the
anti-Gay Defense of Marriage Act, lists all 1,049 statutes by name and U.S.
code number. The 58-page report does not indicate whether the laws provide or
withhold advantages to people because they are married.
   Barry R. Bedrick, GAO's associate general counsel and chief author of the
report, said GAO did not have the funds or staff to research each of the
1,049 federal laws to determine exactly how they affect persons who are
married, single, or in a same-sex relationship.
   The report divides the laws into 13 categories and identifies them in a
way that interested parties can look them up in U.S. statute books, which are
available in many public libraries.
   Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, directed
the GAO to prepare the report last September at the time the House debated
and passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Hyde said he requested the
report at the urging of former Rep. Steve Gunderson (R-Wis.), who planned to
introduce an amendment to DOMA calling for such a report.
   Gunderson, who is openly Gay and who strongly opposed DOMA, said such a
report was needed to show how DOMA's ban on Gay marriage would deny a litany
of benefits and privileges to same-sex couples that currently are available
to people who are legally married. Gunderson agreed to withdraw his amendment
after Hyde promised to formally direct the GAO to conduct a report on the
matter.
   However, the GAO report does not include some of the information Gunderson
and Gay activists sought.
   In a Sept. 5, 1996, letter to U.S. Controller General Charles A. Bowsher,
the head of the GAO, Hyde requested a "study of federal laws in which federal
benefits, rights, and privileges are contingent on one's marital status." In
addition, Hyde asked the GAO to "conduct a survey of how other governmental
units may have defined non-marital domestic partnerships, and report on how
states define and determine when a relationship becomes a common law
marriage."
   The GAO report, released Feb. 7, includes the first part of Hyde's request
but does not include anything about domestic partnerships or common law
marriage.
   Bedrick said he and his staff told Hyde that limited resources at the GAO
prevented him from broadening the study to include domestic partnership laws
or common law marriage rules in state and local jurisdictions.
   "We negotiated with Mr. Hyde's staff on this," Bedrick said. "We said we
couldn't do it all. So his staff agreed to what we did as a first step."
   The categories of laws covered in the report are Social Security and
related programs, housing, and Food Stamps; veterans benefits; taxation;
federal civilian and military service benefits; employment benefits and
related laws; immigration, naturalization, and aliens; Indians; trade,
commerce, and intellectual property; financial disclosure and conflict of
interest; crimes and family violence; loans, guarantees, and payments in
agriculture; federal natural resources and related laws; and miscellaneous
laws.
   Single copies of the report, GAO/OGC-97-16, are available free of charge
and may be ordered by calling (202) 512-6000. The report may be accessed on
the Internet through the GAO's Web site at http://www.gao.gov.


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Fenceberry@aol.com (by way of summers@rt66.com (Bob Summersgill)) -- nmqn