News
DOJ faces renewed call to provide benefits to gay veterans
Udall leads seven senators in requesting action from Obama administration


Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) is renewing his call for the Obama administration to stop enforcing portions of Title 38 (Photo public domain).
Pressure is increasing on the Obama administration to ensure gay veterans have access to spousal benefits everywhere they go in the country as additional U.S. senators are joining others in a call for action.
In a letter dated Jan. 16 to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, seven senators — led by Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) — call on the Obama administration to stop enforcing 103(c) of Title 38 to ensure gay veterans in same-sex marriages can receive spousal benefits.
“We believe taking this action is an important part of DOJ’s responsibility to implement and enforce the legal doctrine created in Windsor,” the senators writes. “Further, if the VA is able to apply 103(c) so that all marriages legally entered into will be recognized, it will provide continuity with the Department of Defense policy that applies to active duty service members and avoid a situation where the federal government is recognizing a person’s marriage one day and ignoring it the next.”
Joining Udall is signing the letter are Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Colo.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) as well as lesbian Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.).
A portion of the law governing veterans’ benefits, 103(c) of Title 38, looks to the state of residence, not the state of celebration, in determining whether a couple is married. That means if a gay couple in which one partner is a veteran weds in a marriage-equality state like New York, but moves to non-marriage equality state like Colorado, the couple won’t be able to apply for these benefits.
The letter emphasizes that the place of residence rule for spousal benefits isn’t a hypothetical problem for gay couples because many have already been denied benefits under this statute. Some of the spousal benefits allocated under Title 38 are disability benefits, survivor benefits and joint burial at a veteran’s cemetery.
“Over the last few months, there have been specific instances of legally married couples who were denied VA spousal benefits solely because of their gender and place of residence,” the letter states.
The Obama administration has already taken some action on this issue. In the wake of the Supreme Court decision against DOMA, the Justice Department had announced in September the Obama administration wouldn’t enforce a portion of Title 38 that independently defines marriage in opposite-sex terms.
But no decision has been made on the place of residence rule of Title 38. The Obama administration has said it’s still reviewing whether it can stop enforcing 103(c) of the statute.
In the letter, the senators are critical about the length of time it’s taking to resolve this issue in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision against DOMA in June.
“Unfortunately, nearly six months after that decision we continue to see specific cases where the federal government is withholding federal benefits to legally married same-sex couples,” the letter states. “This appears to be in conflict with the central principle of the Windsor decision, that the federal government should respect the lawful marriages of same-sex couples.”
Dena Iverson, a Justice Department, said in response to the missive, “We’re reviewing the letter.”
The continued enforcement of this 103(c) of Title 38 to deny benefits to gay couples has concerned lawmakers for some time.
In November, Udall wrote a letter on his own to the Justice Department calling on the Obama administration to stop enforcing the place of residence rule to discriminate against gay veterans. Earlier this month, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) wrote a similar letter asking the Obama administration to cease enforcement, citing issues that gay veterans are having with obtaining VA loans.
LGBT groups, including the Human Rights Campaign and American Military Partners Association, have said they share the concerns about the place of residence rule under Title 38. HRC has previously called for clarity from the administration on whether or not it can cease enforcing that section of the law to discriminate against gay couples.
Stephen Peters, AMPA president, reiterated his previous call for the Obama administration to take action in a statement.
“No veteran should be treated differently by the federal government just because he or she is married to someone of the same-gender or lives in a state that does not value the diversity of his or her family,” Peters said.
Alex Nicholson, who’s gay and legislative director of Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America, said his organization “absolutely” shares the concerns expressed in the letter.
“IAVA strongly believes that all veterans are entitled to fair and equal treatment with respect to benefits and services provided by the VA,” Nicholson said. “The Supreme Court has been clear that legally married same-sex couples are entitled to federal recognition and benefits, so the administration must proactively resolve the lingering technicalities that have thus far prevented the VA from complying.”
It remains to be seen whether Holder will address this issue — as well as other post-DOMA issues, such as granting Social Security survivor and pension benefits to married same-sex couples in non-marriage equality states — in any of his upcoming public appearances. He’s set to deliver testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 29 and is scheduled as the keynote speaker at HRC’s Greater New York Gala on Feb. 8.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article was incorrect about the date on which Holder would deliver testimony before the Senate. The Blade regrets the error.
Israel
Activist recalls experience in Tel Aviv after Israel-Iran war began
Marty Rouse was part of Jewish Federations of North America Pride mission

A long-time activist who was in Israel last month when its war with Iran began has returned to D.C.
Marty Rouse traveled to Israel on June 6 with the Jewish Federations of North America. The 5-day mission ended the night before the annual Tel Aviv Pride parade was scheduled to take place.
Mission participants met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and several LGBTQ activists in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. They visited the Western Wall, the Nova Music Festival site, and Nir Oz, a kibbutz in southern Israel that is less than a mile from the country’s border with the Gaza Strip. Mission participants also visited Sderot, a city that is roughly a mile from the Hamas-controlled enclave, a veterans rehabilitation facility, a new LGBTQ health center and the Aguda: The Association for LGBTQ Equality in Israel in Tel Aviv.
Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023, killed upwards of 360 partygoers and kidnapped dozens more at the music festival that was taking place at a campground near Re’im, a kibbutz that is roughly 10 miles southwest of Nir Oz. The militants killed or took hostage nearly a quarter of Nir Oz’s residents. They also took control of Sderot’s police station.

Tel Aviv Deputy Mayor Chen Arieli spoke at the mission’s closing party that took place at the Sheraton Grand, a hotel that overlooks Tel Aviv’s beachfront, on June 12.
Rouse and other mission participants planned to stay in Tel Aviv for the Pride parade, which was scheduled to take place the following day. He and Gordie Nathan, another mission participant who lives in Palm Springs, Calif., had checked into a nearby hotel that was less expensive.
“We said our farewells,” recalled Rouse when he spoke with the Washington Blade in D.C. on June 24. “We went to our hotels, and we get the warning, and then all hell broke loose.”
Israel early on June 13 launched airstrikes against Iran that targeted the country’s nuclear and military facilities.
Rouse said mission organizers told him and other participants who remained in Tel Aviv to meet at the Sheraton Grand for breakfast and dinner — Israel’s airspace was closed in anticipation of an Iranian counterattack, and authorities cancelled the Pride parade.
He said he went to bomb shelters at least twice a night for three nights.
Israel’s Home Front Command during the war typically issued warnings about 10 minutes ahead of an anticipated Iranian missile attack. Sirens then sounded 90 seconds before an expected strike.
Rouse and Nathan walked to the Sheraton Grand on June 13 when the Home Front Command issued a 10-minute warning. They reached the hotel in a couple of minutes, and staff directed them to the bomb shelter.
“You know to walk slowly, everything’s fine,” recalled Rouse. “You get 10 minutes, so everything was fine when the alarm goes off.”
Rouse described the Sheraton Grand shelter as “well lit” with WiFi, a television, and air conditioning. He was watching an Israeli television station’s live coverage of the Iranian missile attack when he saw one hit an apartment building in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan.
A 74-year-old woman died and her boyfriend was seriously injured.
“I go over to look at the TV, just to watch,” recalled Rouse. “All of a sudden, you watch, and you see one bomb go and land and explode in Tel Aviv on TV. It landed and blew up.”
“I was like, okay, this is real, and so that was scary,” he added.
Rouse said the bomb shelter in the hotel where he and Nathan were staying after the mission ended was far less comfortable.
“It was dark. It was humid. It was hot. It was very uncomfortable,” said Rouse. “You really felt alone.”

Rouse and nearly everyone else on the mission who were in Tel Aviv when the war began left Israel on June 15. They boarded buses that took them to the Jordanian capital of Amman, which is a roughly 2 1/2-hour drive from Tel Aviv through the West Bank.
Rouse described the trip as “like a field trip” until they drove across the Jordan River and arrived at the Jordanian border crossing.
“You walk into this room, and instead of being in a well air-conditioned airport, you’re in this hot, humid, small place in the middle of the desert, packed with people, and those big, large, loud fans and pictures of military people on the walls,” he said. “It was almost like a Casablanca kind of feeling.”
Rouse said Jordanian authorities brought mission participants through customs in groups of 10. A Jewish Federations of North America liaison from Amman who previously worked as a tour guide for A Wider Bridge — a group that “advocates for justice, counters LGBTQphobia, and fights antisemitism and other forms of hatred” — went “behind closed doors” to ensure everyone was able to enter the country.
“It took a really long time,” Rouse told the Blade.

Mission participants arrived in Amman a short time later. They checked into their hotel and then had dinner at a restaurant.
“Now we feel like we’re safe and we’re in Amman,” recalled Rouse. “We’re sitting outside having a beautiful dinner.”
Iranian missiles passed over Amman shortly after Rouse and the other mission participants had begun to eat their dessert. They went inside the restaurant, and waited a few minutes before they boarded busses that brought them back to their hotel.
“No one was openly freaking out, which I was surprised by,” said Rouse.
The group was scheduled to fly from Amman to Cairo at 11 p.m. local time (4 p.m. ET) on June 16. They visited Jerash, an ancient city north of Amman, before their flight left Jordan.
“[The Jerash trip] actually took our minds off of everything,” said Rouse.
A Jewish Federations of North America contact met Rouse and the other mission participants at Cairo’s airport once their flight landed. Rouse arrived at JFK Airport in New York on June 17.
Trump-announced ceasefire ended 12-day war
President Donald Trump on June 23 announced a ceasefire that ended the 12-day war.
The U.S. three days earlier launched airstrikes that struck three Iranian nuclear sites. The ceasefire took effect hours after Iran launched missiles at a U.S. military base in Qatar.
Iran said the war killed more than 900 people in the country.
The Associated Press notes Iranian missiles killed 28 people in Israel. One of them destroyed Tel Aviv’s last gay bar on June 16.
The war took place less than two years after Oct. 7.
The Israeli government says Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023, killed roughly 1,200 people on that day when it launched its surprise attack on the country. The militants also kidnapped more than 200 people.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed nearly 55,000 people in the enclave since Oct. 7. Karim Khan, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, has said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who the IDF killed last October, are among those who have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and Israel.

Rouse upon his return to the U.S. said he “was never as aware of the comfort of another human being than I was during that time.” Rouse affectionately called Nathan his “bomb shelter boyfriend” and even questioned the way he reacted to the missile alerts.
“He’s sitting on the edge of the bed and he goes, okay, I’m going to put on my socks and my shoes, and I say, really? You’re going to put on your socks,” Rouse told the Blade. “The fact that I was nervous, that putting on socks might have changed the direction of our lives, to me was like I can’t believe I said that to him.”
Rouse quickly added Nathan helped him remain calm.
“If I was by myself, those nights would have been long enough,” said Rouse. “It’s a totally different feeling to be with another human that you know than to be by yourself.”

Rouse also praised the Jewish Federations of North America.
“JFNA really sprung into action and started to figure out all options to get us all safely home,” said Rouse. “It was all about logistics. Staff worked around the clock identifying and then mobilizing to get us back to the states. It was a great team effort and I know I speak for everyone in expressing our deep appreciation for their dedication to getting us safely home.”
Congress
Congress passes ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ with massive cuts to health insurance coverage
Roughly 1.8 million LGBTQ Americans rely on Medicaid

The “Big, Beautiful Bill” heads to President Donald Trump’s desk following the vote by the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives Thursday, which saw two nays from GOP members and unified opposition from the entire Democratic caucus.
To partially offset the cost of tax breaks that disproportionately favor the wealthy, the bill contains massive cuts to Medicaid and social safety net programs like food assistance for the poor while adding a projected $3.3 billion to the deficit.
Policy wise, the signature legislation of Trump’s second term rolls back clean energy tax credits passed under the Biden-Harris administration while beefing up funding for defense and border security.
Roughly 13 percent of LGBTQ adults in the U.S., about 1.8 million people, rely on Medicaid as their primary health insurer, compared to seven percent of non-LGBTQ adults, according to the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute think tank on sexual orientation and gender identities.
In total, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the cuts will cause more than 10 million Americans to lose their coverage under Medicaid and anywhere from three to five million to lose their care under Affordable Care Act marketplace plans.
A number of Republicans in the House and Senate opposed the bill reasoning that they might face political consequences for taking away access to healthcare for, particularly, low-income Americans who rely on Medicaid. Poorer voters flocked to Trump in last year’s presidential election, exit polls show.
A provision that would have blocked the use of federal funds to reimburse medical care for transgender youth was blocked by the Senate Parliamentarian and ultimately struck from the legislation — reportedly after the first trans member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) and the first lesbian U.S. senator, Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), shored up unified opposition to the proposal among Congressional Democrats.
U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court to consider bans on trans athletes in school sports
27 states have passed laws limiting participation in athletics programs

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear two cases involving transgender youth challenging bans prohibiting them from participating in school sports.
In Little v. Hecox, plaintiffs represented by the ACLU, Legal Voice, and the law firm Cooley are challenging Idaho’s 2020 ban, which requires sex testing to adjudicate questions of an athlete’s eligibility.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals described the process in a 2023 decision halting the policy’s enforcement pending an outcome in the litigation. The “sex dispute verification process, whereby any individual can ‘dispute’ the sex of any female student athlete in the state of Idaho,” the court wrote, would “require her to undergo intrusive medical procedures to verify her sex, including gynecological exams.”
In West Virginia v. B.P.J., Lambda Legal, the ACLU, the ACLU of West Virginia, and Cooley are representing a trans middle school student challenging the Mountain State’s 2021 ban on trans athletes.
The plaintiff was participating in cross country when the law was passed, taking puberty blockers that would have significantly reduced the chances that she could have a physiological advantage over cisgender peers.
“Like any other educational program, school athletic programs should be accessible for everyone regardless of their sex or transgender status,” said Joshua Block, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Project. “Trans kids play sports for the same reasons their peers do — to learn perseverance, dedication, teamwork, and to simply have fun with their friends,” Block said.
He added, “Categorically excluding kids from school sports just because they are transgender will only make our schools less safe and more hurtful places for all youth. We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play.”
“Our client just wants to play sports with her friends and peers,” said Lambda Legal Senior Counsel Tara Borelli. “Everyone understands the value of participating in team athletics, for fitness, leadership, socialization, and myriad other benefits.”
Borelli continued, “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit last April issued a thoughtful and thorough ruling allowing B.P.J. to continue participating in track events. That well-reasoned decision should stand the test of time, and we stand ready to defend it.”
Shortly after taking control of both legislative chambers, Republican members of Congress tried — unsuccessfully — to pass a national ban like those now enforced in 27 states since 2020.
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