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These steps will directly improve thousands of LGBTQ elders’ lives. It is heartening to see the Biden administration abolish this policy and provide redress to its victims. The New “Ultra-MAGA” Contender in Pennsylvania’s Senate PrimaryĪnd, right up until 2021, the federal government’s official position remained that it must abide by unconstitutional marriage bans in denying survivor’s benefits. The Horrifying Implications of Alito’s Most Alarming Footnote There’s Already a Revolution in Abortions Happening-and the Supreme Court Can’t Touch It Your Guide to the Nightmare of the Pennsylvania Republican Primary for Senate One year earlier, Alaska attempted to deny equal benefits to same-sex military spouses, maintaining an official policy that deemed these couples unmarried. In 2020, Indiana’s Republican attorney general asked the Supreme Court to let states strip rights from same-sex parents, rendering them legal strangers to their own children.
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Both the Obama and Trump administrations tried to deny citizenship to certain children born abroad to gay American citizens.
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When the Supreme Court brought marriage equality to all 50 states, it did not end the battle for same-sex couples’ equality under law. The responsibility to identify beneficiaries and help them claim their money now falls on the LGBTQ community and its allies. By definition, only elders qualify for these benefits it is quite possible that many will die before receiving the money owed to them. The number of eligible survivors gets smaller every year. Lambda attorney Peter Renn told me that number “only represents the tip of the iceberg, because the overwhelming majority of people who were never able to marry, understandably, never applied for benefits generally dependent on marriage, believing that to be futile.” Renn said “thousands of surviving same-sex partners are potentially sitting on millions of dollars in survivor’s benefits, for which their loved ones already paid, and which could dramatically impact their everyday lives.” So far, the Social Security Administration has identified 700 people who previously applied for, and were unconstitutionally denied, survivor’s benefits. Applicants can provide documentation, and if they’re turned down, they have an opportunity to appeal. No single factor determines the outcome it’s a flexible standard meant to accommodate for the restraints that anti-gay animus imposed on same-sex couples. Among other factors, they look at whether the couple was in a committed relationship, lived together or owned property together, supported each other financially, raised children together, or held a commitment ceremony. state has unclaimed property programs that actively and continuously find owners of lost and forgotten assets. But the Social Security Administration has trained its staff to gauge whether a survivor would have been married but for the unconstitutional marriage ban. Some survivors might assume they aren’t eligible because they never actually got married.