6 states buck U.S. on military gay spouses
On the morning of Sept. 3, the first day the Pentagon said they could, Alicia Butler and her spouse, Judith Chedville, who is a Texas Army National Guard officer, went to Austin’s Camp Mabry so Butler could get a military spouse identification card and register for the same federal marriage benefits provided to wives and husbands of heterosexual service members.
The two women handed a sheaf of official papers, including their 2008 California marriage license, to a clerk who glanced at the documents and declared, “It’s one of those.” She then called over her boss, who told the couple they would have to travel to a federal military base like Fort Hood, 70 miles to the north, to get the ID, Butler recalled.
The reason: Texas is one of six states refusing to comply with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s order that gay spouses of National Guard members be given the same federal marriage benefits as heterosexual spouses. Hagel’s decree came after the Supreme Court’s ruling in June striking down part of the Defense of Marriage Act that had prohibited the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.
Although a majority of states ban same-sex marriages, most are not fighting the new policy. But Pentagon officials say that in addition to Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and West Virginia have balked. Each has cited a conflict with state laws or constitutions that do not recognize samesex marriages.
While the president has the power to call National Guard units into federal service — and nearly all Guard funding comes from the federal government — the states say the units are state agencies that must abide by state laws.
Requiring same- sex spouses to go to federally owned installations “protects the integrity of our state Constitution and sends a message to the federal government that they cannot simply ignore our laws or the will of the people,” Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma said last week.
But the six states are violating federal law, Hagel told an audience recently.
“It causes division among the ranks, and it furthers prejudice,” he said. Hagel has demanded full compliance, but Pentagon officials have not said what steps they would take with states that do not fall in line.
Officials in the six states say they are not preventing same-sex spouses from getting benefits, because those couples can register and receive IDs through federal installations. But those officials conceded that many couples would have to travel hours round-trip to the nearest federal installation. Advocates for gay service members, though, fear that some benefits offered on bases, like support services for relatives of deployed service members, could still be blocked.
Gay spouses also say that in an age that saw the scrapping of the military’s ban on openly gay service members, it is discriminatory — and humiliating — to have to jump through extra hoops to receive benefits.
Butler is critical of state officials who say they are causing only a minor inconvenience because all the same-sex spouses have to do is travel to a federal base. The reasoning behind that notion, she said, was similar to that of the Southern states that once required separate — but what state officials then insisted were “equal” — water fountains and bathrooms.
“Sometimes it’s about the indignities you make people go through,” Butler said. “It’s a petty way to score political points.”
Aides to Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican who is not running for re-election but is considering another presidential bid in 2016, told the commander of the Texas Military Forces (the state’s National Guard) that state law prohibited processing same-sex benefits at National Guard bases on stateowned land.
“The Texas Military Forces is a state agency and as such is obligated to adhere to the Texas Constitution and the laws of this state, which clearly define marriage as being between one man and one woman,” said Josh Havens, a Perry spokesman.
The state Guard commander, Maj. Gen. John F. Nichols, “wants to support all his soldiers and treat them all equally and fairly, but he cannot break state law,” said his spokesman, Lt. Col. Joanne MacGregor, who serves in the Texas Army National Guard. She said at least 20 federal installations in Texas were processing the benefits, while Camp Mabry and four other Guard bases on state property were not.
Nichols has asked the state attorney general, Greg Abbott, to issue an opinion on whether there is a way to adhere to Hagel’s demand without violating state law. Abbott, a Republican vying to replace Perry in next year’s election for governor, may not issue an opinion for some months.
According to political analysts and early polls, Abbott’s toughest challenge next year is likely to be in the general election against state Sen. Wendy Davis, the Democratic front-runner, who has supported equal treatment of gay people.