Draft Congressional ethics rules would recognize marriages of same-sex couples

As reported by Paul Singer in Roll Call:

"The House ethics committee has drafted rules that for the first time would define married gay couples as 'spouses' for the purposes of filling out their annual Congressional financial disclosure forms.

"Activists on both sides of the freedom to marry issue said the reporting requirements, if adopted, would mark the first time Congress has recognized a gay partner as a spouse. Opponents of gay rights said the draft appears to contradict the so-called 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which mandates that for any federal regulations, 'the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or wife.'

"The ethics committee — formally known as the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct — has released the annual financial disclosure forms that Members of Congress and Congressional staff must complete by May 15. Along with the new forms, which include small changes from prior years, the committee has drafted new instructions for how to complete the forms.

"The new instructions include the following paragraph under a new heading, 'Same-Sex Marriages': 'In 2009, there were a total of four states which issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont. (New Hampshire and the District of Columbia began issuing such licenses effective in 2010). If you and your spouse were issued a marriage license by any of these states and were subsequently legally married in that state, you must disclose all required spousal information on your Financial Disclosure Statement.' ”

"Members of Congress and senior Congressional staff are required by federal law to complete the disclosure forms each year, detailing their stock holdings, investment properties and other sources of earned and unearned income. The forms require the filer to include assets held by their spouse and dependent children and to disclose any source of income (but not the amount) earned by their spouse in the prior year.

"The change in instructions would not affect any of the openly gay Members of Congress because none has been legally married in the lawmaker’s home state. But it is possible that there are married gay couples among the thousands of senior Congressional staff who are required to complete the form each year.

"The ethics committee’s draft instruction manual offended both gay rights activists and their opponents.

"For gay rights activists, the disclosure requirement is an attempt to saddle gay couples with some of the obligations of marriage without providing the full benefits of marriage, such as the right to file joint federal tax returns.

"Brian Moulton, chief legislative counsel for the gay rights advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, said: 'This is yet another example of the unequal treatment created by the discriminatory DOMA. Married same-sex couples should be subject to the same obligations, and entitled to the same rights and benefits, as their heterosexual counterparts.' ”

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