Apparently even the most basic of protections for Gay couples has to be fought for tooth and nail.
The Social Security Administration is singling out Gay married couples for disenfranchisement if they are legally married in one state but have the misfortune of living in a state that has no legal recognition of Gay marriage.
Think about all those straight couples that wed in Las Vegas or Niagra Falls being told their marriage isn't recognized because they did not get married in the state they now reside in.
In this case the bigotry takes the form of Social Security benefits. Benefits Gay families paid into during their working lives but are being denied for no other reason than the Social Security system says it can.
This is nothing more that state sponsored discrimination at the Federal level.
WASHINGTON — The Social Security Administration is limiting payment of claims for same-sex married couples currently to those couples who were married in a state the allows same-sex couples to marry and are “domiciled,” or live, in a state that recognizes same-sex couples’ marriages. The decision means claims from same-sex couples married where such couples can legally marry but who live in a state that does not recognize such marriages are having their applications put on hold for the time being.
As of Friday, a new section for “Windsor Same-Sex Marriage Claims” — named after the Supreme Court case of United States v. Windsor, which resulted in a part of the Defense of Marriage Act being struck down — was added to the Social Security Administration’s Program Operations Manual System (POMS), which the agency describes as the primary source of information used by Social Security employees to process claims for Social Security benefits.