A year later, gay marriage 'still one step ahead'
BY RUKMINICALLIMACHI
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PORTLAND — Every morning
before she headed out into the world,
Evelyn Hall took off her gold ring and
placed it on the kitchen counter. At
night when she returned, she slipped
it back on.
Last year, she put it on for good
when she married the woman who rel
atives assumed was her roommate,
cracking open the secret life the two
had hidden for 46 years.
A total of 2,968 couples wed
in Oregon when the state’s most
populous county began issuing
same-sex marriage licenses a year
ago today. Every one of those
marriages is now in legal limbo —
but one year on, gay couples say their
legally hazy unions are nonetheless a
giant leap forward.
“It was like an out-of-slavery
i experience. I know it sounds crazy,
but we were so closeted,” said Mary
Beth Brindley, 65, who ran away
from home to be with Hall, now 66,
when she was 19. “It’s a total relief
not to have to lie anymore. ”
Gay weddings swept the country
from coast to coast starting in San
Francisco on Feb. 12, when Mayor
Gavin Newsom flung open the city’s
wedding registry to gay couples. The
movement jumped to Oregon in
March, then New Mexico and New
Paltz, N.Y.
By May, throngs of gay and lesbian
couples were tying the knot in
Massachusetts, following a ruling by
the state’s highest court.
While more than 13,000 gay couples
married in all, only the 5,000 vows
. exchanged in the Bay State are still
considered legal in the eyes of state
authorities. Yet even in Massachusetts,
the legislature is considering passing a
constitutional amendment banning
such marriages.
In November, voters in Oregon
and 10 other states passed ballot
measures banning gay marriage.
Voters in two other states — Missouri
and Louisiana — banned gay
marriages earlier in 2004.
In Oregon and in California,
lawsuits are winding their way
through the state’s legal machinery to
determine the legal status of the
approximately 7,000 certificates issued
to gay couples in the two states. And
while an effort to pass a federal ban on
gay marriage failed in the U.S. Senate
last year, supporters say they will try
again in the new Congress.
Opponents of gay marriage point
to these and other successes to say
they are winning the battle over the
definition of marriage.
They say gay couples are living in
a fantasy world, pretending to be
married when neither state nor federal
law has sanctioned their unions.
“They’re basically lying to
themselves,” said Tim Nashif, political
director of the Oregon-based Defense
of Marriage Coalition, which backed
the Portland ballot measure banning
gay marriage.
“I think they’re trying to spin this
into something positive, but how
do you spin something like this
into something positive when you’re
0-for-13?” he said, referring to last
years’s gay marriage ban in 13 states.
Gay advocates contend that time
is on their side.
“It’s a case of two steps forward
for every one step back, which
means we’re still one step ahead,”
said Rebekah Kassell, spokeswoman
for Basic Rights Oregon, the state’s
leading gay rights group.
While the marriages are obscured
by legal and legislative challenges, gay
couples who married say they discov
ered a feeling of validation, a sense of
equality which made it all worthwhile.
“You don’t have to keep proving
that you’re a family,” said Kelly Burke,
35, who married Dolores Doyle, 39,
her college sweetheart, last March 3.
Soon after, Burke — a stay-at-home
mom who has been caring for the
couple’s 3 1/2-year-old son — stopped
paying out-of-pocket health insurance,
after Doyle’s employer agreed to
add her to Doyle’s health plan
as a “spouse.”
And her relationship with relatives
subtly shifted. One day last summer,
Doyle’s 19-year-old niece called Burke
to ask for help with a project for her
women’s studies class. She had been
instructed to interview a woman who
was “not a family member” — and
Burke had to tell her that she no longer
fit the bill.
“How do you describe your aunt’s
life partner?” Burke said. “Because we
had become married she suddenly had
the language to identify this person
who had been in her life for so long.
And it changed for me as well. I began
to introduce her as ‘my niece.’”
Like other gay married couples,
Brindley and Hall cherish their
marriage certificate. They ended a
half-century of hiding by publicly
marrying, and later appearing in a TV
ad urging voters to vote “no” on
November’s ballot measure.
They met in 1959 in Memphis,
Tenn., Elvis’ hometown, where Hall
had attended high school with Presley.
When family became suspicious, Hall
and Brindley ran off to Texas where for
37 years they lived as “roommates,”
hiding their rings.
“I don’t care what ‘pending’ box
they put our marriage in,” Brindley
said. The marriage certificate, she
said, “means our relationship has a
validation that it didn’t have before.”
Donations to colleges up for first time in two years
BY JUSTIN POPE
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
After two years without growth,
charitable contributions to U.S.
colleges and universities rose
3.4 percent last year to a record
$24.4 billion, according to a report
released Wednesday.
The increase was driven by a
9.7 percent increase in giving from
individual donors, including a
21.5 percent surge in giving by
non-alumni individuals. That offset
a 6.1 percent decline in donations
from foundations.
Among alumni, total giving
rose slightly, but the percentage of
alumni donating fell, as it has every
year since 2001.
Harvard University led the list,
raising $540 million, according to
the latest annual survey by the
Council for Aid to Education, a unit
of the RAND Corporation. UCLA,
10th overall, raised the most of any
public university — $262 million.
Overall, alumni donations last year
accounted for 28 percent of university
giving, non-alumni individuals 21 per
cent, corporations 18 percent and
foundations 25 percent. Foundations
generally ramp up giving more slowly
than individuals when the economy
recovers, as it has in the past
two years.
The remaining 8 percent was
contributed by religious and
other organizations.
Though the increase in overall
contributions barely outpaced
inflation, survey director Ann
Kaplan of CAE called the results
"not too bad,” considering the
decline in foundation grants, which
she expects to turn around.
The overall increase followed
zero growth in 2003, and a decline
in 2002 — the first since 1988.
Kaplan credited a stronger
economy and more effective
fund-raising.
“Fund-raising behavior has a
strong effect,” she said. “The
number one reason people make
gifts is being asked. Without that,
the economy’s not going to have
much of an effect on giving.”
Perhaps the best news for
colleges and universities was the
21.5 percent increase in gifts from
non-alumni donors — often parents
of alumni, community members or
donors who want to back specific
research. The increase suggests
schools are succeeding in expand
ing their donor pools.
But while total alumni giving rose
2 percent to $6.7 billion, the
percentage of alumni donating fell
to 12.8 percent, which has steadily
dropped since it was 13.8 percent
in 2001.
Kaplan said that may be because
colleges are keeping better records
and now simply have more alumni
to target who figure into the
calculation. But she said they may
also be focused on securing larger
donations from major donors rather
than on getting a broad base of
alumni in the habit of giving, even
small amounts. If that’s the case,
the strategy could negatively affect
future fund-raising.
“Alumni who make small gifts
tend to be the people who end up
making large gifts,” she said.
The Voluntary Support of
Education Survey was based on
replies from 971 institutions, a
group that accounts for about
85 percent of voluntary support
raised by colleges and universities.
Donations to
colleges increase
After two years without growth,
charitable contributions to U.S.
colleges and universities rose
3.4 percent last year to a
record $24.4 billion.
Annual charitable giving
to higher education
$24.4 billion
SOURCE: Rand Corp
Private donations to higher
education by source, 2004
6.4% - Other -i
18.0%
Corporations
I_„gk
25.4%
Foundations
Religious
organizations
27.5%
Alumni
21.3%
Nonalumni
individuals
1.4%
Top universities by
amount raised, 2004
Harvard University_
$540 million
Stanford University
$524
Cornell University
$386
University of Pennsylvania
$333
University of Southern California
AP
$322
Number of Oregon West Nile
cases may increase by hundreds
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PORTLAND — Oregon’s brush
with the West Nile virus last
summer might have been merely a
primer for what the state will face
this year, a health official said.
The mosquito-borne virus, which
has been detected in eight counties,
sickened birds, horses and five
people last year. This year,
hundreds of human cases could be
diagnosed if the virus follows the
pattern seen in other states, said
Emilio DeBess, a public health
veterinarian and epidemiologist
with the Oregon Department of
Human Services.
DeBess will convene a summit
March 8 in Portland for public
health and hospital officials from
across the state to plan how to deal
with a major outbreak.
The virus, which peaks during
the summer when mosquitoes are
most active, entered the United
States in New York in 1999 and has
moved clear across the country. It
killed 88 people in 2004, according
to the national Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
DeBess and other epidemiologists
theorize that the disease can
enter an area in three stages. In the
beginning stage, infected birds fly
into a state and are bitten by
mosquitoes, which in turn become
infected with the virus.
During the second stage, the virus
spreads widely among mosquitoes.
The mosquitoes bite a large number
of people who become infected.
DeBess said it is likely that Oregon is
entering the second stage and will
see substantial numbers of human
infections this year.
In the third stage and beyond, the
number of human cases typically
declines rapidly because those who
were previously exposed to the virus
acquire an immunity to it.
Colorado, for example, reported
14 human cases in 2002. That
ballooned to 2,947 in 2003 and then
dwindled to 276 last year.
It’s impossible for the disease to
transfer from an animal to a
human or a human to a human,
state health officials said. Cattle,
sheep, swine, cats and dogs appear
to be immune.
In humans, most people infected
with the virus exhibit no illness or
only mild symptoms such as fever,
headache and body aches.
DeBess said that although the
number of human cases goes down
in subsequent years, the amount of
virus circulating among mosquitoes
is still high.
“The thing to remember is that
the virus circulates between birds
and mosquitoes,” DeBess said.
“Human beings are dead-end
hosts. They’re just innocent
bystanders in this.”
IN BRIEF
Pilot continues world flight
despite fuel problems
SAUNA, Kan. — Millionaire adven
turer Steve Fossett decided Wednesday
to press ahead with his attempt to fly
solo around the world without refuel
ing, despite a serious problem with the
plane’s fuel system.
Fossett and his flight crew agreed
Wednesday afternoon to keep the
GlobalFlyer in the air rather than
abandoning the record-setting attempt
and turning back for a landing in
Japan. He is now heading east over
the Pacific Ocean, and the team
expects to decide Wednesday night
after reaching Hawaii whether to press
on to the U.S. mainland.
Fossett discovered the problem with
the fuel system of the custom-built
plane early Wednesday.
Project manager Paul Moore said
fuel sensors in the 13 tanks differ from
readings of how quickly the plane’s
single jet engine was burning fuel.
Moore said the crew had been forced
to assume that 2,600 pounds of
the original 18,100 pounds of fuel
“disappeared” early in the flight.
It was not clear whether the
problem was with the instruments that
track how much fuel remains or if
some fuel had been lost because of a
leak, Fossett’s team said.
"This is a huge setback,” Fossett
said from the plane, according to a
statement issued by his staff. “I have
not that high a level of confidence at
this point.”
Fossett might still be able to finish
the flight on his original path if a tail
wind in the jet stream remains strong
enough to push him across the Pacific.
Before the fuel problem was
discovered, Fossett had estimated he
would complete the 23,000-mile jour
ney at midday Thursday. He took off
Monday from Salina.
Fossett already holds the record
for flying solo around the globe in a
balloon, as well as dozens of other
aviation and sailing records.
The project is being financed by
Virgin Atlantic founder Sir Richard
Branson, a longtime friend and
fellow adventurer.
The first nonstop global flight
without refueling was made in 1986 by
Jeana Yeager and Dick Rutan, brother
of GlobalFlyer designer Burt Rutan.
— The Associated Press