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Same-sex Marriage In Massachusetts
Same-sex marriage in Massachusetts has been legally recognized since May 17, 2004, as a result of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruling in ''Goodridge v. Department of Public Health'' that it was unconstitutional under the Massachusetts Constitution to allow only opposite-sex couples to marry. Massachusetts became the sixth jurisdiction in the world (after the Netherlands, Belgium, Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec) to legalize same-sex marriage. It was the first U.S. state to open marriage to same-sex couples. Legal history Background In 1989, passing legislation first proposed in 1973, Massachusetts prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation in credit, public and private employment, union practices, housing, and public accommodation. In the decade that followed, political debate addressed same-sex relationships through two proxy issues: spousal benefits and parenting rights. The Boston City Council debated health insurance for the same-sex partn ...
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Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) is the court of last resort, highest court in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Although the claim is disputed by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the SJC claims the distinction of being the oldest continuously functioning appellate court in the Americas, with a recognized history dating to the establishment of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature in 1692 under the charter of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Although it was historically composed of four associate justices and one chief justice, the court is currently composed of six associate justices and one chief justice. History The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court traces its history back to the high court of the British Province of Massachusetts Bay, which was chartered in 1692. Under the terms of that charter, Governor Sir William Phips established the Superior Court of Judicature as the province's local court of last resort (some o ...
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Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, Worcester, and Springfield. It is one of two de jure county seats of Middlesex County, although the county's executive government was abolished in 1997. Situated directly north of Boston, across the Charles River, it was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, once also an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Lesley University, and Hult International Business School are in Cambridge, as was Radcliffe College before it merged with Harvard. Kendall Square in Cambridge has been called "the most innovative square mile on the planet" owing to the high concentration of successful startups that have emerged in the vicinity ...
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Same-sex Marriage
Same-sex marriage, also known as gay marriage, is the marriage of two people of the same Legal sex and gender, sex or gender. marriage between same-sex couples is legally performed and recognized in 33 countries, with the most recent being Same-sex marriage in Mexico, Mexico, constituting some 1.35 billion people (17% of the world's population). In Same-sex marriage in Andorra, Andorra, a law allowing same-sex marriage will come into force on 17 February 2023. Same-sex adoption, Adoption rights are not necessarily covered, though most states with same-sex marriage allow those couples to jointly adopt as other married couples can. In contrast, 34 countries (as of 2021) have definitions of marriage in their constitutions that prevent marriage between couples of the same sex, most enacted in recent decades as a preventative measure. Some other countries have constitutionally mandated Islamic law, which is generally interpreted as prohibiting marriage between same-sex couples. ...
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Second-parent Adoption
The second-parent adoption or co-parent adoption is a process by which a partner, who is not biologically related to the child, can adopt their partner's biological or adoptive child without terminating the first legal parent's rights. This process is of interest to many couples, as legal parenthood allows the parent's partner to do things such as: make medical decisions, claim dependency, or gain custody in the event of the death of the biological parent. Second-parent adoption is of significant importance in the context of the LGBT adoption. In the United States, second-parent adoption was started by the National Center for Lesbian Rights (formerly the Lesbian Rights Project) in the mid-1980s. The NCLR offers a legal guide that covers the basics of second-parent adoption. According to the NCLR, second parent adoption is the most common means by which LGBT non-biological parents establish a legal relationship with their child. Family law varies from state to state in America. C ...
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Michael Dukakis
Michael Stanley Dukakis (; born November 3, 1933) is an American retired lawyer and politician who served as governor of Massachusetts from 1975 to 1979 and again from 1983 to 1991. He is the longest-serving governor in Massachusetts history and only the second Greek-American governor in U.S. history, after Spiro Agnew. He was nominated by the Democratic Party for president in the 1988 election, losing to the Republican nominee, Vice President George H. W. Bush. Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, to Greek immigrants, Dukakis attended Swarthmore College before enlisting in the United States Army. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he won election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, serving from 1963 to 1971. He won the 1974 Massachusetts gubernatorial election but lost his 1978 bid for re-nomination to Edward J. King. He defeated King in the 1982 gubernatorial primary and served as governor from 1983 to 1991, presiding over a period of economic growth known ...
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Thomas Menino
Thomas Michael Menino (December 27, 1942 – October 30, 2014) was an American politician who served as the 53rd mayor of Boston, from 1993 to 2014. He was the city's longest-serving mayor. He was elected mayor in 1993 after first serving three months in the position of "acting mayor" following the resignation of his predecessor Raymond Flynn (who had been appointed United States ambassador to the Holy See). Before serving as mayor, Menino was a member of Boston City Council and had been elected president of the City Council in 1993. Dubbed an "urban mechanic", Menino had a reputation for focusing on "nuts and bolts" issues and enjoyed very high public approval ratings as mayor. During his tenure, Boston saw a significant amount of new development, including the Seaport District, the redevelopment of Dudley Square (today known as "Nubian Square"), and the redevelopment of the area surrounding Fenway Park. Alongside this development, gentrification priced some longtime residents o ...
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Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most populous city in the country. The city boundaries encompass an area of about and a population of 675,647 as of 2020. It is the seat of Suffolk County (although the county government was disbanded on July 1, 1999). The city is the economic and cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Boston, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 4.8 million people in 2016 and ranking as the tenth-largest MSA in the country. A broader combined statistical area (CSA), generally corresponding to the commuting area and including Providence, Rhode Island, is home to approximately 8.2 million people, making it the sixth most populous in the United States. Boston is one of the oldest ...
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Paul Cellucci
Argeo Paul Cellucci (; April 24, 1948 – June 8, 2013) was an American politician and diplomat from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A Republican, he served as the 69th governor of Massachusetts from 1999 to 2001, and as the United States Ambassador to Canada from 2001 to 2005. He also served as the Commonwealth's 68th lieutenant governor from 1991 to 1999, as well as in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and Senate from 1977 to 1991. When Bill Weld resigned in 1997 after being nominated for United States Ambassador to Mexico, Cellucci became acting governor. He then was elected governor in 1998, and served until 2001, when he resigned to become the U.S. Ambassador to Canada under President George W. Bush, a post he held until 2005. Early life and career Cellucci was born in Hudson, Massachusetts, into a political family, the son of Priscilla M. (née Rose) and Argeo R. Cellucci Jr. His father was of Italian descent from the small Lazio village of San Donato Val di ...
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Home Rule
Home rule is government of a colony, dependent country, or region by its own citizens. It is thus the power of a part (administrative division) of a state or an external dependent country to exercise such of the state's powers of governance within its own administrative area that have been decentralized to it by the central government. In the British Isles, it traditionally referred to self-government, devolution or independence of its constituent nations—initially Ireland, and later Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. In the United States and other countries organised as federations of states, the term usually refers to the process and mechanisms of self-government as exercised by municipalities, counties, or other units of local government at the level below that of a federal state (e.g., US state, in which context see special legislation). It can also refer to the system under which Greenland and the Faroe Islands are associated with Denmark. Home rule is not, however ...
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Massachusetts General Court
The Massachusetts General Court (formally styled the General Court of Massachusetts) is the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name "General Court" is a hold-over from the earliest days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, when the colonial assembly, in addition to making laws, sat as a judicial court of appeals. Before the adoption of the state constitution in 1780, it was called the ''Great and General Court'', but the official title was shortened by John Adams, author of the state constitution. It is a bicameral body. The upper house is the Massachusetts Senate which is composed of 40 members. The lower body, the Massachusetts House of Representatives, has 160 members. (Until 1978, it had 240 members.) It meets in the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill in Boston. The current President of the Senate is Karen Spilka, and the Speaker of the House is Ronald Mariano. Since 1959, Democrats have controlled both houses of the Massachusetts General Court ...
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Roman Catholic Archdiocese Of Boston
The Archdiocese of Boston ( la, Archidiœcesis Bostoniensis) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church located in the New England region of the United States. Its territorial remit encompasses the whole of Essex County, Middlesex County, Norfolk County, and Suffolk County, and also all of Plymouth County except the towns of Marion, Mattapoisett, and Wareham in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is led by a prelate archbishop who serves as pastor of the mother church, Cathedral of the Holy Cross in the South End of Boston. The Archdiocese of Boston is a metropolitan see with six suffragan dioceses: the Dioceses of Burlington, Fall River, Manchester, Portland in Maine, Springfield in Massachusetts, and Worcester. As of 2018, there are 284 parishes in the archdiocese, 617 diocesan priests, and 275 deacons. In 2018, the archdiocese estimated that more than 1.9 million Catholics were in its territory. History Early history New Engl ...
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The Pilot (Massachusetts Newspaper)
''The Pilot'' is the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston and claims the title of "America's Oldest Catholic Newspaper", having been in continuous publication since its first issue on September 5, 1829. Although the first Catholic newspaper in the United States, '' The United States Catholic Miscellany'' of Charleston, South Carolina, was founded seven years earlier in 1822, it ceased publication in 1861. The paper was founded by Bishop Benedict Joseph Fenwick, the second bishop of Boston, at a time of increased Irish immigration to the United States and rising anti-Catholic animus to the newcomers' church. In its first edition, Bishop Fenwick wrote that the newspaper's purpose was to defend against the "crying calumnies and gross misrepresentations which in this section of the country have been so long, so unsparingly, so cruelly heaped upon the Church."
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