Vet sues after burial plot with gay partner denied

http://hamptonroads.com/2014/07/vet-sues-after-burial-plot-gay-partner-denied



Madelynn Taylor, 74, looks at a 2011 photo of herself (in red) with her wife Jean Mixner, in Boise, Idaho on July 7, 2014. Taylor has filed a lawsuit seeking the right to have her deceased wife interred with her at the Idaho State Veterans Cemetery. Idaho state law allows only married couples who are legally recognized by the state to be buried together at the cemetery; the state has refused to recognize Taylor’s legal marriage to Mixner in California as valid.

Vet sues after burial plot with gay partner denied
By Rebecca Boone
The Associated Press
© July 8, 2014

BOISE, Idaho

A U.S. Navy veteran filed a civil rights lawsuit Monday after the Idaho State Veterans Cemetery refused to allow her to be buried with the ashes of her late wife.

Seventy-four-year-old Madelynn Taylor filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Boise after she tried to make advance arrangements last year to have her ashes interred with Jean Mixner, whom she met on a blind date in 1995 and married in California in 2008 when gay marriage was briefly legal.

Though federal veterans cemeteries allow the spouses of gay veterans to be interred with their loved ones, Taylor said she was surprised to find the Idaho cemetery — which is owned and operated by the state — does not.

Taylor's situation is "among the most extreme examples of the harm caused by state laws that deny respect to the marriages of same-sex couples," said Christopher Stoll, a senior attorney with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which is representing Taylor. "Denying these important protections to committed couples is not simply unjust, it is needlessly cruel."