Word: jersey
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...around the globe, paid in cashier's checks and accompanied only by word that the giver wished to remain anonymous. In January the shroud lifted, revealing a tale of such unsung goodness that some almost wished its secrecy had been preserved. Charles F. Feeney, 66, a businessman from New Jersey, had during the past decade given away more than $600 million through his two charitable foundations. At least $3.5 billion more--the entire value of Feeney's ownership stake in the duty-free shop empire DFS Group Ltd., which he turned over to the foundations in 1984--remains...
...adopt. Last year Congress passed a bill dubbed the Defense of Marriage Act, which said each state could choose whether to recognize gay marriages; 25 states have banned them outright. In this context, says Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay lobbying group, "this [New Jersey policy] is a vitally important agreement. The next stage of the gay-rights movement will focus on all of these issues dealing with our families...
Last week New Jersey became the first state to explicitly allow lesbian and gay couples to adopt children jointly, just as married couples do. The state agreed to change its policy after Holden, Galluccio and a group of 200 other gay couples brought a lawsuit arguing that New Jersey's no-gay-couples rule violated both state law and their right to equal protection. Previously, gays in the state could adopt only as individuals, forcing couples to undertake the lengthy and expensive adoption process twice. Now, all unmarried couples, gay and straight, can adopt...
...sure, Holden and Galluccio aren't the first American gay partners to adopt jointly. Judges in other states, including California, have quietly allowed such adoptions in the past, according to the A.C.L.U.'s Michael Adams, the point man on the New Jersey case. And according to a 1996 report by the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a gay legal-rights group, courts in 21 states have approved so-called second-parent adoptions, or adoptions by the partners of individuals who have given birth to or who have already adopted a child. (This was the lengthy double-adoption procedure that...
...unclear how much the New Jersey agreement will change adoption law elsewhere. In fact, there's a chance that the New Jersey case could do for adoption policy what a Hawaii case did for marriage: ignite a national backlash. Lower-court decisions in Hawaii allowing same-sex marriages led other states and eventually Congress to pass the bills outlawing them. (The Hawaii Supreme Court will probably rule on the issue soon, but next year Hawaii's voters will have a chance to amend their constitution to ban same-sex marriages.) The New Jersey case, says Arne Owens, a spokesman...