Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 258, Ed. 1 Friday, April 17, 2015 Page: 4 of 100
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STATE/NATIONAL
4A
Friday, April 17, 2015
Denton Record-Chronicle
Stories of love, life, death in gay marriage case
marriage as the union of a man
and a woman confront obstacles
across the course of their lives,
from adoption to hospital visits
to death benefits.
The Yorksmiths live in Ken-
tucky and work in Ohio, both
states that ban same-sex mar-
riage. That complicates school
enrollment, benefits, travel and
tax matters, as well as medical
care.
from their home in Memphis.
Each time they cross into an-
other state they declare, “We’re
married!” or ‘We’re not mar-
ried!” — depending on whether
the state recognizes same-sex
marriage.
Those trips mimic daily life
for deKoe, an Army Reserve ser-
geant on active duty. His mar-
riage is considered valid while at
work at a military base in Mil-
lington, Tennessee. But back
home in Memphis, there is no le-
gal recognition for his nearly 4-
year-old marriage to Kostura.
In 2013, Jim Obergefell and
John Arthur were watching TV
news about the Supreme Court
striking down part of the federal
anti-gay marriage law. Oberge-
fell leaned over, kissed the man
he had loved for more than two
decades, and said, “Let’s get mar-
ried.”
They include young parents and
grandparents, as well as a couple
of grieving men who already
have lost their life partners.
Some have never known a
moment’s fear about living life as
an openly gay person.
Others, like Luke Barlowe
and Jimmy Meade, still don’t
hold hands in public, even after
more than 40 years together.
‘We grew up in an era where
you didn’t show your affection
for a same-sex person,” Barlowe
said. ‘We’ve never gotten over
that.”
coming up behind us,” Barlowe
said.
They knew they didn’t have
much time. Arthur was in the fi-
nal stages of Lou Gehrig’s dis-
ease.
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - A mid-
dle-of-the night trip to the emer-
gency room, with her 9-month-
old son coughing and laboring to
breathe, gave Pam Yorksmith
her latest reminder of why she
took up the fight for same-sex
marriage.
Before baby Orion could be
treated for croup, the hospital
had to call his birth mother —
Yorksmith’s wife, Nicole — “to
get permission to treat my child,”
Yorksmith said.
Although the Yorksmiths
started their family together
through artificial insemination,
hospital records and Orion’s
birth certificate don’t list Pam
Yorksmith as a parent.
Beyond the right to wed, gay
and lesbian Americans in the 13
states that continue to define
Once the couple signed up
for the lawsuit, they finally felt
they could stop living in the
shadows.
Meade had a doctor’s ap-
pointment recently and Barlowe
filled out his paperwork. In the
blank asking for their relation-
ship, Barlowe did something he
hadn’t done before. He wrote
“husband.”
“It was the strangest feeling,”
he said. “Even after all these
Ohio voters had banned
same-sex marriage. So within
weeks, a medically equipped
plane carried them to Maryland,
where Arthur’s aunt waited to of-
ficiate. Arthur lay on a gurney as
the couple exchanged their vows
inside the plane, on the tarmac.
Less than four months later,
Arthur died at age 48. Obergefell
was listed on the death certifi-
cate as his surviving spouse; the
couple had won a court order be-
fore Arthur’s death to make it so.
None of it was afight Oberge-
fell and Arthur were looking for.
“No one could ever accuse us
of being activists,” Obergefell
said, smiling. “We just lived our
lives. We were just John and
Jim.”
They are among the 19 men
and 12 women whose same-sex
marriage cases from those two
states, plus Michigan and Ten-
nessee, will be argued at the Su-
preme Court on April 28.
Many of them spoke to The
Associated Press about their
cases.
years.
Barlowe and Meade met in
1968 at the Gilded Cage, a gay
bar in Lexington, Kentucky.
Both retired, they married in Io-
wa in 2009 and live about an
hour outside of Louisville.
‘We wanted to do this not for
us — it does nothing for us — but
we wanted to do it for the kids
Sgt. 1st Class Ijpe deKoe and
Thom Kostura were married in
New York in 2011, just before de-
Koe deployed to Afghanistan
with the U.S. Army. The Army
has since moved them to Ten-
Some sued for the right to
marry, while others are fighting
to have states recognize a mar-
riage performed elsewhere.
nessee.
They have a game they play
on the many road trips they take
Fraud case highlights impact
of rural hospital closures
SATURDAY
& SUNDAY
APRIL 25 & 26
1-6 PM, EACH DAY
Medicaid Services.
He said occasionally, other
care facilities such as nursing
homes will close because of mis-
management or fraud, but it’s un-
usual to find a hospital system so
broadly effected.
“It really was something we
weren’t expecting to see in this
kind of arena,” Wright said.
Mahmood, 63, was sentenced
Tuesday to 11 years in federal pris-
on after earlier being convicted of
submitting more than $1 million
in false reimbursement claims.
The hospitals at the center of the
case took a major financial hit
when federal funding was with-
drawn after inspectors found sub-
standard patient care and deteri-
orating conditions at the facilities.
Hospitals in the North Texas
communities of Terrell and
Grand Saline have closed. In East
Texas, the town of Center lost its
hospital, as did Whitney, north-
west of Waco. Two others were
taken over by new owners.
The closures exacerbate the
shortage of medical care in Texas,
where 10 rural medical centers
have ceased operations in the last
two years alone, according to the
Texas Organization of Rural and
Community Hospitals.
Some must travel hundreds of
miles to receive care, particularly
for specialized treatment, said Dr.
Doug Curran, a family physician
in the East Texas town of Athens
and board member of the Texas
Medical Association. People in
East Texas seeking specialized pe-
diatric care usually have to travel
to Dallas or Houston.
“Health care ought to be about
how we take good care of our pa-
tients and when hospitals like
these dose down you see people
who get hurt,” he said.
By David Warren
Associated Press
DALLAS — Access to medical
care has long been a dilemma for
rural Americans.
In some pockets of Texas, the
problem has grown even worse
after a doctor’s Medicaid and
Medicare fraud scheme dedmat-
ed a chain of rural medical centers
that provided health care not easi-
ly found for hundreds of miles.
The sentencing this week of
Dr. Tariq Mahmood condudes a
legal saga that induded the clo-
sure of four rural hospitals he op-
erated. For the communities now
facing a gaping void in medical
care, problems are far from over.
“These are small community
hospitals in rural areas, which was
why the impact of their closure
was so large,” said David Wright,
deputy regional administrator for
the Centers for Medicare and
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Dallas
5 children taken from
church where boy died
Authorities say five children
have been removed from a Dal-
las-area home that served as a
church where leaders helped
starve a 2-year-old boy to rid
him of a “demon.”
Texas Child Protective Ser-
vices tell The Dallas Morning
News the children taken from
the Balch Springs home range in
age from 1 to 13.
Balch Springs police say a
church leader, 49-year-old
Aracely Meza, told the boy’s par-
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25 days, believing it would save
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to resurrect him shortly after he
died last month.
Washington, D.C.
Pilot of gyrocopter
faces two charges
The postal carrier who flew a
gyrocopter onto the lawn of the
U.S. Capitol is facing two crimi-
nal charges. But he’s being re-
leased from federal custody to
return to Florida.
Doug Hughes made his ini-
tial appearance in U.S. District
Court in Washington on Thurs-
day. That’s one day after he
steered his tiny aircraft onto the
Capitol’s West Lawn after flying
through restricted airspace
around the National Mall. He
was charged with operating an
unregistered aircraft and violat-
ing national airspace.
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Washington, D.C.
Unemployment rate up
for recent college grads
The Labor Department says
job prospects for recent college
graduates deteriorated slightly
last year despite an improve-
ment in the overall job market.
The unemployment rate for
Americans age 20 to 29 who re-
ceived a four-year or advanced
degree last year rose to 12.4 per-
cent from 10.9 percent in 2013.
But the figures are volatile, and
many recruiters and campus of-
ficials say hiring this spring will
be strong.
For graduates with bachelor’s
degrees, unemployment climbed
to 14.9 percent last year from 115
percent in 2013. For those with
advanced degrees, unemploy-
ment slid to 5.4 percent from 9.3
percent
New York City
Study: Youth smoking
down, e-cigarette use up
Teen smoking hit a new low
last year while the popularity of
electronic cigarettes and water
pipes boomed, a government re-
port shows.
The number of high school
students who tried e-cigarettes
tripled in one year — to more
than 13 percent. Water pipes or
hookahs were used by 9.4 per-
cent. But smoking of traditional
cigarettes plummeted to 9.2
percent from more than 13 per-
cent.
ru
Austin
DPS: Finish investigation
and clear our name
Q_
The Texas Department of
Public Safety is challenging pub-
lic corruption prosecutors to fin-
ish an investigation into a ma-
ligned border security contract
with a private defense company.
DPS Director Steve McCraw
said Thursday that continuing
questions about the state’s for-
mer partnership with Abrams
Learning and Information Sys-
tems has damaged the reputa-
tion of the agency.
The Virginia-based company
received $20 million in no-bid
contracts to bring military
know-how to state border oper-
ations starting in 2006. That
work ended in 2012.
Dallas
New vault to hold JFK
items, historic archives
Dallas has a new vault to
store historic city documents
ranging from items from the
1963 JFK assassination to de-
tails on tax rolls from the 1880s.
Mayor Mike Rawlings on
Wednesday helped dedicate the
storage area in the basement of
Dallas City Hall.
The Dallas Morning News
reports the area has protective
lighting, controls for tempera-
ture and humidity, and more
than doubles the previous ar-
chive space.
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 258, Ed. 1 Friday, April 17, 2015, newspaper, April 17, 2015; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1124463/m1/4/?q=%22~1~1%22~1: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .