for about $35,000. that is more robust -- much more robust for males than for females. very hard for only a high school job at 35 grand a year. it is not impossible for men because there's still enough manufacturing, construction, coal climbing and utilities to go around for boys but women don't have access to those occupations and the ones they do, don't pay. so there is a -- this poll to some extent, results will only get stronger, i think, as time goes by. >> i'd liken this 3 out of 10 situation that tony's talking about to two simultaneous games of musical chairs. in one group you've got the group with the high school credentials and more and more of the chairs are being pulled out. and the other group you've got the people with the post-secondary credentials and more and more of the chairs are being added. the people who need -- who want a middle class lifestyle are

increasingly are going to have to be in the game on this side rather than on this side if they want to be successful. >> all right. let's ask if any of you have questions. i'm sure you do. i hope you do. while we're getting the mics set, i want to ask a question so i'm going to take the privilege of the chair to ask the first question. i can hear some in higher education, i suspect, expressing some concern over the way we frame these findings and are we talking about turning our colleges and universities into sort of a massive job training system? and is this about -- is this about training people for specific jobs? ..

>> as a parent, as a colleague, as a neighbor are the same things that make you successful in a job. and, in fact, the skills that employers say through surveys that we've seen from the business round table, from the committee for economic development, lots of different places show that what the employers most value are those things like critical thinking and problem solving, the ability to communicate, to be analytical. those are all of the things that we believe we do best in higher education. so this conversation about are we training people for jobs or for life is, in fact, the same conversation because those skills for life are the same skills you need to be successful to get and be successful in a good job. now, the conversation gets

rockier from that point on because there are differing returns to differing types of credentials, and i think that's part of what tony's most recent research is starting to show is that we've got to begin differentiating the kinds of things that people are majoring in and the occupations that they choose. be not all of the -- not all of the returns are universeally the same, but all of the returns for people with postsecondary skills and credentials are higher than those without those postsecondary skills and credentials. >> i would, just one -- i guess my sense of this is it's not an either/or kind of choice that we have to make here. first of all, the system as it presently operates is not an either/or system. keep in mind that among bas only about 10% are in liberal arts and humanities. the other 90% are, basically, occupational or industry or professionally based. all graduate education is

occupational or industry based. i mean, you can get a ph.d. in history and not find a job, but it's clearly intent to do something in history. so there is a -- and when you go down to community colleges, less than half but nearly half are occupational, the other half are general ed degrees that are supposed to send you to a four-year school where 90% of the degrees are, in fact, occupational. so, and certificates, community college certificates and test-based industry certifications which are the new big bullies on the block now, those are clearly intended to be occupational. so it's too late to worry about this for starters. higher education, the good news in this is higher education has really been pretty responsive to market demands. there's an issue about whether it should have been more so. jamie and i agree, i think, it should have been more responsive than it's been. young people need to know if they're going to get a degree

what it's going to pay. i think they should know. my final point about this is i do believe that this, the employment role of higher education is pivot a. clearly, higher ed is supposed to satisfy all sorts of needs, learning for its own sake, individual human development. it's supposed to give us good citizens and good neighbors. but in the american system you can't be a good citizen or a good neighbor or participate fully in the life of your times if you don't have a job. we don't make you vote here, but we do make you go to work. if you don't go to work, unless you have a very good excuse, the rest of us aren't going to take care of you. so if higher education doesn't deliver on its mission to get people employed, it won't deliver on all of its other missions either is my bias about this. >> questions? yes. first one right here. okay. we'll take --

>> want me to go first? is. >> we'll come down over here next. >> hi, deborah hump freeze. i want to go back to something that was asked in the earlier session about, um, aligning policy with the needs to improve education either in terms of completion or in other ways. and i want to ask about sort of how we help bring this message to policymakers in particular. i was just giving a speech two days ago in a state who i won't even name the state because i -- it will reflect badly on them. [laughter] and i was giving a speech to a faculty development group about improving, changing the teaching and learning environment to improve both completion and quality. and be i was also using some of tony's wonderful data which i do frequently. thank you, tony. to talk about the changes in our economy, what people need, etc. and later i talked to a dean who was in the audience who also happened to be in that state a state legislator.

frankly, i'd never actually met a college dean who was also a state legislator, but in this state this actually happens. and she said to me how do i help my colleagues in the state legislature understand this data including tony? and i directed her to the wonderful charts state by state that you have in that report, help wanted, and so fort. and she said, yeah, i showed them to some of my colleagues, and they're just not buying it. they don't buy it. they're not interested. and i didn't even really know what to say because it's always felt to me that tony's data -- and clearly the public agrees with your data. i mean, this poll clearly shows that there's a connection between the economic health of this state and investment in the higher education. but in this state anyway, the state legislature was the key. and they couldn't get them to hear this message. >> part of the answer from my perspective since it's tony's

data, i want to give him the chance to actually provide the real answer. part of the answer from my perspective is you may not believe it, but you know what? the public policymakers in canada and korea and 30 other countries that are our economic competitors believe it because they're investing heavily in this kind of success. in fact, they've started to surpass us in terms of attainment. oh, and by the way, states that are your neighbors are probably also doing similar things because there are some states that are taking the path that you're talking about, but there are several states now that this has become a bipartisan issue of very high accord among people recognizing that increasing educational attainment is critical. one thing that i think is missing from many of these conversations that's probably worth mentioning is that the quality of the conversation about the common core and the k-12 changes is going to need to be matched at the higher ed level. by that i mean we're going to

need to have some alignment of that conversation. now, i don't literally mean lock step alignment. i think one of the mistakes of the conversation so far at the k-12 level is not enough involvement of the people from the higher ed side about what does college ready actually mean? it would help if we had more higher ed people in the room to describe what college ready actually is. i think that would help strengthen the equation. at the same time, higher ed's going to have to respond in some very meaningful ways in terms of its admission processes, its college placement processes, its assessment systems in order to be able to better align with what i think are going to be quality improvements that we're going to be seeing at the k-the level. -- k-12 level. >> i think politicians do understand this, that is, they read the same polls -- they read a lot more of them, actually, than most of the rest of us do. [laughter] and that number, i can tell you, comes up over and over again. it is no accident that in the

last two presidential campaigns access to higher education in both platforms, it moved as the economy moved, even as the economy be collapsed it went from two to three, never fell before four in any speech i heard. the way political leadership is dealing with this because they're in a box, box they're in is they don't have any money. and they've got to make very hard decisions about whether they're going to take money away from old people or young people. in the end, going to be young people because young people are resilient. i can tell you, old people aren't. [laughter] so there is a -- i have a horse in this race. [laughter] but there is a, there is a, there is a recognition of this. so what you heard in the last presidential campaign, and i would note in the one before you heard the same thing, and that was the political answer is

we're going to make college affordable. so there is an implicit assumption in that is that we're going to make college universeally available. that's really what they've been saying. the bush administration, interestingly, was the first presidential statement on this. it was in their higher ed commission that most people didn't like very much where they said, and it's something of an ambiguous sentence, where they said, i think literally, everybody doesn't need to go to college, stop, but everybody needs some postsecondary education. somehow two-year schools were no longer college. but there is -- that's the only way i can make sense out of that sentence. but in the end the, this is generally -- they understand that the voters want access to postsecondary education for their children. so there is, and the answer is affordability. the question then is, what does affordability mean? and the answer is we don't have much money, we're going to have

to do more with less. i think that's what they're saying. they then shift the blame towards higher education. that is, the problem is it's not affordable. not that it shouldn't be universeally available, and that's where it resides. it's not that hard to do to shift it to the institution because it's just like when anybody -- two things you know in political polls. one is gas prices are the only prices if you're a politician you have to worry about because everybody stands at the pump and watches the meter. so everybody knows about gas prices. the other thing is you get a tuition bill. i can tell you as somebody who's worked with politicians. they all know that. there are two things -- one is the gas pump, and the other is the tuition bill. and they -- so it's not hard for them to say the price of gas has got to go down, and the price of college has got to go down. then the next question is how do you do that. and we really come up somewhat empty on that, i think, quite frankly. >> yes, question here. >> good afternoon, my name is

patty, and i'm from fairfax county public schools, and you started to address my question, but maybe you could go into it a little bit more. can you address the increasingly expensive costs of higher ed especially for those students whose parents do not have a college credential? >> look, the gaps between the haves and the have nots are growing, and i think part of what we need to increasingly recognize that ignoring those gaps comes at our collective peril. this is no longer an issue of trying to do better by those who are less fortunate. what we are talking about is the majority of our population now, and the emerging majorities of latinos and the large numbers of african-americans and first generation college goers, the huge numbers of adults who absolutely have to be trained or retrained at the postsecondary level was the jobs that they had which were middle class jobs no longer afford them that middle class lifestyle. they lost them, they need to get

some postsecondary education. but the critical piece of all of this in any opinion, however, is that we've got to get serious about a new kind of social compact for those families. that is, we've got to find a different way of articulating the value of higher education for them, and i've spent most of my career as a ardent advocate for need-based financial aid, and nothing's going to change that. i've been, i've been, you know, i was a pell grant recipient, i was a pell grant advocate. i get why that's so important. but the reality of the cost of higher education for those populations that you're talking about is simply -- are simply too high. i think the solution is not going to come on the price side unless we agree to price controls which i think have all kinds of negative effects, and i wouldn't support government price controls. government can't control the price of anything, let alone something as complex as higher education. so i think price controls would not be the right way to do it. the only way to do it is to deal

with it on the cost side, and that's going to mine that that -- mean that that delivery model for higher education is going to have to change. we've got to have a more productive system of higher education, productive meaning both efficient but also effective, focusing on those learning outcomes that the public expects through this gallup poll that we need to deliver on in terms of high quality learning that leads to a good job, etc. so this is part of our challenge for those populations that you're talking about. the failure to deliver on that, however, is going to, i think, really impact our collective well being and our economic and social future as a country. >> the one thing i would add to that is it's why the governor and tom were up here before talking about technology. for me it's always like fresh air. it's something i don't know much about, and it sounds like maybe they've got an answer.

and i've heard enough people do that. i heard hillary pennington do it a few weeks ago in richmond talking to the virginia higher ed system leadership, and she made me feel the same way. intuitive through, it makes -- intuitively, it makes so much sense. the only thing that bothers me is i've been hearing that now for about 30 years. but as somebody who is an expert said to me a number of years ago, he said, tony, you judge things in terms of your own lifetime, and really that's not very long. it feels long sometimes. [laughter] he said, we've been at this for 30 40rbgs years with technology, it'll take another 30 or 40 to do it. and in the meantime we're going to have a problem delivering high quality education universeally in the united states, and that'll simply be a difficulty we'll struggle through until the technology comes online. >> another question. we have a question down -- oh, yes, you've got a mic. >> yes. my name is camilla, i'm a first

year master's student here at the george washington school of education. and i wanted to talk a little bit more about, um, the perception that once you actually do obtain a postsecondary education that you're still not prepared to go into the work force. um, and as someone that's a relatively new entrant into the work force, i want to speak a little bit from my perspective. i think there's a lot of reasons, but two of them come to mind. one is the fact that students need to be strategic about choosing a major. and when you come into your undergraduate degree, i feel like there's very little guidance about not only what's going on in the market now, but what will be going on in the four years so you can figure out what you should be, you know, strategically doing to get there. but i think more importantly is what experience you're getting while you're in school, internships specifically. i know this past year summer jobs for young people were very low, an opportunity of getting one was difficult. and so when you are in school and you don't have that work

experience and you're graduating, that makes you less competitive and less able to get a job. so what do you think the opportunities are for providing incentives for the business sector to expand internship programs, to make sure that those things aren't cut when the economy kind of goes south and just to help students have more work experience when they're leaving college? >> look, there's a growing number of efforts that are trying to connect with this, although i would say that we have a lot more work to do, so lots of organizations, i mentioned a few of them as the business round table, committee for economic development, skills for america's future, many others are trying to elevate this issue which is that work-based experiences combined with education can actually enhance the learning process and lead to higher quality outcomes. but the degree itself, the credential itself is really the prerequisite. it's not going to be a guarantee of that high quality job. you're going to need to augment that with other things in order to enhance your hasn'ts for

success -- chances for success. one issue that i think our employers need to step forward on is doing a better job of actually participating in that process rather than lamenting the incomplete job that they're getting from our higher education system. now, let's be clear, employers are clearly paying a premium for people with college degrees, so they believe very strongly that that's important. but they're also telling us they need more, and they need different, and i think those different kinds of learning outcomes that we're talking about would be an important way in which they can invest directly in that success. >> back here. >> oh, sorry. go ahead. >> my name is anita, and i'm with the new leadership alliance for student learning and accountability. and one of the things i think that maybe is a little bit unfortunate about the results is that, um, students and families are continuing to pay the high cost of higher education. and so the legislature sees those results, they know that

they can reduce the amount of money that they're giving the state institutions, and families and students are going to keep paying for it, and in the end it's sort of a detriment to the entire system. and they kind of look at it like all market system. we don't have enough, i guess, ammunition, i want to say, to force colleges to change and really look at the prices. so i sort of feel as though as long as people are going to be willing to pay, colleges and universities aren't going to be forced to change as quickly, and that's unfortunate. >> there's an issue, you know, we've gotten to the end of the rope in a growing number of states on the raise tuition/cut budget strategy. the truth is that the tuitions have been raised to a level that are extraordinary, that are causing problems. and at the same time you see states like california where there are legitimate capacity issues in the system now, right? the california community colleges cannot serve the needs of a growing number of people,

literally they don't have the capacity to do that. so there's a, something happening on the ground here where i think we are starting to go over the cliff on the, um, cut some more and use tuition to make everything level after all is said and done. and that's where i think these efforts to improve productivity are going to become increasingly important be. we've with invested on seven different states, we're trying a variety of different approaches to do that, but we think that's the camel's nose under the tent. there's got to be widespread acceptance that improving product it is going to be -- productivity is going to be critical. not the old way, that was a wasted effort in my opinion. what we've got to do is engage the faculty, find ways to wring them into the equation -- bring them into the equation to get them the outcomes that are going to lead to the high quality of success we need in order to be

successful. >> one more question, and then i think we'll need to wrawp. yes, sir. >> thank you. charles mccullough, embassy of australia. my question goes to what you were saying, annie, in response to the last question, focusing on degree and improving degree, and especially given what we've heard in this poll about perceptions of the value of that degree itself. i know in australia universities, government and businesses have come together several years ago and developed the qualifications framework that allowed universities themselves to really focus on student learning outcomes in awarding degrees. that being said, how do you suggest that here in the united states institutions of higher education can come together to focus instead of keeping the focus on credit hours, move to more of a focus in awarding the degrees on learning outcomes? so things that you may know about, anthony, or things that you also may know about as far as what are happening with lumina. >> well, a quick advertisement for our own work, and our own work is sort of built on the

backs of the great work that's been done by aac and u and others on defining learning outcomes of higher education which is we've developed what you've seen in many other countries in the world which is a first attempt to define the competencies that should be demonstrated by people at the associate, bachelor's and master's degree, irrespective of the field of study. we call this a degree qualification profile. many countries call this a qualification framework. we've produced what we call a beta version because we don't think we have it right, but we're trying to test this idea of actually defining those competencies in ways where faculty, institutional leaders, policymakers can actually put their hands on this and better understand what the potential uses of this kind of a framework might be. now, i want to be clear that i think, ultimately, that has to be owned at the delivery level, that is at the institutional

level. that's where the teaching and learning takes place. so i'm not in favor of a nationally-articulated system that all colleges and universities would have the drive themselves through. but i think the reality of american higher education is that we cannot in any meaningful way describe what an associate degree actually represents and what it is or what a bachelor's degree actually is. and that's the same conversation we've been having at the k-12 level. so i think this credit hour-based system is going to need to be replaced where we can better articulate what those degrees represent at each of those levels of qualification. >> all right. let me turn it back to shane, but, first, jamie and tony, thank you very much for -- [applause] >> washington journal is featuring a look at the medicare program all this week. today an overview of the program and the changes over the 45 years since it became law. you can see the series live every morning at 9:15 eastern on c-span and again each evening

here on c-span2 at 7:15. also tonight on c-span2, "the communicators" with marc rotenberg of the electronic privacy information center and larry clinton of the internet security alliance talking about the obama administration's proposals for reducing cyber threats against the u.s. tonight at 8 eastern. then on booktv prime time a look at book fairs ask festivals. at 8:30 eastern the harlem book fair hosts a discussion ofmanning marable's malcolm x. don luskin on his book, "i am john galt." and the roosevelt reading festival at 10:40 eastern with james mcgregor burns and historians michael and susan dunn. >> dr. martin luther king was not a president of the united states, at no time in his life did he hold public office. he was not a hero of foreign

wars, he never had much money. and while he lived, he was reviled at least as much as he was celebrated. by his own account, he was a man frequently racked with doubt, a man not without flaws, a man who like mosess before him more than once questioned why he had been chosen for so arduous a task. the task of leading a people to freedom. the task of healing the festering wounds of a nation's original sin. >> watch this entire event, the groundbreaking of the martin luther king jr. memorial at the c-span video library. and now nearly five years later, the memorial will be dedicate inside washington, d.c. this sunday live on c-span. and during this week we'll have coverage of other events surrounding the dedication on the c-span networks.

♪ >> next, leaders in the digital media field discuss how consumers and brands are connecting through new platforms. this panel from the hamptons institute in july talks about cloud computing, apps and regulating the use of social media for the next hour and a half. >> thank you all so much for joining us this afternoon. um, my name is michael, and i'm going to moderate a discussion about the evolution of degeneratival and digital -- digital and digital media. and this is a pretty, um, esteem ed, yet loose group here, so we want lots of questions and lots of participation, and we're really excited to chat with you about some of the things that we see from a consumer perspective, what's happening in the marketplace and how things are evolving. so some quick introductions. starting, um, at the very end, please meet christine cook. christine is the senior vice president of advertising for the daily which is the, um, the

daily newspaper tablet that hasv been developed and put into market about -- >> [inaudible] >> february 2nd. um, christine has had manyde senior sales and marketing roles in digital, um w the financial times, with martha stewart living on the media with iac, and is i'm delighted to have you here today. >> thank you. [applause]ar >> clap, clap, clap. right next to her is, um, anthony risikotto. he is the gm of tremor media and has been a digital marketerh since digital marketing began. and i've known anthony for quite some time.al he's held many different roles in a number of great companies including double click which isn one of the pioneer companies in' the digital advertising space,i and delighted to have you as well today. >> thank you very much, michael. [applause] >> next to anthony is michael kelly, and michael kelly is thea

chief marketing officer of ad genesis which is a, um, i'll let you tell them a little more about it when we get to it. but really a transformative, umf advertising business focusing on, um, a paradigm shift in howl advertising is delivered toreal consumers. michael has had a great career with pwc. most recently he was the chief marketing officer of pwc and worked with some of the biggeste brands, um, in the world including at&t on their digital strategy. he wasgg also very instrumentalg launching hulu which is the, um, the video service that is joint-owned by a number of media companies. so welcome, michael.h [applause]dia and last but certainly not least is david stewart. and david, gosh, i have known david for a very long time. we were, um, colleagues withs

martha stewart living many, many years ago, and he has built, um, many, many consumer-facinghe brands working on things like "people" magazine, martha stewart, tv guide, and now a really interesting art business and i thought it would be greatg for you to, actually, tell us aa little bit about your businessg" to sort of get us started. and christine, maybe you can --s christine's going to be our av person today as well as one to have panelists.o b hopefully you guys can see thats ..an see that. great. so, you know what i'm going to stand up actually. >> great to see you all here today. thanks for being inside on one the most beautiful days of the summer. nice to have you all here. so i hail from an interesting

intersection. the intersection of art and internet. two worlds that have been separate for a long time. the company is 20 x 200. we have a premise that art doesn't have to be expensive to be good. doesn't mean that there's not expensive art that is good. we all know there is. but they are not mutually exclusive. we think a lot of people out there that love art and aren't able to find part ofw the problem is the wonderful, warm reception most of us get when we go toul a gallery.ha if you've been to many, thise is what you've seen and the woman not only starts in t that position, she stays ina that position. [laughter] and the gallery world, in many ways it is designed toi intimidate. i would argue more than itn is to really bring people to

an understanding and an appreciation of or the. andedart. our founder, jen bekman, set out to try to fix that. this is the baggage. a lot of us have a lot of baggage around art because the way we have been treated in the past and we often think of art as sort of, you know, the high holies, you know? there is something that goes on back there. we don't understand it., we're told it's important but we're never supposed to really get it ourself.s so jen started, she opened at gallery in 2003 and thes gallery business is an interesting business. we work really hard at0 making people welcome at thee gallery and educating themy about the work that we sell but the reach of a physical gallery is quite limited.

what we do is really move from the world of gallery which works for a few, to bringing together the worldwo of artists and world of consumers through the internet. that's what you see on the right side heret consumers throh the internet. that's what you see on the right side here. and really using the power of the internet to amass large audiences of consumers and connect them to large numbers of artists. this is a great photo, i think it's a great photo. but one of the things in -- that happens when you have a lot of context, or a rot of choices is it becomes overwhelming. it's hard to pick what you want. finding art that you like is generally, it's very difficult. either because you are seeing a

lot of bad things, or finding a lot of what you don't like. if you look at a lot, a lot of it, after a while, it all sort of looks the same. so some people default to the familiar. i would guess that there probably -- oh know. there have problem been a million of the copies of the dog playing poster -- playing poker poster sold. and it's a sad comment on -- i don't think that everybody that bought this really wanted this. i think if they had found or been able to find better examples, they would have bought them. but you've got to kind of find your match. what do we do to help turn customers into connoisseurs? how do you get started? if your entry point is, you

know, an amazing oil painting, there are only a few people are going to be able to participate. and that's a hard part. so we really start with what we call the gateway drug to the art world. for those of you who don't recognize it, that's a marijuana leaf. [laughter] >> and we work with an amazing range of artists from emerging artist to various established conceptual artist like lawrence weiner. we start with each edition that we do at a 20 or $50 price point. that's why we call it the gateway drug of the art world. that's okay. and we offer them an abroad array of sizes. and unlike a lot of -- a lot of sites that deal in art. we give people entry points that

they are familiar with. how do people get in, how do they get excited? and -- thank you. you weren't in navy club in high school, were you? >> those shoes. no way. >> but, you know, we break a lot of art world traditions at the same time that we try to bring the audiences of artist and collectors together. and one of the examples of that is being able to browse by color. you know, a lot of people that like art buy art based on decor. i'm sorry. and that's hearsay for a lot of people. we do give them the ability to buy by color. next. did that go -- okay. the other piece of the puzzle is

-- there's different kinds of shopping. right? sometimes you know exactly what you want. like i have run out of toothpaste. i want to get another six ounce tube of crest ultra whitening. right? you can go into a place like amazon, type in crest ultra whitening and find it. or google, whenever. most people don't know exactly what they want in the category like art. what is it that you want? what is it that you need? it's a hard thing to search for. we find it important to build a relationship, and really create an experience, rather than just the transaction. and one the ways we do that is by having a newsletter. and so we have over 50,000 newletter subscribers. each news letter helps people understand a bit more about the artist. a bit more about the work. so that people are getting educated. so they develop an appreciation

for the work as well as the person who's creating the work. and this is a provocative, we sell actually a fair amount of text start. this is artist name mike montero and, you know, it comes with a certificate of authenticity, as well as an artist statement. this is a great -- a great designer and artist, paula shaare. some of you may have seen a lithograph of this at union square cafe. there's a really gorgeous, large, large piece of work. and we worked with paula and we were able to offer the really starting at $50. so that people could experience the art in her own home, even

though she would be otherwise beyond their reach. of course, this we all know, happy customers are great marketing. when we get wonder comments from our customers and here's one that we got -- you guys i'm so excited right now. i could see in my pants. that makes us feel really good. it does. it does. i don't know how it makes them feel. but for us it's really wonderful. we all know that one the great ways to build a business is by having really happy customers. so this is basically how we feel. live with art, it's good for you. thanks. >> great. thank you, david. [applause] >> i want to develop around the horn fast. what is the digital trend, consumer trend that's really

getting your attention. who wants to kick it off? >> i think with the launch of spotify and the bending launch of apple cloud base music store with the cloud-base and not having a device, media through the photography or individual, but now media that you have bought through amazon, itunes, spotify. >> does everyone know what the cloud is is? icloud just launched and store everything to access it from many of your apple devices, rather than having to be tethered to a computer. >> here's two examples. one is idisk, any of you have who apple computer, there's an option to store your pictures,

data files, your videos so that they are not stored on your computer, if you went to the web cafe or friends house and log in through a url and have access through your own passwords to your specific information. other example is google, gmail, yahoo! mail that is cloud based, where you are logging into a web site that's particular to you. to underscore that point, google and gmail, which started as more of a personal usage functionality increasingly, i hear, so many businesses that are using google dox. which is business' ability to store very large files, allow people in multiple locations geographically to access them, without having them stored, storage fees from an operations perspective, or reduced for the company. because google is paying to run

all of the computers that are storing all of that information. with that baseline, now you over lay the entertainment services, and any of you that use kindle, if you have an kindle and iphone, you can put a kindle app on your iphone. it'll sink. it knows where you are in your book, whether it's on the kindle itself, or the kindle app. that's using that same type of underlying functionality for you to have an entertainment. i think the presence of entertainment through the cloud is really interesting. >> david, -- i know, david, you have a big music collection. are you storing your stuff on the cloud? are you buying a lot of music? >> it's funny. in my basement, i live up in springs, i have about 4,000 vinyl disks and probably 2,000cds. ii haven't bought anything physical in probably the past five years. >> what are you doing? >> i buy a few things from time

to time via itunes. generally, i have a subscription service, $10 a month, to rhapsody, they have an amazing catalog, i access it via my phone, ipad, i have it hooked up. if i'm on the road traveling, open it up, turn it on, and i got all of my music with me. >> it's great. >> it's fantastic. >> it's great. >> i was going to say it's interesting. i think our virtual lives are a mess. i have 4,000 photos from the last year on my iphone. >> move closer. >> sorry. is that better? >> yup. >> i have 4,000 photos on my iphone, music on six devices, you talk about consumers trends. i see two, one is education centers. literally will start popping up for people.

like me who have no idea what they are talking about. you know, i have no time to go to rhapsody, i think i have no time. actually, i probably could get more time if i had it organized and i was driving here from hampton bays. i saw the cooking schools. we need technology. we need the growth of brands that will help people learn. and speaking of which, i think the most horrible interfaces in the world right now are created by the very brands. i just don't think -- i think there's one person, steve jobs, who is a unique blend of chromosomes, who can get unique touch with a person like martha, to get in touch. we hear 3d movies aren't doing well. four out of five households make less than $55,000 a year in this

country. if you don't think that's an interesting way to live, try doing it for some of you that don't. they can't afford 3d. hollywood is starting to flounder. it would be interesting to bring it back if sony teamed up with google to really improve their user experience, or teamed up with disney, or teamed up with a content company that knows how to entertain. and use navigation. because i can't find half of the things that i hear about. i'm in the business. i think those are the two trends that we're going to start to see. better user experience and actually going out and teaching people how to do it. >> great. something about -- we all touched on this a little bit. i do work in the video space. it might be self-serving. the whole concept of how we are consuming. i'm a consumer of media, news, journalism, movies, television shows, i probably don't want to mention here that i watch

religiously. how we are all watching and consuming those things almost incommerce blue has changed without it noticing how quickly it has happened. i haven't bought a newspaper in probably three years. i read probably five newspapers a day. i haven't watched a television ad, a live television ad in probably three or three years. but i know every marketing campaign that's happening. because i'm consuming that content in different places. when you ask about what the future is, it's how we are consuming this content, and how we are being affected by the messaging and the marketing and whether i'm watching television and my ipad on the side of a coffee cup, you know, on a billboard somewhere. that's the fascinating piece, the social fabric of how we consume media, we are not huddled around the tvs. we are consuming this in very

individual ways. that to me is a fascinating social tie between media, marketing, and people. i hoping it's a positive thing and we can work to make it positive. that to me is really kind of the next ten years. that's a c change that i have no way of predicting what it's going to look like. >> it's not even just content. it's accessing information, social graph. i did a fair amount of research at hearst when we launched a product, a mobile product that allows you to track the things that matter with high quality content sources. it was like an addiction. we're never unplugged. you know, whether we're on a bus , between meetings, whatever, at the gym in the locker room where we are checking all of these things. i want to ask the audience, i'm just curious, audience

participation. what's the first thing that you do in the morning when you wake up. do you brush your teeth and get freshened up? show of hands. check your e-mail? before brushing your feet; right? facebook profile. post to facebook. no? okay. how about saying good morning to the one you love next to you? nobody. one, one -- two. [laughter] >> how many of you have a mobile phone and a land line? okay. of how about you guys? you do. okay. >> i really wanted to have both. but the land line that we had was battery operated. my whole rational for having that one. if the power went out, i wanted that thing that would be working and when that wasn't available,

i just have a cell phone now. >> great segue to the next question. how many battery operated devices do you have on you right now? one? two? three? i saw somebody with three. four? two. okay. very good. how many of you subscribe to newspapers? local or national? both. okay. and my last question: has anyone -- okay, we talked about facebook. how many of you have facebook profiles? okay. so how many of you go on to facebook once a week? once a day. twice a day? okay. all right. good. and the last question, how many of you have not bought something online? everybody has bought something

online. okay. good. next thing i want to talk about is base -- facebook. and social media in general. i think if i was thinking about preparing for this. i personally feel like social media gets a bad wrap. in that it's not just about sending pictures and tweets. it's also about, you know, connecting with business professionals through linkedinand things like that. i wanted to talk to you about things. how are brands and consumers using social media that strikes you as interesting? >> well, i love that question. because i was originally cynical about social media, especially if facebook became the suppository for people to tell you the things that you didn't want to talk to them about the phone about. i think there are a lot of tools that come into play. i have some of them up here

calling social media a form of business and research perspective and making it a lot more sensible. pulse news, flip board, and tweet deck are tools that i use a lot. pulse news and flipboard, pulling in from social media to make sense of what journalist and or voices and curators that i respect are saying. and putting it together in one place that's easy. so hollywood reporter, "vanity fair daily" any kind of news "huffington post" all of these feeds coming in basically from twitter, but it's presenting it in an interesting way. i like that. flipboard takes a little bit of a another approach by presenting it to look like a magazine. you know, so these are things that ted talks or my own twitter

feed, whatever i'm interested in. but presenting it in, you know, kind of an interesting way. so i feel like this is social media. this is a whole nother aspect of social media that actually, you know, is the twitter feed that you are accustom to but is an easier way to look at it in ways that i was accustom to in a magazine. i think the immediacy of journalism now with better cure ration and what an certain extent newspapers have provided for us is fantastic. these tools allow us to filter out the crap of, you know, blogs that don't really make sense or people that aren't consistent and contributing, as well as bring the best of all of the journalism and the respected sources for entertainment as it maybe that's available. >> a couple of -- i'm sorry, just a couple of stats that i

think are pretty wild. if facebook has 150 million users, if it was the considerate, it would be the third largest country in the world. which is amazing. 50% of those users go on to facebook every day. there are over 700 billion minutes spent on facebook per month. 700 billion minutes. it just kind of boggles by mind. >> it'll be a very, very noisy country. [laughter] >> wait, aid owe is -- audio is coming to facebook. >> any other thoughts about facebook? >> i've been in the digital side of business says michael say '95. although i'm youthful looking, i'm older than i look. i had a company and one the developers came up to me. i had been running the company. he was nervous and came up to me. he was like i don't understand. don't understand what?

he said how could you not be on facebook? i was like what are you talking about? of course, i was on facebook. i can't find you. i had made my facebook profile private to the people that i wanted to deal with on a regular basis. that concept was so bizarre and alien to this person who was 20 years younger than me. he just couldn't understand. i tried to make the analogy, i don't want everyone calling me. i don't want everyone that i meet to have my phone number. and that's how i used facebook, as a way to interact with the people that i wanted to interact with, but i'm the last of that. i mean that doesn't exist for the people coming up. >> i do the same thing. i used linkedin which is like a professional social network. which is a great tool for recruiting people and connecting on a network perspective.

that's my business and social. facebook i try to restrict from, you know, colleagues and business associates. so i totally agree with you. >> we really like using facebook at 20 x 200 as a way to get response from our customers. so we do, you know, different sorts of quizzes or contexts from time to time. it's a really easy way to get sort of interactive, if you will with your customers. and that's one the real strengths that we find about it. >> so i have to be honest, my -- i've noticed, you know, the broad spectrum of behavior on facebook, at least in my life. i have a large group of friends and family members who use it sort of on a regular basis. then i have some that are really afraid to share information. then i have any nephew who is sharing everything about his life to me every hour of the day. every whim, every thought that passes through his mind.

it scares me a little bit. and as i know, as i've hired many people over the years, i know that employs look at your facebook, linkedin, they look at what you are tweeting and share as part of the process. how do we deal with this and how do we, you know, start to educate people on what to do with social media? >> well, you know, first of all, i became a prolific social networker in my 40s. like a lot of us, we were well into adulthood. we learned from appropriate behavior was. we learned what's appropriate, what libel, definition, bullying, abuses. i love social networks. i've been thinking about several things. one is we face a dire fiscal situation in the country that's being debated as we sit here. number one. number two we have a new way of technology, when you started and most of us did in digital, it

provided surpluses to our country. how do we leverage what's happening in order to -- and the most fundamental things and i have a lot of teens, including a gaggle of kids. i watch what they post. and i am friends with them, i follow them, they follow me, we have conversations about what they've posted across the line. we have conversations about what's appropriate behavior, we have conversation about apologizing to people that we've offended. this is all happened in my household. the thing that we've been talking about, at least the teen son and i wrote this about the family. to think about the family protection networking act where we literally like they had to do at the same age as the automobile where we licensed social network. educate, certify, and license social networking to teach people like we do right now in the state of network, a three tiered program to teach them how

to become an independent driver. my son is 16. he started six months ago, he got a driver's license where he could only drive with his parent. when you are 12-14, you can go only if they approve. parents have to get more involved. they have to help him understand what is appropriate behavior as we do have a family to driving to shopping to spending to communicating. we have to think about what can this mean to help protect our people as well so that free speech can proliferate. people aren't atrade to post. but laws are being broken on new ways. how do we allow freedom of speech and constitutional right to proliferate while we protect our people. but also create frankly a new revenue stream. just like the department of motor vehicles became a very big revenue. we have a new platform that we

could also leverage to start ensuring that we are teaching our people, we are certifying them, we are penalizing them, and taking away if they break certain laws like harming children or anyone else. this is something that i think is starting to gain steam in many corridors. of course, the popular, the one that tend to control the beltway and don't like to see this kind of proliferation. but personally, i think we have a great vehicle. 750 million people are now on facebook alone. we have the opportunity to think about where is this going to take our great democracy? we've seen democracies being tested and ones that are not by turning on and off switches and things. that's an interesting thing to observe and bring back. >> you know, i think -- i often think a lot of consumers don't even realize how often facebook changes it's policies.

and -- which has been a big issue and, you know, many of you may not know this, if you don't watch the privacy policy on facebook, rights to do things like use your pictures that you post in advertising across facebook to friends and other people who sort of demographically look like you. i think data is -- yeah, exactly. other bald people. yes. >> that's targeted marketing up here. >> twitter owns 100% of your >> when you post. that means that they could sell it t o gary a photo if you takea picture with dwayne wade at the bar and make $300 and the consumer makes nothing. >> the consumer side. >> the consumer easpect. >> yeah. >> any other thoughts? yeah? are you sure? [laughter] >> sorry. only that facebook has a new big

consumer in the marketplace and it will bec interesting to see with the ability to do what they seemed to find it easy to segment out yourd profile and associate with people that you only want to associate that seems to express on their product differentiator but, you know, google amsnd you start running the numbers and you start touching a significant number of people and while it might not have the elegance of an apple product yet but they seem to do really well with technology underpinning so it will be interesting to see what happens in a year from now where facebook and if google's attempts in this space takes off. >> more artists and science -- >> well, it's interesting. i think what the new offering from google really does is reflect much more the way we live which is there's certain things we talk about with people in the office. there's other things we talk about with our families.

there are other things we talk about with our friends. one of the things on facebook that we're talking about everybody the same way. and that just doesn't mirror the way we behave with people. so i think that's really a point of exposure for facebook. and one is that led to your point, michael, wow, i had an amazing night last night and upload all the pictures from the party and then, you know, two days latert they're interviewin for a job and somebody goes -- and checks out their facebook profilewi and it's like, wow! i don't think so. >>e one of my favorites was som college kid who>> posted that h had met a girl at a bar last night and had a good time and his mom liked it. and she hit the like and he wa like,i mom, what are you doing? oh, my gosh how do i unlike this

and she was tracking her son. it was prettyh funny. >> i don't mean to be mr. regulation but it also goes to approval. if somebody takes a picture of all of us there's a technology i just heard about on thursday literally at lunch where it has to go to allul of us on email a we allct have to click approvedo havehn it posted and i think that's ail pretty darn good thi po think about. >> that facebook didn't exist or a lot of these same we're all learning and tripping and stubbing our toes a little bit the companies that are creatinh it and all of us that are participants along the way and it's all happening so quickly. but, you know, all of these ways we're communicating is diversion did thehe operator us to listen at the switch board when she put your call through, right? [laughter] >> we've gone through that to have the abilitys to have three-way calling when i was in young, there was always somebody listening and then you do with the speed with which something can go up and/or out through

email so as our technologies and abilities to connect, there's attributes of ul it which are greatol but, unfortunately, there are all of these stumbling blocks for the companies and being up front which i don't think enough are being forwarded about the privacy implications with all of these delightful devices that provide gps. that's great if you're trying to figure out where gilda hall is. it stinks if someone is certificate repetitiously is tracking you and you didn't give them permission. if you tell a marketer or retailer anytime you drive within 5 miles and they're having 50% off to send you a text message, that's great. if they decide to do that on their own, then that's not so great. and that's the same core technology0 that you both love but i think it's a really interesting time with things moving so quickly to like you said, there are regulations and

there's some social responsibility that we ahes the citizens using these tools need to take a part in. >> you know, there's this very interesting thing with advertising which is, you know, when you're in thes market for somethingit or when you're interested in something and you get ath marketing message, it's really service. you know? it's lid ke, wow, you know what? i was going to -- i am in the market for a sweater and now i can getw one for a third less than i was going to pay for it. fantastic. on the other hand, when you get those messages w fantastic. on the other hand, when you get those messages at the wrong time, or when you are not interested, they are totally obnoxious. and so one the tricks with technology is figuring out how we do get those messages to our customers when they want them. and when they are excited to get them because then they love it. >> yup. >> and every time that you get one when you don't, it moves you

away from that company. >> agreed. agreed. >> it's interesting. adgenesis is a company that's i'm adjusting and operating with. we work with publishers, just like an airline gives you point, or american express gives you membership reward points for using their card, we are going to help publishers especially give rewards. how we do that is we allow the partners that we work with from parade magazine to others to create video award. this is making advertising not allow, but rewarding. so that you pay attention. we start what is your life? what do you want to buy seven not what you bought. amazon does what you bought. oh, you like romantic novels that's one aspect. but if you buy a car or computer or whatever it is, you want to take as many seven passenger

vehicles as you can get so you can compare so what we do is you join through our publishers and you give up information about your life that we never shell, hu hunt. and right now the little banner ads you see on your t now the lis that you see on your web screens when you are all checking your e-mail, which you do, only generates about .5 click through. that means 99.5% of the ads aren't getting clicked on. what you are asking, what do you like? what genere, when you deliver, we ask for the point. for the marketers, it's valuable. for the publishers, we have to

save. we have to save "new york times" and "financial times." we need to evolve and fund the forms of communication that are vital to our country. >> and to say "the daily" too. >> to relocate. >> let's go down. >> we have to evolve our advertising so that we are able to -- because we really haven't evolved it. if you think about it, video has the biggest. how do we start to match it and cut out the fake crap. >> i want to riff on something that you just said. i want to talk about cure ration. they use a combination of age,

and i think it's an interesting area of growth opportunity and it's interesting to narrow it down. any thoughts on it? >> yeah, the -- we live in the incredibly exploding world of access and options and choices. listen, i live in this world. i find it completely bewildering it is nonstop from the moment that i wake up in the morning, monday to friday, to the minute that i put my head down on the pillow, it is an information fire house coming at me. work, friends, twitter, facebook, news, everywhere. and it's unmanageable. and it's hugely important to be able to find the outlets whether it's "the daily" or news and

widdle down the topics that i'm interested learning about and pushed to me in a reasonable fashion. i'm 100% not on twitter. period. 140 characters is not even enough to say good morning. i just don't think it's enough information to have a meaningful interaction with a piece of content. importantly, around the piece, it's important to not be digital. i have a beautiful house in month -- montauk, and i big -- dig a hole in the ground. i return to the digital life monday. i have a wide group of friends that will sit down at dinner. everyone's phone is out. we are all reading, tweeting,

blogging, whatever it is that we are doing. we have to continue to find the balance of absorb information in an efficient way. we are humans as well. >> i wanted to challenge. >> good. >> i would only challenge. i think that you are right. the touch points in working lives now, you wake up, you have a blackberry, you have an iphone, you are expected to read the e-mail on the way to the office before you sit in front of the computer all day and are expected to call through billions of e-mails, et cetera, but the thing i was going to get at is on the weekend. the digital transformation of information, versus the masses of information are two different things. you are saying you don't want to be digital on the weekend. i think the reason for existence of the daily is to be the future of newspaper publishers, magazine publishing for the future. no trees, no trucks to drive and have to distribute what were the

old forms of delivery mechanisms. i think that there are delivery mechanisms that can transport to us and deliver to us the kinds of journalism and or entertainment that we are accustom to when we want to consume them. and so the tablets are fascinating for that as a beginning of a delivery mechanism for that right now. what does delivery mechanisms look like that? does the tablet become the remote report for the television? we've talked about cloud base storage of information. so i think that we are going to have an increasingly digit tap world and reduce the need for paper and trucks to deliver and the delivery mechanism. >> fair point. and for the record, i did fix my tractor this morning with my ipad with an exploded parts diagram on the ground next to it. fair point. >> my wife takes the ipad into

the kitchen and is, you know, dumping cake batter all over it. i'm trying to get her to realize it's $1,000 piece of computer. >> there's a cover, put it on the refrigerator. >> you are a great knowledge. >> from martha stewart to "the daily" i can do a lot of technology. >> can you fix a tractor? >> i cannot fix a tractor. >> just quickly on twitter, i'm not a huge twitter. i use it for tracking people that matter to me. you know, to stay on top of different people in our business or things like that. but the numbers are just astounding. it took three years, two months, and one day for twitter to reach it's one billionth tweet.

today there's a billion tweets being sent out each week. it's unbelievable when you start to think about the scale of these things. when you look at how twitter was used in egypt, during the political uprising. that was like a main form of communication to the outside world. i think there's real value that it provides. but it's just astounding to me. >> you don't have to tweet to like twitter. i think that's the trap. people think you may have to log in to start to look. i love to watch broadcast news. i'm not a broadcast news correspondence. it's kind of that way. if you want to tweet and put stuff out there, great. i think that twitter actually like we were showing before provides a lot of functionality and perspective without you having to do it. >> i love things like flipboard that help take that twitter experience and put it, at least

for me, into a format that feels a lot more familiar and engaging. and the way that i often use -- that's the way i typically use twitter is very much like there are a number of different people that i follow, many -- many obviously in the digital arena. other in the art arena, or marketing, or design. and it really allows me to sort of like customize my news source. and i have to say i have found that a really good experience, i don't tweet much. >> i was going to say, i think twitter to, go back to the original question, i came across a great company for all of you called blurts, which is akin to no longer typing but doing an audio blurt. so you bring humanity back to the web. i think tweets, i don't tweet a

lot. i don't really follow it. it's like a to do list that i'll never get to. it's like a constant -- my son will say i tweeted that on tuesday. you got to be kidding me. i have to go back through all of the tweets to find your? but i think it's also about bringing people together live. i think you touched on that, anthony. all renaissance are defined by bridging geography and thinking people of common thoughts, ideas, experiences from knitting if we can crack this code from knitting to losing weight to dealing with a loss of a spouse what have you. how do you help people? the greatest information comes from the circles that google has touched on. >> i think what we are finding, you know, i was talking earlier, you know, when the gay marriage vote was going on in the new york senate. i was watching twitter feed live. i was watching it streaming on the web. at the same time, i was having conversations with people, both

via twitter and facebook, my friends, about what was going on. and so it was pay -- it was allowing us to share the experience, even though we weren't in the same physical place, we were still having a shared experience. when you talk about sort of the humanity, we were using technology to bring us together and to have a group experience even though we were physically in very, very different locations. >> then once it passed, what was on the news? everybody was brought -- they wanted to be with people to celebration. >> i think that's attributed to our evolution of being a part of the new way of communication. on the kindle app that we have up here, is david carrs. what the internet is doing to your brain, digesting the quick bits of information. the backlash against that, people seek that old -- some of the things from the old world to add to and bring along into the

world that we have right now. we are talking about marshall earlier. the medium is the message. and the big freak out then was oh my god, tv is going to displace books. books seem to be doing fairly well. i don't know that any of us would have imagined the portability of what digit tap -- digital looks look like now on your nook, kindle, whatever it is. we are.cc fun with reading a lot of books. you can read more now than you could have before. you take one and you have ten books with you. and the audio is interesting too, for "the daily" we produce 100 to 120 pages of journalism. we tell them from taking the best of all media. we have broadcast journalism, full screen photography, and long form written content. you can either type or leave an

audio comment. it's fascinating to listen to someone who's articulating verbally a comment that they normally would have typed. you can hear the tv in the background, or the dog, or the kids running by. the intimacy all of the sudden with the community that's a national community in a way that you wouldn't have before. it's the community because we both read "the daily" not because you are my friend on facebook. >> have you seen any real -- and i realize it's early on. have you seen any dramatic differences in behavior or colleagues from traditional, have they seen traumatic otherwise what you've just described in user behavior? >> we see that our readers are primarily news consumers. they are aggressive news consumers. they are reading at about five days a week, coming in regularly, the difference that you have from this than a regular newspaper, you can see when people are coming back.

they are reading it throughout the day. which i think is very common do what you would do it you had a real newspaper. read some in the morning, stuff it in your bag, pull it back out. we are seeing the same behaviors. you know, outside of that, the ability to share more easily, i think, i mean it just gives you all of the sense of kind of what their experience looks like. >> don't make my dizzy. >> i'm teasing. >> that was a great one to end on. born in debt. but, you know whereby i think that the only other thing that's different here is it is big mixture of news and entertainment. people are coming in from all different things. did you know that j-lo broke up? >> she and marc anthony? >> she is getting a divorce.

right. so now that we know where you were when you found out about this, where were you when you find out about osama bin laden? >> i said a unique story before. >> oh, i was on a plane from san francisco. we had saw something on cnn on the plane. then the woman next to me was on her -- she was on a iphone -- you know, laptop on twitter. that's how we had learned he had been killed. you know, we are in an airplane, 30,000 feet above the ground, following a story, realtime in twitter as it's evolving from rumor to con fir -- confirmation, all in fact stream of 140 character bursts of information. it was amazing. something like -- like a crazy thing i would have never

imagined. never imagined. and -- >> when you landed, you came in and out to the east end and dug a hole in the ground. >> right, right, right. >> you know the other thing that i have to say is pretty amazing is also just watching christine work with the ipad is -- you remember seeing minority report with tom cruise and him moving his hands and the screen of information. he said that's so cool. that's never going to happen. that's really cool. here we are like swish, swish, information. up down. >> beautiful segue. >> i think it's a great segue. i want to make sure we have enough time for questions. and just like this lady here in the middle, please don't be bashful. just yell them out. let's talk about mobile and

tablets and platforms. mobile is exploding; right? there's 50 million smartphones in the united states. iphone and android. >> and blackberry. they are still around. >> sort of. you know, 37% of the market is now made up of the android platform, and apple is 27 and blackberry is 22. if you, you know, went backwards 24 months, blackberry is the king. it's losing share. there's 400,000 apps in the iphone store. >> you are about to get in addition to the ipad, a whole slew of devices, the samsung, motorola zoom. >> and amazon, they are launching a tablet product in october, i believe. >> my prediction there is that we're going to see a lot of

crappy tablet that is are, you know, apple based. and in about a year or so, we're going to start seeing $49 android or amazon based platform tablets. that is when we are going to see real critical adoption. >> there's interesting between those two. tablets and mobile, i just did it, tablets and mobile get clustered together. mobile is smartphones. we have also learned at "the daily" the way that people are using tablets is fundamentally different than the way they are using the smartphones. while it's true a lot of them are in urban areas are toting it around, the primary usage tends to be at home, on the couch, the television, or in bed. >> it's an additive. >> right. the mental state of the person is really different than the smartphone. and therefore, the kind of content that we present is really different. and creates great opportunities,

i think. >> so mobile internet access from your phone. i think this is actually from the ipad as well. i think it's come together. it has tripled the past three years. the next three it's going to increase 26fold. you think about people like cisco and you think about at&t, and you think about the network challenges they are going to have. we are not going to go down the path. >> didn't we have the same challenges with dial up? in the beginning with our computers and the -- i don't know how many -- i'm going to ask y'all this. how many years did it take us to get where we are than the speeds we are compared to. the 54 gig. >> it doubles every 18 months. the processing power doubles. it's increasing now. our bandwidth has been increasing, doubling every two years from a network architecture stand point, you get the crazy statistics where i

don't know. how many people use netflix? streaming? yeah. yeah. that's fantastic. that didn't exist two years ago. we were ordering dvds. of all of the internet usage across the entire united states, half of it in prime time is netflix being streamed. it's just incredible sort of -- i mean data that's being used. >> the other thing that's amazing about that, think about the economics of that. right, netflix has build a business where the primary cost of delivering that product, that bandwidth, netflix is paying nothing for. >> it's a great business; right? >> think about that. as you said earlier, think of ford selling a car where they didn't have to pay to build the car; right? netflix is paying to license the content. that's only a part of the delivery of that product. somebody has to have bought the

device to watch it on, and somebody has to have paid for fr the bandwidth. >> bandwidth is the new oil. they are going to start taking down the all you can use bandwidth. : >> that's when we got mutual of omaha and wild king. >> i miss marlin perkins. >> there you go. i actually watched lauren welk the other day. >> while jim wrestled with the alligator. >> those are the kinds of things that we're seeing that comeback. brands are going to start supplementing a lot of the

content you consume and pay for your bandwidth because that's the new form of paying of your content. >> there are a lot of people who are in content businesses in one way or other and we've seen this revenue from content creators to bandwidth providers and technology providers. it really began to gather steam with apple and the ipod where instead of me going to buy a cd and that money going to the record company and a portion of it to the artist, all of a sudden i'm paying for bandwidth. i'm paying for an ipod. andiot less was going to the record companies and the artists. now we're seeing it happen like magazines and newspapers. people are paying less directly for content and instead we're paying for bandwidth and we're

paying for devices. and it's a really fundamental change. >> yeah, and it's a little scary and troubling but it's exciting at the same time and someone just mentioned books. i have -- someone in my family who works at a very large publisher in manhattan. we talk a lot about this i'm on the digital side of marketing and she's been working with prints and books and whatever and three weeks ago i remember the lunch we had she was like oh, crap i think we're done. this was just starting to take off. the kindle got out there and the ipad was coming. more books were sold last year than any other year ever. right? three years from now they believe more books will be sold in a year than the previous 10 years combined. that's because of the access. now, the financial model -- >> are book publishers making more money? no. >> i think that's the challenge to them. one of the things i had up here -- this one thing -- >> it's not the daily again is

it? >> it's the waste lands. it's it all depends how you envision what the delivery mechanism is. if you think -- if you continue to try to doing with with a preexisting framework but everything in the rest of the world is telling you that it's going differently, then you're not going to win. but if you look and say, how do we do this completely differently because this is, you know, an experience that people are having? buying more tablets, living mobilely connecting on wifi, and what are new ways that you can bring things to the table. the other reason the brought this up, i was a literature major, i was a t.s. eliot poem you can hear him reading the poem. you can pick what year that you want to hear that he read it. obviously, this is in the framework of this one poem and it lends itself nicely but the point is that this was a complete reenvisioning of the way that this is put forward.

i think -- touch press -- i paid $14 for this app, okay? and so that's the other thing. if it's done right -- i mean, here it is. and it sits on there. [inaudible] >> it's called t.s. eliot the waste land. i bought it through the itunes store. it isn't the most expensive app that i have bought but i have bought other apps at half this price is probably the going rate. i'm happy to pay this. this is robust. you bring to the surface people talk about how their children flock to tablets and you increasingly hearing that tablets are making a place in the school room, well, if you can tell stories in this way and allow children to learn at different paces to navigate around an experience like this and then bring them together, that is more rich than any of the textbooks that we had before. and just while i'm on this point, if we don't do that we won't get anywhere because for the last 10 or 15 years we've had playstations and xboxes.

we've had cable tv with 700 to 800 channels. you have animation that's brought to life, the whole lens through which this current generation of children over the last 15 years has come in to being has been through high-fidelity, high quality imagery, animation and things that they control and/or play, socially with games over the web with their friends. so if we don't adjust the rest of everything else that we want them to consume through those lenses, it's, of course, going to look very boring. it would be the equivalent of saying, you know, for us who are very accustomed to high-speed access on the internet to go and the only thing -- you know, for all your entertainment you can have high speeds but when you go to school i want you to go dial up through aol. [laughter] >> of course, they're going to be like sitting there waiting for the page to come down, distracting carving into the desk. you have to give them the equivalent what they have brought to consume in their

entertainment and i'm not suggesting that is all of that but this is something that i thought was pretty fascinating. >> that's great. i want to shift gears and just really quickly -- let's talk about our favorite apps here. i think it's sort of fun. >> this is michael's favorite apps. >> this is mine. this is called chip finder. >> i didn't see the big ad on the top. [laughter] >> well, i got the free one. i didn't buy it. >> so go into -- scroll up a little or something. of course, you're not going to see any ships, great. >> it's just loading. >> so here's what this is. this is really cool. so i love to sail. we take this on the sailboat with us and when we're sailing at night out in long island sound, we see ships that pop up. see the orange one up there? if you'll click -- click on any one of those. click on that one. >> why not. >> press the blue arrow. >> i didn't pay for it. it's just going to ask me to email it. >> and you press the blue arrow

and you get the ship's course and heading, the speed, the size of the vessel. so when you're it's at long island song and a little boat and you see these lights coming out you can tell if it's a lower boat or a container ship that's about to, you know, run you over. but it's a really great application. and, you know, we used it a couple of weeks ago. we were selling back from block island. it was really foggy and i fired this up on my ipad and, you know, we were able to see where the ferries were, you know, coming across from new london. and it's a really cool app so that's one of my favorite ones. >> how expensive is that? >> yeah. >> it's geolocated so it's tracking it. anthony, what's one of your favorites? >> oh, you see a little movement. >> i'm completely obsessed for home animation. i'm going to out myself. my phone, my tablet and i travel a lot for work. i live in manhattan and i come out here on the weekends i can know what's going on in my

house. if my father-in-law is showing up at the house, i can unlock the doors for him. >> or you can lock the doors. >> or lock the doors. >> just kidding. just kidding. >> there's a live video of what's going on at my house all over the internet, you know, there's motion detectors, what the temperature is. now, this -- this is not content immediate but it's a way to incorporate some digital things that makes my life easier. having a house out here is hard without -- >> can i turn on some lights? >> this is a -- [inaudible] >> it's both. it's iphone and ipad. >> automator. >> you have to rewire your whole house. >> no, no, it's very easy. >> david, what about you? what do you like? >> i have a lot of favorites. one of the things i end up using

a lot is foursquare, actually, which when i first heard about it i thought was really kind of silly. but it's this -- for those of you that don't know, it's all about checking in at locations. so, for instance, when i came here today, i checked in to guild hall and do you know what i uploaded a picture why isn't it there yet. and i check in and then it's connected to my social networks like twitter and facebook so that when i check in, my friends know where i am and what i'm doing. [inaudible] >> where's the pollack? >> anthony -- >> that's why -- that's why we have to license social networking. >> anthony, you use this you're too paranoid because you're monitoring your house. you don't want people to know you're out there. >> tori birch so you should talk to them. i think they're on their way. >> michael, what about you? >> well, let me ask this

question first to the audience. mine if you pull it up is hotel tonight. how many have you land in a city when you travel without hotel reservations. oh, look a couple of you. you'd be surprised 42% of all travelers, i think you can go to the cities -- if you go to the cities, yeah, 40% of all travelers do this and like 80% of those under the age of 30 do not have a hotel when they land so you can go lark -- you go to a shi and i've been doing this for six months by the way and i pay no more for $100 and i'm telling you four seasons in atlanta, the -- >> and the deals come out like noon. >> at noon. >> in local time so you could be there and you could see like the crescent beverly hills which actually is a nice hotel. you've got -- >> it's hip. >> you've got the thompson which is related to the one in new york thompson beverly hills and you've got sort of a boutique which is actually a nice hotel.

so you can get these for a fraction of the cost and i've done it for six months. i wait at noon and i book the hotel and i'm going to do it in atlanta when i get there and i'll see what i will get. >> automator. [inaudible] >> it's in the middle with the light bulb. >> the little -- [inaudible] >> they only do it on a daily basis three categories and it's at noon local time wherever you're traveling and you go on and you find it so i've been in atlanta, in l.a. and i get a hotel. so it's pretty cool. >> let's open it up to questions. yes. >> hi, i'm an interior designer.

somebody suggested using an online magazine to show my work. i went on the online magazine, and i find by the time you get to the work, rather than the advertising, you lose patience. what do you find of that concept? >> i'm going to have to speak about it from the point of view of the daily i mean, i kind of had it up -- [inaudible] >> i'd love that. [inaudible] >> i would say that you should sync your ipad or your itunes or we can talk after and i can do technical support for you on that. but i guess the thing i would say is i spent the last 15 years of my career selling -- working with advertising on websites.

and the challenging thing about publishing on the web was that the templates with which you were given to communicate content are very limiting. and the screen size was small. i mean, it's getting better as we get bigger monitors. the challenge was that the placements for advertising have been predefined for so long based on the smaller screen and availability that they're relegated to these very alleyways or headers and so out of those people were pushed into situations to have to put multiple ads on a page and/or have ads jump out and ads started to become offensive and people were put off by ads. but the ads were funding before many people were willing to charge for content. so, you know, the philosophy of having an experience that's a digital experience where you have a full-page ad like a magazine in between, i think, i hope is the future where advertising can have the space it needs to communicate and be in a place that doesn't compete with the content but complements

the content. some of the magazines for the tablet i think do follow this model. if you see some of the replica magazines like a "wired" or the conde nast titles are going full page but it's all still so new that a lot of people are feeling it so to your point, unfortunately, what you were trying to get at may be obscured. >> another question? i can repeat it. [inaudible] >> i'm sorry. okay. you keep telling us about the daily. and i'm a content provider, a writer. in fact, i have the talk with lee crassner tomorrow morning so i'm concerned of the future of content providers and the marketers, publishers, i just wondered -- well, actually i have two questions. the first one is whether the

daily content is new because -- is original to the daily because you mentioned pulling from all other publications. and i wondered how you do that with copyright. and my second question goes back to your comment about twitter owning the photographs that people post. and i wondered -- and you mentioned something about facebook having the right to use photographs in advertising. do people posting photographs today lose their copyright or is that simply a shared licensing or what is it -- >> are you getting any money from twitter photos at this moment? >> it's not shared. there's nothing shared about it. >> no, but are you losing your own copyright once you put it on twitter? >> the source photo, if you took a picture with your camera and you downloaded it to your computer, of that great birthday party that you were out last week and you upload it to twitter, and there's some very well known people in it that would be -- you know, they'd like to put it in some magazines or newspapers, and there's

images -- companies that buy them all the time, getty and others, you obviously own it because it's still sitting on your camera or your computer. that's your image. it's your friends with -- >> but owning physically doesn't mean you own the copyright. >> but twitter can go sell that image and not have to share any money with you. >> right. >> so, you know -- >> it's a shared licensing. they have the right but it's not exclusive. >> no. of course not. they're not going to chase you now you post this on twitter we own it. of course, not. if you went out and -- >> does facebook have the same ownership as twitter? >> you'd have -- you know, what check their 97-page terms and conditions for using -- >> that's what i was afraid you would say. >> i'm sure that's great bedtime reading. >> i'll just clarify the point. why i think you may have misinterpreted in what i said before. the development of the daily was to take the best of all what we all love without consuming content from broadcast, from the web and from print.

all of the journalists that are on staff are 100% creating content for the daily. we are not collecting it from other places. so, in fact, what we're doing underscores the value of what you said, you know, you're a content creator. we actually cherish journalism. we think people should be trained to collect and present and tell these stories across all these categories, arts and life and sports and news as we share them. and so what you see in those examples and in this example this piece is just 100% video piece that we have people on staff that have created -- ♪ >> the experience of watching develop it. >> one thing that i do want to watch you said whether you're aggregating content and information and copy rights and things there's a fair number of people who are following sort of

the fair use guidelines and are posting a headline with 150 characters and then linking to the original content provider and those services provide value to quality content it's making it more search engine friendly. it's hopefully driving more traffic to those sights. there are people who are basically rewriting it with, you know, journalists and kind of taking the content. so there's -- there is some aggregation out there that i would submit makes quality content discoverable and is playing by the rules in the right way. >> so we're building a company with which michael was building at hearst. and it was very much about the consumer. i mean, i invest and help consumer oriented companies and you as a writer and artist are a consumer as well. and what they were doing was driving the original source content if you're making money safe from advertising like christine's content, you could drive it right there and drive what they call more impressions, more people seeing it.

and so those are the ways with the way we need to get on and follow because they're really encouraging people to do professional quality journalism and writing and content creation and talking about by doing it in a way that helps people find out about it and personalize it for me. so i can make your own app, lmk based on things i care about. >> and all of these mediums and again, whether it's the print piece of a failed novelist and a english teacher from years ago, the things that's happening in digital, what it's doing to printing press companies, what it's doing to box companies -- when was the last time someone used a pay phone? there's an entire industry of companies who managed pay phones and made money off of those things. we haven't yet from a media standpoint caught up to that destruction. so the problem is, folks like you, who are content creators --

there's a lot of fear, well-based fear, about how you're going to be compensated for the -- [inaudible] >> what's going to happen? and we try to talk about futures here a little bit is that this consumption of media and content and what i read and what i watch and what i buy is all going to be down to those individual pieces that i watch and read and buy. and i think this kept of the large sort of media companies being able to sell me a subscription to something is very quickly going to start to go away. and we're going to have this metered sort of -- i'd like to read content about these sort of topics and there's going to be a way to do micropayments around that like itunes has already done for music. so when i'm going to read an article and my account is going to get dinged 83 cents. >> yep, yep. >> yes.

[inaudible] >> i just want to say for books, this is -- i'm really interested in this idea of micropayments because right now with previews on amazon and google books, i can actually dip into various books and get as much as i need without buying the book which is very bad for the author/publisher and the good thing about them is, of course, they'll destroy the used book market because there's no way to sell used ebooks though i imagine someone is going to invent that but thank you. >> i scan my ipad, print it out and hand it to my friends. i'm just kidding. [laughter] >> in the back. >> thank you all very much. this has really been a fascinating conference. all of us in this room have seen in the last 6 years the miracles of this technology that we're all talking about and the benefits that we get from it.

and there's no question that it has changed the world recently with all the things that you've discussed in the middle east and everything else. but in my opinion, there are three losses we get from this technology. the first loss is the relationship with the self. as long as i'm connected digitally to some technology, i'm disconnected from myself. i'm disconnected from solitude. i'm disconnected to thinking with nothing but my own mind. if i'm walking by a town pond and i'm on my iphone i'm not going to notice the swans and there's the loss with the relationship with other human beings. if anything out to dinner with friends that i love and everybody is on their iphone, we're not connected. everyone is on their iphone. so there's a loss for me there. and lastly, and i think for me this is really important in the development of the human species, for young people and for children, i just picked up a

book that's called "nature deficit disorder." and it's based on the kept that in order to be a full human being, we have to have a very profound connection to our world and the nature in it. living things, the outside world, animals and all of this fantastic technology dissipates that and takes young people away from that. and we lose a balance, i think, and i just wondered has that conversation ever come up in your worlds? >> i was going to say -- i mean, you know, i agree with you on every level. and worry about it for my children. i think again digital will be helpful to us as a human species if it brings us back together live and by the way, that is no different than the printing press did and other forms of technology that allowed people to link regardless of geography on common interests, thoughts,

ideas, ways to help which by the way is missing from our discourse in this country in my opinion. so i think you're dead on. we have to think about ways to bring it back to people. bring people together live, touch each other, how do we actually get people to discover. i mean, being outside. i had kids last night, not my own, my best friend's kids, and they're all young. but 70% of them are overweight or obese, from sitting behind a device of some type. and they have to learn to move 60 minutes a day. so i told them after they had a big piece of chocolate cake go run out in the yards and run away from the mosquitos and you can't stop and they were having a blast. you know, we have to get people that -- these are fundamentals by the way. reading a book is a fundamental. >> i think it's in keeping -- it does come up. the example i'll give you is that i like anthony taught high school before i got into this business and so i try to stay close to education and i hear

increasingly that the students in high school and in college now have a really, really hard time writing papers because they can't sit down. they haven't had the grooming to sit and focus on one thing. they're used to these microbits. that book i told you i was reading what the internet is doing to our brains is we have so much information. we're used to consuming things in microbits. in southern korea they got much earlier this media concept that's if any proliferated in america and this generation of kids is actually incredibly antisocial. i mean, literally it's a problem. they only really are comfortable communicating with each other through electronic devices, through phones, texting, gaming, et cetera. it's ugly and unfortunate. i don't think that the medium of these things are creating it as long as our own lack of

discipline and it's interesting because michael brought up the obesity thing and we're really lucky to have access to so much food and kid snacking with fast food and that is right there at your fingertips. and as a society, we probably are -- these things will become more clear, we will self-imposed more discipline that just because there is a feast food restaurant doesn't mean you drive through and get french fries between meals and just because your friends are sitting there doesn't mean they have to pull out their phone just because we have 100 we're not there yet. they're novelties over time we will super impose more self-discipline around things like food and use of your cell phone at dinner. and that won't be as much of a problem. >> but we can't be luddites either, right, as much as i like to dig a hole over the weekend and i think that's important and i agree with you. we have to find ways to embrace it and incorporate it rather

than be incorporated into it. so check out leaf snap i think is the name of it. >> i have it. it's one of my favorite apps. when i'm out i can take a picture of a tree, of a leaf, a weed, a flower and it will tell me everything about it and it will tell me, this is this certain flower if the back of the leaf is fuzzy. if it smells like thyme. >> there's an app for fruit trees in new york city. >> i think it's called leaf snap is the one and the one for new york city is called -- which won the big app prize two years ago is called trees nyc. and, you know, that's the sort of stuff that i'm constantly trying to find because i'm not going to get away from the digital world. you know, i'm going to die in a holographic coffin at some point. [laughter] >> how do i incorporate this? >> it's a really -- you know, this is a really long arc. this isn't a new arc. you know, it used to be listen

to music you had to be a wealthy person who had an orchestra play in your drawing room. and that was great for like the 10 people -- [laughter] >> that, you know, got to listen to it but everybody else was left out. and so, you know, what technology over time has done is democratized content, entertainment, news. but it's also introduced a bit of a barrier, right? think about when television came around. everybody thought, you know, what's going to happen to our kids? but i think over time there's still no substitute, one, for really good parenting. you know, and i think parents need to pay attention to what their kids are doing and to make sure that there's a good balance >> aamen. >> in their lives and we're running around playing

hide-and-seek and making mud pies and, you know, whatever. you know, but, you know, let's -- it's about balance. like everything else. and i think let's take advantage of what technology is bringing. it can create community where otherwise you wouldn't have community. if you're, you know -- i don't know. a disabled person who has trouble leaving home, all of a sudden like you can have a great community through something like facebook or twitter and being plugged into the world. it works both ways. it works both way. >> about balance, we're getting the virtual hook. and i want to thank everyone -- i want to thank the panelists for joining us today. we're delighted to be here with all of you. one announcement, there's a cocktail reception immediately following and we'll be hanging out there if you guys want to keep chatting about different things, we'd love to chat with you but we're delighted to be

with you today and delighted for having us. thank you. [applause] >> folks, i just wanted to be sure that you were invited also tomorrow morning 11:00. gail levin will be giving a wonderful lecture in the hamptons and thank you tore our sponsors, the tarr family, chubb and dayton wood osborn and thank you to ellen chezler and mickey strauss for getting this organized. [applause] >> a really -- thank you. thank you very much. and thanks to the panel. [applause] ♪ >> "washington journal" is featuring a look at the medicare program all this week. today an overview of the program and the changes over the past 45 years since that became law. you can see the series live every morning at 9:15 every morning on c-span and you can see it again each evening here

on c-span2 at 7:15. also tonight on c-span2, the communicator ♪

[no audio] >> notice the color of the bourbon, that pretty amber color that you see is all coming from the inside of the barrel. this is where bar been gets all of its color and a lot of its flavor. currently they discovered over 200 chemical flavors just in the oak and the tar from the barrel. >> this weekend we highlight frankford, kentucky on booktv and american history tv. on booktv tv on c-span2, vice, violence, corruption and urban renewal, douglas boyd on frankford's crawfish bottom and

john porter and on american history tv on c-span3, a visit buffalo trace distillery, one of only four distillery in operation during prohibition for medicinal purposes, of course, and the first two-state houses burned to the ground. stop by the third, the old state capital. booktv and american history tv in frankford, kentucky, this weekend on c-span2 and 3. >> the senate judiciary committee is considering legislation to repeal the defense of marriage act. the law which was signed by president clinton bars marriages of same-sex marriages. ..

>> the statements from the three house members who are here. i want to welcome everyone to the first ever congressional hearing, examining a bill to repeal the defense of marriage act, doma. i called this hearing to assess the impact of doma and american families. i've heard from a vermont families concerned about this

important civil rights issue, and earlier this year i was proud to join senator feinstein and others introduced the bill that would repeal doma, and restore the rights of all lawfully married couples. these american families deserve the same clarity and fairness and security that other families in this great nation enjoy. and as chairman of this committee i've made civil rights a focal point of our agenda. outside of the hearing room, i've often spoken with those who think civil rights is meant one for the history books. that's not so. there's still work to be done. work must continue until all individuals and families are both protected and respected equally under our laws. in 15 years since doma was enacted, five states including

my home state of vermont, plus the district of colombia provide the protections of marriage to committed same-sex couples. just a few days the state of new york will become the sixth state to recognize and protect same-sex marriage. but, unfortunately, the protection of these states provide to married couples are overwritten by the operation of doma. i'm concerned that doma was served -- this runs counter to the values upon which america was founded, to the proud tradition we have in this country moving toward a more inclusive society. next month we will celebrate our 49th wedding anniversary. our marriage is so fundamental to our lives, it's difficult for me to imagine how it would field of the government refuse to acknowledge it. but sadly the effect of doma goes well beyond the harm to a families dignity. the commitment of marriage leads all those to want to protect and

provide for our families. as we'll hear today, doma's cause significant economic harm to some american families. no one has made more difficult for some families to stay together. it has made more difficult for some family members to take care of one another during that health, and doma is made more difficult for some americans to protect their families after they die. i believe it's important we encourage and sanction committed relationships. i also believe we need to keep our nation moving toward equality and our continuing efforts to for a more perfect union. i'm proud to say that vermont led the nation in this regard. in 2000, vermont took a crucial step and can first it -- state in the nation to allow same-sex unions. nine years later for motley fool to house the relationship to fulfill our lives by becoming the first state to adopt same-sex marriage through the legislative process. i've been inspired by inclusive example set by vermont.

i've also been moved by the words represented john lewis, my dear friend, from the other body. like others, my position has evolved to states acted to recognize same-sex marriage. i applaud the president's decision to endorse the respect for marriage act as senator feinstein and the others, the rest of us have introduced. the president understands that civil rights issue affects thousands of american families. i want to support the repeal of doma because i do not want for mod spouses, a chance to experience continued hardship a result of doma's operation. they live in north hartman, vermont. they been together in a committed relationship for over three decades. they both served the country they love in the navy, both worked in the postal service. they moved to lend his parents home in montpelier where i was born. to care for her mother who was

living with alzheimer's disease. sadly, her degenerative arthritis forced her into retirement now she's regular and painful treatment. linda was denied family medical leave to care for her spouse because does not recognize her vermont marriage which is a lawful vermont marriage. just one example of america's families unfair treatment because of doma. many other vermont families reached out to share their experience, like small business owners pay more in federal taxes because they are not allowed to file like other married couples do. young couples attacks when their employer provides health insurance to their spouse. their working parents of teenage children not getting student loan forms, retirees. these are powerful stories. and there are stories all over that we part of the hearing record. the respect for marriage act would allow all couples are married under state law to be

eligible for the same federal protections according to every other lawfully married couple. nothing in this bill would obligate any person, religious organizations, state or locality to perform a marriage between two persons of the same-sex. those prerogatives would remain. what would change, it must change, is the federal government's treatment of state sanctioned marriages. the time has come for the federal government to regulate the married couples deserve the same legal protections afforded to opposite my couples pics i thank the witnesses who will be here today. i know those are able to travel represent a small fraction of americans impacted by doma but i'm glad that committee will webcast is so they can hear it. senator hatch, did you wish to say anything? >> mr. chairman, a want to welcome all of our good colleagues here. personally all three of them. and i will put my statement in the record.

thank you. >> thank you. senator feinstein, you are the sponsor, chief sponsor of this bill. would you like to say something? >> very briefly, mr. chairman, but me thank you for your leadership because you have made this a historic day in holding the first hearing ever on this subject. so it is very special, and very historic. doma was wrong in 1996, and it is wrong today. 27 of my colleagues and myself have introduced the respect for marriage act. our bill is simple. it strikes doma from federal law. i'd like to make just a few quick points. family law has traditionally been the preserve of state law. it therefore varies from state to state. marriage is the preserve of state law. divorce is the preserve of state law. adoption is the preserve of state law. and inheritance rights are the preserve of state law.

the single exception is doma. chief justice rehnquist once wrote that family law quote has been left to the states from time immemorial, and not without good reason, end quote. and he was right. my second point is that same-sex couples live their lives like all married couples. they share financial expenses, they raise children together, they care for each other in good times and in bad. in sickness and in health, until death they do part. but doma denies these couples the rights and benefits to file joint federal income taxes, to claim certain unpaid leave under the family and medical leave act, to obtain the protection of the estate tax when a spouse passes. and wants to leave his or her possessions to another. i'd like to thank ron wallen from india california as well as

the of the witnesses today for coming before the committee. and i also want to thank the 166 californians who submitted statements for the record which, mr. chairman, i would ask to enter into the record. >> without objection. >> that are between 50 and 80,000 married same-sex couples in this country. and 18,000 in my state of california. many californians impacted by doma could not come here today to testify. let me give you one example. joe johnson young from riverside could not fulfill one of her wives linda's last wishes. that they be buried together at a veterans cemetery. this is not right. doctor kevin mackey was tragically killed this past thursday on his way to san francisco general hospital. he leaves behind his husband and two children who now, because of doma, essentially lose ride that would have gone to a

heterosexual couple. for some reason, the congress of the united states when it passed doma in 1996, sought essentially to deny rights and benefits provided by the federal government to legally married same-sex couples. this must change. that's what this is all about. however, long it takes. we will achieve it. thank you very much, mr. chairman,. >> thank you very much. our first witness is congressman john lewis. civil rights legend. is also a close personal friend. he is often referred to as the conscious of the congress. today, congressman lewis continues to be as he has, a powerful advocate of matters of quality. congressman lewis, please go ahead. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. chairman leahy and other members of the senate, i thank you for inviting me to testify before

this committee today. it is an honor to be here. i'm very happy to see the judiciary committee hold hearings to address the issue of marriage equality. but at the same time, mr. chairman, i must admit i find it unbelievable that in the year of 2011 there is still a need to hold hearings and debates whether or not a human being should be able to marry the one they love. now, i grew up in southern alabama. i'm from a little town called troy. but my entire childhood follow the signs that said white restrooms, colored restrooms, white water fountain, colored water fountain. colored waiting, white waiting, colored men, white men. colored women, white women. i tasted the bitter fruits of

racism and i did not like it. and in 1996, when congress passed the defense of marriage act, a case of the old bitter fruit filled my mouth once again. it is a stain on a democracy. we must do away with this unjust discriminatory law once and for all. it reminded of another dark time in our nation's history. many years when states passed laws banning blacks and whites from marriage. we look back on that time now in disbelief. and one day we'll look back on this period, with that same sense of disbelief. when people used to ask dr. martin luther king jr. about interracial marriage, he would say, races do not fall in love and get married. individuals fall in love and get married. marriage is a basic human right.

no government, federal or state, should tell people they cannot be married. we should encourage people to love and not hate. human rights, civil rights, these are issues of dignity. every human being walking this earth, man or woman, gay or straight, is entitled to the same rights. it is in keeping with the america's promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. these words mean as much now as they did at the signing of the declaration of independence. that is why congress must not only repeal the defense of marriage act, or work to ensure for marriage equality, for all citizens together with the privilege and benefits marriage provide. all across this nation, same-sex couples are denied the very much you have got into it. they are denied equal rights and

benefits in health insurance and pensions. simple because the person they love happens to be of the same sex. even in states where they have achieved marriage equality, these unjust barriers remain all because of the defense of marriage act. unfortunately, a committee of us are comfortable sitting on the sideline by the federal government and state governments trample on the rights of our gay brothers and sisters. as elected officials were called to lead. we are called to be a headlight and not a daylight. so i unplugged the senate judiciary committee for holding this hearing. i urge this committee, the senate as a body, and the united states house of representatives as a whole to pass the respect for marriage act as soon as

possible. justice delayed is justice denied. in passing this bill is simple, the right thing to do. more than just our constituents, these are our brothers and sisters. we cannot turn our backs on them. we must join hands and work together to create a more perfect union. when the final analysis, we are one people. one family. the american family. and we all lived together in one house. the american house. mr. chairman, i thank you again for inviting me to testify. >> thank you very much, congressman lewis. and we've been joined by senator grassley. we have a congressman from his own state of iowa, august and stephen king, it represents iowa's fifth congressional district it is a member of the house agricultural small business, and the judiciary

committee of the house. the other judiciary committee, and congressman king, thank you for being here please go ahead. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and i want to thank senator grassley also for inviting me to testify here. it's an odd approach to testify before the senate judiciary committee, and i testified of course in opposition to s. 598 and other efforts to repeal the defense of marriage act. the defense of marriage act passed in 1996 by overwhelming bipartisan majorities and was signed into law by president clinton. this law defined marriage as adequate a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife and the word spouse refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife. closed quote. is also clarify that states did not have to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.

traditional marriage is the sacred institution answers as the cornerstone of our society. we cannot afford to devalue it with legislation like s. 598 come and we must oppose any effort that would diminish the definition of marriage. all of human experience points to one committed relationship between a man and a woman as the core building block to society. it takes a man and a woman to have children, and children are necessary for the next generation. we need to provide to them, pass through them the backs of our civilization in the family. the u.s. supreme court affirmed this in 19 -- 1888 when it stated, and ago, marriage is the foundation of the family and of society, without which they would be neither civilization nor progress, closed quote. and 94 to the supreme court said marriage and procreation are fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race, closed quote. doma was passed in 96 because

congress and president clinton understood that civil society has an interest in maintaining and protecting the institution of heterosexual marriage because it has a deep and abiding interest and encouraging responsible procreation and child rearing. now with today's proposed legislation, you are suggesting the government does not have the same interest to protect a marriage today as it did in 1996. the other side argues that you can't choose who you love. and a union between two men or two women is equal to that of one man and one woman. these are the same arguments that could be used to promote marriage between fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, or even polygamist relationships. in 1998 i helped draft i was defense of marriage act that states only a marriage between a male and female is valid. in 2090 i thousand nine the iowa supreme court issued a lawless decision in barna versus brion, seven ice cream court justices decided to legislate from the bench if they struck down i was

doma law, and to read their opinion, brings one to the conclusion that these justices believe they have the authority to find the constitution itself unconstitutional. they even went so far as to say that the rights to same-sex marriage quote were at one time unimagined, closed quote. when i was went to polls on november 2, 2010, they sent a message to the supreme court of iowa. they rejected the decision and historically ousted all three justices who are up for retention. and include chief justice marshall turners. never in the history of iowa how the voters ousted a single supreme court justice, let alone the three that were up for retention votes last november. every single time the american people have had the opportunity to vote on the definition of marriage, 31 out of 31 times data from that marriage is and should remain the union of a husband and a wife. and three states currently have

constitutional amendments to define marriage between one man and one woman. and maine passed an initiative to overturn a same-sex marriage bill. despite the clear will to people with legislation like s. 598 before us today. we also have the president saying that doma is unconstitutional despite no court ever reaching that conclusion. president obama has directed the justice department to stop defending the constitutionality of this law. it's not the role of the executive branch, determine what is or what is not constitutional. it is a role of executive branch to execute and uphold the laws that congress pass. i understand that mr. president obama announced he would support the repeal of doma. it is his domain to make, take such a position. but contrary to the position i think it is clear that the will of the american people to maintain, protect and uphold the definition of a marriage between one man and one woman is there, this is good for fans, good for society and good for government. i would quickly add, mr. chairman, that a couple of points about civil rights.

title vii of the civil rights acts as protection for race, color, religion for sex, national origin. those exhibits cost assure protection of religion are characteristics. those characteristics that are immutable should be ejected into discussion and a marriage license is often because that's a permit to do that which is otherwise illegal. it's not a right to get married. that's why states regulate it by licensing. they want to encourage marriage. thank you. i appreciate your attention and i yield back. >> thank you very much. congressman nadler is the author of the respect for marriage act, and lead sponsor of the companion bill in the house. he is also the lead sponsor for the families american act which is the daughter and this committee. congressman nadler, thank you for coming. across the divide and joining us here, please go ahead. >> thank you, mr. chairman for holding this hearing, and for your leadership on this issue. i also want to thank our colleague, the senior senator

from california, senator feinstein come far leadership in introducing the respect for marriage act in the senate earlier this year. along with the chairman and whether abstention the senator from new york, senator gillibrand. i'm thrilled to be here today as the author lead sponsor of the respect for marriage act which now enjoys the support of 119 cosponsors in the house. just yesterday president obama announced his support for the bill and i applaud his leadership on the issue as well. when congress passed doma in 19 and six it was not yet possible for gay or lesbian couples to marry anywhere in the world. 15 years later much has changed. seek state and district dissident going inadequate gay and lesbian couples in the state marriage laws. there are an estimated 80,000 in less than couples married illegally in this country. as a result, and the stereotypes have fallen away, public understanding and opinion on this issue has shifted dramatically. while 75% of the public oppose allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry, when congress enacted

doma, a majority of americans now support marriage equality. once viewed as a fiercely ours in asia, most individuals under age 45 who identify as republicans now support equal responsibility and rights for gay and lesbian couples. recently in my home state republican and democratic lawmakers join forces and voted to include gay and lesbian new yorkers in our state marriage laws and they can start getting married in new york legally on sunday. this shift i shift in understanding an opinion now makes clear what should've been a. in 1996. the refusal to recognize the legal marriages of a category of our citizens based on their sexual orientation is unjustifiable. time and experience has ever the legal and factual foundations used to support doma's passage, and meaningful congressional examination of this law is long overdue. some of congress' reasons for doma have not been disavowed. most notably the claim that

congress can or should use the force of law to express moral disapproval of gay and lesbian americans. it is no longer credible to claim that most americans hold this view, and, of course, while once believed a legitimate reason for the law, it is now since lawrence v. texas reason enough to declare invalid. doma support stokely the law should survive and argue primary that doma serves a legitimate interest in protecting the welfare national welfare joe biden a so-called optimal family structure. one that consistently married opposite sex couples raising their biological children. but there's no credible support for the notion that children are better off with opposite sex parents, or that married gay and lesbian parents do not provide an equally loving supportive and wholesome environment. in a legitimate interest in children demands the children of married lesbian and gay couples also we see the advantages that flow from equal federal recognition of their parents, state marriages. no legitimate federal interest in the welfare of children is ever advanced by withholding

protections from some children based on a desire to express moral disapproval of their parents. and it defies common sense to claim that it is necessary to harm or exclude the children of married same-sex couples in order to somehow to protect the children of opposite sex couples. nor is it accurate to claim that congress only interest in marriage is in its children. congress routinely allocates federal obligations and benefits based on their status and often doesn't about the welfare and security of these adults. the centers are not possibly served by doma. lando legitimate federal interest is served by this law, doma unquestioned and causes harm as we'll hear today from the married gay and lesbian couples who have joined us today. these couples pay taxes, serve their committees, struggle to balance working families, raise children and care for aging parents. they've undertaken a series public and legal pledge to care for and support each other in their families that civil marriage in tempe they deserve

equal treatment from the federal government. in fact, the constitution demands it and respect for marriage act would provide a. the reef -- the bill does not define marriage but instead restores our practice of respecting all states since a marriage for purposes of federal law while allowing each state to determine its own marriage laws. unlike doma, the respect for marriage acts protects states right. each date now set its own marriage laws, doma prevents the federal government from treating all states marriage is equally. respect for marriage acts would restore respect to the marriage is their stated respect for marriage act also enters america's highest religious freedoms. some religions opposing and others solemnizing marriages to lesbian and gay couples. the respect for marriage act allows the diversity to flourish leading every religion free to marry the couples it chooses without government interference. in offering this bill i would close within the experts to ensure that the federal government once again worth cooperative with the state to

sport the families that i'm confident the bill strikes the right balance and i look forward to working with all due to assure its passage. and i didn't thank you for this hearing. >> thank you, congressman nadler. i know that the house is both debates and both schedule, my in tension is there on the question, allow our three health minister go back to the other body. and then i would yield to senator grassley who did not have a chance to make his opening statement because we changed the schedule to yield to him. but i think all three of you for being here. i know how especially this week our hectic schedule it is. on both sides but i appreciate you taking the time to come here. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for respecting my lateness and kersey. the bill before us today is entitled to respect for marriage

act. george orwell would've marveled at at the name. a bill to restore merge would restore marriage as it has been known. as between one man and one woman. that is the view of marriage that i see. marriage would -- by repeating the defense of marriage act. the defense of marriage act was enacted in 1996. and just think of the goals by which it passed the united states senate. 85-14. we don't often get votes of 85-14 in the united states senate on controversial pieces of legislation. unlike a bill in which one member of a party support a partisan bill of the other party, which sometimes passes for bipartisanship around here, this was truly a bipartisan bill as evidenced by to 85-14 vote. president clinton signed it in to law. even president obama ran on election on a platform of

support for traditional marriage. until yesterday he was a supporter of doma as well. one of the witnesses before us today says that doma was passed for only one reason, quote, to express disapproval of gay and lesbian people, and to quote. i know this to be false. senators at the time such as biden, harkin, coal or even you, doma and representative at the time like representative schumer and driven as their members of the house at that time did not support doma to express disapproval of gay and lesbian people. and neither did i. marriage is an institution that serves the same public purpose all over the world. to foster change that can result in procreation. creates incentives for husbands and wives to support each other and their children. it takes is more to benefit children than adults. although many marriages do not

involve children. societies all over the world recognize the numerous reasons to extend special recognition to traditional marriage. i never thought that i would have to ever defend traditional marriage. it's been the foundations of societies for 6000 years. not only here but around the world. and it is what civilizations have been built on. support for traditional marriage cannot be viewed in a vacuum. over the last 50 years marriage has changed very dramatically. perhaps the divorce laws, inheritance laws, criminal loss of that kind needed reforms. like many members of congress i believe in federalism. i do not support the rise of the state -- i do support the rights of states to make changes in marriage if they choose. but i also believe that a state that changes this definition of marriage should not be able to impose that change on sister

states or the federal government. section two of doma adds a statutory enhancement to state authority under the full faith and credit clause of article iv, section one of the constitution. to maintain their own definitions of marriage. in addition to same-sex couples are not the only couples who face the issues that we're going to hear about today from our witnesses. on -- unburied federal couples such as, siblings and friends lived together all conveys the same problem. some of which can be addressed through other means than this particular legislation. and legitimately so. i'd like to know if one of our witnesses described the serious threats that were made against ordinary citizens, to petition the government for redress of grievances when california judges force that state to adopt same-sex marriage by the

minority, very much hope to call a witness today at this hearing to testify in support of doma. i'm sure she would have done it excellent job. she declined, however, i guess one reason the threats and intimidation that have been leveled against not only her but her family as result of her public support of doma. she will continue to write on this subject but will no longer speak publicly. is chilling of the first amendment rights is unacceptable. there are good people of good faith on both sides of this question. they should seek to persuade each other through logic and factual evidence. they should not resort to threats of violence or seek silence their opponent. and i say the same thing for people that want to take that action against people that are gay and lesbian. doma is a constitutional law. but it is subject to constitutional attack. as one of today's witnesses show, the department of justice has not performed its constitutional duties to take

care that laws be faithfully executed during the course of litigation involving doma. the department recently argued in another case that the court should rely on i'm passed bills in deciding the legality of government action. this is a ridiculous argument. one which courts have never accepted. the rule of law requires ruling based on actual laws, not on policy preferences. the obama administration lost that argument in the other case called -- although regrettably judges agreed that somehow the out to make a decision on the fact that congress might pass a law as opposed to what the law actually is. neither the administration nor any judge would rely on past due s. 598 arguing or deciding the constitution, constitutionality of doma.

nor should the administration or any judge accept the argument that justice department made in the case that there is any legal significance to the mere introduction of a bill, even if it is strongly supported by the administration. nor should the administration or any judge be of the erroneous opinion that this congress will pass s. 598. thank you very much. >> thank you. the other case you're referring to what you have treaty obligations, that anytime we enter a treaty it does become the law of the land. >> that says the president of the law clause that i take to a paul pierce i agree with you on that. >> as each one of us have had at one time or another, we've had a citizen from our state as being held by authorities in other countries. we've argued they should have the right to have someone from our embassy speak to them and advise them of their rights.

and, of course, in the case of the argument was if we ask other countries to do that for our citizens, that have the same rights in our state but in any event, it would change the names on here and we will call up, call the next panel. call up ron wallen, thomas mary, susan murray. before we start we'll hear the tests went from each of them and then we will open it up to questions. i should also note the audience, we are pleased that senator dick gillibrand who is in the audience -- senator gillibrand who is in the audience, a couple of the witnesses have already

noted, she's a strong supporter of this legislation, and has worked with us, worked very hard for this passage. so glad to have you here, senator. the first witness will hear from this ron wallen. is a resident of indio, california. he married tom, his partner of 55 years in june 2008. mr. whelan, please go ahead, sir. and it's a good i should go for all witnesses, your whole statement will be placed in the record. and once you have the transcript, you'll get a copy of the transcript, you will find, i should've added this one or that one, you will have a chance to do that. we want as complete a record as we have. but please go ahead, mr. wallen.

>> thank you, chairman leahy and members of the senate judiciary committee for inviting me to testify at this important hearing today. i want to especially thank my senator, senator feinstein, for introducing the respect for marriage act. and i am honored and appreciate the opportunity to tell my story. my name is ron wallen, i am 77 years old and i've lived in indio, california. four months ago my husband and partner of 58 years died of leukemia. , and i first met back in 1953 when he was 23 and i was 19. and from the first day he enjoyed a sense of togetherness which never we can in both good but -- in both good times and bad. tom suffered a massive heart attack in 1978. on doctors orders we change our lives and also resulted in a diminished income for us both.

and for the next 33 years our very ordinary life was happily spent together surrounded by friends and family and tell tom's last illness. on june 24, 2008, were among the lucky couples in california to stand for family and friends and legally married the one person we love above all others. it was a wonderful day a day after joint. and as ingrained as her love for each other was we were still surprised by the amount of emotion that came to us when the words i now pronounce you married for life was broken. imagine after 55 years together the two of us were blubbering on our wedding date. but even on the day we found in sickness and in health we are already facing the worst. because tom had been diagnosed with lymphoma which later morphed into the kenya. tom's illness was four years of pure help with more hospitalizations and i can get using both hands and feet. not a month went by i was not rushing into the emergency room.

but we were in it together. tom didn't have leukemia. we had leukemia. and as rotten as those for years were, they were made easier because we had each other for comfort and love, and because we were married. since tom died on march 8, i miss him terribly. and beyond the emptiness caused by the loss of a man i spent my entire adult life with, my life has been thrown into financial turmoil because of doma. a lot of retirees we took a big financial hit in the stock market these past couple of years. between tom's social security benefits of 1850 come in small private pension of $300 my social security check which is $900, we had a combined steady monthly income of $3050, which kept the roof over our heads. our living expenses were covered by the income from our investments. not much but enough. as you know permitted couples in

his, social security allows a widow or a wayward to either claim their own benefit are the benefit him him out after d.c.'s spouse, whichever is highest. that survivors benefit is often what allows the widow or widower to stay in their home at a very difficult time. but doma says gay and lesbian marriage couples cannot get that same treatment. therefore, my reliable income went from $2050 down to $900 a month. monthly mortgage on the homeless 2078. you don't have to be an accountant to see that from the day time passed, i have had to worry about how to pay that mortgage. ease the pain of loss, help during a very difficult transition and allow time to make decisions and plan for my future alone. yet i cannot depend on this benefit after 58 years with my spouse. simply because of doma. it's unfair and this is unjust.

many widows and widowers downsize and make adjustments after the loss of their spouse. downsizing is one thing but panic sale of a home which is underwater is quite another. after a lifetime of being a productive citizen, i am now facing financial chaos. tom and i played by the rules as we pursued our own version of the american dream. we served our country. we paid our taxes. we volunteer. we maintained our home. we got married as soon as we are legally able to do so. and yet as i face a future without my spouse it is hard to accept that the federal government is throwing me out of my own home. you can fix this problem by repealing doma. it's discriminatory law against gay and lesbian couples ups and all responsibility of marriage. all we ask is to be treated fairly just like other married couples. i beg you to repeal this law and allow all married couples the same protections. again, thank you for inviting me

to testify today, and i'll be happy to answer any questions you may have. >> thank you very much, mr. wallen. our next witness is thomas mary, senior vice president focus of on the family come and mr. minnery reminded me that years and years and years and years ago, and years ago, when we were both younger, he actually covered me for one of the newspapers in vermont but go ahead, mr. minnery. [inaudible] spent is your microphone on? spent it is on now. and mr. wallen, my heart goes out to you. my organization is a very large. we do a lot of counseling to families to help them thrive in a difficult time. we have resources for couples to build healthy marriages that reflect and for parents to raise their children according to morals, and values grounded in

biblical principles. we have 13 international offices, our radio programs are broadcast in 26 light which is come to more than 230 million people around the world each day. and mr. wallen, we have resources that i believe can help you even in your situation. if you permit us we would love to try and be helpful to you. mr. chairman, and members of the committee, i believe i represent two groups of people who have not been invited here today to testify. the first group of people are those many voters who have unapologetically endorse traditional definition of marriage. typically, these folks passed with overwhelming majorities on the average of 67% majority in each of the 31 states where voters have had a chance to register their opinions about it. in addition, additionally, 15 more states have passed some sort of statute bringing the total of 44 states that are decided in one form or another,

usually by large overwhelming majorities, that a marriage is between one man and one woman. one of the bill's most serious impacts, the bill we are discussing today, is logged in largely ignored the repeal of section two of doma. that is the section that protects states from being forced to recognize out of state same-sex marriages. the bills revocation of section two is an attempt to undermine the public policies laws and constitutions of the vast majority of states from traditional marriage is a settled issue. the only possible reason for doing so is to place the issue of marriage once again into the hands of judges and to take the issue of marriage out of the hands of people who have already spoken so clearly in so many states. should doma be repealed? though states which have registered their approval of traditional marriages will be faced with the problems of

coping with marriages of which they overwhelmingly disapprove. we need look no further than massachusetts, the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. to understand what i'm talking about. it is this force of political correctness that diversity of opinion, that is the problem. national public radio featured an interview with a massachusetts eighth grade teacher, ted allen, who was exuberant about her newfound freedom to explicitly discuss homosexual behavior with kids after the law passed in massachusetts. in my mind i know that okay, this is legal now, she said. if somebody wants to challenge me, i was a gimme a break, it's legal now. that's what she said to npr. npr reporter went on to explain that the teacher now discusses gay sex with students thoroughly and explicitly with a chart in eighth grade. i feel like i'm also representing parents who have

not been invited here to speak who have a sincerely religious view that marriage is between one man and one woman and i want to protect their young children against other views. in 2006, a seven year old son come home to tell them about about his teacher had read to the first grade class, expand on same-sex relationships. at first they thought that he was mistaken. they requested the school informed them about such presentations, and they were turned down. another couple, david and tonya parker had an even worse result when they questioned the teaching of explicit same-sex issues to their young son, mr. parker found himself in jail. i'm just trying to be a good dad, parker said after his arraignment. the farm -- the family acknowledged they were christians attempting to follow their faith. we are not intolerant. said his wife. we love all people. that is part of our faith.

but see, the judge ruled in the case, the case of the parkers, had this to say. the sooner children are exposed to those topics, same-sex relationships, the better it is. it's difficult to change attitudes and stereotypes after they have developed. excuse me? sincerely held religious views of their parents. the judge takes it upon himself to believe that these youths sincerely held should be erased from the minds of the children. mr. chairman, that's my opening statement. i be pleased to take question. >> thank you very much, mr. minnery. and it's good to see you again. our next witness is andrew sorbo, a resident of berlin -- how do you pronounce that? berlin. same way we do in vermont.

[laughter] we have a problem in vermont, for those who are wondering. andrew -- and his partner should live with regis. they are joined in a civil union in vermont in 2004, back when vermont had civil unions before that same-sex unions. and been legally married in connecticut in 2009. please go ahead. >> thank you, senator leahy, senator feinstein, and senator blumenthal, for inviting me to testify before this committee. my name is andrew sorbo. i am 64 years old and a resident of berlin connecticut. i spent 35 years as a teacher and principal and the catholic and public schools of rhode island and connecticut before retiring in 2005. i'm here today to talk about how i've been hurt by the events of -- about defense of marriage act after lost my part of nearly 30 years, the love of my life, and

my legal spouse, dr. colin atterbury, a professional of medicine at your university and the chief of staff of the west haven connecticut veterans administration medical center. as a young man of 23 i had mistakenly married, separated and divorced, and expected to spend the rest of my life alone, and my nights in quiet desperation. but then to my everlasting surprise on july 29, 1979, on a visit to new york city i met colin. from our first conversation we knew that we had found our soulmates and our partners for life. although we never expected it to happen in our lifetime, we had the opportunity to legalize our relationship with a simple and holy union in vermont on the occasion of our 25th anniversary. a year later i retired and shortly afterwards, colin was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. for over three years he battled the cancer with stoicism and

courage, and i nursed him with a strength i was not aware i possess. in january 2000 we are married by to minister friends in a subdued ceremony in the living room of our home in connecticut. colin died four months later just shy of our 30th anniversary. even though we did everything we could to legalize our relationship and protect herself finance it, doma hung over us like a dark and ominous cloud. the financial impact due to doma came swiftly after colin's death. his federal pension checks stopped, so our household income declined by 80%. doma did not allow colin the same legal rights which my own brother-in-law possessed when he retired. that is, the opportunity to accept a smaller monthly pension to allow his spouse, my sister, to inherit his bench and maintain her financial security in the event of his death. this year i had to sell our house and downsize to a

condominium. leaving our home at 18 years is a moment i will never forget. colin was also denied the right to include in his medical insurance plan. when i retired as a teacher in 2005, i had no alternative except to pay for my insurance coverage in full at a much higher rate than as a spouse. last year might insurance payments consumed almost one-third of my $24,000 teacher pension. in addition, doma force my financial planner to create a retirement plan much less advantage for me than if i'd been colin's female spouse. another consequence of doma is that unlike my mother, when my stepfather died, i was unable to inherit my spouse's social security benefits. doma also industry with our ability to file joint state income tax returns, even though we were legally married in connecticut. that process is prohibitively complex for same-sex spouses. even after our civil union in

2004, colin and i were not allowed to file joint federal income tax returns, a situation that my sister and her husband have faced. after colin died i was forced to file a separate federal return for him, and separating our finances at that point was exceedingly difficult. the damage that doma and flexibility on the lives of decent americans is not only financial but also psychological as well. those toll on our belief in that justice and fairness of our society is incalculable. where colin sitting by my side today, colin would implore you to remove this insult to our dignity, to respect us as much as you do our heterosexual countrymen, and to rescind doma. mr. chairman, would ask you restore the economic justice that doma denies us. he would remind you that we are your brothers and your sisters, your aunts and uncles, your cousins and your friends. your work mates and your

neighbors, your sons and/or daughters. and yes, even sometimes your moms and your debts. and in colin, the doctor who was a philosopher, would stop to ruminate because he was a thoughtful man. he would lower his voice solemnly. he would look every one of you in the eye before saying, everybody deserves equal treatment. thank you, senators, for allowing me to testify today. >> thank you very much, mr. sorbo. our last witness on this panel is susan murray. ms. murray lives with her wife, karen in harrisburg vermont. she is a partner in a law firm, in burlington, vermont, and one of the leading law firms of our state. she specializes in family law, if your state planning and civil rights. she was cocounsel of baker versus state of vermont which

established in vermont. please go ahead. >> thank you, chairman leahy, and thank you, senator grassley and the other members of the committee. four-line me to testify here today. i am the oldest of seven children, a good catholic family. i had a great childhood. my mom and dad were completely devoted to us kids. but they were also devoted to each other. they were happily married for 51 years before my dad died six years ago. sorry. so that was my model of a successful marriage. that's what i wanted for myself. when i realized as a young adult that i was gay, i didn't think that i would have have the opportunity at the same kind of life that my parents had. and then i met karen hibbert. and i consider myself blessed to

have found the person that i wanted to be with the rest of my life. we've been together for more than 25 years now, and as soon as the state of vermont, says the vermont legislature said we could, we got married. we promised to continue to love one another and to be with each other through thick and thin for the rest of our lives. by now our lives are completely intertwined, both financially and otherwise. we still can't file joint federal tax returns. and that means we have to pay more in taxes. there was a time a few years ago when i was very sick and i was in hospital for four days. karen stayed with me everyday and every night until i got better. luckily i had health insurance to karen's work. so that helps pay the medical bills. but unlike other married coworkers that she works with, karen has to pay tax on the

value of that health insurance coverage for me. that's about $6200 a year. senators, when we met karen have blonde hair and i'd like it. and now we both have great here. and as we get older we are starting to worry about the financial difficulty that we may face because of social security laws don't provide us full benefits of other couples. now, all of these things, large and small, they add up over time. and it's like waves hitting sand on a beach over and over. it has the effect of the eroding our financial security. it's something, trying to the road things that we've built up, we work so hard to build up over time. as senator leahy pointed out i'm a lawyer by profession so do a lot of family law work and a lot of state planning work and in that role i have seen firsthand the ways in which the lack of federal protections heard

same-sex families and the children they are raising. so i would just like to give you two examples here today. i once represent a woman named carrie. she was a blue-collar worker. she worked at a big box store. she and her big partner, aaron, willie struggle to support themselves and errands to children that aaron had from a prior marriage. at one point she went to employ untried health insurance for erin and erin's two children the company said the. they specifically told her that the federal government did not require them to ensure their employees same-sex partners or spouses, or those spouses children. so they were not going to do it. so for this family, the lack of health insurance really was very scary for them. they were essentially one illness away from financial ruins. and alas? i will tell you about is really

a tragedy. my clients and her partner jane, they were the new parents of an eight year-old boy. but they were totally in love with that little baby. had some hopes and dreams together for raising that child. they agreed the shell would stay home and be a full-time stay-at-home mom to take care of the baby and that jane would go to work. she had a very modest job and made a modest income but they had a total house and were making ends meet. then one morning on her way to work, jane was killed in a car accident. ..

two examples of the harms that same-sex couples have faced and will face if doma is allowed to remain the law of the land. i really hope you will get rid of this unfair law. thank you. >> thank you very much and we will go to our questions. you know, as a member of the vermont bar and a member of the legal community, i have been dairy familiar with your advocacy in the fight for equality, but this is the first time i have heard your personal story and what you said about your parents and how their marriage was an example to you,

and i can certainly relate to that with my own parents. but, you also were in vermont when we had first civil unions that the legislature pass. that was a major debate in our state. then subsequently a few years later when the vermont legislature elected members voted and debated and passed the same-sex marriage, which actually was far less -- it did not bring about an awful lot of controversy from the right to the left. but why was it important to you to get married rather than just have a civil union? >> that is a great question

senator. you know silly unions were created whole cloth by the state of vermont and no other states have borrowed that phrase now but it was brand-new back then and it is different. people didn't know what it was. when we had a civil union ceremony we had a big party and some of the people we invited didn't know what we were inviting them to. they didn't understand it. but, marriage is universal. everybody understands it. everybody in this country and everybody in this world. everybody knows what the marriage vows are, that you take someone for better or worse or richer or poor or and sickness and health and death do you part. everybody knows that and the childhood that i had in the model that i had for my parents cause me to believe in marriage and i believe in its power to bind people and its power to, its importance to society and i wanted to declare that publicly. we both wanted to declare that

publicly for our friends, the family so that they would either to support us and they understood that we were part of that world. >> let me ask you -- we will have a number of witnesses and already have had and will have more to oppose the respect for marriage act, and some will say they want to fight poverty by keeping american families intact. they talk about the problems of single parent households. states have long determined issues of marriage. it is rare the federal court and supreme court stepped in and they did of course 40 years ago in loving versus virginia and unanimously struck down miscegenation laws, but i think we can say that our federal government has had an interest in protecting children. we can agree that marriage

provides more stable and financially secure homes and families with children. do you see any way that doma is offered to keep families more intact and protected or the other way around? >> just the opposite, senator. let me give you an example. karen and i have friends who actually live in new york outside of albany, a gay male couple. they have adopted three special needs kids including one who got aids because his mother was an intravenous drug user. they have had so many difficulties raising the children, really trying times but they have done a fabulous job raising these kids. and to the extent doma, doma undermines their ability to take care of these children and to provide these children with the care and support that they need. to the extent they can't file joint tax returns and that increases their tax burden, that is money that these parents

can't use to buy books for those kids. they can't spend it on tutors. they can't spend it on summer camps. they can even put money away for the kids college education. so i think we can all agree in this room that children are this country's most precious resource. they are our future, and the kids of same-sex couples deserve exactly the same protection and benefits in that sense of security that every other child in this country deserves. and they are not getting it with doma. >> thank you. ms. maneri, earlier this year the conservative political action conference in d.c., you made this statement. i believe i'm quoting you correctly. we believe we fight poverty every day in the most practical way of poverty can be fought in this country and that is by keeping families intact. and, your report the value of

marriage for writing party contributes poverty to a large prevalence of single-parent single parent households in our nation. this will lift a significant numbers of adults and children out of poverty. i think we all agree that marriage provides more stable and financially secure homes and families for children. but, does that come through if we are denying some parents their rights and benefits that make their families healthy and more secure? >> thank you for the question mr. chairman. we all, we the people care about marriage, care about what it is because it is the nurturing environment for children, and a mountain of social science data and diluted overwhelmingly the best environment for raising

those children is possible is an intact home headed by a married father and mother. in fact, i have put in my prepared statement. >> it my specific question though, if you do have parents legally married and they are same-sex, and there are children, are those children benefited by saying that in that family, they will not have the same financial benefits that another family, married parents of opposite sex would have? are those children -- are those children not put at a disadvantage by denying those same benefits to them? i am talking about now a legal marriage under the state laws of the state you live in. >> no and that question --

without question children are certainly better off than having no parents, but. >> wait a minute i don't understand it. they would be better off if they had no parents? >> they would certainly be better off if they had -- been if they had no home headed by parents but same-sex marriage says a whole lot more than that senator. >> i'm trying to go specifically to the financial. are they not disadvantaged by not having the same financial benefits that an opposite sex family would have? >> as i saysaid, not knowing the details of which families you are speaking of, certainly those families are better off -- the children are better off with parents in the home. >> what i'm talking about, just yes or no. this is not a trick question. i am just asking, please. if you have parents legally

married under the laws of the state, one set of parents are entitled to certain financial benefits for their children. the other set of parents are denied those same financial benefits for their children. are not those children at least in that aspect of finances, are not those children of the second family, are they not at a disadvantage? >> that would be yes answering the question narrowly. >> i was asking it narrowly. i used to have a career where i had to ask questions all the time, so senator grassley. >> mr. minnery, the testimony we have heard appears to me to turn on the operation of section 3 of doma, which defines marriage for

the purpose of federal law. doma also contains section 2 which as you mentioned preserves federalism by allowing each states to define marriage for itself without imposing its definition on the other states. the bill before us would repeal section 2 of doma as well as section 3. does section 2 of doma have anything to do with the loss of benefits that the witnesses have discussed? >> doma was in place well before the couples at the table were married, so their situation senator has not changed with doma. it is the same and that is why i question the advice that mr. wallin spoke about when he talked about legal advice given

to him about how to survive. it seems as though the legal advice he was talking about assumed that doma would be repealed but it seems to me that the legal advice of a competent adviser ought to understand the situation that exists. nothing has changed since doma past for these couples. >> section 2 of doma has nothing to do with any things -- anyone's benefit. to be the effect in what on what justification do proponents of repealing doma offer or repealing section 2? >> well, section 2 is that section of doma which excuses states from being required to recognize same-sex marriage as performed in other states. these are the states that have overwhelmingly determined what

marriage is for the citizens of that state. overwhelmingly they have voted for that. if doma were to be repealed, presumably same-sex marriage performed elsewhere would have to be recognized in those states, those many states that have determined that marriage is what it has always been in their states and with that comes very forced political correctness, which can get downright nasty. in my prepared comments, i speak about a case in washington state, in which voters had gone to the polls to try and repeal a civil unions measure. they put that on the ballot by the initiative process. many of the petition signers

were released. and the threats and the intimidation against them were horrendous and those threats and intimidation's found their way into a reef filed in federal court on behalf of those parents. most of those comments against the petition signers i cannot report here. they are too vile. >> can i go on to another question please? mr. minnery we hear testimony today that social science research shows that the well-being of children raised with same-sex marriages the same as children who are raised in traditional marriages. is that your understanding of the research? is there anything questionable about the studies that show that children are just as healthy and well-adjusted when raised by same-sex parents? >> yes, in my written statement i go into that in some detail senator. i appreciate the question. as i started to say before an

overwhelming mountain of evidence shows that children do best when they have a mom and a dad. the studies that have analyzed the same-sex households are very recent, the conclusions tend to be ambiguous. the sample sizes tend to be small and they tend to be what social scientists call snowball samples. that is to say they are not random samples for an inclusion in the study. they are people who have been recruited to be in the study by for example answering ads in the same-sex publications, bookstores, places where same-sex couples frequent. that is the way most of them have been included in the studies and that is not as legitimate as a scientifically random sample and those samples are much better in those studies

which are longitudinal and will show that a mother and a father provide the best environment for those children. >> thank you. >> thank you. i yield to senator feinstein. i have to step out for four or five minutes and i wanted to give her the gavel during that time and senator whitehouse will be recognized after another member on the republican side comes. >> i will step out for a minute but i will be right back. >> thank you. senator feinstein. >> thank you very much mr. chairman. i want to establish an things for the record. in 1997 in the case called -- bogs the supreme court said in a quote the whole subject of the domestic relations of husband and wife, parent and child, belongs to the laws of the state and not to the laws of the

united states and quote. nothing in this bill would obligate any state, religious organization or locality, to perform a marriage between two people of the same-sex. nor would anything in this bill require a state to recognize a same-sex marriage from another state. doma has never been necessary to preserve states rights, because the state does not have to recognize a marriage that violates its public policy. so, i think that is pretty clear. i think one of the big discrepancies here it is in the area of health coverage. many americans get health coverage through their employers and they use those plans to cover families including their

spouses. these plans are usually free from tax, so if the business pays $2000 in health premiums for an employee and a spouse, the employee does not have to pay income taxes on that benefit. doma removes its tax protection for same-sex couples. under doma the employee will have to pay taxes on three mediums paid to his or her spouses health coverage. plus the employee has to pay any employee contribution after taxes rather than before taxes, like any other married couple. this is how doma discriminates. so that means that same-sex couples are subject to thousands of dollars in additional taxes because of doma. susan you are an attorney. would you like to comment on that? >> that is right. you are absolutely right. i experienced that in my own

life, and i have seen it with many of my friends and with some of my clients to the extent people can actually get health insurance benefits. some of them can't because the companies think that the federal government allows them to discriminate, and therefore, they are able to do that. so if they can get access to health insurance, they still have to pay more money on it. >> in the area of gift tax, state tax, divorce, and let me talk about the gift tax for a moment. you know, many americans are generous with their spouses. they give them a piece of jewelry or an expensive electronic item. they buy a vacation for a spouse. under federal law, these gifts are not taxed for married couples, except for same-sex couples because of doma. i have a constituent from piedmont california by the name of max kalin.

he recently suffered from this aspect when his husband philip passed away from an aggressive form of cancer. phillips estate was tax to the tune of $2 million because of doma. now could you comment on this issue of the gift and inheritance tax? >> i would be happy to, senator. i see this all the time in my practice. i can tell you the story of a young couple named jessica and i've been looking to see me recently. jessica was lucky enough to have inherited some money, significant amount of money from her parents, but herb partner, her spouse, her wife, had no money at all. they had two goals. one was to provide some financial protections to eileen to give her assets to protect her in the event that jessica passed away and prepare for the ups and downs of life says they moved forward and got older.

and the other was to try to minimize their federal estate tax just like any other married couple that comes into my office. now if they were a married couple that was recognized by the federal government that would have been if very easy straightforward as they plan for me to draft, but he goes up doma, there are no -- i can't just simply have jessica transfer assets into eileen's me because anything right now for $13,000 a a year triggers a gift tax. >> thank you. obviously i'm trying to build a record here. let me speak about veterans benefits. "don't ask don't tell" has been repealed. so gay servicemen will be able to put their lives on the line in service to our country in the military. and they have received a number of benefits on account of their service to our nation. for example if a veteran dies in service, the surviving spouse will receive death benefits. if a veteran dies from a disability related to is service

the surviving spouse can receive benefits. a veteran spouse can also be buried with their deceased spouse in a military cemetery. under doma, the spouses of servicemembers would be excluded from these benefits. even though those servicemembers performed exact weight the same service to our country and put their lives on the line for the united states. my question is for any witness who would care to answer. can you please comment on the extent that you know on the likely impact of doma on gay servicemembers and their spouses? >> senator i can tell you briefly from a non-gay case that i just had. i do divorce work and i represented a woman who is divorcing her husband who is active in the military. she is entitled to i think it was 55% of his pension. he is about ready to retire

after 20 years in the military. she is divorcing him and getting 55% of his military pension. any same-sex couple are not going to have access to that same pension benefit. it is just not available to them. >> thank you very much and i thank all of you for being here today. it is very important and i am very grateful. senator whitehouse. >> thank you manocherian thank you or your leadership on this issue. i will loudly yield. this discussion we are we are having is so often a clash between ideology and just human stories that what i would like to do is to take my time to act out the testimony of ron and andrew and susan with some stories from rhode island. david and rock wrote to me from providence. we now both have active and busy careers and a teenager thinking about college in the financial challenge of college tuition and

shrinking retirement assets. we are involved in the community and our church. we have the concerns of most families. in fact if we were a heterosexual couple our story of the conservative american family, the importance of education, the importance of faith, delaying marriage until financially stable, marriage followed by a shared household followed by childrearing. and then there is doma. we carry our marriage document. adoption documents and medical care proxy documents when we travel. i am in eligible for inclusion in military family benefits. we are not eligible to file joint income tax. we are we are ineligible for spousal social security benefits in the event of the death of one of us. it is time to end this discriminatory policy. carol and ann right we have been together since 1987 and it have had 20 foster children. for 30 years i have worked at the same company and pay taxes and been a model citizens for 23

years and ann has taken care of children in need. at one high school we are known as the ladies. and educators heaved a sigh of relief when they knew a tough child had us as their foster parents. with kindness and patience and compassion our efforts have made great changes and 20 young lives. we are doing our best to make this a better world. please pass pass the respect for marriage act in reverse doma. we want to be able to tell her foster children that we are married 100%. bill and ernie wright, we live in cumberland rhode island and we have been a couple for over 20 years. we live quietly and go about our business without offering anyone. i was born 59 ears ago and ernie was worn 55 years ago. we have been citizens of the united states all our lives and since the passage of doma our government has seen fit to take rights away from us. why is this? we have not heard anyone. our union will not cause harm to anyone. it makes no sense to set us

outside the protections of federal law to make us less than full citizens of the united states. please ask your colleagues in the senate to support the return of our civil rights. is the only civil thing to do. finally from a story in the providence journal about pat aker and deborah. pat is, has been in public service for a long time. she is a 51-year-old correctional officer. it says here she was never a gay rights activist but after doctors diagnosed her with incurable lung cancer in december she got an added joel. the federal defense of marriage act precludes her from collecting the social security benefits baker in for a surviving spouse. the story continues, the discovery stunned baker leaving her to embark on what may well be her first and last act of bravery in the name of marriage equality. the story concludes, they are not entitled to the full scope or protections with regard to

end-of-life issues, disposition of remains, who is considered next of kin. who gets to make decisions on medical care, organ donations and more. noting that the couple is spent thousands of extra dollars trying to put in place such protections said i hope it is a reminder to the legislators that this is not abstract. this is a really tragic illustration of how these vulnerable situations are made so much more difficult because the same-sex couples are not treated like everybody else. i could not improve on those comments from rhode island couples and i thank you everyone for their attention and look forward to working particularly with senator feinstein on passage of her bill. again i want to recognize her leadership and i want to recognize the leadership of our chairman. there have been many occasions when this hearing room has been made the fulcrum of progress for this country as a result of his leadership. this is another such occasion

and i want to recognize him for that. >> thank you very much senator whitehouse, and i think we have all been fortunate with the leadership you have shown, senator feinstein and others have shown here. senator franken, you are next please. go ahead, sir. >> as i begrudgingly healed to senator durbin. >> thank you is your chairman. i want to especially thank the witnesses who have shared their personal stories with us and what you are doing here is very important. not just for the millions of americans directly affected i the so-called defense of marriage act but for our entire nation. doma is an injustice and an immoral and discriminatory law. our nation was founded on the premise that all people are created equal. and that all person should receive equal treatment under the law. our society may be different

than it was then, that these principles remain the same. that is why i am an original co-sponsor of of the respect for marriage act and that is why a think the day we repeal doma will be a great day in this nation akin to the ratification of the 19th amendment and the passage of the civil rights act. i think that congressman lewis' present here spoke to that in a very powerful way. mr. chairman i would like to answer the rest of my statement, opening statement come into the record. mr. minnery on page eight of your written testimony, you write quote, children living in their own married biological or adopted -- with their own married biological or adoptive mothers and fathers were generally healthier and happier, had better access to health care, less likely to suffer mild or severe emotional problems,

did that are in school, were protected from physical, emotional and sexual abuse and almost never lived in poverty compared with children in any other family form. use site -- you cited department of health and human services study that i have right here from december 2010 to support this conclusion. i checked the study out. [laughter] and i would like to enter it into the record if i may. actually, it doesn't say what you said it says. it says that nuclear families, not opposite sex married families, are associated with those positive outcomes. is a niche through, mr. minnery,

that married same-sex couple that has had or adopted kids would fall under the definition of the nuclear family in the study that you cite? >> i would think that the study when it cites nuclear families, would mean a family headed by headed by a husband and a wife. >> it doesn't. [laughter] the study defines a nuclear family as one or more children living with two parents who are married to one another. and are each biological or adoptive parents of all the children in the family. and i frankly don't really know how we can trust the rest of your testimony if you are reading studies this way. ms. murray. i recently read about a minnesota same-sex couple with

two daughters. the working partner and their daughters could get health insurance through that partners employer but they couldn't afford to cover the nonworking partner who is named shannon because every contribution they or their employer made to shannon's coverage would be fully taxable under federal law. now, shannon and her partner can't get married in minnesota but even if they could, doma would mean that their situation would remain the same. according to one estimate because of doma, same-sex couples pay $1069 more annually for health coverage than opposite sex employees. as senator feinstein mentioned, you have had to go through this. can you tell us how same-sex couples end up paying for coping with these disparities?

>> senator, a lot of them simply don't get health insurance, and they end up in the emergency room. might partner is a physician assistant in burlington vermont and she sees these couples coming in when they can afford insurance. so our system is paying for at least on an emergent basis, paying for these folks health care and their kids aren't getting, their kids are not covered, they are not getting regular check-ups nor the partners. that is a huge problem that we have on a long-term basis in terms of of health health healt. >> thank you very much and thank you to all the witnesses. mr. chairman. >> thank you senator franken. using our early bird rule, senator. senator coons, senator coons is next. >> thank you chairman leahy.

thank you to you and senator feinstein for your long and determined work in repealing doma. thank you to the members of our panel today who have shared with us steering personal stories of their experiences as veterans, teachers and attorneys. they represent i know thousands of our constituents, our colleagues, classmates and friends who have gone through similar suffering losses and mistreatment through doma. the purpose of today's hearing is to look at senate bill 59098 and to consider the impacts doma has had on legally married couples who have been denied access to all sorts of different federal programs, benefits rights and privileges and as ms. murray mentioned they are like waves on a beach that just drive away the possibility of equality, even to those legally recognized couples. now, to me this hearing is fundamentally about equality and whether or not we as a nation think it is okay to deny some american citizens the same rights and privileges afforded

to other citizens. do we really think it is okay for our federal government to say we simply don't like who we love? my question here is how we can have an answer that is anything other than radically know. equality for all his supposed to mean in my view, equality for all and i don't see what business it is of our federal government to reach into america's hearts and judge them for whom they love particularly when their states have empowered them to marry. i am tired of it being the love this land that it is okay for the government to discriminate against americans solely based on their gender, identity or sexual orientation. i'm tired of seeing kids grow up in a country where the government tells them discrimination is okay and i think it is no wonder that we continue to see kids being bullied in school and see so many lgbt children take their own lives because they have given up hope because in my view this log simply encourages discrimination. i think we have bigger problems in this country than going out of our way to continue to

discriminate against and deny rights to americans. we have for today some of these witnesses have a think movingly testified about how same-sex marriage is at real harm from doma. in my view, others have testified here and elsewhere about how somehow same-sex marriage threatens or hurts heterosexual marriage. i don't know about my colleagues at my wedding ring and my marriage did not magically dissolve or disappear just because they passed the same-sex marriage bill last month. in my view as 598 is about restoring rights. is not about taking them away. it is about writing these wrongs in moving on. i'm a person of faith. my family and i worship regularly. i'm raising children in what might be considered a traditional marriage. but i don't think my faith, which informs my politics, empowers me to have a monopoly on the interpretation of the will of god. and in my view, it is expressly not appropriate for the federal

government to discriminate against couples based on who they love. in my view the defense of marriage act is just wrong. it is wrong and needs to be repealed and i'm grateful to the chairman into the witnesses before us for having laid out in clear and telling ways how doma has harmed them directly. i would be grateful if i could take a moment to ask some of the witnesses about the symbolic harm that doma has also imposed on you because you have spoken in compelling ways about financial losses. the loss of a home, loss of survivors benefits, loss of health benefits, loss of respect that i would be interested in hearing if i could further about the symbolic power of doma in your lives to any of the three witnesses, ron andrew or susan who have testified. mr. sorbo?

>> senator, i am glad to be able to respond to that. i was a teacher and principal as i told you, for 35 years. every day of my career, i led my students in the pledge of allegiance, and that pledge of allegiance and with liberty and justice for all. but, for 35 years every day, when it came to those words, i stood in front of my students with a blank face, but inside i knew it was not true. i knew as a history teacher that it had not been true for blacks. it had not been true for women. it had not in true for mixed race couples, and i knew that it was not true then for same gender couples. and i had to stand before them and say that. i also had every day of my

career, until the very end when i finally got the courage to admit who i was, to always use the pronoun i do my students when they would ask me questions that went to my personal life. i was going on vacation. i did this. i could not say we because the next question was, who is the other person? and i knew that would lead to lots of problems. so, it is a good question, senator, because the financial aspect of this is only one aspect of the harm that doma does and the discrimination against gay people. it is an insult to our dignity and our sense -- as i said in my testimony, our sense of the quality. i grew up in a normal household. my father died when i was a year old. i grew up -- but normal and that

my mother and sister and i have a loving home and my mother brought me up to be as ethical as possible. i knew from her example the difference between right and wrong, that it was wrong to discriminate against the black people who lived in the housing project that i lived in providence, rhode island. and i believe as a person who studied history and loved history from the time i was a child, that this country that is supposed to be the shining beacon on the hill according to the people who settled in massachusetts bay colony, this country was formed on ideals of equality and justice. and, we have had to struggle to fight every generation to extend that idea of freedom and justice to more and more groups, and my

group, my community, is the latest to have to fight for that. and i am appalled and i am baffled at how representatives of our country and the senate and the house cannot see the historical perspective on this. that some of our own representatives and senators who are there to protect the minority are allowing us to become the victims of the majority, which to me is unconstitutional. and i am sorry to say that i can't understand how they do not see that they are the philosophical descendents of those who defended slavery, who defended laws against mixed-race couples and who defended the laws that allowed the separate but equal status that

representative lewis so eloquently spoke of in his testimony. >> thank you mr. sorbo and sometimes it takes a history teacher to help us see our way clearly to the future. i too found congress -- congressman lewis' testimony moving as well. >> thank you very much and our next witness is senator blumenthal -- for a question. >> i would yield to senator durbin. i would be delighted to yield, not begrudgingly. [laughing] >> senator durbin did you wish to speak? senator blumenthal is a valued member of his committee and former attorney general of the state of connecticut. mr. blumenthal go ahead. >> thank you mr. chairman for your leadership and senator feinstein and other members of the committee who have joined in

this cause and thank you to all of the witnesses who are here today particularly to mr. sorbo on the town of berlin, connecticut. it is a small town but there are those of us who love it. and, i want to say at the very outset might thanks to you, all of you, for giving a face and a voice to some abstract and seemingly complicated as the polls and constitutional law and basic liberty and rights. you have given a face and voice in terms of the practical consequences of the respect for marriage act. i regard this hearing as really a historic day for our nation. nations, like teeple, are judged by their capacity for growth and i think today marks another step in the growth of our nation and the progression toward

recognizing some couples they go to the very core of what makes our nation the greatest in the history of the world. so, i thank you, all of you for being here today. you know, for me, some of these questions are much narrower. then the constitutional issues that are being debated in the courts, because what really matters here is the respect for connecticut's laws. and mr. sorbo you were married under connecticut law. respect for connecticut law means the federal government should recognize that law, and give it the kind of sanctity that the founders of this nation meant for the laws of our state to have. states do have the prerogative to establish the rules that

surround marriage just as they do inheritance and divorce, and so for the federal government to discriminate against some marriages in the way that it does is also disrespectful. connecticut's law as well as connecticut's people and connecticut's marriages. so, in order to illustrate some of the practical consequences here, i think you mentioned the effect on your ability to access colin's i.r.a. and i wonder if you could expand a little bit about how you were unable, and most people don't think a buyer a's is being a function of the law, how you are unable to access it as fully as you would have been otherwise if doma had not existed? >> senator, after colin died, i went to our bank to speak to a

financial adviser about how to transfer all of the assets, which we have done everything we could to protect in terms of putting it in both of our names. at yale university, required colin to have that i.r.a. in his name so that when, when he passed away and we tried to transfer that over, because i have the right of survivorship, we spend hours and hours and hours on the phone. it would have been almost a comic program if it had been recorded, because my financial adviser and i sat there talking to one person after another and each one of them at yale had a different opinion about what needed to be done and disagreeing and so on. and it took us many many hours, many days to finally get it transferred over. the ultimate result was that i

guess they went to one of their lawyers. i'm not sure but whoever they went to finally decided that they could not recognize our marriage because of federal law, because of doma. and so therefore, we had to change, transfer that i.r.a. into an inherited i.r.a.. now the difference -- i am not an expert on this, but my understanding was that because my marriage wasn't recognized, it had to go over as an inherited i.r.a. which then i had to begin withdrawing on the december after the year following colin's death. now, if i had been a woman, that would not have been the case. i could have deferred withdrawing that until i think it is 70 and a half by law. you have to begin withdrawing a minimum amount. that may not seem like a lot, but that seven extra years would

have allowed me to build up that assets before it began to withdraw from it. and that is what my financial adviser would have liked to have done, because at my age, i am still fairly healthy. i go to the gym and try to take care of myself as much as i can, and so i've not facing large health bills which i might be facing in the future. and so, of course inflation eating up my income -- every retired person knows that inflation is the big guerilla in the closet for us. so, that denied me the ability to do what i could have done and what my sister could do, is to build up that asset until she was 70 and a half or goes. >> and i think as you have testified, just to complete your story, the practical consequences extended also to family medical leave act, retirement survivor benefits

under social security and a variety of very practical, sizable consequences to you because of doma, which would have otherwise existed even though under connecticut law they were lawfully married. thank you mr. chairman. >> that is correct. >> is there anyone i can yield to? [laughter] thank you very much madam chair and thanks to the witnesses who are here today. there are events in the life of a senator that are memorable and one of those that comes to my mind was attending the ceremony where president obama signed the law which repealed "don't ask don't tell." it was a day of great celebration and relief. the rabbi who gave the indication that day, i remember his words, said, when you look into the eyes of another person, if you don't see the face of

god, they see the face of another human being. and i thought to myself that really is what this conversation is all about. recognizing our own frailties and weaknesses and strengths but seeing in the face of every person in another human being. the woman who gave the invocation that day with someone i had never met and still have not met but have it mired and told her story many times. a retired u.s. air force colonel marguerite cham are. this was the one who served as a combat nurse during vietnam, risking her life for our men and women in uniform, and progressing through the ranks to the status of colonel and then answering honestly one day on a questionnaire that she was lesbian and for that she was discharged from the service. there was never any suggestion that she had ever done anything wrong or ever failed at her duty to her country. but she was the victim of outright discrimination. senator grassley was kind enough

to mention my name in his opening statement and i thank him and mention the fact that i voted for the defense of marriage act. it is true. others did as well. i won't use that as an explanation or an excuse, but i recall when a former congressman from illinois named abraham lincoln was challenged because he changed his position on an issue and his explanation was very simple. he said, i would rather be right some of the time been wrong all of the time. that is why i am an original co-sponsor of the respect for marriage act calm -- that senator feinstein has introduced. i believe this is eminently fair and gives to those who are in a loving relationship an opportunity to receive benefits which they deserve. mr. minnery i read your testimony and i wasn't here when you presented it, but if we are truly interested in the welfare of children, and we are, it seems to me that denying basic financial resources to a loving couple who have adopted a child

is not the way to help that child. in fact i think we can find in many instances, families have struggled financially have a tougher time raising children. not all that time, but many times. it just makes a lot more sense for us to recognize under the law that when it comes to federal benefits, a same-sex relationship that is recognized in the state is going to be recognized by our federal government across the united states of america. i would just close by saying that i know that this is an issue which has evolved in america. the feelings of most americans about same-sex marriage have changed, and i think they have changed for the better. this new law does not mandate any -- does not mandate any religion to change beliefs. this new law does not mandate any state to change its laws.

what it does is say that as a nation, our federal government is going to recognize the rights of same-sex couples to the basic benefits in which they are entitled to. this could've been a hearing under my subcommittee for constitutional law and human rights but chairman leahy asked if he could make it a full committee hearing and i'm glad he did so that more of my colleagues could come here and speak and be on the record and support the respect for marriage act. thank you. >> thank you very much senator durbin. let me thank the witnesses. we have a vote at 12:00. there is another panel coming up, so i'm going to move on. i hope that is agreeable, but let me thank everyone. i have been in a lot of these and this was very good testimony. i think all of us will remember it. thank you all very much and we will move on to the next panel, and i will quickly introduce them.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> i would like to thank the chairman for asking me to leave

the deliberations of this committee for the second panel and first i would like to begin by asking the members of the second panel to please rise. raise your right hand after me as i administered the oath. do you solemnly swear the testimony you are about to get to the committee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you god? thank you and please be seated and let the record recognized the committee's members have taken the oath. we will welcome joe solmonese with more than a million members and supporters of the human rights campaign our nation's largest advocacy organization the transgender civil rights. prior to joining he was chief executive officer of emily's list a native ave. attleboro massachusetts and is a graduate of boston university. mr. solmonese please proceed to let me or me or witnesses if i could to please limit your opening remarks to five minutes. your full status will be placed in the record in their entirety

and as senator feinstein just recognize there is a new boat -- and in both which may require us to do a little juggling to manage the thank you. mr. solmonese please proceed. >> thank you senator cummins and members of the committee. on behalf of the human rights campaign and are more than 1 million members and supporters nationwide i want to thank you for the opportunity to offer testimony in today's historic hearing and i also want to tank a senator feinstein for her leadership on this legislation and on behalf of lesbian gay and transcend gender people in california and across the country. every week i have had the opportunity to travel this country and to speak with members of my community, with their families, their friends and with their religious leaders and with their employers about the distinct difficulties that they face in the form of discrimination.

now today i have the privilege of bringing their stories and their concerns before this committee. gay and lesbian couples work hard to provide for their families. they work hard to provide quality health care. they work hard to plan for retirement in to save for college, just like their friends and families, just like their neighbors and co-workers. that they do so in a country that still refuses to recognize them as equal. and for those who are lucky enough to live in states that do permit them to marry, they still face a federal government that treats their marriages as if they do not exist. so on behalf of the tens of thousands of married same-sex couples in this country, including myself and my husband, i urge congress to pass the respect for marriage act and to end the federal government's disrespect for and discrimination against lawfully married same-sex couples. doma harms thousands of families as they try to manage the

day-to-day issues of their lives. families like rachel black and lee matthews from the bronx where they are today with their beautiful daughter, nora. rachel and we met in college in mississippi and they been together for 13 years. with marriage now a reality for for -- gay and lesbian couples rachel and leah are thrilled and excited to at long last tie the knot. but for gay and lesbian couples like them the joy of finally being able to marry is tempered by the fact that doma remains in the way of true equality. rachel and they worry every day about the important protections that they will be denied. bike unpaid leave from work for one, to care for the other if she gets sick. the ability to continue health coverage for their family if one of them gets laid off. doma means that the many protections of the federal government provides for the health and security of american families remains out of reach

for same-sex couples and their children. it keeps for instance gay and lesbian americans from sponsoring their spouses for immigration to the united states, forcing bi-national couples to choose between love and country. it deprives their surviving same-sex spouses of crucial social security benefits earned by their loved ones for years of hard work. senator feinstein asked about the impact of doma on "don't ask don't tell." it even bars the spouse of a gay or lesbian servicemember of veteran from being buried with him or her in a veterans cemetery. as you have heard today particularly from those who have dealt first-hand with the hardship imposed by doma, the impact of this discriminatory law is real and unconscionable. it is long past time for the federal government to end its discrimination against lawfully married same-sex couples. congress must repeal this law

enacted solely to treat gay and lesbian unequally so i urge you to pass the respect for marriage act and to ensure that all american families have the full respect and protection of their federal government. thank you. >> thank you mr. solmonese. we now turn to mr. austin nimocks sr. legal counsel for the alliance defense fund. his practice focuses on the definition of marriage, parental rights, voters rights and liberty. adf is closely involved in defending dome against legal challenges and he is earned both his bachelor's and j.d. from baylor university in waco texas. mr. nimocks please proceed. >> thank you mr. chairman and ranking member grassley and members of the committee for the privilege invitation and testifying here today. mr. chairman as debates raged regarding budget deficits and debt ceilings and jobs i'm please that this body is taking time to discuss mothers and fathers. arguably the two most important jobs in our society. this legislation also gives us

the opportunity to look at an important problem that is overlooked. wise government in the marriage business? mr. chairman as you are where congress enacted federal doma 1996 plane 84% margin and as follows. civil society has an interest in maintaining and protecting the institution of heterosexual marriage because it has a deep and abiding interest in encouraging responsible procreation and childrearing. simply put government has an interest in marriage because it has an interest in children. ..

>> it is through children alone that sexual relations become of importance to society and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution, unquote. it's a longstanding, worldwide idea that is a building block of society. marriage doesn't prescribe conduct or prevent individuals from living how they want to live. and individuals marry, mr. chairman, as they always have, for a wide variety of personal reasons. but today's discussion should not be about the private reasons why individual marry, but about the policy of our country as a whole and the government's unique interest in this public institution. because the government's interest in marriage is different from the reasons why individuals choose to marry, entrance to marriage has never been conditioned upon a couple's actual ability and desire to find happiness together, their level of financial entanglement or their actual personal dedication to each other.

rather, marriage laws stem from the fact that children are the product of the sexual relationships between men and women and that both fathers and mothers are viewed to be necessary for children. thus, throughout history diverse cultures and faiths have recognized marriage between one man and one woman as the best way to promote healthy families and societies. the studies you've heard about over a long period of time demonstrate that the ideal family structure for a child is an opposite-sex, low-conflict marriage, but some are asking you to ignore the unique differences between men and women in parenthood. no mothers, no father, just generic parents. we are composed of two complementary but different halves of humanity. quote, the truth is that the two sexes are not fungible, inherent differences between men and women, we have come to appreciate remain cause for celebration, unquote.

this body should also disavow any notion that repealing is a constitutional mandate. in 1967, the supreme court decided the case that struck down a race-based marriage law that prohibited whites from marrying anyone of color. the supreme court talked about marriage as, quote, fundamental to our very existence and survival, unquote, discussing the timeless and procreative aspects of marriage. just five years later the supreme court in 1972 substantively upheld a decision by the minnesota supreme court that marriage laws, like federal doe ma, are not unconstitutional. mr. chairman, not one single justice of the united states supreme court found the constitutional claim against marriage worthy of a court eat review. marriage between man and a woman naturally builds families and gives hope that the next generations will carry that family into the future. and while some may argue, mr.

chairman, that times have changeed, they cannot credibly argue that humanity as a gendered species has changed. men and be women still compose the two great halves of humanity. men and women still play important and necessary roles in the family. in conclusion, mr. chairman, because of the fundamental truth that children are the product of sexual relationship between men and women and that men and women each bring something important to the table of parenting, this government maintains a compelling interest in protecting and preserving the institution of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. thank you for the time and privilege, mr. chairman. >> next we will hear from ed whelan, president of the ethics and public policy center. mr. whelan is a regular contributor to national review online. he has served as deputy assistant attorney general at the office of legal counsel as well as general counsel previously to this committee. mr. whelan earned both his undergraduate and law degrees from harvard university. please, proceed.

>> thank you, senator coons. my thanks, also, to senator leahy and ranking member grassily for inviting me to -- grassley for inviting me to testify in opposition to s. 598 which is misleading titled the respect for marriage act. this bill would empty the term of any core content. it would redefine marriage for purposes of federal law to include anything that any state now, in the future recognizes as a marriage. the effect and the evident purpose of the bill is to have the federal government validate so-called same-sex marriage by requiring that it treat as marriage for purposes of federal law any such union recognized as a marriage under state law. the bill would require taxpayers in the states that maintain traditional marriage laws to subsidize provision of federal benefits to same-sex unions entered into in other states. further, the principles invoked by advocates in their ongoing attack on traditional marriage clearly threaten to pave the way for polygamists and other

unions, one of the current projects of the left. under the bill any polyamorous union recognizes a marriage under state law would have to be recognized by the federal government as a marriage for purposes of the law. thus, the foreseeable effect would be to have the federal government to require tax pairs throughout -- taxpayers throughout the country to subsidize other polyamorous union. that proposed repeal is wholly unwarranted. doma was approved by an overwhelming majority in both houses of congress and signed into law by president clinton in 1996. it does two things. it reaffirms the long understanding of what the term marriage means, the legal union of a man and a woman as husband and wife. second, it safeguards the prerogative of each state to choose not to treat as a marriage a same-sex union

entered in another state. it operates to help insure that one state does not effectively impose same-sex marriage on another state or on the entire nation. at the same time, it leaves the citizens of every state free to decide whether or not their state should redefine its marriage laws. it is a profound confusion to believe that values of federalism somehow require the federal government to defer to or incorporate the marriage laws of the various states in determining what marriage means in provisions of federal law. now, it's worth noting that the eight current members of this committee who voted on doma in 1996, seven voted for doma including chairman leahy and senator cole, as well as senators schumer and durbin. among the other prominent democratic senators who voted for doma in 1996 were vice president joseph biden, barbara

few cull sky. this list of supporters of doma suffices to refute the empty revisionist claim that doma somehow embodies an irrational bigotry against same-sex couples. a longstanding judgment that that relationship with its inherent link to procreation and child rearing is especially deserving of support. people are, obviously, free to dispute that judgment, but no one who voted for doma can plausibly claim to be surprised by how it is operated. and while it's natural that everyone would hope for more federal benefits for themselves, no one can claim that doma somehow disrupted his or her own financial planning. doma was enacted eight years before the massachusetts supreme court first opposed same-sex marriage in this country, so there was never a time when anyone had any reasonable basis for believing that union would entitle him or her to federal spousal benefits.

moreover, it's wrong to assert as some do that the definition of marriage has always been purely a matter left to the states. our predecessors understood what too many americans today have forgotten or never learned or find it convenient to obscure, namely that the marriage practices that a society endorses have real world consequences that extend far beyond the individual seeking to marry and that shape or form a broader culture. that understanding was recognized to be incompatible with democracy. that's why congress in its separate enabling acts for statehood for arizona, new mexico, oklahoma and utah included antipolygamy provisions in their state constitutions. that history makes it all the more jarring that supporters of this bill would require that federal law treat as a marriage and require federal taxpayers to subsidize any polygamous marriage recognized by any state. i detail how the obama administration has wrongly

declined to defend doma. legislators who genuinely want to respect marriage should defend traditional marriage, not undermine it. >> finally, we welcome mr. evan wolfson. mr. wolfson is founder and is executive director of freedom to marry, the national campaign to end marriage discrimination. mr. wolfson was co-counsel in the case that launched the ongoing global movement for freedom to marry and has participated in many landmark gay rights cases. mr. wolfson earned his ba in 1978 after which he served as a peace corps volunteer. he's graduated from harvard or law school and has appeared in the case of the boys scouts of america and in 2004 mr. wolfson was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by "time" magazine.

he's the author of "why marriage matters" which was published in 2004. please proceed. >> thank you, senator coons, members of the committee. as the senator said, i'm founder and president of freedom to marry, the national campaign to end discrimination in marriage, and i'm also author, as you said, of "why marriage matters." i'm very pleased to be here today to testify in support of the respect for marriage act which would return the federal government to its traditional and appropriate role of respecting marriages performed in the states. i want to thank chairman leahy for holding this hearing, chief sponsor senator feinstein, my senator, senator gillibrand for their leadership in introducing this important legislation in the senate. fifteen years ago this summer i was in a courtroom in the hawaii along with my non-gay co-counsel dan foley representing three loving and committed couples who had been denied marriage licenses despite being together, some of the couples, for

decades. in the clear, cool light of the courtroom, we presented evidence, called and cross-examined witnesses and made logical and legal arguments as did the state's attorneys. at the end of that trial, the first ever on marriage in the world, the court concluded based on the record we compiled that there is no good reason for the government to deny the freedom to marry to committed couples simply because of their sex or sexual orientation. by contrast, congress compiled no such record and did not wait to consider evidence or serious analysis before rushing that same year to add a new layer of marriage discrimination against couples already barred from marrying. doma imposes a gay exception to the way the federal government historically and currently treats all other married couples. doma stigmatizes by dividing married couples at the state level into first class marriages and second class marriages for

those the federal government doesn't like. but in america we don't have second class citizens, and we shouldn't have second class marriages either. much has changed since doma's enactment in the 1996. then same-sex couples could not marry anywhere in the world. today five states and our nation's capital have now ended the denial of marriage licenses joining 12 countries on four continents where gay people share in the freedom to marry. tens of thousands of same-sex couples are legally married in the united states. as you've heard, many raising children. and as of this coming sunday when new york state ends its restriction, the number of americans living in a state where gay couples share in the freedom to marry will more than double to over 35 million. in 1996, opponents could conjure up groundless but scary hypotheticals about the impact of the freedom to marry on

children, on society, on marriage itself. those claims were hollow, but today there's a mountain of evidence, and it all points in the direction of fairness. for that reason literally every leading public be health and child welfare association in the country, including most recently the american medical association, have all concluded based on science, evidence and clinical as well as personal experience that the children being raised by same sex couples are healthy and fit and that these kids and their families would benefit from inclusion in marriage without taking anything away from anyone else. today thanks to the lived experience with the reality of the freedom to marry, even the republican sponsor of doma, former congressman bob barr, believes it should be repealed. stating that, quote, doma is neither meeting the principles of federalism it was supposed to, nor is its impact limited to

federal law. the democratic president who in 1996 signed doma into law, bill clinton, has also called for its repeal as has president obama who has endorsed this restorative legislation. congressman barr and president clinton's journey away from doma to the freedom to marry and respect for marriage mirrors the changed minds and opened hearts of the american people. and in a 1996 gallup poll, only 27% of the american people favored the freedom to marry, but today according to gallup and five other recent surveys, support has counseled to 53 -- doubled to 53% with younger americans across the board overwhelmingly in support. 63% of catholics are for the freedom to marry, and opposition is falling amongst all parts of the public with accelerating momentum and bipartisan voices as reflected in the last month's historic vote in new york.

this sunday many will watch on television as joyous couples declare their love and have their commitments celebrated by family and friends and confirmed by the state. yet as they join in the marriage, these couples will become the latest meshes to ex-- americans to experience fisthand the sting of discrimination by the federal government. they will endure the tangible yet very real pain of once again being branded a second class citizen and will suffer the tangible harm of being excluded from the safety net of protections and responsibilities that other married couples cherish. mr. chairman, it is time for congress to end this discrimination. congress can remove this sting, eliminate this pain and this harm by enacting the respect for marriage act. fairness demands it, and the time has come. thank you. >> thank you very much to all of our witnesses on the second panel. um, and i appreciate your following the testimony from the

first panel which spoke sort of personally and in moving ways about the very real harm suffered by lbgt couples through the so-called defense of marriage act, and i look forward to hearing your response to questions. senator klobuchar now joining us for questions of the second panel be. >> thank you very much, senator coons. i was at a transportation hearing, so i want to thank all of you for being here, and i was really struck after hearing the first panel by just the legal entanglements, all of the issues that have arisen in the last few years whether it's someone trying to sit, be at a partner's bedside when they're dying or whether it's some of the other issues that the witnesses raised and stories that they told. it made me think about what you were just speaking about, mr. wolfson, that it's been 15 years since doma was enacted. the legal and social landscape has changed since then, and i guess i'd ask everyone your opinion how is the issue of

same-sex marriage transformed over the years, what effect has the passage of time had on the debate? if you could just answer briefly, mr. solmonese. >> thank you, senator. i think, first and foremost, perhaps the most powerful contributor to changing american public opinions on the question of same-sex marriage or the circumstances of our relationships generally were perhaps best displayed in the previous panel. hard working, committed, loving americans having the opportunity to tell the stories of their lives, and more to the point, to really talk about the inequities and the injustice that we face in the absence of marriage equality. and i think that all across this country the more opportunities that we have had to tell those stories, to help people understand the circumstances of our lives and in particular when i reflect on ron's story in the previous panel, the genuine inequity and disparity that we

face in the absence of marriage e l quality, i think that most americans and most americans to my way of thinking are fair-minded and optimistic, can't help but be moved by these stories and can't help but be moved in the direction of understanding the need for full marriage equality. or in the case of the debate today -- and we should not lose sight of what this conversation is about today -- the real need to insure that in those states where same-sex couples enjoy the right to marriage equality, that they be afforded those federal benefits. particularly things like social security survivor benefits. >> thank you. thank you, mr. solmonese. just quickly, mr. any mock, any response to the changes over the past 15 years? >> thank you very much, mr. chairman, senator klobuchar. i don't believe that there have been substantial changes in the opinions of americans across this country about marriage as time has passed. we know that the first vote in this country occurred in hawaii in 1998.

the last one in iowa in the 2010. and what is clear in all those votes, in all the 32 jurisdictions where americans have voted upon the question of marriage is they have been unanimous, that marriage should be the union of one man and one woman. and as i alluded to in the poll where 62% of americans agree that marriage should be defined as the union of one man and one woman, that's the exact language that's going to be on the ballot in 2012 in your home state of minnesota, and i believe minnesotans will become the 33rd jurisdiction to affirm that. the question before the committee with respect is the question of marriage, whether it should be the union of one man and one woman, whether mothers and fathers are necessary. and i think americans over a large period of time have been very consistent on that. thank you. >> mr.-- if you could just keep it down to 30 seconds, i have another question to ask mr. solmonese. >> well, i hope i can give a somewhat more extensetive remark from that.

there has been a decline in young people in support for marriage. i think that decline refleblghts a broader collapse in our marriage culture, a collapse that i will emphasize is largely a responsibility of what heteroexyules have done to marriage in recent decades, and i think we have a situation where a lot of folks simply don't understand what marriage is, they don't understand the systemic importance of marriage in serving the interests of millions and millions of children who deserve to be raise inside the best possible environment and, i think, increasingly some folks don't understand that when you decouple marriage from the core interests in if procreation and child rearing, you create a mission confusion be that inevitably disserves the interests of millions and millions of children yet unborn. >> and i'm going to, maybe mr. wolfson we can get your answer in writing because i have a quick question before my time

runs out of mr. solmonese, and that is whether the respect for marriage act has any impact on the ability of religious organizations or churches to freely express their views. >> thank you, senator. as i mentioned before, what we are here to discuss today and what is at the heart of this legislation really is how the federal government treats lawfully-married people in states where marriage equality is the law of the land. it does not require individuals or religious organizations to do anything, and as you know the first amendment protects the rights of churches and religious organizations to determine who they will or are not marry -- >> and i think that's an important point for some people. >> yes, it is. >> that they, because the freedom of religion is so important to many people in my state and across the country. i know senator feinstein had made that point, so i appreciate you making that, that this bill doesn't in any way require churches, sin dogs or mosques to recognize or perform same-sex

marriages. thank you. i really appreciate it, and i thought that the panel before this -- not that your panel isn't stupendous, but i thought that the way they tell their stories, their own individual stories was quite moving and also gave us a sense of the legal problems that they're encountering because of this law. thank you. >> thank you, senator klobuchar. if i might turn first to mr. whelan. in both your testimony and mr. nimocks, there's a suggestion that somehow there's an inevitable connection between procreation, parenthood, opposite-sex couples and then critical national/federal policy interest in promoting marriage as being just between a man and a woman. what do you see as the rationale for why federal law is silent on unlimited serial he is ro sexual marriage with all the pain and difficulty of divorce and its impact on children and child rearing, but prohibits one lifelong loving, stable same-sex marriage. help me understand that.

>> well, i think the answer to that, senator s the same as the answer to why congress can in the mid 19th century took action to outlaw polygamy and to condition -- or more reicely, to condition the admission of several states currently banning polygamy. it's true within broad bounds the general practice of the federal government has been to permit variations among state laws in terms of what constitutes marriage. at the same time, as the anti-polygamy effort illustrates, there's an understanding there is some genuine core, some genuine essence to what marriage is, that marriage cannot simply be defined to mean anything. and i think what we see here and what 84 of your predecessors in the senate underin 1996 -- understood in if 1996 is that the union of one man and one woman is at the very core of what marriage needs to be in order to serve the interests of children over the generations. >> thank you, mr. whelan. if i might, mr. solmonese, your

written testimony notes, i think quite correctly, that doma harms more than just gay and lesbian couples. one of my areas of focus on lgbt issues is the support for the get better project which uses the internet to share sort of messages of hope to lgbt youth. there's been testimony by several witnesses about public opinion. i'm not sure what the relevance is of whether 60 or 70% support today or yesterday. in my view doma to the extent it enshrines and advances discrimination has negative secondary impacts not just immediately on the couples from whom we heard previously, but also more be ip directly, symbolically in terms of encouraging discrimination. could you speak, mr. solmonese, if you would, to hrc's experience and views on how doma might have secondary effects on our culture as a whole. >> thank thank you, senator. certainly. i think there are a number of

ways, and certainly we heard from the previous panel bees ways in which individuals in our communities have faced genuine discrimination in the absence to have right to full marriage. but one of the things that i think is important to point out, and be i see this and i experience this as i travel the country, and i travel to places where it is, for lack of a better term, perhaps more difficult to be a member of the lgbt community. parts of the country where i talk to people who just face much more sort of discrimination on a number of fronts. and one of the things that they tell me that i think is important to point out is that, for instance, when they walk into a hospital emergency room, you know, they are, um, even in a place where civil unions perhaps may be the law of the land there is a sort of a process that that admitting person goes through as they evaluate the circumstances and the individual family in front

of them. you are not married and so, um, while you are not married, you know, a sort of a societal disparity there, and i need as an admitting person in this hospital emergency room to understand what is different about you and what is different about the circumstances of your particular life that i need to be aware of. you know, parents tell me that they send their children off to school, to school nowadays off from the household of a civil unioned family. and what sort of beyond the tangible perhaps benefits disparity that we talked about here today, um, you know, what does that mean? what does that speak to? did that child and the sort of experience they might encounter as having been sent to school from a same-sex couple family as opposed from are a married household, and the societal understanding of what it means to walk in the door of an emergency room as a married couple or to walk into a pta meeting as a married couple and what that means generally.

and that's something that i think is important to point out because that's beyond sort of the tangible benefits discrimination that we heard about earlier today, something that i hear a great deal of as i travel across the country. >> thank you, mr. solmonese, and i just want to thank everyone who's testified today to the very real impact, the negative impact that doma's had on legally-married couples in states across this country. i am committed as one of the original co-sponsors to the passage of the respect of marriage act, and i'm hopeful that the remainder of this hearing can be constructive given there are just a few minutes left in the vote currently going on on the floor. i will yield the gavel and the microphone to my more senior colleague, senator schumer, who will close out today's hearing. thank you very much. >> well, thank you. and i want to thank you, chairman coons. sounds good, right? chairman coons. [laughter] for running this hearing. when i recruit members, i say you'd be amazed how quickly you move around here up the ladder.

i want to thank our witnesses on this panel and on the previous two panels for their testimony, and i'm just going to give an opening statement, or a statement and then we'll adjourn the hearing. um, i think the powerful testimony of the witnesses we've heard today speaks l volumes. so, mr. chairman, i just want to say a few brief words about the importance of repealing doma. not long after this hearing concludes, in less than 100 hours, gay couples from across my home state of new york will be lining up outside courthouses and clerks' offices to officially tie the knot. many of those who plan to say "i do" have been together for decades, they've raised children together, battled illnesses together, built loving, lasting lives together, and on sunday our state of new york will recognize that, that love, that life, that commitment til death do they part with a marriage license. so personally i support marriage equality, i believe one of the defining qualities of america

has always been our inexorable drive to equality. as the french historian observed when he visited the u.s. in the 1930s, it's the quality that distinguishes the united states from all other countries. now, we're not here today to discuss the relative merits of marriage equality, but another issue of equality. the purpose of this hearing -- and i want to thank chairman leahy -- is to imagine the real-life impact of the defense of marriage act. the federal government will not be able to give married couples the same benefits that straight couples receive who similarly pledge in the eyes of the law to spend their lives together. instead, in the eyes of the government these couples are remain strangers with nonof the responsibilities or privileges of matrimony.

there are well over a thousand different federal benefits that married gay couples are denied because of doma. unfortunately, the effects of this discrimination are most acutely found in the times of vulnerability. gay couples are denied estate tax exemption and many other vital rights that their heterosexual neighbors and friends enjoy. this isn't right, this isn't fair, and something needs to be done about it. i want to draw my attention to one particular way in which doma adversely impacts gay couples, the federal tax exemption for health benefits. if a straight, married man wants to add his wife to his plan, he can do so without hassle or expense. it's a tax-free fringe benefit. it has been for decades. now, let's say you're gay, and your employer is kind enough to offer same-sex partner benefits.

but because of doma a gay employees must improve the cost of insurance -- and we all know that health care isn't cheap -- in their taxable income. that means that even though they're married in the eyes of their state and the company is being fair and generous, the federal government hits them with a heaping tax burden every april 15th. worse still, the employee is required to pay fica taxes, that's right, looking at that side of the room forced to pay extra taxes. i have a bipartisan bill with senator collins to change, it's called the tax parity for health plan beneficiaries act, and needless to say, were we successful in repealing doma, there'd be no need for the legislation. our bill addresses one of thousand federal benefits that married gay couples can't receive under law. so i hope we will repeal doma. cbo climb to the following

conclusion in 2004: if doma were repealed, revenues would be higher by less than 900 million -- 400 million a year and by 700 million by 2014. i want to say this, there are three fundamental principles at stake here. repealing doma makes good fiscal sense, it respects states' rights, and it treats all married people the same. it's fair, it makes sense, and it's time. and i would say to many in the audience who have waited a long time for many things that one of my favorite expressions was what martin luther king said and i was proud to repeat over and over again at the gay pride parade in new york a few weeks ago. and that is the arc of history is long, but it bends in the direction of justice. the hearing's adjourned. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> all this week on washington journal we're featuring a look at the medicare program. today an overview of the program and the changes over the past 45 years since it became law. you can see the series live every morning at 9:15 eastern on c-span and again each evening here on c-span2 at 7:15. also tonight on c-span2, "the communicators" with marc

rotenberg of the electronic privacy information center and larry clinton of the internet security alliance talking about the obama administration's proposals for reducing cyber threat against the u.s. that's tonight at 8 eastern. and then on booktv prime time, a look at book fairs and festivals. at 8:30 eastern the harlem book fair hosted a discussion of manning marable's malcolm x. at 9:45, don luskin on his book, "i am john galt." and the roosevelt reading festival with historians michael and susan dunn. >> be watch more video of the candidates, see what political reporters are saying and track the latest campaign contributions with c-span's web site for campaign 2012. easy to use, it helps you navigate the political landscape with twitter feeds and facebook updates from the campaigns, candidate bios and the latest polling data. plus links to c-span media

partners in the early primary and caucus states all at c-span.org/campaign 2012. [applause] >> coming up next, the third annual red state gathering. redstate is a conservative political blog, and former texas solicitor general ted cruz, who's running for the u.s. senate, is endorsed by redstate.com in the race. he spoke in charleston, texas, for just over -- doctor thank you very much, eric, for that very kind introduction. i have to say that is the first time in my life i've ever been compared to "rainman." [laughter] and i am assured that judge wapner is, indeed, on at 5, and i'm a very good driver. [laughter] congratulations to everyone who's here. what an incredible time in the history of our country. in 1776 americans were facing king george and the mightiest

army on the globe. and yet when the king came to take our rights away, our founding fathers pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honors to defend the inalienable rights given to us by our creator. in 1835 texans in the city of gonzales received an order from general santa ana to hand over their guns and the cannon that guarded their city. the texans responded with typical mild-mannered texas spirit. [laughter] they responded with a flag with a picture of the cannon and a simple legend: come and take it. [laughter] [applause] that's the spirit of america.

that's who we are. and we're seeing that same spirit today in 2010 and 2012. of -- three year ago at the first redstate gathering in atlanta i remember it was kind of a small conference room and cool, the air-conditioning worked there. [laughter] you know, it's a good problem that we have too many people for air-conditioning. [applause] but there were maybe 50, 75 of us in a little hotel gathering and nobody noticed. except the people in that hotel gathering got together to change this country. and today my home state governor, rick perry, in if a couple of hours -- [cheers and applause]

will be coming here to you to announce his campaign for the presidency of the united states. [applause] this room knows two things. number one, barack obama is the most radical president this country has ever seen. [cheers and applause] you know, just a week ago tragically the united states debt was downgraded as a symbol of the failure and overspending of this president and this congress. and president obama had the audacity to blame that on the tea party. [laughter] you know, that's like charlie sheen blaming it on the betty ford clinic. [laughter] [applause] [cheers and applause]

but the president doesn't need to worry because we're staging an intervention. [laughter] [applause] but a second thing this room knows which is that republicans need to stand for principle. [applause] you know, this isn't simply a team sport. the goal isn't to have 51 people with rs on their -- behind their name and, yea, we've got more red shirts, we win. if we're not standing for principle, if we're not standing for freedom, if we're not standing for free markets and the u.s. constitution, we don't deserve to lead. and i have to say a lot of times the attitude of the republican

leadership in a fight reminds me of an old ebay advertisement for a french army rifle. [laughter] advertised in pristine condition -- [laughter] never fired, dropped twice. [laughter] [applause] and we need leaders who don't yell ready, aim, surrender. [laughter] we need leaders who are ready to stand up and fight. now, met me stay something about my governor, rick perry, who's going to be coming here very soon. [applause] i've known rick perry a lot of years. i've worked with him, i've been his lawyer in court. i'll tell you two things about rick berry.

number one -- rick perry. number one, he's a conservative. in his heart, in the his gut he knows what he believes. and number two, he's a fighter. in his dna rick perry is a fighter. [applause] and i'll make a prediction to you right now, there are a lot of good people in the republican primary for president. i think in very short order it's going to come down to two principled candidates, mitt romney and rick perry. and my prediction is rick perry will win the nomination, and in november 2012 he will defeat barack obama for the presidency. [cheers and applause] now, let's talk about the u.s. senate.

the senate is a central battlefield right now. you know, two and a half years ago senator jim demint was a lonely man. [laughter] he was john the baptist. [laughter] a voice in the wilderness. i haven't asked him if he, indeed, ate honey and locusts -- [laughter] but he was wandering alone this the wilderness and along came the men and women in this room. and in 2010 we saw a tidal wave where americans all over the country rejected establishment business-as-usual republicans. and said we want strong, principled conservatives like mike lee and rand paul and marco rubio and pat toomey. [cheers and applause]

and every one of those senate candidates when they launched, they were told they couldn't win. they were told the money and the establishment had decided somebody else needed to be in the senate. the a boys' club -- it was a boys' club, and they didn't know the rules. the rules are you go along with the democrats, and whatever happens you keep growing the size, power and spending of the federal government. and in 2010 something remarkable happened. the american people rose up and said, no, and we saw a tidal wave that changed the u.s. senate. now, we just had a huge fight over the debt ceiling. and, sadly, congress passed a lousy budget bill. [applause] but, you know, those senators i just mentioned who led the fight

to cut, cap and pass a strong balanced budget amendment to the u.s. constitution. [applause] and we should take heart in two things. number one, we've changed the conversation. at least we're talking about cutting instead of talking about creating yet another trillion dollar pork man. that's a big shift. and number two, that small band of brothers doesn't have the critical mass to win this fight in the u.s. senate right now, but i'll tell you 2012 is the second half of 2010. [applause] one of the most meaningful things in my campaign for u.s.

senate is i've had the honor to be endorsed by senator jim demint and mike lee and rand paul and pat toomey because all four of them have said we need reinforcements to stand and fight and win! [cheers and applause] that's what this senate race is about. and like their races, it's a national race. there are a lot of texans here, and i'm grateful to see so many texans here. [cheers and applause] but there are a lot of people from all over the country. and we are building a national army of conservatives because we need strong leadership in the u.s. senate. the heart of my campaign is based on a proven record. i've spent five and a half years as the solicitor general of texas, the chief lawyer for the state of texas in the front of the u.s. supreme court. during that time over and over

again texas stood up and led the nation defending conservative principles. we defended the ten commandments monument on the state capitol grounds. we took it to the u.s. supreme court, and we won 5-4. [applause] we defended the message of allegiance when a federal court struck it down because it included the words "one nation under god." we brought together all 50 states, we went to the u.s. supreme court, and we won unanimously. [cheers and applause] we defended the second amendment, the right to keep and bear arms. we brought together 31 states, we went to the u.s. supreme court, and we won 5-4. [applause] and let me tell you about what i think was the most important fight of my tenure as sg.

in a case called medellin v. texas which began with a really horrific crime where two teenage girls were gang raped and murdered in houston. the world court, which is the judicial arm of the united nations, the world court issued an order to the united states to reopen the convictions of 51 murderers across this country. it was the first time in the history of our country a foreign court has tried to bind the u.s. justice system. my boss, attorney general greg abbott, the finest attorney general in all 50 states -- [applause] had no hesitancy we were going to fight. and our governor, rick perry, had no hesitancy we were going to fight. [applause] i had the honor of arguing this case twice before the u.s.

supreme court. on the other side were 90 foreign nations and also, sadly, on the other side was the president of the unite. president of the united states. the president had signed a two paragraph order that attempted to order the state courts to obey the world's court. so texas stood up, we fought the world court. we fought the united nations. we fought 90 foreign nations, and we fought the president of the united states. [applause] we defended u.s. sovereignty, and we won 6-3! [cheers and applause]

you know, a lot of political candidates talk about american exceptionalism, but the men and women in this room, american exceptionalism isn't something we learned in a textbook. it's something we know there our lives and our families. let me tell you a little bit about my family background. my dad is from cuba. he was born in cuba, he grew up in cuba, and as a teenager he began fighting in the cuban revolution. when he was 14 years old, he began fighting in a war. he was thrown in prison and tortured when he turned 17. my grandfather got him out of prison, and he fled cuba. he came to the united states to go to the university of texas. he arrived in austin, texas, he was 18 years old, and he didn't speak a word of english. he had to possessions -- no possessions, but he had $100 scene into his underwear -- sewn into his underwear. and he worked seven days a week,

and he paid his way through school, school, and he got a job, and he became a citizen, and he started a small business. now, my dad has been my hero my entire life. but every one of us in this room has a story like that in our background. that is the history of this country, every one of us has an ancestor who risked everything seeking freedom and opportunity. [applause] >> [inaudible] >> exactly. and i'll tell you, when i was a kid, my dad used to say to me all the time when we faced oppression in cuba, i had a place to flee to. if we lose our freedom here, where do we go? and i'll tell you, there is no question that better explains why it is i'm running for u.s. senate than that question right there. every one of us is here because

we are fighting to preserve our freedom. now, the race for u.s. senate in texas had has been incredible. we have united conservatives and tea party activists and grassroots leaders across the state of texas and nationally. my principle opponent is an incumbent establishment republican multimillionaire. who in all likelihood will write a ginormous check, and that's a technical term, ginormous check. it's actually in the campaign code. [laughter] a ginormous check from his own bank account. but you know what? we've seen this fight before. we saw this fight in 2010, and i can promise you one thing; no candidate will be able to buy the u.s. senate seat in the state of texas. [cheers and applause]

but i need your help. we are organizing a conservative grassroots army all across the state of texas and all across the country. i would ask every one of you to do five things. number one with, come to our web page, tedcruz.org, and sign up now and join our team. number two, contribute. it's very simple. it is going to take money to fight the tidal wave on the other side. we have raised over $1.9 million already. and we've raised that from 241 texas cities and from 103 texas counties and from all 50 states all over the country. but we've got a long way to go. if we raise the money we need, we will win this race. and if we don't raise the money we need, we will lose this race.

so go online, please, and contribute. in particular, we have a program called the alamo circle. the alamo circle are are people who sign up to contribute $25 a month on a recurring basis which i like to tell college kids $25 is about the price of two pizzas. but the powerful thing about the math as i understand it there are 550 people here. if 550 people signed up for the alamo circle at $25 a month, this room today would generate $13,000, and between now and the primary this room would generate $100,000. now, here's some really interesting math. if in addition to signing up for the alamo circle everyone in this room found nine of your friends to do the same, this room of activists would raise $11 million in the -- $1 million

in the next seven months. that's the power of the people. so sign up online, contribute, join us on facebook. we have over 62,000 supporters on facebook b and post about our campaign on facebook, on twitter. and then blog about us. we have a widget that can be downloaded to any blog, and we are relying and depending upon the voice of the people. you know, it's interesting. some reporter t ask why is rick perry coming to a bloggers' convention to announce his presidency? [laughter] because y'all are framing the discussion. because y'all are speaking the truth. because y'all say what you believe without a filter in the way. [applause]

the men and women in this room have the ability to help us build a national team and raise the money we need to raise to win, and if we do that, i'll make a commitment to you right now. if i go to the u.s. senate and i just vote right 100% of the time, i will consider myself an abject failure. baud what we desperately need right now is definitely leadership. barack obama is incredibly effective at defending his vision of government control of the economy ask our lives. and our lives. how many people right now inspire you as standing up and fighting for free market principles and the constitution and limited government? i'll make a commitment to each and every one of you. if i'm in the u.s. senate, if i am not standing in front helping lead the fight, if i don't have arrows up and down my torso -- [laughter]

i won't be doing my job. and i want every one of you to hold me accountable for that. and if there's one thing i know, it's that you'll do it. [laughter] so in closing i want to simply ask a few questions. with apologies to president barack obama. can we shrink the federal budget? >> yeah! finish. >> yes, we can. [laughter] [applause] can we pass a balanced budget amendment? >> yes, we can! >> can we retire harry reid? >> >> yes, we can! >> can we repeal every word of obamacare? in yes, we can! >> and can we retire president barack obama? >> yes, we can! [cheers and applause]

[cheers and applause] >> that, my friends, is change we can believe in. [cheers and applause] [laughter] >> so i've been admonished by my mother via text message, i should stop comparing you and mike lee to rainmen and say you're modern day daniel websters. [laughter] [applause] now, the problem is my mother just figured out the text messaging, and so there's a space between every letter so it comes across in about five text messages to get to the point. [laughter] so let's do some questions for ted, and i'm going to apologize on his behalf, he has to fly back to texas, and there aren't a lot of flights between

charleston and texas, so he's not going to be around this afternoon. i want to make sure, though, that he gets some questions in for you guys. right here. >> yes. we keep talking about repealing obamacare, but nobody talks about this dodd-frank bill. that's got to be overturned as well. [cheers and applause] the money's gone -- i think we need to overturn everything he's done. >> i absolutely agree. i'll tell you on dodd-frank, the question was we don't just need to repeal obamacare, we need to repeal dodd-frank, and we need to repeal be everything president obama's done. [applause] i absolutely agree. you know, on dodd-frank you don't need to get any further than the title of the bill. [laughter] to realize just