WGLB

STEVE HAYES: Tired Old Queen at the Movies

2011-10-25T02:38:00.000-04:00

THE HAUNTING (1963)

Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn and a host of ghosts and goblins bring Halloween to Tired Old Queen at the Movies, with Robert Wise's classic THE HAUNTING (1963). Shot in black and white and based on a novel by horror master Shirley Jackson, this is probably the scariest haunted house movie ever made. Filled with superb performances, an eerie score, fabulous sets and shot in an atmosphere of absolute conviction, this film will not only make you believe in ghosts, but will have you jumping out of your skin at a knock on the door. Whatever you do, wherever you are, whoever they are, don't let them in! Happy Halloween!

Report details inequities for kids of gay parents

2011-10-25T02:36:00.000-04:00

A growing number of American children are being raised without all the legal protections of traditional households

By DAVID CRARY -

According to her dads, life is good for Carrigan Starling-Littlefield, a spunky 5-year-old being raised by two gay men in South Carolina, which doesn't recognize their out-of-state marriage.

"We've found that being a family has created a lot of common ground with other families. We've not had many issues at all," said Tommy Starling, a partner in a food brokerage.
Yet he and his husband, Jeff Littlefield, who became parents through a California-based surrogacy program, remain wary as they contemplate Carrigan growing older and confronting challenges beyond their supportive community in Pawley's Island, S.C.
"We're cautious about where we go, because we don't want our daughter to see any negativity," said Starling, 39. "We have some longer-term apprehensions that she'll face issues as she gets older, and we're trying to prepare her for that ... I feel she's the type of person who will stand up for her family."
Carrigan is among a growing multitude of American children — possibly more than 1.2 million of them — being raised by gay and lesbian parents, often without all the legal protections afforded to mom-and-dad households.
Increasingly, the welfare of these children will be a core part of gay-rights strategies, as evidenced by a comprehensive report being released Tuesday. Compiled by an alliance of advocacy and child-welfare groups, it summarizes how laws and social stigma create distinctive challenges for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender families.
"There are myriad ways that our families are discounted by government at all levels, and children are hurt the most," said Jennifer Chrisler of the Family Equality Council, one of the three groups authoring the report.
The other groups are the liberal Center for American Progress and the Movement Advancement Project, a gay-rights think tank. Among other participants in the project were the National Association of Social Workers and the Child Welfare League of America.
The U.S. census does not attempt to count the number of children being raised by gays and lesbians. Demographer Gary Gates of the UCLA School of Law's Williams Institute, who has been a consultant to the Census Bureau, estimates the number at 1.2 million, while the new report uses the figure of 2 million, including children with bisexual and transgender parents.
Whatever their numbers, the families are striking for their diversity — encompassing many low-income and minority households, and spread across about 96 percent of America's counties, according to data compiled by Gates and others.
Among the barriers and inequities they face, as detailed in the report:
—Many government safety net programs use definitions of family tied to marital status which may exclude same-sex partners.
—Because of lack of legal recognition for their unions, gay and lesbian parents can face heavier tax burdens, higher costs for health insurance, and diminished financial protections in the event of death or disability.
—When same-sex parents separate, one parent may lose custody or visitation rights, even in cases where he or she had been a child's primary caregiver.
Overshadowing all these problems is pervasive social stigma, according to the report.
"Many of the challenges LGBT families face stem from a society that assumes that everyone is heterosexual and comes from a family with two married heterosexual parents," it says.
For opponents of same-sex marriage, the issue of children can prompt nuanced responses.
"Certainly children in any household arrangement need to be protected — need full support and love," said Mary Ellen Russell, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Maryland. But she said such protections should be provided without redefining the traditional concept of marriage as between a man and woman.
Many of the obstacles and inequities outlined in the new report would be addressed if same-sex marriage — now legal in six states and Washington, D.C. — were legalized nationwide and recognized by the federal government. However, the report includes numerous recommendations for less sweeping changes that would benefit children with gay parents, such as:
—Broadening the definition of "family" to allow LGBT families to benefit fully from government safety-net programs, and revise the tax code to provide equitable treatment for these families. At present, even legally married same-sex couples who can file joint state tax returns must file separate federal returns.
—Enacting state-level parental recognition laws that would allow joint adoption by LGBT parents. Even with about 110,000 children in foster care who are eligible for adoption, some states and agencies refuse to place children with same-sex couples.
—Ensuring that LGBT families have access to health insurance on equal terms with heterosexual families, and eliminate inequitable taxation of these benefits.
—Ensuring that hospital visitation and medical decision-making policies are inclusive of LGBT families.
—Expanding education and training about LGBT families for social workers, health care providers and other professionals.
Jeff Krehely, director of the Center for American Progress's LGBT research and communications project, said the report is part of an effort to counter arguments that same-sex marriage is a threat to children.

"People who oppose marriage equality have used and exploited children in a very scare-mongering way," said Krehely, who hopes the report will increase public understanding and empathy.
The report, titled "All Children Matter: How Legal and Social Inequalities Hurt LGBT Families," is being presented Tuesday at event in Washington drawing some high-level government officials.
Bryan Samuels, commissioner of the federal Administration on Children, Youth and Families, is scheduled to be part of a panel discussion, and the opening speech will be given by Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler, a staunch gay-rights supporter in a state where lawmakers will be considering a bill to legalize same-sex marriage next year.
"Same-sex marriage is a pro-family measure," Gansler said in a telephone interview.
Lisa Polyak, chair of the statewide gay-rights group Equality Maryland, says there will be a concerted effort during the legislative debate to highlight the challenges facing children of gays and lesbians.
"If you care about children, you should care that the parents don't have the legal tools to take the best care of them," she said.
Polyak and her partner of 30 years, Gita Deane, were married earlier this year in Washington. They have two daughters, Devi, 12, and Maya, 15, who testified before lawmakers last year in support of same-sex marriage in Maryland.
"The root of my activism is denial of equal treatment of my children," said Polyak, citing instances where her daughters had been hurt by other people's comments.
"One child told my daughter she was not allowed to come over to our house because we weren't really a family," Polyak said. "For them, it's a constant source of sadness and hurtfulness."

STEVE HAYES: Tired Old Queen at the Movies

2011-09-24T20:50:00.000-04:00

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1939}

Charles Laughton gives the greatest performance of his career in William Dieterle's adaptation of Victor Hugo's THE HINCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1939). Along with able support from Maureen O'Hara, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Edmund O'Brien, Harry Davenport, Thomas Mitchell and a cast of thousands, this is a spectacle of spectacles. A film of such rich scope, brilliant direction and bravura performances, you will be mesmerized, awed and overwhelmed by the beauty, pageantry and sensitivity of this unforgettable classic.

Parents of Teen Suicide Victim Speak Out on Bullying

2011-09-22T09:32:00.000-04:00

By Andrew Harmon

Jamey Rodemeyer

The parents of a high school freshman in Amherst, N.Y. who killed himself told CNN that their son had endured pervasive antigay bullying beginning in fifth grade, both at school and particularly online.

Jamey Rodemeyer, 14,committed suicideMonday in the Buffalo, N.Y. suburb. “He had the biggest heart in that little body,” Rodemeyer’s mother, Tracey, told CNN's Anderson Cooper Wednesday. “He was either loved so sincerely or he was bullied. There wasn’t much in between.”

Much of the bullying Jamey faced, Tracey Rodemeyer said, occurred not in school but via Facebook and other social media sites. "Because people can access each other in numbers so readily — it’s still accessible for people to do their bullying.”

“We need to get a better a system in our school district, in our school systems, to get rid of these bullies. Because it’s a rampant problem,” Rodemeyer’s father, Tim, said. (Watch the CNN video below.)

Rodemeyer’s death came just two days before a second-annual conference on bullying hosted by the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., one attended by educators and LGBT anti-bullying advocates such as Tammy Aaberg, who lost her son, Justin, to suicide in 2010.

Aaberg was among a group of advocates who met last week with Minnesota representative Michele Bachmann’s district office and urged the congresswoman to come out against the multiple youth suicides in her own district. Bachmann said last week on the presidential campaign trail that school bullying "is not a federal issue."

“I think Congresswoman Bachmann is in a leadership role to speak out against bullying," Aaberg The Advocate last week. “I’m not asking her to change her beliefs. But all kids should be protected in school.”

Rodemeyer, a devout Lady Gaga fan who found inspiration and strength in the pop star's music, said in an “It Gets Better” video that he faced bullying at every turn.

"No one in my school cares about preventing suicide, while you're the ones calling me 'faggot' and tearing me down,” Rodemeyer later wrote online to those who harassed him prior to his death.

In a message to her 13.7 million Twitter followers, Lady Gaga tweeted Wednesday, “I am meeting with our President. I will not stop fighting. This must end. Our generation has the power to end it.”

“Trend it,” she wrote, adding the hashtag #MakeALawforJamey.

Legislation to expressly prohibit discrimination in schools on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity has been in the works for some time — a House version of the Student Nondiscrimination Act was reintroduced earlier this year by Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado, with the Senate companion bill introduced by Senator Al Franken of Minnesota.

“[W]hat I want is for schools to have a policy against bullying—and that parents would have a right of action, kids would have a right of action against the school district,” Franken told The Advocate in July. “Once you give a right of action, schools know they had better comply. So then they make a policy."

Telling my dad that I am gay-LIVE

2011-09-20T07:26:00.000-04:00

I called my dad to tell him the hardest thing that gay guys will ever have to say.

Good riddance. DADT was fully repealed last night at midnight!

2011-09-20T07:09:00.002-04:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Victims say criminal charges against pope not a stunt

2011-09-14T10:43:00.000-04:00

By Francis X. Rocca -

VATICAN CITY – A campaign to hold the pope responsible for "crimes against humanity" is not a publicity stunt, sex abuse victims say, even as experts doubt it will have much success at the International Criminal Court.

In a dramatic and unprecedented move, abuse victims filed a complaint that seeks to hold Pope Benedict XVI and others responsible for the "systematic and widespread concealing of rape and child sex crimes throughout the world."

Lawyers representing the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) filed the 84-page complaint at the ICC in The Hague, the Netherlands, on Tuesday.

The filing calls for the investigation and prosecution of the pope and three other top Vatican officials: former Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano; current Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone; and Cardinal William Levada, a former archbishop ofSan Francisco who now has jurisdiction over abuse cases as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The four men are "responsible for rape and other sexual violence and for the physical and psychological torture of victims around the world both through command responsibility and direct cover up of crimes," said Pam Spees, a lawyer with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed the complaint on SNAP's behalf.

Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi declined requests for comment. But Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe of Naples, former head of the Vatican's missionary office, told the Vatican Insider website that the filing was "the usual anti-Catholic attempt that tends in some way to obscure" the image of the church.

Tuesday's filing cites five cases of sex abuse which occurred in the U.S. and theDemocratic Republic of the Congo. The latter country, unlike the U.S. and the Vatican, is a party to the Rome Statute, which governs the ICC.

Vatican lawyers have argued that local bishops do not act as agents of the pope, noting that they do not receive their salaries from Rome nor work on Vatican property, and that the pope is therefore not responsible for their mishandling of sex abuse cases.

Various attempts to hold the Vatican responsible through the U.S. court system have repeatedly failed, usually because the pope, as the head of a sovereign state, is immune from prosecution.

On Tuesday, a leading authority on international law characterized the SNAP filing as an effort to attract publicity for the group's cause, which would not receive serious consideration from the ICC.

"There will be no follow-up," said Giorgio Sacerdoti, who teaches at Milan's Bocconi University. "It will be set aside."

Among the reasons the court is likely to view the sex abuses cases as beyond its jurisdiction, Sacerdoti said, is that they were not part of a "systematic" attack on human rights.

SNAP President Barbara Blaine denied that the complaint is a publicity stunt.

"We have submitted 20,000 pages of evidence that fully document all the crimes in a way that meets the criteria of the ICC," Blaine said. "Our attorneys have done due diligence."

Remembering Mark Bingham, American Hero.

2011-09-11T08:00:00.005-04:00

Mark Kendall Bingham (May 22, 1970 – September 11, 2001) was an American public relations executive who founded his own company, the Bingham Group. He died at age 31 in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on board United Airlines Flight 93.

Education

Bingham attended Los Gatos High School. He was a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where he was also president of his fraternity, Chi Psi. In college, he played for the UC Berkeley rugby union team and helped them win a string of national championships.

Rugby and business career

A large athlete at 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) and 225 pounds (102 kg), he also played for the San Francisco Fog RFC, a rugby union team. In 2001 most of the Fog were complete novices to the game, but Mark started showing up anyway. He coached, cajoled, and crashed through their practices, and played No. 8 in their first two friendly matches. He also played in their first tournament (where he promptly dislocated his shoulder). He taught his teammates his favorite rugby songs and made them feel like we were part of something bigger than themselves.
In May 2001, as a member of the Fog, he took part in the Washington DC Renegades Invitational Tournament. Although very few in number, most of the rugby teams extant at that time took part in the tournament. It was after the tournament that Gotham’s Scott Glaessgen, who had been inspired by the tournament and who had been friends with Mark since 1998, contacted Bingham about forming a rugby team in New York City.
Mark had recently opened a second office of his successful public relations firm in NYC and was spending more time on the East Coast. Mark was excited about the possibility and over the summer the two men started planning the formation of a New York City team the Gotham Knights RFC. On September 11, 2001 he boarded Flight 93 at the last minute, on his way to California to be an usher in his fraternity brother Joseph Salama's wedding.

Death

Bingham was among the passengers who attempted to storm the cockpit of Flight 93 to try to prevent members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist organization, from using the plane to kill hundreds or thousands of additional victims as a part of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. He made a brief airphone call to his mother, Alice Hoagland (formerly spelled "Hoglan"), shortly before the plane went down. Hoagland, a former flight attendant with United Airlines, later left a voice mail message on his cell phone, instructing Bingham to reclaim the aircraft after it became apparent that Flight 93 was to be used in a suicide mission.
Bingham was survived by his boyfriend of six years, Paul Holm, who said this was not the first time Bingham had risked his life to protect the lives of others. He had twice successfully protected Holm from attempted muggings, one at gunpoint. Holm describes Bingham as a brave, competitive man, saying, "He hated to lose — at anything." He was even known to proudly display a scar he received after being gored at the running of the bulls in Pamplona.
Quote by Mark Bingham: “We have the chance to be role models for other gay folks who wanted to play sports, but never felt good enough or strong enough.
"This is a great opportunity to change a lot of people’s minds, and to reach a group that might never have had to know or hear about gay people. Let’s go make some new friends … and win a few games.”

10:03 on a Tuesday morning
in the fall of an American dream
a man is doing what he knows is right
on flight 93

Loved his mom and he loved his dad
loved his home and he loved his man
but on that bloody Tuesday morning
he died an American

[chorus]
Now you cannot change this
You can't erase this
You can't pretend this is not the truth

Even though he could not marry
Or teach your children in our schools
Because who he wants to love
Is breaking your God's rules

He stood up on a Tuesday Morning
In the terror he was brave
And he made his choice and without a doubt
A hundred lives he must have saved

[chorus]

And the things you might take for granted
Your inalienable rights
Some might choose to deny him
Even though he gave his life

Can you live with yourself in the land of the free
And make him less of a hero than the other three
Well it might begin to change ya
In a field in Pennsylvania

[chorus]

Stand up America
Hear the bell now as it tolls
Wake up America
It's Tuesday Morning
Let's roll

[chorus]

-end-

Judy Shepard, Neil Broverman, Lisa Bloom & Chris Jacobs On Lawrence King Murder

2011-08-30T00:27:00.000-04:00

Chris Jacobs talks with Judy Shepard (Mother of Matthew Shepard), Lisa Bloom (Attorney) & Neil Broverman (The Advocate) about the Brandon McInerney trial.

Michelle Obama talks bullying on 'Ellen'

2011-08-29T20:14:00.000-04:00

First Lady Michelle Obama discusses America's 'culture of bullying' - http://lgbtq.me/nd0UbD

Hudson Taylor Continuing Effort To Battle Bullying

2011-08-26T05:07:00.000-04:00

Thomas Roberts talks with Hudson Taylor, Founder & Executive Director of Athlete Ally.
Visit Athlete-Ally at (http://www.athleteally.com/)

Oral Roberts' Grandson Randy Roberts Potts On Coming Out

2011-08-24T01:42:00.000-04:00

Don Lemon talks with Oral Roberts' gay grandson about his struggles with coming out and his relationship with his family.

Weekend (2011) Movie Trailer

2011-08-24T01:29:00.000-04:00

On a Friday night after a drunken house party with his straight mates, Russell heads out to a gay club, alone and on the pull. Just before closing time he picks up Glen but what's expected to be just a one-night stand becomes something else, something special. That weekend, in bars and in bedrooms, getting drunk and taking drugs, telling stories and having sex, the two men get to know each other. It is a brief encounter that will resonate throughout their lives. The Weekender is both an honest and unapologetic love story between two guys and a film about the universal struggle for an authentic life in all its forms. It is about the search for identity and the importance of making a passionate commitment to your life.

Big Breakthrough on Binational Gay, Lesbian Couples

2011-08-18T17:53:00.001-04:00

Sujey and Violeta Pando on their wedding day in Iowa, November 15, 2010.

Immigration officials will set aside deportation cases not involving security threats and convicts

BY PAUL SCHINDLER -

In a significant reprieve for the same-sex partners of American citizens facing the threat of deportation, the Obama administration on August 18 announced that such actions would no longer be pursued against foreign nationals unless they are identified as security threats, convicted criminals, or repeat immigration law violators.

The policy was rolled out in a letter from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

In a telephone conference call with reporters, a senior administration official explained that the focus on those “high-priority” categories represents the latest in the government’s efforts to un-“clog” a deportation system that currently has 300,000 cases pending.

The Obama administration has already made a significant dent in shifting deportations toward priority cases, the official said. In fiscal year 2010, more than half of those deported were security risks or criminal convicts –– up from just 30 percent before the president took office –– and two-thirds of the remainder were repeat immigration law offenders, including deported individuals who had reentered the country.

The new policy was announced in response to a letter sent to President Barack Obama from 22 senators earlier this year asking that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) categorically stop deportation proceedings against young people who would have been covered had the Dream Act been approved by Congress. That bill aims to offer permanent residency to college students and military service personnel who are undocumented immigrants that arrived in the US as minors.

Like same-sex partners and other law-abiding undocumented immigrants, these young people should now largely be in the clear.

According to the administration official, cases currently in the system will be reviewed to see whether they represent “high priority” situations where DHS sees a pressing need to move toward deportation. If not, any pending procedures will be “stayed.”

“They will not be taken out of the system,” the official said, “but those cases will be set aside.”

As part of evaluating cases, some will be identified as “very low priority” –– those involving law-abiding immigrants with strong community or family ties. The administration official emphasized that LGBT families are considered “families” for purposes of such evaluation.

In the past, the government, relying on the Defense of Marriage Act, has refused to recognize the legal marriages of same-sex binational couples.

Immigration enforcement officials, however, have always had “prosecutorial discretion” in handling specific cases. On June 9, Jane Minichiello, chief counsel in the Newark Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office, exercising such discretion, recommended closing deportation proceedings against Henry Velandia, a Venezuelan immigrant who lives in Princeton with his American husband.

On June 17, ICE’s director, John Morton, circulated a memo to agency offices nationwide urging that such discretion be applied to weed out cases that did not merit agency enforcement focus.

In her letter to Reid, which was the administration's response to the earlier Dream Act letter to the president, Napolitano stated that the principles Morton spelled out in June would now become uniform policy across ICE offices nationwide.

The administration official who spoke to reporters stated that those undocumented workers identified as low enforcement priorities would be eligible for employment authorization on a case-by-case basis. Five weeks after having his deportation case closed, Velandia, who is a dancer and dance instructor, received such authorization, for a one-year period.

Immigration rights advocates were heartened by the news. In a press call following the administration briefing, officials from Immigration Equality, which advocates on behalf of binational same-sex couples, the Legal Action Center, and the Immigration Policy Center welcomed the news, particularly the administration’s explicit acknowledgement of LGBT families as qualifying when immigration officials evaluate family ties.

Victoria Neilson, Immigration Equality’s legal director, noted that there are an estimated 36,000 binational same-sex couples in the US –– nearly all of them potentially at risk prior to the new DHS announcement. Still, that number represents just a fraction of the 300,000 deportation cases and of the estimated ten to eleven million undocumented immigrants in the US.

Lavi Soloway, who founded Immigration Equality but is now in private practice and represents Velandia, said, “Everyone who works in this system wants uniformity.”

He explained, “Rather than allowing each ICE deportation office to assess whether a particular person warrants having their case closed, decisions will now be made at the top, with the full force of the administration behind them. It is as close as you could get to a uniform policy. It takes us one step closer to assuring us that all deportations will stop.”

Soloway is due in Immigration Court in Denver on August 19 on behalf of Sujey Pando, who came to the US at 16, after being thrown out of her home in Mexico, where she suffered physical and sexual abuse from an uncle. She lived in the US with her mother and American stepfather, until they threw her out when they learned she is a lesbian.

Living on her own, she came to the attention of immigration officials when she was stopped for a routine traffic violation in 2008. Despite the fact that she and her wife, Violeta, married in Iowa last November, Pando now faces her final deportation hearing.

Soloway is currently reaching out to government attorneys to see whether they are willing to close the case based on the new DHS policy or at least postpone the final hearing until Pando’s file can be reviewed in line with the new uniform guidelines.

“I would think they would welcome the fact that the responsibility for a decision is coming from the highest levels of the administration,” he said.

Pando’s is one of five cases Soloway’s Stop the Deportations Project is due in court about in the next several weeks.

“We will bring the Napolitano letter into court on each of them,” he said.

Cuba celebrates its first gay wedding in style

2011-08-14T18:54:00.000-04:00

Cuba's first transgender person has married her gay fiancée in Havana, despite a ban on same-sex marriage in the country.

STEVE HAYES: Tired Old Queen at the Movies

2011-08-13T19:01:00.000-04:00

CAGED (1950)

Emotions run riot as Eleanor Parker and a superb cast of actresses fight for their rights and freedom in John Cromwell's tale of women behind bars, CAGED (1950). Parker, earning the first of three Oscar nominations, plays Mary, a pregnant girl of nineteen, tried, convicted and "sent up the river" for one to five years on a first offense. Despite the kindness and guidance of Agnes Moorehead as the kindly warden, Parker learns how to survive in a cage filled with ruthless women who'll stop at nothing and have nothing to lose. She's joined by talented array of some of the best character actresses in the business, including; Jan Sterling, Betty Garde, Ellen Corby, Lee Patrick, and fellow Oscar nominee Hope Emerson as Harper, the unforgettably evil and gargantuan prison matron. It's a riveting drama, filled with superb performances, raw emotions and heartbreaking moments that will stay with you long after "lights out."

Marriage Equality News 8-8-11

2011-08-08T00:35:00.000-04:00

Holocaust’s Last Gay Survivor Dead at 98

2011-08-05T09:32:00.000-04:00

By Kilian Melloy -

Rudolph Brazda (Source:Ronny Hartmann, File /AP Photo)

The terrors of the Holocaust wiped out six million Jews. What is less known is that a number of other groups were also targeted for forced labor and extermination by the Nazis, with gays being among them.

It’s estimated that around 100,000 gay men were arrested during the Nazi regime. Of those, about half were incarcerated, and as many as 15,000 were sent to concentration camps under the Nazis, a Wikipedia article says.

"It is unclear how many... eventually perished in the camps, but leading scholar Ruediger Lautman believes that the death rate of homosexuals in concentration camps may have been as high as 60%," the Wikipedia article notes. "Homosexuals in the camps were treated in an unusually cruel manner by their captors."

The Nazis forced gay concentration camp prisoners to wear pink triangles as a means of identification; GLBT equality groups later embraced the pink triangle which now stands as a symbol of the civil rights struggle for equality before the law.

But when the Allies liberated the concentration camps, gays were not set free; rather, they were turned over to the civil authorities. All too often, they were locked up once again.

The issue of gays having been persecuted, arrested, incarcerated, and murdered under the Nazi machine was left unaddressed for decades. In 1979, playwright Martin Sherman used the topic as the basis for his play "Bent," a separate Wikipedia article says. "When the play was first performed, there was only a small trickle of historical research or even awareness about the Nazi persecution of homosexuals. In some regards, the play helped increase that historical research and education in the 1980s and 1990s," the article adds.

In 2002, the German government finally issued an apology to the gay community.

One of the gays sent to the camps under the Nazis was Rudolph Brazda, who spent three years at Buchenwald. Brazda was thought to be the last surviving gay man to have been sent to the camps for his sexuality upon his recent death, the Associated Press reported in an Aug. 4 article. He was 98 years old.

The AP story drew on a statement made German group the Lesbian and Gay Association (LSVD), which reported that Brazda died on Aug. 3. The report "didn’t give details of the location or cause of death," the AP article said.

The AP reported that Brazda spent the years 1942 - 1945 at Buchenwald. He was sent to the camp after "repeatedly [running] into trouble with Nazi authorities over his homosexuality," the article said.

"When a memorial to the Nazis’ gay victims was unveiled in Berlin in 2008, the LSVD said the last ex-prisoner that it knew of had died three years earlier," the AP article recounted. "But the group said it was then contacted by Brazda, who visited the memorial at its invitation and became an honorary member."

The openly gay mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, lauded Brazda. The two men had met in 2008, the AP reported.

"He is an example of how important the work of remembrance is for our future," Wowereit told the media.

"Fewer and fewer people can give information about repression under the Nazi dictatorship authentically and from their own experience."

"Nazi Germany declared homosexuality an aberration that threatened the German race," the AP reported.

Similar rhetoric has been used against gays in the United States, and recently anti-gay screeds that claim gays will cause the destruction of all humanity unless stopped have been at the heart of a campaign in the African nation Ghana, where a regional minister has launched an effort to round up and "get rid of" gays.

The anti-gay crackdown started last month when a regional minister, Paul Evan Aidoo, responded to lobbying from Christian and Muslim groups with a directive that gays be placed under arrest. Aidoo tasked Ghanaian security agencies with finding and detaining gays, and also called for heterosexuals, such as landlords, to turn in people they suspect might be gay.

Aidoo has described the effort to round up and arrest gays as an initiative to "get rid of" all homosexuals.

Kilian Melloy is EDGE Media Network’s Web Producer and Assistant Arts Editor. He also reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes aggregate news stories and commentary for EDGE.

Pinksixty News FRIDAY 05 AUGUST 2011

2011-08-05T09:28:00.000-04:00

A Californian federal judge has struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage, ruling that Proposition 8 violates the U.S. Constitution. The decision is a major step forward in the fight for equality for gay Americans.

A lesbian couple in Norway have been commended for saving the lives of 40 youngsters during the recent massacre. They ferried injured teens off the island in their small boat whilst under fire from the killer, who shot at their boat during the rescues.

A runaway Turkish soldier has been arrested in Istanbul for murdering a transsexual sex worker. The victim, known as Didem, was killed by the 26 year old man after he discovered she was a trans woman.

The launch of Ben Cohen's Stand Up Foundation website was halted by the huge demand yesterday. Ben's promised that the site will be up and running soon, and all tee-shirt orders made this week will receive a free anti-bullying wristband. You can place your order at www.ben-cohen.com

And finally, Dolly Parton has issued a personal apology to the lesbian couple who were told to invert their gay marriage tee-shirt before being allowed into Dollywood. She reaffirmed her commitment to the queer community and said she is looking into the incident personally.

Lambda Legal eNews: NY's First Vows | Attack at Sizzler | Supreme Court Petition

2011-08-04T19:26:00.000-04:00

August 2011: Marriage Vows

In Brief
by Kevin Cathcart
Executive Director
Lambda Legal

On July 24, the whole world watched as New York celebrated marriage equality. Among the first to tie the knot were three plaintiff couples in Lambda Legal's New York marriage lawsuit, Hernandez v. Robles. It was a historic day and a momentous occasion for all of us—one that we are committed to recreating across the Hudson River, in New Jersey.
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Top Stories

First Marriages in New York
Lambda Legal plaintiffs among first to tie the knot. Read more. Watch video. Download our FAQ.
Birth Certificate Case Aims for U.S. Supreme Court
Lambda Legal asks justices to hear case of gay couple seeking accurate birth certificate for their son.
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Woman Attacked at Sizzler
Lambda Legal sues NY restaurant on behalf of a woman targeted because of anti-LGBT bias.
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Stop Deportation of Married Same-Sex Couples
Lambda Legal asks officials to halt immigration proceedings pending legal challenges to the so-called Defense of Marriage Act.
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Register for Equality
Honor a couple by making a donation in their name on Lambda Legal's Wedding Registry, or register your wedding.
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Lambda Legal Is Proud . . .
Deputy Legal Director Hayley Gorenberg has been named co-chair of the American Bar Association Litigation Section’s new Civil Rights Litigation Committee.
Will You "LIKE" Us for $10,000?
As part of a special 10,000 Actions for $10,000 Challenge, now through September 5, Lambda Legal will receive $1 for every new person who "likes" us on Facebook or follows us on Twitter.
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Citing new research, psychology group supports gay marriage

2011-08-04T07:12:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON – The world's largest organization of psychologists took its strongest stand to date supporting full marriage equity, a move that observers say will have a far-reaching impact on the national debate.

The policymaking body of the American Psychological Association (APA) unanimously approved the resolution 157-0 on the eve of the group's annual convention, which opens here today.

The group, with more than 154,000 members, has long supported full equal rights for gays, based on social science research on sexual orientation. Now the nation's psychologists — citing an increasing body of research about same-sex marriage, as well as increased discussion at the state and federal levels — took the support to a new level.

"Now as the country has really begun to have experience with gay marriage, our position is much clearer and more straightforward — that marriage equity is the policy that the country should be moving toward," says Clinton Anderson, director of APA's Office on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns.

The resolution points to numerous recent studies, including findings that "many gay men and lesbians, like their heterosexual counterparts, desire to form stable, long-lasting and committed intimate relationships and are successful in doing so."

It adds that "emerging evidence suggests that statewide campaigns to deny same-sex couples legal access to civil marriage are a significant source of stress to the lesbian, gay and bisexual residents of those states and may have negative effects on their psychological well-being."

Six states (Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont) and the District of Columbia allow same-sex marriage.

"Psychologists have been very important in helping to keep the discussion at a fact-based level and not let it steer off into stereotypes," says M.V. Lee Badgett, research director at the non-profit Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law & Public Policy at the University of California-Los Angeles.

Sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia-Charlottesville, says his board is divided on the issue and hasn't taken a stance on same-sex marriage. He says the APA resolution will likely have a broad impact.

"I don't think it's very significant for the population at large, but I do think this move is significant for the ongoing public policy and legal battles in Washington and around the states," he says.

Clinical psychologist Mark Hatzenbuehler, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at Columbia University in New York City, whose new research is cited in the resolution, says the courts tend to look at these kinds of policy statements because "they're really looking to see what social science research says about the influence on gay marriage and marriage bans on a whole host of outcomes."

Badgett's research of gay marriage across cultures is also cited in the resolution. She says the Netherlands was the first to allow gay couples to marry, and it showed "very little change in the overall society, but it was very important to gay couples themselves."

The last APA resolution on sexual orientation and marriage was approved in 2004. The resolution notes that since that time, APA has worked on 11 amicus briefs filed in same-sex marriage cases since 2004.

Cuddle Therapy - Gay To Straight Scam

2011-08-03T15:24:00.000-04:00

Social conservatives are promoting so-called cuddle conversion camps where cuddle therapy is supposed to turn gay people straight. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss.

Church child protection chief caught with 4,000 child porn pictures

2011-08-03T12:41:00.000-04:00

Christopher Jarvis leaves court

A child protection official for the Catholic Church has been caught with 4,000 pictures of child porn.

Father-of-four Christopher Jarvis was arrested after uploading pictures of children being abused to a website.

Married Jarvis, 49, a former social worker, was employed by the church following sex scandals about pervert priests.

His job was to monitor church groups to ensure paedophiles did not gain access to children in the church’s congregations.

But he was caught by police in March with more than 4,000 child porn images on his home computer and his work laptop.

He admitted 12 counts of making, possessing and distributing indecent images when he appeared before magistrates in Plymouth and is likely to face jail when he returns to court for sentencing next month.

Jarvis, who has been sacked from his job as child safeguarding officer, worked the Diocese of Plymouth for nine years.

Church spokesman David Pond said: “Mr Jarvis was suspended from his position as soon as the diocese became aware in March of the police investigation.

“The Bishop took that action and since then the Church has worked closely with the police.

Lesbian couple saved 40 teenagers in Norway massacre

2011-08-03T09:32:00.000-04:00

By Jessica Geen -

A married lesbian couple have been commended for saving the lives of 40 teenagers in Norway’s massacre two weeks ago.
Toril Hansen and Hege Dalen were having dinner on the shore opposite the island of Utoya when they heard shots ring out and screaming.
They saw young people running into Lake Tyrifjorden as Anders Behring Breivik opened fire on the Norwegian Labour Party camp.
In a stunning act of bravery, the couple got in their boat and started towards the island.
Hansen and Dalen made four runs across the lake, each time picking up injured, frightened and dazed youngsters while Breivik shot at – and hit – the sides of the boat.
Dalen told Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat: “We were eating. Then shooting and then the awful screaming. We saw how the young people ran in panic into the lake.”
While other acts of heroism have emerged from the massacre, Hansen and Dalen’s actions have been largely unreported until now.
The LGBT blogTalk About Equality asked: “If a married lesbian couple saves 40 teens from the Norway massacre and no-one writes about it, did it really happen? … The heavy hitters who usually kill for hero stories like this have remained silent.”
Tom Chivers, of the Daily Telegraph, wrote: “Have the media ignored a gold-plated tale of bravery and heroism just because they don’t like the sexual orientation of the protagonists? I don’t know, obviously.
“But it’s not as though it’s just traditionally minded, conservative news organisations, who might be expected to have misgivings about homosexual marriage, which have not reported on Mrs Hansen and Mrs Dalen’s heroism.”
Breivik has admitted to killing 77 people on the island and in Oslo on July 22nd.
He surrendered when surrounded by police and remains in custody.

Chris Matthews Plays Hardball with Dr. Anthony Fauci at amfAR Capitol Hill conference

2011-08-03T01:10:00.002-04:00

Chris Matthews, the longtime host of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, interviews Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, at amfAR's July 2011 Capitol Hill conference, "Making AIDS History: Ending the Epidemic."

LGBT History 2011 Overview

2011-08-02T11:33:00.002-04:00

The Michael Causer Foundation

2011-08-02T07:53:00.000-04:00

Today is the 3rd anniversary of Michael Causer's murder.The invisible death of Michael is a film made by Michael Causer's parents after the UK press failed to report on his homophobic murder, please watch this short film and then join the Michael Causer Foundation page to show your support.

The Latest Wrinkle in the Prop 8 Trial

2011-08-01T07:34:00.000-04:00

A new twist in the Prop 8 case, with a court date coming just days after a controversial new judge is expected to join the Supreme Court. New York launches its own attack on the Defense of Marriage Act, and polling brings mostly good news, and a little bad.

All In The Family: "Edith's Crisis of Faith"

2011-07-31T17:28:00.000-04:00

Edith's religious faith is shaken after her friend, female impersonator Beverly LaSalle, is brutally murdered by street thugs at Christmas. Perhaps the earliest, serious television role for a cross-dresser/drag queen.

Julian Bond speaks at NAACP on Homophobia

2011-07-31T13:06:00.000-04:00

The NAACP held its first-ever town hall meeting to discuss LGBT issues on July 25 as part of its 102nd annual convention held at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The theme was "Our Collective Responsibility: Overcoming Homophobia". Julian Bond, Civil Rights Icon and Chairman Emeritus NAACP, addresses the NAACP. Video by Renee Sotile & Mary Jo Godges of www.TraipsingThruFilms.com for www.LGBTPOV.com.

Tempe Pastor Proudly Hates Gay People

2011-07-31T12:32:00.000-04:00

New Details On Cult Leader Who Killed Woman & 4-Yr-Old He Thought Was Gay

2011-07-31T10:43:00.000-04:00

In a hearing Friday, prosecutors announced plans to seek the death penalty and revealed details of their case against Peter Lucas Moses Jr., accused of murdering a 4-year-old boy and a 28-year-old woman because of his beliefs and association with a radical religious sect. Moses, 27, faces two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Jadon Higganbothan, 4, and Antoinetta Yvonne McKoy, 28.

Dolly Parton Apologizes for Gay T-Shirt Incident at Dollywood Splash Country

2011-07-30T16:26:00.000-04:00

A same-sex couple from Knoxville, TN recently took issue with the enforcement of the dress code at Dollywood Splash Country Pigeon Forge, TN and received a reply from Dolly Parton herself.
According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, Olivier Odom and her partner Jennifer Tipton were entering the park with their family on July 9 when a park worker asked Odom to turn her shirt inside out. The words "Marriage is so gay" were printed on the shirt, in support of gay marriage. When she asked why she needed to turn the shirt inside out, the park worker told Odom that Dollywood is a "family park."
Odom complied with the request, but wrote a letter to Dollywood later asking the park to "implement policies that are "inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people" and "inclusive of all families." She also stated that she felt Dollywood's policy about not allowing clothing or tattoos with offensive messages should be more clearly spelled out.
Representatives for Dollywood issued statement in response to the news, assuring the gay and lesbian community that everyone was welcome at Dollywood properties. Now, Dolly Parton has released a statement to ABC News apologizing for the incident. The statement reads:
"I am truly sorry for the hurt or embarrassment regarding the gay and lesbian t-shirt incident at Dollywood's Splash Country recently. Everyone knows of my personal support of the gay and lesbian community. Dollywood is a family park and all families are welcome." Dolly adds that the policies on clothing or signs with profanity or controversial messages are in place to protect the person wearing the shirt and keep disturbances at the park to a minimum. Dolly concludes saying, "I am looking further into the incident and hope and believe it was more policy than insensitivity. I am very sorry it happened at all."

STEVE HAYES: Tired Old Queen at the Movies

2011-07-30T16:07:00.000-04:00

GYPSY (1962)
Rosalind Russell, Natalie Wood and Karl Malden combine their considerable talents for the 1962 screen adaptation of Jules Stein's and Stephen Sondheim's smash musical GYPSY. Based on the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, with a book by Arthur Laurents and directed by veteran Mervyn Leroy, GYPSY is a musical standout where every song is a bonifide hit. Roz brings all her brilliant comic technique to the role of Rose, the overbearing show biz mother of all time and is matched by Natalie Wood at her most beautiful and beguiling as Gypsy. It's a loving tribute to vaudeville, burlesque and mother love that will leave you laughing, humming and wanting more.

ItGetsBetter.org and the Orioles team up

2011-07-28T08:33:00.000-04:00

The Orioles and ItGetsBetter.org team up to encourage LGBT youth, and all children who are bullied, to not give up, stay true to themselves

Apple Strikes iTunes Participation in ’Christian Values Network’

2011-07-28T07:47:00.000-04:00

No anti-gay apps here...

By Kilian Melloy -

It seemed like a good cause: Participating companies like Microsoft and Apple could give consumers a chance to support religious charities when they purchased goods and services by participating in the Christian Values Network, a link referral service.
Other corporations also participated: Macy’s, Netflix, REI, even cable channel BBC America.
But when it came out that virulently anti-gay groups like Focus on the Family, Liberty Counsel, Abiding Truth Ministries, and others were exploiting the service to rake in funding, big-name corporations started dropping out of the service -- fast.
In part, the exodus was fueled by the fact that the groups mentioned above, plus others drawing funds from the service, such as the Family Research Council and Summit Ministries, have reportedly been identified as "hate groups" by watchdog group the Southern Poverty Law Center, reported Advocate.com on July 15.
An online petition started through Change.org by Stuart Wilber convinced Microsoft to pull its support of CVN, stopping its contribution to the revenue streams that were flowing into the coffers of groups that had engaged in "blatant and repeated homophobic lies about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people."
Ben Crowther -- who, like Wilber, lives in Seattle -- started a petition of his own through the site, encouraging Apple to drop its support of CVN. A July 27 press release from Change.org reported that Apple followed suit, pulling its iTunes store out of CVN and following the example set by numerous other companies, including Wells Fargo, Macy’s, and BBC America.
"The previous petition to get Microsoft to drop its association with CVN directly inspired me to petition Apple," Crowther told EDGE. "My good friend and fellow activist Stuart Wilber was behind the Microsoft petition. When I read his petition and saw Apple was part of the CVN, especially after Microsoft dropped out, I knew that another petition needed to be started. So with the inspiration from Stuart and the help from my friend Joe Mirabella at Change.org, the petition was born."
Change.org reported on the earlier dissolution of corporate support for CVN in a July 18 article.
"Macy’s serves a diverse society," a spokesperson for the retail outlet told the online petition site. "As such, we are deeply committed to a philosophy of inclusion in the way we operate our business and support our communities. We welcome all customers into our stores."

Wells Fargo told Change.org they had pulled out of CVN because "it was not compliant with Wells Fargo’s brand and marketing [standards]."
"BBC America Shop was not aware of CVN.org’s current donation policies," VP of Publicity April Mulcair old a British GLBT news outlet. "We have ended our relationship with this affiliate effective immediately."
"The Focus on the Family website contains anti-gay and anti-transgender content. They describe being gay as ’a particularly evil lie of Satan,’ " reported Change.org. "They also attack transgender people."
While Wilber’s petition picked up 500 signatures in a single day, Crowther’s petition seeking Apple’s exit from the arrangement with CVN commanded 13,000 signatures in one day, noted Change.org.
"I wonder if Apple is even aware they are being used to raise money for these homophobic groups," Crowther, a student at Western Washington University, said at the time. "It is so out of character for Apple to be associated with groups like Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council. I hope Apple acts quickly to remove their store from the Christian Values Network."
On July 27, Change.org reported that Apple had indeed dropped CVN, with over 22,000 people having signed on to Crowther’s petition.
"From the beginning, I knew that once this issue was brought to Apple’s attention, they would not want to be a part of CVN because it funds anti-gay hate groups like Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council," Crowther told Change.org. "Apple is a fair-minded business. I’m glad this petition helped make Apple aware of this issue, and I am thrilled that they removed iTunes from CVN."
Crowther had a personal stake in his effort to ensure that GLNT-friendly companies like Apple and unwary iTunes shoppers did not inadvertently lend their financial support to anti-gay groups. Change.org reported that Crowther and his boyfriend came out in high school, and were promptly targeted for homophobic bullying.
"The harassment got so bad I had to go to the principal," Crowther, who will begin his junior year in the fall, recounted.
The bullying continued into college, with homophobic epithets being scrawled on Crowther’s door. He finally had to move out of the dorms "because the bullying was so bad," he told Change.org.
Controversial Apps

Crowther told EDGE that there are definite parallels between what he has suffered in school at the hands of homophobic bullies and the way that GLBTs in society at large are treated by anti-gay groups like Focus on the Family.

"These hate groups are creating the same oppressive and unwelcoming environment that bullies do in school," the young man said.

This is not the first time that pro-equality advocates have turned to Change.org. Earlier this year, petitions launched via the site convinced Apple to pull an iPhone app from Exodus International, a group that claims gays and lesbians can be "choose" heterosexuality.

The Exodus app was popularly perceived as "gay cure" via smart phone, said a March 22 NW32.com article from Denver news channel KWGH.

However, Exodus International characterized the app as a resource for users who wished to find relief from "unwanted same sex attractions," in the words of spokesperson Jeff Buchanan.

Among other things, the app listed dates and locations for Love Won Out, a workshop sponsored by anti-gay group Focus on the Family. Its seminars claim that with prayer and therapy, gays can "convert" to heterosexuality. Love Won Out has made the controversial assertion that "same-sex attraction is a preventable and treatable condition."

Truth Wins Out, an organization headed by Wayne Besen that counters Love Won Out, started a petition for the app’s removal from iTunes and quickly gathered more than 150,000 signatures, Less than a week elapsed between the petition’s launch at Change.org and the app being taken down.

"Dr. Gary Remafedi -- a Univ. of Minnesota professor who claims that findings from his research were distorted by Exodus International -- also requested that Apple remove the app from the App Store," Techland.com reported in a March 23 article.

Supporters noted that the app had a rating of 4+, meaning that it did "not contain objectionable content," but critics noted that this only means that supporters of the application had voted en masse for that rating to be assigned.

"The real issue: Apple has no coherent policy about what kind of content gets approved and remains in iTunes," said Cult of Mac in a March 22 article.

Cult of Mac was among the first sites to report that the app had disappeared. "Our obsessive checking for it just showed that poof! The Exodus International app was no more," the article stated.

Exodus International signaled defeat with a tweet from Alan Chambers, president of the group, who sent a message reading "It’s official, the @ExodusInl App is no longer in the @AppStore. Incredibly disappointing. Watch out, it could happen to you. #freedom"

Chambers also issued a statement to the effect that Christians suffer persecution, but that it is part of their role as defenders of God’s word and exemplars of compassion and patience.

"If we [gathered] 150,000 signature to pull [a gay] app, it would be seen as intolerant and homophobic," said Chambers, according to a March 23 Christianity Today article. "We wouldn’t do that because we believe of freedom of speech and freedom of expression in the public sphere. As Christians, we bear the brunt of it because the other side sees it as an antiquated expression."

Anti-gay religious organizations have long claimed that legal and social equality for gays could only come at the cost of freedom of religious expression. But opponents of the app said that it promoted "hatred and bigotry."

Cyberguilt?

Besen had spoken out earlier about another app, Confession: A Roman Catholic App, which asked users to reflect upon their sins by asking questions such as, "Have I been guilty of any homosexual activity?" Besen said that the app promoted not virtue, but rather "neurosis."

"This is cyber spiritual abuse that promotes backward ideas in a modern package," Besen charged. "Gay Catholics don’t need to confess, they need to come out of the closet and challenge anti-gay dogma."

Saying that the application was "helping to create neurotic individuals who are ashamed of who they are," Besen slammed the very notion of homosexuality as being inherently sinful. "The false idea that being gay is something to be ashamed of has destroyed too many lives," Besen asserted. "This iPhone app is facilitating and furthering the harm."

LGBTQNation reported on Feb. 10 that the app was the product of three designers in Indiana who had worked with two socially conservative priests. Lawmakers in Indiana recently advanced a resolution to amend the state’s constitution in a way that would ban both marriage equality and civil unions.

The flap over Confession was, in turn, reminiscent of an even earlier controversy surrounding an app for the Manhattan Manifesto, an anti-gay document that contained anti-gay language.

The Manhattan Manifesto claims that the push for equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian families is nothing more than an attempt to "redefine" marriage to suit "fashionable ideologies," and "affirm[s]... marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society." An online petition decrying the app was organized through Change.org and gathered thousands of signatures within a week; Apple responded by removing the app.

GLBT equality group the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) noted that the app went beyond an implicit assumption that same-sex families were somehow undeserving of the "dignity" that the Manhattan Declaration indicated should be reserved solely for mixed-gender couples.
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"The app features an electronic version of a declaration, through which users can pledge to make ’whatever sacrifices are required’ to oppose marriage equality, even, presumably, if that means breaking the law" in asking users not to "bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth," a Dec. 15, 2010, GLAAD release said.

"The ’Manhattan Declaration’ calls gay and lesbian couples ’immoral,’ it calls the recognition of their relationships ’false and destructive,’ and claims that allowing them to be married will lead to ’genuine social harms,’ " the GLAAD release noted. "The original application also contained a quiz in which the ’right’ answers were those that oppose equality for gay and lesbian people.

"This application fuels a climate in which gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are put in harm’s way," the GLAAD release went on. "Apple did the right thing in recognizing that this application violates the company’s guidelines."

For his part, Crowther regards himself as part of the solution to the problem of anti-gay bullying, whether at school or in the wider world.

"I consider myself an activist for GLBT equality, yes," he told EDGE. "And I’m very proud of my involvement." But while Crowther notes the power of the Internet and other social media for spurring change, he doesn’t think that the struggle for civil and social equality will move entirely to the online world.

"We need online petitions as much as we need marches and rallies," Crowther said. "One doesn’t substitute the other, and they were never supposed to. Social networking is another tool on our belt to create positive social change."

Speaking about the petition he launched and the success it garnered, Crowther said, "The queer community stood up for itself. We told Apple that they were supporting bullies, and that we couldn’t continue supporting Apple until they changed.

"Well, Apple listened. No one likes a bully."

Kilian Melloy is EDGE Media Network’s Web Producer and Assistant Arts Editor. He also reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes aggregate news stories and commentary for EDGE.

Trevor's David McFarland On Teen Suicides In Anoka-Hennepin School District

2011-07-28T00:23:00.000-04:00

Civil rights organizations are pushing district to address suicide epidemic. Anti-gay groups accused of fueling & ignoring crisis. Thomas Roberts talks with David McFarland from The Trevor Project.

Joel Burns On Teen Suicides In Bachmann's District

2011-07-28T00:21:00.000-04:00

Lawrence O'Donnell talks with Joel Burns (Councilman, Fort Worth, TX) about the "No Promo Homo" rule in the Anoka-Hennepin school district.

EQUALITY MATTERS: Ending Taxpayer-Funded Employment Discrimination

2011-07-26T16:12:00.000-04:00

By Kerry Eleveld -

Over the past decade, a "Christian humanitarian organization" called World Vision has received hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding for projects ranging from disaster relief in Africa to "at-risk youth" programs in the United States.

The organization also openly discriminates against religious minorities, stating on its website that "Christian faith is a prerequisite for employment." It is just one example of a faith-based organization that receives U.S. government grants regardless of its discriminatory hiring practices - a policy legal ized during the Bush Administration and continued by President Obama despite his campaign promise to end it.
When candidate Barack Obama laid out his plan on the campaign trail to revise the White House faith-based initiative established under President George W. Bush, he drew a line in the sand.

“If you get a federal grant, you can't use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can't discriminate against them - or against the people you hire - on the basis of their religion,” Obama told a Zanesville, Ohio, crowd over three years ago on July 1, 2008.

It appeared to mark a departure from a series of Bush executive orders in 2001 and 2002 that established faith-based offices in the White House and major federal agencies and forged the way for sectarian organizations to practice religious discrimination in their hiring practices even if they were receiving taxpayer dollars from the federal government. And according to Bush White House officials, the administration poured about $10.6 billion into faith-based organizations including groups like World Vision, a “Christian humanitarian organization” that has received hundreds of millions of dollars in support from the U.S. government but also openly discriminates against religious minorities in its hiring.

But when President Obama was asked about his Zanesville commitment during a Maryland Town Hall last Friday, he could not affirmatively tell the questioner that he had ended the practice of allowing religious organizations that receive government money to discriminate in hiring. That’s because when Obama issued an executive order in 2009 creating his version of White House faith-based office, the order did nothing to reverse the policy codified by Bush.

In answering the question, Obama acknowledged that there are certain situations where the government does per mit religious organizations to discriminate in their hiring -- even for positions financed by taxpayer dollars. He also said that some religious groups believe the administration has been too restrictive in this area while others believe it isn’t restrictive enough.

“I think we've struck the right balance so far,” Obama offered, “but this is something we continue to be in dialogue with faith-based organizations about to try to make sure that their hiring practices are as open and inclusive as possible.”

In fact, a coalition comprised largely of conservative religious groups is quite pleased with the administration’s approach and sent a laudatory letter to President Obama this month stating, “We commend you and your Administration for maintaining current federal law and policy…” Meanwhile, progressive organizations delivered their own letter to the president just last month urging him to “restore key civil rights protections” that were rolled back by President Bush.

Religious organizations have traditionally been allowed to use religious beliefs as a criteria in their hiring when using their own money – a prerogative provided to them under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited all other entities from discriminating based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. But when receiving federal funds, religious institutions were subject to federal contractor guidelines laid out via executive order by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 that barred consideration of religious beliefs in hiring.

Bush’s mandate amended that order and radically changed the landscape, tearing down the barriers that had kept highly religious organizations from receiving funding and cutting to the quick of what most Americans think of as a fundamental Constitutional principle – the separation of ch urch and state.

Although groups that have loose religious affiliations like the Salvation Army and Goodwill had long partnered with the federal government to administer basic social services to people in need, fundamentalist institutions and local Houses of Worship that made little-to-no distinction between government programming and their ministry were now eligible for federal funding.

LGBT advocates found the change especially problematic because it legitimized and reinforced the behavior of certain religious institutions that were already predisposed to creating an inhospitable atmosphere for gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals who might seek employment or services.

No more, Obama said in his Zanesville speech.

“I don’t think there was any equivocation or confusion in his statement,” recalls Representative Robert “Bobby” Scott (D-VA). “There will be no disc rimination or proselytization – the structure of the sentences did not allow for any fuzzy interpretation.”

Congressman Scott, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, has been on a quest to figure out what happened to that campaign pledge, questioning a number of administration officials under oath about the status of the policy. Their answers have varied from deftly worded dodges on the subject to ignorance about the fact that religious institutions receiving federal funding can discriminate on Obama’s watch.

When Scott asked Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius in May whether federally funded religious organizations could discriminate in hiring, she suggested they could not.

“To my knowledge, that would violate the civil rights umbrella that we operate under, Congressman,” Sebelius responded. Her office later sent a clarification to Scott’s office acknowledging tha t religious organizations can, in fact, “consider the religious orientation of persons that apply for employment provided that no other law applies.”

Members of the Justice Department, which is purportedly conducting a review of the policy, were better prepared for Scott’s line of questioning.

After Scott asked Attorney General Eric Holder also in May whether the government’s grantees can “actively discriminate based on religion,” Holder responded, “We don't want to do that. We try not to do that.”

Scott interrupted, “But, wait, wait a minute. Either you do or you don't. Do you not give grants to organizations that actively discriminate based on religion or not?”

Holder responded, “The attempt we make is not to do that. The -- as I've indicated, our hope is that we do -- the grants that we give are consistent with the law. But beyond that, are consistent with our values.”
But moments later, Holder acknowledged that the Justice Department was still adhering to a Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memo stating that World Vision, the conservative Christian relief organization that has a stated policy of only hiring “Christian staff,” was still eligible for federal funding.

“The memo is still in effect as I understand it,” Holder said, adding, “with regard to that specific OLC opinion, we are not in the process of reconsidering it.”
Holder’s juxtaposition between the law – which presently allows for such discrimination – and their values – which presumably do not condone discrimination of this kind – was a concept also advanced by Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez last month. Scott recalls Perez, who heads up the Civil Rights Division, reciting his answer from a piece of paper when he was queried on the topic of whether the administration’s p olicy on faith-based funding was being reviewed.

“The review remains ongoing and again, we're committed to ensuring that we can partner with faith-based organizations in a way that is both consistent with our laws and with our values and that we continue to address these legal questions that you have raised,” Perez said on June 1 in response to a question from Congressman Jerry Nadler (D-NY).
Scott, whose subsequent exchange with Perez in the same hearing on the policy turned a bit testy, calls the answer the type of “gibberish” one uses when they’re hoping to simply put the question to rest and move on.

“I get the sense that they wish it would go away,” Scott says. “You can’t make a decision like this without making somebody mad and to the extent that nobody brings it up, they don’t have to deal with it. And to the extent that no one in America knows that it’s even going on, it doesn’t become an issue.”

On The Trail
President Obama’s announcement of his intention to expand the faith-based office within the White House – widely viewed as an effort to court Evangelical Christians – sent shudders through many queer rights activists.Although gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals are still not protected classes under federal law, allowing religious organizations to discriminate based on faith provides a readymade rationale for not hiring an LGBT person if the applicant’s sexual orientation is viewed as a violation of certain faith beliefs. Additionally by federally funding religious groups that discriminate in their hiring, the government actively promotes programming that is much less likely to generate a welcoming atmosphere for LGBT people in need.

Programs that reject people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity is not a theoretical problem. In January, for instance, a Columbus, Georgia, homeless shelter called House of Mer cy received nationwide attention when its director said practicing gays were not welcome there regardless of how desperate their situation and turned away two women allegedly because they were lesbians.

"That act is not tolerated here at all,” Elder Bobby Harris told the local CBS affiliate, WRBL. “Let me tell you one reason why: because of the Bible, of course.”

While House of Mercy has not been tied to federal funding, the organization is, for instance, named in a city of Columbus application for federal grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development – an indication that such an entity is viewed as a legitimate partner by the local government.

Current federal law prohibits religious institutions that receive federal funding for a program from turning away potential beneficiaries of services on the basis of their religious practices – a violation that would appear to exist if the shelter were to receive government money since the bias was inspired by religious doctrine rather than simply being based on the recipient’s sexual orientation.

But hiring discrimination that is explicitly leveled at gays on religious grounds is a different matter entirely and is often deemed legally permissible even in states that have stricter prohibitions around employment practices than the federal government.

“When it comes to the LGBT community, people who don’t like LGBT people because of their religious objections have gotten a pass from the courts in a lot of cases,” says Greg Nevins, senior staff attorney at Lambda Legal who specializes in employment law.

Nevins, however, successfully represented Aimee Bellmore and Alan Yorker in a 2003 case against the state-funded United Methodist Children’s Home after both highly qualified counselors were denied employment. Bellmore was fired wh en the organization learned she was a lesbian and Yorker’s interview was halted as soon as the group learned he was Jewish.

The case was eventually settled on behalf of the plaintiffs for an undisclosed amount and hailed as a victory against discriminatory employment practices on the basis of religion. But it was the state law – not federal statute – that sealed the deal.

“We had a very strong arrow in our quiver because the Georgia constitution has a very rigid provision for spending public money,” explains Nevins. Lambda attorneys led with the state argument but they also reasoned that the organization’s actions violated the U.S. Constitution. That contention, however, would be particularly challenging to prove in court since both federal regulations and the Bush and Obama administrations’ policy allow for it.

When Obama originally announced his intention to expand the faith-based initiative in ‘08, campaign staffers switched into damage control mode with the Democratic base, sending out talking points that sharpened the future president’s commitment to ending government funded infringements on people’s religious liberties.

“Whatever uncertainty there is about employment rights here reflects Bush administration executive orders, which Senator Obama would promptly reverse,” read one talking point. “Let's be clear: Obama's position on religious hiring rights is a return to the state of the law before the Bush Administration took office and muddied the waters with various executive orders.”

The talking points also noted that while sexual orientation and gender identity were not federally protected classes, Obama supported passage of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, legislation that prohibits employment discrimination against LGBT people. (The legislation ultimately st alled in the 111th Congress and likely has no chance of passing in the 112th now that Republicans control the House of Representatives.)

But many progressives remained unconvinced, including Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“This initiative has been a failure on all counts, and it ought to be shut down, not expanded,” Rev. Lynn told the Associated Press at the time of Obama’s speech.

Progressive groups, however, were not the only ones paying attention to Obama’s pronouncement.

“We obviously listened to the Zanesville, Ohio speech [with] some concern,” Richard Stearns, president of World Vision – the Christian relief group that had been the subject of the OLC memo – later told National Public Radio. “After that speech, a number of us began to engage the Obama campaign, and we found a very r eceptive audience.”

Lynn and Stearns both spoke to NPR for that story, which was posted on February 4, 2009 – shortly after President Obama’s inauguration and the day before he signed an executive order creating what is now called the White House Office of

Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. In the story, Lynn and Stearns faced off about whether Obama would reverse the Bush directive and start prohibiting religious groups that receive government money from discriminating in their hiring practices. Lynn was “optimistic” that Obama would hold to his commitment to discontinue federally funded discrimination, while Stearns was confident that Obama had changed his mind.

“World Vision would be forced to walk away from those grants and that would really be tragic because of the thousands and thousands of people we serve,” Stearns told NPR.

When Obama introduced the executive order the next day, it fell far short of the prompt policy reversal promised by the campaign.

Though the White House press release stated that the faith-based program would be “consistent with American laws and values” and reaffirmed the separation of church and state as “a principle President Obama supports firmly,” it advised only that “a new mechanism” would be added by which the executive director of the faith-based office could “seek the advice of the Attorney General on difficult legal and constitutional issues.

The president also created a 25-person advisory council that was tasked with generating recommendations for making the faith-based office a more effective partner of community groups that were implementing the initiative on the ground.

The council assembled a diverse group of representatives: some notoriously anti-LGBT people such as Dr. Frank Page, for mer president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is a chief sponsor of the “ex-gay” movement to turn gay people straight; and LGBT advocates like Rev. Harry Knox, who was director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Religion and Faith Program at the time, and Fred Davie, an openly LGBT man who had advised the Obama campaign in ‘08 and later worked for the pro-LGBT advocacy organization the Arcus Foundation.

Stearns – whose organization World Vision has received about $650 million in federal funding over the past decade for its anti-poverty work – was also appointed to the council. Beyond the 2007 OLC memo, World Vision also prevailed last year in an employment lawsuit filed by three former employees over religious discrimination. The organization fired the employees when it discovered that they “denied the deity of Jesus Christ and disavowed the doctrine of the Trinity,” according to the decision. After the N inth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that World Vision was perfectly within its legal bounds, the company issued a statement reading, “Our hiring policy is vital to the integrity of our mission to serve the poor as followers of Jesus Christ.”

For his part, Rev. Lynn ended up sitting on a separate task force created to help the advisory council review the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and suggest reforms.

But from the very outset, the issue of religious discrimination in hiring practices was taken off the table and the group was explicitly advised not to engage the topic.

Rabbi David Saperstein, who also sat on the advisory council, talked about the exclusion of the employment discrimination matter at a June press conference arranged by Congressman Scott.

“The president did make the decision not to put the employment discrimination issue before the 25 diver se members of the council – he felt it was too controversial and he wanted to have it dealt with inside the administration,” Saperstein explained. “We argued … that we could really be of help to them because, if this group could reach agreement on this very controversial issue and how to deal with it, it would be of great assistance to them.”

The explanation for Obama’s decision was “a moving target” according to Lynn.

“It was just that it would raise additional complexities,” Lynn says, recalling the rationale that was generally offered, “there’ so much we might be able to agree about, we don’t want to burden you with this contentious issue.”

But Congressman Scott has a more explicit theory for the origins of that directive.

“The fact is, half the committee would have walked out the door if they had decided the discri mination issue,” says Scott, referencing organizations like World Vision. “You can’t keep the coalition together and decide the discrimination issue.”

Joshua Dubois, director the White House faith-based office, did not respond to an interview request for this story.

But Scott has a point. Other religious organizations that sat on the advisory board and would be unlikely to support a policy change included the U.S. Conference on Catholic Bishops, Sojourners, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, all of which signed on to a letter last year urging Congress to preserve their right to discriminatory hiring practices. World Vision was the first signatory of the letter.

Lynn takes Scott’s theory a step further, building on the insight that World Vision president Richard Stearns offered NPR about having to “walk away” from federal grants if the policy were to change.

“I think that this administration is being harangued by the biggest recipients of federal money,” Lynn says.

Justice Delayed
The closest administration officials have come to articulating a policy on what would transgress their values is to say that they will address issues that arise on a “case-by-case basis.”

This was the explanation Joshua Dubois provided to reporters when Obama launched the faith-based office in February of 2009 as well as the one a White House spokesperson offered last month.

“The Department of Justice continues to review this issue on a case-by-case basis,” White House spokespersonShin Inouye said in response to an inquiry from Equality Matters.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. Though Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said under oath that a review of the policy was “ongoing,” he also acknowledged that the Civil Rights Division was not heading up that review.

But Rev. Harry Knox, one of two LGBT people who sat on the 25-member advisor y council, is deeply unsatisfied with the progress on this front. He views the continuation of federally funded discrimination as an unfulfilled campaign promise.

“In my thinking, I feel betrayed because the president said they wouldn’t do it,” Knox says. “He promised in Zanesville that he wouldn’t do it, and he’s doing it.”

Of course, the inherent problem with gauging anything “case by case” is that there’s no articulated standard on which to base a judgment.

“Ask a civil rights lawyer what ‘case-by-case basis’ would mean and I’m sure they would suggest that it’s insulting language,” says Congressman Scott. “To me, the discrimination is illegal or it isn’t.”

As Scott sees it, this policy undermines the moral force of the civil rights legislation of the 1960’s – that certain types of discrimination in hiring were so egregious, so inherently reprehensible, that the federal government would restrict it – not only in federally funded programs but even in private enterprise. But as it stands now, religious organizations that receive taxpayer dollars can practice discrimination while private businesses cannot.

“You cannot possibly make the case that discrimination is inherently reprehensible when it’s going on in government programs,” Scott says. “If you can discriminate in a government-funded program, how can we tell a devoutly religious man down the street what he can’t do with his own money? In essence, you lose your moral authority to enforce any civil rights laws.”

Rabbi Saperstein paints a picture from a taxpayer’s point of view.

“No one should pay their tax dollars only to have the government turn that money over to a for-profit or nonprofit entity that would bar that very taxpayer from employment in that government funded program because of that taxpayer's race, religion, national origin, gender, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation,” Saperstein said at the press conference last month. “That is morally wrong.”
Rev. Lynn agrees.

“This is a staggeringly important civil rights issue to be ignored now for two full years,” he says, adding that it affects people who are nonbelievers, minority religious groups, and the entire LGBT community.

But he says the administration has shown no urgency in addressing the topic, despite the fact that administration officials have repeatedly been engaged on the matter by a broad section of labor leaders, civil rights groups, and progressive religious groups since as far back as Obama’s transition into office.

“This is like a turtle stuck on tar,” Lynn says. “This is not rocket science, this is not getting out of Afghanistan, this is not reforming health care in America. This is a very simple thing: You should not give people money – even religious people money – if they will not hire people based on the quality of their work. If they’re going to apply a religious litmus test, they shouldn’t get a dime.”

Mom And Dad, I'm Gay And Also Stronger Than Both Of You, So Don't Try Any Shit (Satire from The Onion.)

2011-07-26T14:44:00.001-04:00

By Adam Cuneo -

Mom, Dad, there's something we have to talk about. I've been wanting to tell you this for some time, and I want you to know that while I'm fully aware this might be difficult for you to hear, remember, I am still your son, and I love you very much: Mom, Dad, I'm gay, and so help me God, I am stronger than the both of you, and I won't hesitate to beat you back to the Stone Age if you give me any shit about this.
I know this must be tough for you. I understand this isn't how you expected your son to turn out, and I know you might be disappointed, but just remember that I go to the gym seven days a week and can bench-press 275 pounds easy. I take excellent care of my body, so while you can be upset, you better be careful and watch how you handle yourselves here, because if you so much as make a sarcastic remark or do anything to take advantage of how vulnerable I am right now, this will end ugly for the both of you.
Bottom line: I was born this way. It wasn't a choice. It was, however, a choice to develop huge biceps like this, so take a good long look at them before you think of uttering a hurtful or bigoted remark.
Look, I'm not naïve. I know how you feel about homosexuality, because you've been very clear on that subject in the past. That's why it took me so long to tell you. Dad, you've said some very hateful things, not considering for a second that I might be gay, and it hurt. Not nearly as much as it will hurt when I throw you across the room if you ever say any of those shitty things again, but it still stung.
I'm a gay man, and I'm proud of it. I'm also super fast and can lift you both over my head and slam you into the ground, no problem. I've recently incorporated kettlebells into my workout routine, and while I don't expect you to understand the physical impact they've had on my body, I can tell you I've put on at least 15 pounds of sheer muscle since the last time you saw me—certainly enough to take out two homophobic parents in their 60s. Mom, what do you weigh? One hundred fifteen pounds soaking wet? Well, it's going to take a lot more than that to bring me down, I'll tell you that much. I'm 2 percent body fat, have washboard abs, and can do 50 pull-ups in a row easy. Just remember that as we continue this conversation.
You want me to be happy, right? Because I can assure you, you don't want to see me unhappy.
Look, I think both of you have known in your heart of hearts that I was gay. You can deny it all you want, but if you try to do something stupid like convince me that I'm not a homosexual and that this is all somehow in my head, I'll put you in a Jujitsu hold where I can dislocate your shoulder with one little tug. I've been taking mixed martial arts classes at this place in the city, and I'm getting pretty good. I'm actually thinking about competing in a tournament in a few months. The point is, if I can make my opponents submit in less than a minute, imagine what I could do to two arthritic senior citizens. Dad, I love you. I've always craved your approval, but you don't move as fast as you used to. You know it and I know it.
You're probably wondering when this all started. Well, I think I've always known I was different, but in college, when I began to get pretty heavy into weight training and sculpting my hulking physique, I also began experimenting with my sexuality. Does this make you uncomfortable? Well, so will your ribs cracking in half and making it impossible to breathe right for three months, so just sit there and listen, because there's more.
I have been in a relationship with another man for the past two years. You've met him. His name is Tony, and he's not my roommate, he's my boyfriend. We're in love, and if I so much as see a pained expression cross your faces because you're imagining Tony and I together, or because you thought I would marry Jennifer—which was always a completely ridiculous notion—Mom, Dad, I'll literally take you down and start kneeing you in the stomach. I seriously will. Over and over again. Also, Tony is a little stronger than me so I definitely wouldn't mess with him, either.
Tony and I are probably going to get married. Dad? What was that? Were you about to say something? Were you about to open your stupid mouth and say something that could absolutely destroy me emotionally? I didn't think so. That's why I'm going to put you back on the ground now instead of throwing you into the china cabinet. And Mom, stop crying. It's just making me angrier.
Tony and I are going to adopt children. We're going to raise a family. You are going to have grandchildren, and you're going to love them. Dad, you're going to teach them all the things you taught me, and Mom, they're going to call you Grandma, and you are going to be so thrilled to be a major part of their lives that my being gay will be the last thing on your mind.
So come here right now and give me a hug or I'll knock your fucking heads off.

International Gay and Lesbian Association finally wins UN accreditation

2011-07-26T09:05:00.000-04:00

ILGA has won UN accreditation

By Jessica Geen -

The International Gay and Lesbian Association (ILGA) has finally won United Nations accreditation.
The group, which is one of the oldest international organisations fighting for gay rights, has been trying to gain recognition at the UN for years.
Yesterday, countries voted 30-16 to grant the group consultative status to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
ILGA gained consultative status in 1993 but lost it a year later.
Co-secretary general Renato Sabbadini said: “This is a historic day for our organisation, which heals a 17-year-old wound and we want to thank all, really all UN Members who voted in our favour.”
Countries which voted in favour: India, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Norway, Peru, Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary.
Countries which voted against: Iraq, Morocco, Namibia, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, Egypt, Ghana.
Abstentions: Guatemala, Mauritius, Philipines, Rwanda, Bahamas, Ivory Coast

Maryland Governor Says Marriage Equality Bill Will Be an "Administration Priority" in 2012

2011-07-26T08:20:00.000-04:00

By Yusef Najafi -

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley (D) met with Marylanders for Marriage Equality, members of the LGBT legislative caucus, Lt. Governor Anthony G. Brown and others to announce his support for marriage equality legislation in the state in 2012.
"Marylanders of all walks of life want their children to live in a loving, stable, committed home, protected under the law," he said. "[T]he legislation we plan to introduce in the 2012 legislative session will protected religious freedom and equality of martial rights under the law."
What's changed since the bill stalled in this year's legislative session, O'Malley added, was the urgency of this type of legislation, saying that in 2012 it will be a priority and that he would make it an "administration priority."
Brown echoed that sentiment, adding that he's enthusiastic about working with O'Malley and lawmakers to ensure equality for all Marylanders.
"Every member of our community should enjoy the same freedoms and share the same responsibilities," Brown said.
Joining the governor at the podium in the Governor's Reception Room at the Maryland State House in Annapolis was, at one point, Sen. Rich Madaleno (D-Montgomery), who is the only out LGBT state senator and was the lead sponsor of marriage equality legislation during the 2011 session. Madaleno said the governor's announcement created "the second exciting moment" he will experience in the Governor's Reception Room.
"It will only be surpassed by the moment in the next nine months that we will stand here, with your pen in hand, signing into law the marriage equality bill," he said, receiving loud applause.
O'Malley pointed to New York, saying that the state's lawmakers showed that it is possible to protect religious freedoms and provide marriage equality to all of its citizens.
"That's what we are going to do with this bill in the upcoming session."
Although a 2011 marriage equality bill was shelved in the state's House of Delegates, when it was recommitted back to committee, O'Malley says he's optimistic that there is enough time to secure votes for passage of similiar legislation in 2012.
"I'm very optimistic that if all of us work hard and if all of us stay focused on the important principles at stake here -- which are freedom of religion and also equal protection under the law and the dignity of every individual -- that we can pull together the necessary votes for passage."
Asked about his thoughts on a referendum effort for a 2012 marriage equality bill by opponents of it, if it does pass the House and Senate successfully, O'Malley said: "That's their right under our laws."
"That's not my primary focus," he added. "I'm focused on working with this broad coalition to pass marriage equality laws that respect and protect rights equally under the law. What others do in terms of referendum and those sorts of appeals, it's their right, each citizen needs to do their duty under the law as they see it and I'm doing mine as governor as I see it."
Out lesbian Del. Heather Mizeur (D-Montgomery County) said the governor's support of marriage equality legislation will make a great impact during the next legislative session.

"There's no bigger megaphone in the statehouse than the governor," Mizeur said, talking to Metro Weekly after the press conference.

"For him to be the captain of our team is going to be an incredible boost in momentum for the next session and we're going to get this done."

New York Celebrates the Freedom to Marry

2011-07-25T17:00:00.000-04:00

On July 24, 2011, hundreds of couples descended on the New York City Clerk's Office to get their marriage licenses and marry one another. This audio slideshow captures the sights and sounds of this historic day.

Marriage Manners: Navigating Gay and Lesbian Etiquette

2011-07-25T15:05:00.002-04:00

Thomas Roberts, News Anchor and Host of MSNBC, sits down with author Steven Petrow to discuss the first-ever comprehensive etiquette guide for LGBT people in the United States.

New York says 'I do' to gay marriage - in pictures

2011-07-25T10:51:00.000-04:00

Hundreds of gay and lesbian couples wed on the day New York state legalises same-sex marriage.

Another couple embrace on their wedding day in Brooklyn. Gay rights activists are now pushing for neighbouring New Jersey to recognise gay marriage too

Brooklyn couple Maira Vargas (left) and Maira Garcia wait in line to wed on the day same-sex marriage is made legal across New York state

Hundreds of gay and lesbian New Yorkers said 'I do', including long time partners, Carol Anastasio and Mimi Brown (far right)

Phyllis Siegel, 76, kisses her wife Connie Kopelov, 84, after exchanging vows in front of New York City Council speaker Christine C. Quinn. The couple have been together for 23 years

Myron Levine (second from left) and Philip Zinderman emerge into Manhattan, finally married after 51 years together

Wendy Torrington (left) jumps for joy, wedding licence in hand and new wife Kimberley Moreno on her arm

Michael Johnson, 55 (left), and Michael Roberts, 81, embrace after exchanging marriage vows and wedding rings

Douglas Robinson (right) and Michael Elsasser celebrate after their marriage at the Manhattan City Clerk's Office

Anoka-Hennepin School District - Don't Teach, Don't Tell?

2011-07-25T08:03:00.000-04:00

15-yr-old Justin Aaberg & 13-yr-old Samantha Johnson are among the seven suicides in the last two years due to bullying. The Anoka-Hennepin school district said it will keep its policy which says the topic of sexual orientation is not part of the regular curriculum and instructs teachers to remain neutral if the issue comes up in their classrooms.

Mayor Bloomberg Presides Over Ceremony Of His Staffers John Feinblatt & Jonathan Mintz

2011-07-24T21:12:00.000-04:00

Also married today Jo-Ann Shain & Mary Jo Kennedy (together 29 yrs.) And Michael Elsasser & Doug Robinson (together 25 yrs.).

Sen. Dianne Feinstein On Respect For Marriage Act

2011-07-24T15:58:00.000-04:00

Sen. Dianne Feinstein on her bill that repeals the Defense of Marriage Act.

Same-Sex Couples Tie The Knot In New York

2011-07-24T15:40:00.000-04:00

CNN's Susan Candiotti follows one of the many gay couples who became officially married under the state's new law.

The End of Awe

2011-07-24T13:05:00.000-04:00

By Maureen Dowd -

WEDNESDAY found both the British prime minister and the Irish taoiseach passionately addressing their parliaments about the demystified lords of their universes.
Frantically distancing himself from the pope of Fleet Street, David Cameron sardonically assured riled-up lawmakers that he had never seen Rebekah Brooks in her PJs because he had not attended Gordon Brown’s wife’s slumber party at Chequers with Wendi Deng and Elisabeth Murdoch in 2008.
He conceded that he should not have ignored warnings from the palace and elsewhere against bringing a capo from the sulfurous Murdoch gang into his inner circle.
Across the Irish Sea in Dublin, Enda Kenny took on the actual pope, making a blazing speech about the Vatican’s unconscionable behavior in the pedophilia scandal.
After 17 years of revolting revelations, Kenny said the latest report on the Cloyne diocese in County Cork exposed “an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago.”
The report, he said, “excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day. The rape and torture of children were downplayed or ‘managed’ to uphold, instead, the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and ‘reputation.’
“Far from listening to evidence of humiliation and betrayal with St. Benedict’s ‘ear of the heart,’ the Vatican’s reaction was to parse and analyze it with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer. This calculated, withering position being the polar opposite of the radicalism, humility and compassion upon which the Roman church was founded.”
Pulling back the curtain to expose the profane amid the sacred would have been remarkable coming from any leader in one of the many countries scarred by pedophile priests, but from the devoutly Catholic prime minister of a nation whose constitution once enshrined the special position of the church, it was breathtaking.
The Irish were taken aback by the ire of the ordinarily amiable, soft-spoken Kenny, the longest-serving parliamentarian in the land. In his first few months as Taoiseach, the 60-year-old had not given any sign that he could throw such Zeus-style thunderbolts.
But bankrupt and battered Eire, which needed a shot of muscular national pride, was thrilled with his emphatic articulation of their revulsion at the tragedy, and his assertion of Ireland as a sovereign republic not under the thumb of Rome.
“If you look at some of his predecessors, going right back 50 years, they would have been very much of the view that they were Catholics first and politicians second,” said Diarmaid Ferriter, a professor of modern Irish history at University College Dublin.
Sounding like he could have been talking about Rupert Murdoch’s fief as well, Ferriter observed: “There has been this very obvious and planned and hugely arrogant policy of obfuscation and deliberate delaying tactics and complete avoidance of responsibility on the part of the Vatican. They were actually treating the sovereign government of Ireland with complete contempt.”
He added: “We’re fed up with hearing about canon law. This is a Republic, it’s about civil law.”
Garry O’Sullivan, the editor of The Irish Catholic, compared the resonance of the speech to the French revolution, without the violence. “The French Republic didn’t kick out the Catholic Church, but they set up a French Catholic Church and kicked out Rome,” he said. “Kenny has tapped into a vein in the Irish psyche, people saying, ‘Well done for standing up to those bloody bishops and the pope.’ It was lancing a boil.”
Like other elites in shaken Ireland, like the multimillionaire bankers and real estate developers, the church elite is rapidly losing clout. “The mighty have fallen from their thrones,” O’Sullivan said.
Diarmuid Martin, the archbishop of Dublin, who has been frozen out by the Vatican and his fellow Irish bishops for his tender solicitude toward abuse victims, teared up on Irish TV talking about Kenny’s cri de coeur.
What church “cabal” is this in the Vatican or Ireland, he asked, “who try to undermine what is being done, or simply refuse to understand what is being done?”
In Britain and in Ireland, two dictatorial institutions that once dominated with fearsome power are crumbling, brought low by highhanded cultures inured even to crimes against children.
A large part of the strategy of the Vatican and Rupert Murdoch in acquiring power was to create an aura of invincibility, a hallowed mystique. But those mythologies are cracking, and people are no longer afraid to confront these empires’ corrupt practices and vast cover-ups.
It is stirring to watch people who have long been cowed finally speaking up, shedding their fear of the authoritarian men at the top who owed their power to the awe of the people.

NY marriage equality is good for business

2011-07-24T10:41:00.000-04:00

By Bob Witeck -

Bob Witeck advises companies on business trends, demographics and issues of significance to LGBT stakeholders. He is co-founder and CEO of Witeck-Combs Communications, as well as author of "Business Inside Out: Capturing Millions of Brand Loyal Gay Consumers."

(CNN) -- Many New Yorkers and thousands of visitors this weekend may make last month's Gay Pride celebrations seem tepid. Beginning Sunday, New York's same-sex couples will become eligible for marriage licenses. Tens of thousands of those couples are expected to marry over the next few years, and their vows will resonate across America.
New York is the sixth state (plus Washington) to offer marriage equality for same-sex couples. To me, after two decades of consulting with business leaders, this moment truly feels personal. It not only arrives packed with emotion, it is a real game-changer for the American work force.
New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and city leaders must be cheering the economic shot in the arm as hotels, restaurants, caterers, florists and legions of vendors welcome the wedding and honeymoon brigades. Some estimate nearly $400 million in revenues for the state over the next three years.
These rewards are also the result of changing tides among American corporations and employers over recent decades. Gov. Andrew Cuomo's same-sex marriage legislation was endorsed not only by major corporations like Xerox and Google but by scores of smaller business owners across the state.
Why should business leaders care? What's in it for them?

Senate debates Defense of Marriage Act

First, many employers already "get it." Beginning in 1982 with New York's Village Voice, thousands of employers have added spousal-equivalent work benefits including health coverage for their workers with same-sex partners. Today, nearly 60% of Fortune 500 companies do so.
Treating same-sex partners and their families equally with other married couples is today as natural for corporate leaders as ending discrimination on race or ethnicity.
If employers give equal benefits to same-sex couples, why worry about marital status? Ask employers in New Jersey, where same-sex civil unions are the law instead. Civil unions, domestic partnerships and other makeshift legal arrangements offer some measure of legal protection. But real-world experience shows that they do not measure up in crucial ways.
"Marriage lite" not only creates a social apartheid among families, it opens significant gaps, confusion and conflicts that businesses confront in areas such as survivor benefits, pensions and bankruptcies, along with disparate tax treatment at the state and federal level.
Keeping it simple and consistent are important to businesses. The power of New York's business allies suggests that states with civil unions, such as New Jersey, Illinois and Rhode Island, will find the marriage-equality trend appealing and inevitable.
Furthermore, administering payrolls and maintaining accurate, timely benefits and tax withholding procedures can strain any employer. When you add the complexity that accompanies different marital and tax status for many couples, from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and workplace to workplace, it is another unacceptable and costly burden on business.
Sooner rather than later, chambers of commerce will recognize that their best interests are served by the simplicity, uniformity and cost savings that come with marriage equality across the nation.
As more states follow New York, and as independent federal litigation progresses, the likelihood will grow that either federal courts or Congress ultimately will dismantle the so-called Defense of Marriage Act. That law prevents federal recognition of states' same-sex marriage laws and codifies the right of other states to not recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. Simply put, a Kansas employer need not recognize a couple's New York marriage license.
Even in a sluggish economy like ours, successful business performance has an unquenchable appetite for strong human performance and top talent. It is not surprising that some of America's leading companies are actively recruiting and rewarding their openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers and assigning them to more leading and executive roles.
The competition for superior talent goes hand in hand with appealing communities and welcoming cultures. Very few LGBT executives and managers will eagerly await employment transfer, with spouses and children too, to states and cities that insist on denying equal legal protections and stability.
Increasingly, same-sex couples will align their ambitions with their best interests in choosing to live and work in states that offer them the full respect and equal treatment under the law they need and wish for their families.
In fact, in a Harris Poll released this week, 78% of all LGBT adults said that, other factors being equal, they would prefer jobs in states that recognize marriage equality. Nearly half went farther by saying they would even consider declining job promotions if it required a transfer for themselves or their family to a hostile state or jurisdiction.
It's clear that New York and its 19 million residents is the pivot now. With marriage equality ingrained in America's capital of commerce, the trend toward business engagement will also accelerate -- and give us the best example yet of the economic benefits and progress awaiting us.

The Morning After Marriage

2011-07-24T09:30:00.002-04:00

Should the gay community really be saying “I do”?

By Jason Anthony -

Celebrations in the West Village (New York City, June 24, 2011) / Zach Roberts / Flickr(cc)

On the night of June 24, 2011, just before Governor Cuomo signed New York’s marriage equality bill into law, some friends and I made our way over to the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. There, we danced in the street.
We weren’t alone. There were hundreds of us, and more by the minute. It was a riot, but an amiable riot. Television crews were there in force. The cops came, too, and half-heartedly corralled the crowd with portable gates until we became too massive, too jubilant. Tourists came by, straight couples with baby strollers, men in outrageous drag, lesbians from the outer boroughs, and each new wave begot more joy, more dancing.
The night of June 28, 1969, wasn’t far from anyone’s mind—that night when adrenaline-jacked transexuals and hustlers confronted a corrupt police force’s routine harassment of the Stonewall’s LGBT patrons. That night, an earlier generation took our struggle to the streets. They swung their purses, swore like sailors, started fires, overturned cars, resisted arrest, and met the beatings and billy clubs with kick lines and high camp. Our modern gay rights moment started there just 40 years ago, and now, somehow, the cops and the governor are on our side.
A neat bookend to history? Maybe. If equality in marriage is the final liberation promised by that outrageous rebellion, then we’ve done well. National gay organizations wielded our economic and political capital, and brought same-sex marriage into reality with sloganeering, organizing, browbeating, and financing as adept as any other interest groups’.
But a few days ago, in the lulls between cheers, as the cameras panned away from the crowd, thoughtful conversations broke out here and there among strangers, as they are wont to do around midnight in the streets of New York. Under the jubilant wave there was a subtle undertow, a force pulling against this rush to the altar. Had marriage been the right goal after all, we wondered entre nous? One Brooklynite who had badgered the senators for weeks put it succinctly: “I did it for all of you queens. Marriage ain’t for me.”

• • •

Happy supporters of same-sex marriage are all alike, but each of us that is unhappy is unhappy in his or her own way. Many eloquent perspectives have surfaced from our ranks. In The New York Times, Katherine Franke worries that the option of marriage may morph into a practical mandate and wonders whether the intrusion of the state and the church into our uniquely wrought relationships is something we ought to cheer about. Hilton Als in the New Yorker suggests that aping straight marriage signals the increasing blandness of being queer and of New York in general. Other essays from recent years outline further objections. Lisa Dettmer demonstrates how the marriage movement has drained the coffers of the biggest nonprofit players in the gay world at the expense of many other worthy causes and that marriage will have an outsized benefit for wealthy, white gays and lesbians.
Perhaps the most touching essay on the subject is by Mark Greif, writing a few months before the last marriage bill failed in the New York Senate in 2009. He passionately extols the utopian moment that the gay movement once seemed to promise, during the flamboyantly life-affirming standoff at Stonewall. He can’t bring himself to see why, 40 years down the road, gays would settle for chasing down an institution that even heterosexuals seem to value less and less with each passing year. “Here is marriage,” he says.

The division of humanity into closed couples, when modernity has given us a chance at something much better—affiliation by manifold currents of love, interest, and likeness . . . . Marriage is lye poured upon the petri dish of the new relations of erotic sociality.

Ah, that utopian moment. While the reality it gave rise to was far from perfect, the queer era has indeed seen a vigorous, breathtakingly inventive exploration—a Cambrian explosion—of emotional and sexual combinations. Even among my apparently conventional circle of friends—comprised by day of bankers, editors, teachers, psychologists, and other average Joes—one finds a robust gamut: friends who are sometimes lovers, former lovers who are now best friends, PLPs (platonic life partners), the odd “thruple” (polyamorists that come in handy packs of three), inventively non-monogamous couples. And, of course, those rare birds forever fated to be together for whom marriage fits just fine.

What about the many other blessed varieties of human love to which we gays and lesbians gave birth?

The field in which this mishmash of romantic ties grows is worth noting: a robust found family of enduring friendships. These powerful networks are unspeakably important to us. They come into play sometimes to replace traditional nuclear families, and they in turn nurture our romantic experiments and absorb our failures. In Dancing in the Streets, a raucous history of collective joy, author Barbara Ehrenreich laments, “We have a rich language for describing the emotions drawing one person to another . . . . [but] what we lack is any way of describing the ‘love’ that may exist among dozens of people at a time.” Queer families like mine have been inventing those words for decades.
The question is this: will these extended queer families exist in the future, to continue their pioneering tightrope walks over those universally prickly fields of jealousy, intimacy, adventure, and security? Once the rosy crown of marriage is on the table, won’t there be a powerful incentive to leave our relationship experiments behind? And if marriage equality launches a widespread flight to the culturally sanctioned form of partnership, have we lost a history and a field of experience that the rest of the world might well have benefited from?

• • •

Another twist on objection—a seemingly perverse twist, in light of similar objections from the religious right—but I question whether embracing marriage is the spiritually and morally right thing for gays to do. I have intermittently made my living writing about religion and therefore witnessed a great deal of religious activity. In churches, synagogues, and mosques, something fundamentally restorative happens—mostly, I think, because the communities that meet there are so like queer families. Congregants make a simple commitment to be there for one another. By this act, if nothing else, they offer absolution for the many failings of the individual. Perhaps this is why the religious, according to research reported by political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell in American Grace (2010), test as happier and more involved and invested citizens. Religion has gotten a bad rap for being exclusionary, but some of us still celebrate it as an unmatched social tonic.

Jason Anthony discusses his project “The Ten Year Game.”

That said, gay marriage may cause the greatest quake in the history of Judeo-Christian religion since the Protestant Reformation. A straightforward reading of Leviticus and Romans shows that a government siding with same-sex partnerships is a gauntlet thrown down to the Judeo-Christian tradition. A line in the sand has been crossed.
To be fair, society crosses these lines often. Women have spoken in church, despite Paul’s strictures. Slavery eventually passed away, though slaves in the New Testament are advised to be obedient. But the homosexuality debate is, to my mind, of an entirely different degree. On other social issues of our day, early Christians were a liberal vanguard. They promoted the radical message that, in spiritual life, “there is neither . . . slave nor free, male nor female.” Not so with homosexuality. Same-sex carnality falls unequivocally afoul of early Christian morality, just as it does with that of nearly every venerated holy text worldwide.
In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James points out that, time and again, societies take drastic steps when the will of the people conflicts with religious values. Deities get discarded when they fall out of step with popular morality.

So soon as [the fruits of the deity] conflicted with indispensible human ideals, or thwarted too extensively other values; so soon as they appeared childish, contemptible, or immoral when reflected on, the deity grew discredited, and was erelong neglected and forgotten.

From the decadence and blood sacrifice of the pagan god-emperors that inspired the founding of Christianity to the excesses of the sixteenth-century church that led to the Reformation, new morals mean trouble for the spiritual status quo.
Fine, for those who can do without faith. But others, like myself, who value our shared architectures of morality and meaning may wonder what lies ahead. Will the LGBT world assimilate with our marriages and our normalized families to the Christian moral tradition—or might we represent some kind of Jamesian next chapter?
Our acceptance, let’s remember, was contingent on society deciding that consenting adults may choose their own kind of love. Is this the nature of the gift that we are meant to bring the future? If so, is fighting for marriage, and only marriage, in some sense a moral failure? What about the many other blessed varieties of human love to which, during our forty years in the wilderness, we gays and lesbians gave birth?

Is having a boyfriend suddenly not good enough? Is sharing an apartment, a dog, and utilities suddenly second-class?

Some argue that marriage is simply a matter of paperwork between consenting adults. If LGBT couples want to receive the considerations in taxation, hospital visitation, etc. enjoyed by their heterosexual counterparts, they should be able to. And no supporter of same-sex marriage disagrees there. But in your experience, how many marriages, even among die-hard secularists, are nothing more than a signature in city hall during a lunch break?
Marriages are high moments of meaning, where we come together to measure ourselves against the best of our love and loyalty. They happen in places that we set apart. In them, we define how we think, relate, and value as a society.
And perhaps by making our rallying call a traditional, one-size-fits all model for love, we have failed to bring back from our exile the moral lessons that the world was meant to learn.

• • •

These and more thoughts ran through my head after I biked home from our friendly riot. I couldn’t help but feel a little blue. On a less abstract level, what did this end-of-an-era mean for me?
For one, here was yet another way to disappoint my mother. The day before, I was a happy gay man, between relationships. Now, unmarried at the age of 40, was I a spinster? Another friend had raised a similar point when we asked if he intended to propose to his boyfriend of several years. Was having a boyfriend suddenly not good enough? Was sharing an apartment, a dog, and utilities suddenly second-class? Were none of us valid without a trip to City Hall and a nod from Albany?

Crowd gathers in front of the Stonewall Inn (New York City, June 24, 2011) / Zach Roberts / Flickr(cc)

I also couldn't help but worry about younger gays. Well, worry and feel incredibly jealous. In the unabashed strut of each new gay generation, I see something gained and something lost. Sure, they’re so comfortable in their skin, taking same-sex dates to prom, seeing queers on every cable station, and, now, dreaming about white weddings.
Who could wish any exclusion on them? But isn’t it exclusion that has made me the man I am? My friends and I fought for a voice during Reagan’s silence about AIDS. We supported our military brothers and sisters through the humiliations of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Do the young ones even belong to the same species as we who Acted Up; who walked, outnumbered by protestors, in small-town marches; and who built our own queer homes and networks when we went years or decades or a lifetime without acceptance from our biological families?
And what will these younger gays miss out on? Being gay defined my choices. It was why I took a trek across America, living out of my car, determined to meet my country in a brand new skin. It was why I worked in an abortion clinic. It was why, today, I volunteer in a homeless shelter. Exclusion radicalized my politics, taught me humility, helped me to question authority and stand up for others. Without those lessons, what happens to us? Will the ghettos turn into shopping malls? Will the twinks go young Republican?

• • •

What’s done is done. No one—on this side, anyway—is actually angry about same-sex marriage. It’s complicated, but it’s the future. I’ll happily try to catch the bouquet at my pals’ weddings. Maybe someday I’ll even tie the knot myself and regain some of that ransom of flatware I’ve been bullied into parceling out to my straight friends through the years.
I recently decided to set my thoughts about marriage in line with those of a well-qualified source: Georges Feydeau, the great Belle Epoque writer of French farce. His plays followed a simple logic: tragedy ends in death; comedy ends in marriage; and farce is the tragedy that begins with marriage.
This equation is less brutal than it sounds. Marriage is never a happy ending in and of itself. It’s the beginning of a new road, with fresh strains of heartbreak, a little absurdity, and its own surprising beauty. On the morning after this legislative victory, it probably pays to be neither too pessimistic nor too misty about what a handful of rice can do. Marriage itself is an experiment, no matter who takes it on. And the LGBT wedding dance is far from over.

A historic change in New York: Same sex marriage is now legal

2011-07-24T06:38:00.000-04:00

By Paul Riede -

David Lassman / The Post-StandardMonti Willett (left) and Donna Stork at their home in Fayetteville. They plan to get a marriage license today.

Syracuse, NY - In 1988, Monti Willett and Donna Stork, now of Fayetteville, were married by an Episcopal priest in Erie, Pa.
As far as the state of Pennsylvania was concerned, it didn’t count.
A few years later, after they moved to Colorado, they walked into Denver’s City Hall and got a certificate declaring them “companions.” It gave them no extra rights, but it at least acknowledged their relationship, Willett said.
Three years ago, when they were thinking of moving to New Jersey, they had another wedding there. It provided some legal protection, but still no official marriage.
Today, in Syracuse, their long quest for full recognition will end. The couple, who have been together for 42 years, plan to drive to City Hall and pick up a license for a marriage that will be entirely legal in the state of New York.
“It’s something I believe we should have been able to do right along,” said Willett, 64. “As far as I’m concerned, I am as married as I could be; we’ve made our vows to each other. But I do want the legal status.”
Couples will be claiming that status today across the state. Clerks’ offices in Syracuse, Ithaca and a number of other cities and towns will be open for a historic piece of business — granting permission for gay and lesbian couples to enter into marriages equal in the state’s eyes to those of heterosexual couples.
New York will become the sixth and largest state in the nation to recognize those marriages, and many couples are eager to exercise their new rights.
Syracuse City Clerk John Copanas, whose office will be open on a Sunday for the first time in at least two decades, says he expects at least 15 to 20 couples to pick up licenses between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. A few are expected to seek waivers from the usual 24-hour waiting period and actually tie the knot today.
Most will wait, which will give them time to plan weddings many of them have dreamed of for years. Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner has so far agreed to officiate three same-sex marriages over the next few months. The Rev. Kathleen Waters, of Plymouth Congregational Church in Syracuse, said she has been approached by more than half a dozen couples asking for her help in arranging their ceremonies.
Four Central New York couples are among 42 couples who have signed up for a group marriage in Niagara Falls on Monday. They include Ken Greenleaf and Richard Baker, of Watertown, who have been together 12 years and have been waiting almost that long for this opportunity.
“It just makes us feel complete now, you know? Marriage is a human right,” said Greenleaf, 45, a school custodian, adding, “We have the right to be as miserable as everyone else.”
The Niagara Falls ceremony is part of a statewide effort to celebrate same-sex marriage as an economic development opportunity. The event is being coordinated by the Niagara Tourism and Convention Corp. as a way to “reinvent Niagara USA as a premier marriage and honeymoon destination.”
Meanwhile, the state’s I Love NY tourism arm has launched a campaign to draw same-sex couples to New York by promoting wedding and honeymoon packages. Last week, the Syracuse Convention and Visitors Bureau emailed 60 hotels, motels and B&Bs in the area urging them to put together deals to be posted on the ILOVENY.com and visitsyracuse.org websites.
Today has special meaning for Ithaca Mayor Carolyn Peterson, who took office in 2004 at a time when calls for legalizing same-sex marriage were particularly intense. She called then for legalization, and as a form of protest, she ordered that any applications for marriage licenses for same-sex couples be accepted by the city and forwarded to the state — where they were summarily rejected.
It is a stand that earned her dozens of threats from people across the country.
Now, as she is planning to leave office in December, Peterson will perform at least three same-sex weddings in City Hall this week — one involving city Councilwoman Jennifer Dotson.
“It’s very moving, and very exciting for the city,” Peterson said.
In Albany, Mayor Jerry Jennings planned to marry up to 10 same-sex couples at 12:01 a.m. today in the city’s Common Council chambers.
In New York City, 823 couples entered a lottery set up by the city to ensure that clerk’s offices would not be overwhelmed by people wanting to get married. Although the city initially set the limit at 764, all of the 823 couples will be accommodated.
Also in the city, a plan hatched by a few friends to provide a couple of free weddings in Central Park has turned into a major event.
Josh French, a Brooklyn man who is the son of the Rev. Craig French, pastor of University United Methodist Church in Syracuse, told The Post-Standard he and a few friends decided to float their idea on Facebook. Before long they had requests from 75 couples who wanted to be married and a number of companies volunteering to help.
Today, 24 couples will be married in individual ceremonies at the group’s two “pop-up chapels” at the Columbus Circle entrance to Central Park. They will get free styling and touch-ups and wedding photographs before their ceremonies. After, they will be given a basket of cupcakes and champagne for their own “mini-wedding receptions” in the park.
“I don’t even know how many press people we’re expecting, but we’ve already had questions about where to park the AP satellite truck,” French said.
In a reminder that the marriage equality law won’t in itself end discrimination against gays and lesbians, one Syracuse couple who had considered getting married today changed their minds after thinking over the possible consequences. The couple asked that their names be withheld from this story because they frequently hear discriminatory comments.
Last week, one of them came out of a local store to find a man standing in back of their car, which sports the bumper sticker, “I Support Gay Marriage.” He spat on the ground twice, got in his car and drove away.
The couple decided that getting married today would draw too much attention to them and could hurt the business they run in the city.
Couples arriving at City Hall today will get a far different reception from the local group CNY Pride, whose members plan to greet them with flowers. The couples will also be given blue-and-white “Just Married” sashes by a representative of the New York City-based Empire State Pride Agenda. The group had 1,500 of the sashes made and will be handing them out to couples seeking licenses across the state, spokeswoman Erica Pelletreau said.
“The point of it actually is just to celebrate and do something fun,” she said. “It’s a big deal, not just for the individual couples, but for the broader community.”

Across New York, a Weekend of Parties and Wedding Bells

2011-07-23T15:09:00.001-04:00

Niagra Falls , NY gets their rainbow on!

By THOMAS KAPLAN -

Hundreds of gay and lesbian couples across New York State plan to marry on Sunday, the culmination of a long battle in the Legislature and a new milestone for gay rights advocates seeking to legalize same-sex marriage around the nation.

The first marriages were scheduled to take place just after midnight in Niagara Falls, where officials planned to illuminate the famous cascade in the colors of a rainbow, and in Albany, where an eager mayor planned to marry eight gay couples.

In New York City, 823 couples signed up in advance to get marriage licenses on Sunday, and many of those couples were expected to marry minutes later in city clerk’s offices across the five boroughs. Officials from more than a dozen cities and towns from Buffalo to Brookhaven said they would open their offices to issue marriage licenses on Sunday, and more than 100 judges across the state have volunteered to officiate at the couples’ weddings on the spot.

“This is long overdue,” said Mayor Matthew T. Ryan of Binghamton, who planned to preside at the wedding of at least two local couples, and who invited same-sex couples from Pennsylvania, and from New York City, to come to his city to be married. “It really is a great day for all of us who believe in inclusiveness and equal rights for everybody.”

The weddings — businesslike ceremonies in fluorescent-lit city offices for some, lavish catered affairs for others — represent the end of a political campaign that lasted for years. On June 24, the State Senate voted 33 to 29 to approve same-sex marriage, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed it into law that night, but the law did not take effect for 30 days, which is why Sunday is the first day that clerk’s offices were permitted to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

“As the hours tick by, we’re getting more and more excited,” Brian Banks, a 33-year-old middle-school special-education teacher from Albany, said on Friday after going to City Hall there to fill out paperwork. Mr. Banks planned to marry his partner of seven years, Jon Zehnder, 37, a high school math teacher, at the midnight ceremony in Albany on Sunday. “Even though we’ve always viewed ourselves as married, to have there be no asterisk next to it, it’ll just feel really good,” he said.

Not everyone will be celebrating. Town clerks in at least two rural communities have resigned in recent days, saying their religious convictions precluded them from marrying gay couples, and some cities will see public demonstrations on Sunday. The National Organization for Marriage is planning protests on Sunday afternoon at the State Capitol; outside Mr. Cuomo’s office in Midtown Manhattan; and in the two largest cities upstate, Buffalo and Rochester.

But a sampling of pastors in the New York City area found that most did not intend to discuss same-sex marriage in their Sunday sermons. At St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, for example, the homilist planned to speak on other subjects. “There may not be much more to say at this point,” Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said.

New York is the sixth, and largest, state with legalized same-sex marriage. Several other states are considering following suit, and on Sunday, some gay-rights activists plan to gather in Hoboken to call on New Jersey lawmakers to follow New York’s lead and allow gay couples to wed. But most states have either laws or constitutional amendments barring same-sex marriage, and federal law bars the United States government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

“It’s a huge step forward, and yet it doesn’t erase the fact that there’s so many roadblocks facing advocates of marriage equality,” said George Chauncey, a historian at Yale and the author of “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940.”

“Most of the time, an awful lot of the nation doesn’t want to be like New York at all,” Mr. Chauncey said. “I suspect that many people will take this as one more sign of what happens in the Northeast, and in New York in particular, that they don’t want to have happen in their own communities.”

Larry Kramer, the playwright and longtime gay rights activist, said that for as long as the federal government continues not to recognize same-sex marriages, the celebration in New York on Sunday would be misguided.“These marriages, in whichever state, are what I call feel-good marriages,” Mr. Kramer said. “Compared to the benefits heterosexual marriages convey, gay marriages are an embarrassment — that we should accept so little, and with so much hoopla of excitement and self-congratulation.”

“These marriages, in whichever state, are what I call feel-good marriages,” Mr. Kramer said. “Compared to the benefits heterosexual marriages convey, gay marriages are an embarrassment — that we should accept so little, and with so much hoopla of excitement and self-congratulation.”

But many activists, both opposed to and in support of same-sex marriage, saw legalization in New York as a significant development, in part because of the size and visibility of the state, and in part because of its symbolism — the modern gay rights movement traces its symbolic emergence to the Stonewall riot in New York City in 1969.

“When you think that a decade ago the number was zero, it just shows what a powerful step forward this represents,” said Evan Wolfson, the founder and president of Freedom to Marry, a gay rights group. “It gives us tremendous momentum for continuing the journey the country has been on toward fairness.”

Whatever the historical implications — and however the push to legalize same-sex marriage fares in the other states where advocates plan to shift their focus — there will be no shortage of celebration, and protest, on Sunday and in the days to follow.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg plans to officiate at the wedding of two senior City Hall officials at a ceremony at Gracie Mansion, while Mr. Cuomo is hosting a party for gay rights advocates and lawmakers in New York City.

In Brooklyn, the borough president, Marty Markowitz, plans to open Borough Hall for a marathon series of weddings, complete with free cake and Champagne.

Outside the city clerk’s office in Lower Manhattan, rabbis from a synagogue in the West Village plan to solemnize weddings under a rainbow-colored huppah, or Jewish wedding canopy. And two gay puppets, Rod and Ricky, from the Tony Award-winning play “Avenue Q,” plan to stage a mock wedding as well.

And there are a variety of same-sex wedding celebrations, some with commercial or promotional overtones, planned over the next days and months.

On Monday night, three gay couples will wed on stage at the St. James Theater after the evening’s performance of the Broadway musical “Hair.” On Saturday, two dozen couples will marry inside two pop-up chapels that are to be installed in Central Park. And the Fire Island Pines resort is now peddling three same-sex wedding packages, one of which features a private ferry ride “complete with your own crew of drag queens.”

President Obama Certifies DADT Repeal!

2011-07-22T16:04:00.000-04:00

By Michael Cole-Schwartz -

After hearing from senior military leaders that repeal posed no threat to the armed forces, President Obama certified the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” His signature of the certification sets in motion the open service of lesbian, gay and bisexual troops. The certification step was part of the legislation he signed in December and now after a 60 day period built into the law, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” will be a relic of the past.
HRC President Joe Solmonese released the following statement:
“For far too long, the ban on openly gay service members has harmed our security and tarnished our values. The President’s certification of repeal is a monumental step, not just for those forced to lie in order to serve, but for all Americans who believe in fairness and equality.
“There are many people who brought this historic day to fruition starting with the President’s tremendous leadership and the steadfast allies in Congress who refused to give in to the lies and fear mongering. Additionally we thank all of the brave men and women who have continued to wear the uniform under a policy that forced them to hide who they are. The end of that shameful time is thankfully near.”

Congratulations New York! Gay & Lesbian Couples to Begin Marrying

2011-07-22T11:07:00.002-04:00

On Sunday, July 24th gay and lesbian couples will begin marrying in New York State. Two of Lambda Legal's former plaintiff couples will be among the first to marry in New York City. Director of Constitutional Litigation Susan Sommer discusses Lambda Legal's history fighting for marriage equality in New York.

UK begins documentation of gay asylum cases

2011-07-22T10:04:00.000-04:00

By Nan Hunter -

UK authorities have begun inputting information on sexuality-based asylum claims into the Central Information Database of the UK Border Agency (UKBA).

From LGBT Asylum News:

The UK joins only five other countries which record data on the number of LGBT persons benefiting from asylum/subsidiary protection due to persecution on the ground of sexual orientation: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Latvia and Estonia...
After the Supreme Court decision one year ago that ended 'go home and be discrete', the UKBA said they would collect data on LGBT asylum but Immigration Minister Damien Green said earlier this year that this wouldn't happen because of "disproportionate cost".

UKBA has made no official announcement but we understand that retiring manager Bill Brandon (Deputy Director, NAM+ Quality and Learning; Refugee Integration and Resettlement) told a event organised by the law firm Mischon de Reja last month about the developments on data and auditing...

UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group (UKLGIG), which works with LGBT asylum seekers, have been lobbying on the issue for some time and in the last 12 months has held discussions with the Home Office on several occasions...

Anecdotal evidence is of increasing disbelief that applicants are lesbian or gay and this website has documented poor decision making in a number of cases. [UKLGIG Group Manager Erin] Power has acknowledged that this is a concern for UKLGIG, telling The Guardian: "It has always been difficult to prove but more frequently now, people are not being believed."..

The Home Office says that:
"The government has made it clear that it is committed to stopping the removal of asylum seekers who have genuinely had to leave particular countries because of their sexual orientation or gender identification."
However... there are serious concerns about a decreasing availability of specialised legal advice due to legal aid cuts and the collapse (due to those cuts, it is claimed) of the two biggest providers of legal services to asylum seekers.

The Immigration Law Practitioners Association told The Guardian that:

"The sensible thing to do would be to review cases of removal. When you get to a point where you have to put someone on a plane for removal, you should get their file out and make sure there's nothing of concern. They should check they have not claimed on the grounds of being gay, because they know that there was an important decision in the court which may be relevant."

Says Power:

"Obviously there is no point in collecting the stats if they don't look at them and see if there has been any change in decisions - hence the audit."

"There are still some concerns which we can look at when we see the results of the audit."

The government has specifically ruled out other measures which would help LGBT asylum seekers. It will not exclude sexuality-based claims from 'fast track' decision making - as some other categories of claim are - despite Damien Green in a letter to Dr Hywel Francis MP, the Chair of the House of Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights, accepting that they "can raise complex and specific issues based on cultural differences and the possible trauma of the individual concerned."

'Fast track' claims are far harder to win because legal options are dramatically reduced and people - often traumatised from torture and other bad treatment, as Green acknowledges - are invariably detained.

In the letter to Francis, Green refers to Stonewall's report 'No Going Back' - however that report made 21 recommendations, which went far beyond training of staff. For example, the report discusses the effect of the dispersal system on LGBT asylum seekers who are sent to towns where it is impossible to access appropriate and safe support. They are often forced to live with people who do not accept them and several reports have found that they can be at risk of violence. We are aware of cases where UKBA has been asked to move LGBT asylum seekers closer to sources of support but has refused.

Green does acknowledge criticism of the crucial 'country information' on which many case decisions hang. In particular, he acknowledges the criticism made by the Shadow Foreign Secretary in the 'BN' Ugandan case that that country's information was two years old and made no reference to LGBT. In the letter he notes that at the time of writing only three country reports made any reference (since he wrote new Uganda guidance has been published which does include LGBT issues, however problems remain with its contents).

Green says in the letter that other work is "in hand" to address the (wide ranging) issues raised in Stonewall's report - but it is not in any of the plans published by the Home Office (and the department's business plan covers the entire life of this parliament).

for more from Nan visit Hunter for Justice.

DADT certifications expected Friday

2011-07-22T06:54:00.000-04:00

By Lisa Keen -

President Obama is scheduled to meet with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen Friday afternoon (July 22) and reports are circulating that the meeting could be to discuss certification of military readiness to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
The Los Angeles Times and other media reported late Thursday that two Pentagon officials said Panetta and Mullen would announced Friday that the two can certify military readiness to Congress –one of the stipulations for enacting repeal of the federal law banning openly gay people from service. The repeal law passed in December also requires the president to submit written certification to Congress of military readiness.
After all three submit their certifications, a 60-day clock must tick down before repeal is actually implemented.
The Washington Post noted that Panetta is to be sworn in as Defense secretary, replacing retired Secretary Robert Gates, on Friday at the Pentagon in northern Virginia. ABC News reported that the certification announcement will take place at the Pentagon shortly after Panetta is sworn in.
The White House official schedules indicate that Vice President Joe Biden will swear in Panetta at 11 a.m. and that President Obama will meet with Panetta and Mullen at 2:45 p.m. EDT.
The White House schedule does not indicate the topic of the afternoon meeting and notes the meeting is closed to the press.

Official: Pentagon set to certify repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell'

2011-07-22T02:55:00.000-04:00

By Chris Lawrence -

CNN) -- The Pentagon is set to certify that the U.S. military is prepared to accept openly gay and lesbian service members, and doing so will not harm military readiness, a U.S. official told CNN on Thursday.
According to the official, who spoke on condition of not being identified, an announcement of that certification -- which is required to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy -- is likely to come Friday.
Under a bill passed last year that set up a process for repealing the controversial policy, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, along with President Barack Obama, have to sign a certification that confirms the military's ability to accept the integration of openly gay and lesbian troops.
Even after certification, there will be a 60-day waiting period before the repeal is fully implemented.
In a statement Thursday, one of the leading groups advocating for repeal, Servicemembers United, said it had expected Panetta to act on certification after assessing the situation since he succeeded Robert Gates as defense secretary on July 1.
"We are glad to see that just three weeks into his tenure as secretary of defense, he (Panetta) is already confident that this policy change can take place with little or no disruption to military readiness," said the Servicemembers United statement.
Repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy would end a convoluted legal battle led by human rights and gay rights groups.
A gay rights group -- the Log Cabin Republicans -- had sued over the 18-year-old ban on openly gay and lesbian members serving in the U.S. armed forces.
In September U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips declared the military's ban to be unconstitutional and demanded the government immediately stop enforcing it.
U.S. officials have been moving ahead with dismantling "don't' ask, don't tell" but had objected to having the courts force the government to officially repeal it.
The case put the Obama administration in an unusual position of supporting a repeal but at the same time filing court motions to prevent it from happening faster than planned.
Last week, a federal appeals court temporarily reinstated the policy, but banned the military services from investigating or discharging anyone under the rule.
The 9th U.S. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in California issued the order late Friday after the Obama administration asked it to reconsider its recent order temporarily blocking the policy.
On Thursday, the Log Cabin Republicans filed a legal challenge to the appellate court's temporary reinstatement of the policy, arguing that the unconstitutional statute would continue to harm the rights of gay and lesbian service members until it was fully repealed.

President Obama nominates gay L.A. lawyer to U.S. District Court

2011-07-22T01:46:00.000-04:00

President Obama announced Wednesday that he is nominating Los Angeles attorney Michael Walter Fitzgerald to serve as a judge on the federal court for the Central District of California.
Fitzgerald, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the seven-county Central District that includes Los Angeles, would be the first openly gay judge on the U.S. District Court for the region and the only one in the state after the recent resignation of Judge Vaughn Walker from the San Francisco-based Northern District.
Fitzgerald, 51, "will serve the people of California with distinction on the District Court bench," Obama said in the statement announcing his choice for one of the busiest courts in the nation.

A congressional source familiar with the vetting process that forwarded Fitzgerald as a potential nominee said he didn't expect to see much resistance at Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings to the president's choice on the basis of Fitzgerald's sexual orientation because he has broad experience as a prosecutor and "stands on his own merits." Fitzgerald is a graduate of Harvard University and UC Berkeley's Boalt School of Law. He has been in private practice with the downtown law firm Corbin Fitzgerald & Athey in recent years.

Tori Spelling gay Hoarders spoof

2011-07-21T19:05:00.001-04:00

Tori Spelling stars in a Funny or Die spoof on cable channel A&E's reality series Hoarders

Stephen Colbert - It Gets Better

2011-07-21T12:58:00.000-04:00

The host of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert has a message for LGBT youth: "It Gets Better."

Sen. Chris Coons (DE): DOMA says it's OK for the government to discriminate

2011-07-21T12:15:00.001-04:00

July 20, 2011 -- "I'm tired of it being the law of this land that it's ok for the government to discriminate against Americans solely because of their gender identity or sexual orientation," Senator Chris Coons said, at the landmark Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to consider new legislation that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

Williams Institute analyzes the impact of DoMA

2011-07-21T09:34:00.000-04:00

By Nan Hunter -

The Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Policy at UCLA just published this excellent report analyzing the demographic, economic, legal and social effects of DoMA. The report was requested by staff of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary in anticipation of its hearing today on S. 598, a bill that would effectively repeal Section 3 of DoMA by providing recognition under federal law for marriages that were valid where they were entered into.

The legal effects of DoMA include:

· Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Benefits. Nearly 430,000 same-sex partners remain barred from taking leave to care for a same-sex spouse under the FMLA, regardless of whether they marry.

· Benefits for Spouses of Federal Employees. The same-sex partners of more than 30,000 federal employees are ineligible for the benefits available to different-sex married spouses.

· Veteran Partner Benefits. Same-sex partners of nearly 68,000 veterans are barred from a variety of benefits including pensions, educational assistance, and vocational training available to different-sex spouses.

· Taxation of Employee Health Benefits for a Same-Sex Spouse. When private employers offer health insurance to same-sex spouses and domestic partners, because of DOMA, federal law taxes these benefits. Approximately 41,000 employees with a same-sex spouse or domestic partner pay, on average, over $1,000 more in taxes per year than an employee receiving the same health benefits for a different-sex spouse.

· Spousal Impoverishment Protections for Medicaid Long Term Care (LTC). Medicaid LTC beneficiaries may have to use some of their spouse’s income and assets to pay for LTC. Federal law require states to allow different-sex spouses to retain income and assets to protect them from destitution. However, about 1,700-3,000 individuals whose same-sex partners receive Medicaid-financed LTC are not protected by these spousal impoverishment provisions.

· Estate Tax. Over the next two years, members of same-sex couples who will pay the federal estate tax, will pay, on average, more than $4 million more than a survivor of a different-sex spouse because they do not qualify for the federal estate tax spousal exemption.

· Social Security Survivor Benefits. Unlike different-sex spouses, same-sex spouses cannot continue receiving their partner’s social security payments after their partner’s death. This results in a loss, on average, of more than $5,700 for a same-sex partner that receives lower social security payments than the deceased spouse.

· Immigration for Bi-National Couples. Nearly 26,000 same-sex couples in the United States are bi-national couples who could be forced to separate because they cannot participate in green-card and accelerated citizenship mechanisms offered to non-citizen spouses of American citizens.

[Disclaimer: I'm listed as one of the authors, but it's a generous credit. The document is a compilation of the work of many people.]

You can watch the full hearing here.

for more from Nan visit Hunter for Justice.

Lawrence O'Donnell - Focus On The Family Busted For Lying At Doma Hearing By Sen. Al Franken

2011-07-21T02:47:00.002-04:00

Lawrence O'Donnell talks with Jennifer Chrisler from Family Equality Council.

Witnesses Give Personal Accounts of DOMA Consequences

2011-07-20T17:28:00.000-04:00

Evan Wolfson testimony on Capital Hill

2011-07-20T15:31:00.000-04:00

White House Briefing - LGBT Issues - July 19, 2011

2011-07-20T12:46:00.000-04:00

White House press secretary Jay Carney takes questions from Chris Geidner of Metro Weekly on July 19, 2011.

Senator Al Franken

2011-07-20T12:39:00.001-04:00

Al Franken fabulously calling out a bigot at the DOMA hearing today!

Erica & Tevonda: New Jersey Marriage

2011-07-20T12:14:00.000-04:00

Meet Erica and Tevonda, plaintiffs in Lambda Legal's marriage equality lawsuit in New Jersey. Together 4 years, Erica and Tevonda are raising their 3-month year old son, Teverico, in North Plainfield and were forced to get a second-parent adoption to ensure legal protection of their son because of civil unions' unequal status. To learn more about the case and send a note of support to the couples, visit www.lambdalegal.org/nj-marriage

BREAKING: Obama endorses Respect for Marriage Act!

2011-07-19T14:57:00.003-04:00

Dear Terrence,

After over 25,000 of you signed a petition to President Obama asking him to endorse the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal DOMA, today White House Press Secretary Jay Carney announced the President will endorse the bill! This -- the White House endorsing legislation that has yet to pass either house of Congress -- is extremely rare, and marks the urgency with which the President wants to see DOMA erased forever.

Can you make a contribution today so we can press more senators to follow Obama's lead and endorse the Respect of Marriage Act? Tens of thousands of same-sex couples are depending on it.

Terrence, tomorrow is the first-ever Congressional hearing on whether to repeal DOMA. This morning, we held a press conference with Sen. Feinstein to highlight the stories of same-sex couples who are punished even though they broke no law, and we generated press coverage from California to Maine. Together, we've targeted four Senators who did not support the Respect for Marriage Act on March 16th...and all four now support the bill. Thanks to our work together, 29 Senators now support repeal, which is more than twice the number of Senators that voted for DOMA in 1996. And now, we have President Obama's seal of approval.

This is the kind of work your contribution would fund: grassroots pressure, story-telling, and generating press coverage so more Americans know what DOMA is and why it must go, so that more Senators stand up against DOMA. With President Obama's endorsement today, we have momentum, and now we have to use it...but we need your help.

Please make a contribution today so we can harness President Obama's endorsement, and press more Senators to endorse the Respect for Marriage Act.

Thanks for all you do,

-- Adam, Cait, Ana, Rick, Arisha, Anthony, and the rest of the team at the Courage Campaign

BBC cuts Torchwood gay sex scene

2011-07-19T09:18:00.002-04:00

By Jessica Geen -

British Torchwood viewers won’t see a raunchy gay sex scene because BBC bosses thought it was too explicit.

The scene, with gay star John Barrowman’s character Captain Jack Harkness and a barman, has already been broadcast in the US on cable channel Starz.

The Sun reports that a source said executives felt the scenes were simply too sexy to show primetime audiences 20 minutes after the watershed.

The source said: “It wasn’t that it was a gay scene that worried people, but just the fact it was such an explicit sex scene, full stop.

“You can get away with scenes like that on American cable channels, but you can’t on primetime BBC1.”

A BBC spokeswoman told the newspaper that the gay sex scene and another which involved violence had been cut.

She said: “The UK and US versions of ‘Torchwood’ are slightly different. However, these differences do not change the story in any way and the strong storylines are first and foremost to the series.”

Last month, Barrowman promised Torchwood fans that the new series would be the sexiest yet, with “man sex” and “full-on” nudity.

Republicans Who Voted For Same Sex Marriage See Campaign Boost

2011-07-19T07:12:00.000-04:00

By Maria Sisti -

ALBANY -- The Republican senators who voted to legalize same-sex marriage have seen an infusion in campaign cash from gay-rights activists across the country, records filed with the state Board of Elections show.
Sens. James Alesi of Perinton, Monroe County; Mark Gristani of Buffalo and Roy McDonald of Saratoga all received at least $50,000 from gay-right supporters in the days following their vote. Sen. Stephen Saland, R-Poughkeepsie, had not filed his campaign finance report as of Friday morning.
Although Alesi's filings didn't show it, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has reportedly contributed the maximum $10,300 to each of the four Republicans. The measure passed June 24 by a vote of 33-29.
"They didn't vote the way I wanted. They voted the right way. They voted the way for freedom, for democracy, for equality, and I think we should all support that," Bloomberg said yesterday, according to the New York Daily News.
Bloomberg's donations drew a rebuke from Sen. Ruben Diaz, D-Bronx, a minister and staunch opponent of same-sex marriage.
"It appears that state Sens. Stephen Saland, Mark Grisanti, James Alesi and Roy McDonald sold their votes to the Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg for $10,300 each," Diaz said.
Alesi took in nearly $150,000 in contributions during the prior six months, with a surge of cash from major national supporters of same-sex marriage.
Alesi received the $10,300 maximum each from Tim Gill, a wealthy Colorado entrepreneur who heads the gay-rights group Gill Foundation, billionaire Robert Ziff and Frank Selvaggi, a member of the Empire State Pride Agenda board. Ziff also gave Alesi $6,500 for a potential primary election.
Grisanti and McDonald reported similar donations from the same individuals.
Alesi also refunded $10,300 in donations from the embattled ESL Sports Centre in Brighton, Monroe County.
The four Republican senators are expected to face strong opposition from conservatives when they plan to seek re-election next year. The National Organization for Marriage is pledging to spend $2 million to defeat the senators, and the state Conservative Party is vowing not to back their elections.

LGBT Healthcare Equality Slowly Improving Among U.S. Hospitals

2011-07-19T06:55:00.000-04:00

By Jaimie Oh -

A new analysis of healthcare equality by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation found that the vast majority of U.S. healthcare facilities don't have fully inclusive policies toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, but that is slowly changing, according to an HRC news release.

Kaiser Permanente, for example, is the first large health network to have a fully inclusive non-discrimination policy for LGBT people. They are also the first health network to achieve Top Performer status in the HRC Foundation's Healthcare Equality Index.

The HEI 2010 independently reviewed a representative sample of 200 of the largest healthcare facilities nationwide. The report found that in all 50 states – and even in historically LGBT-friendly cities like San Francisco and New York – there are facilities that do not fully protect LGBT people from healthcare discrimination. Ninety-three percent of healthcare facilities included in the study do not have fully inclusive policies toward LGBT people, and 42 percent don't include "sexual orientation" in their Patients' Bill of Rights/non-discrimination policy.

The HEI 2010 also includes data from 178 facilities across the country that voluntarily provided information on patient non-discrimination, visitation, cultural competency training and employment non-discrimination. Of the 178 facilities nationwide, 11 individual facilities and one network of 36 hospitals received perfect ratings, and many have made advances over the last three years since the HEI began.

Read the HRC news release about the HRC Foundation's Healthcare Equality Index.

The Cost of Closeted Employees

2011-07-19T06:53:00.000-04:00

By Sylvia Ann Hewlett -

Erika Karp vividly remembers the secrecy and subterfuge that colored every workday before she told her colleagues that she was a lesbian. "You have to devote a huge amount of psychic energy to being closeted — changing pronouns, switching names. I did that for years," Karp recalls, all the while knowing that coming out could jeopardize her career in investment banking. "It was torture."
According to a 2009 Human Rights Campaign, more than half of LGBT employees are not "out" of the closet. Being in the closet is not just painful to individuals; it's also an enormous talent drain for their employers. By not promoting and supporting an inclusive workplace, organizations whose workplace environments cause LGBTs to stay in the closet risk alienating and ultimately losing a critical tranche of talent. A new study by the Center for Work-Life Policy published in the July/August 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review quantifies just how high the cost is for both closeted LGBTs and their employers.
Nearly one-third (31%) of LGBTs surveyed in the study live double lives — out to their family or friends, but closeted on the job. Being forced to stay in the closet — or feeling penalized by a disapproving or hostile environment once they do come out — puts their career ambitions at war with their ability to put their whole self behind those ambitions. Like Karp, LGBT employees expend an enormous amount of energy simply keeping their stories straight, leaving less for focusing on the work they need to do to advance. Forced to lie about their private lives, they are excluded from the collegiate banter about weekend outings and personal interests that forges bonds in the workplace.
That's a pity, not just for LBGTs but for their employers.
LGBTs' ambition to excel is equal to that of their straight counterparts. Fully 88% of LGBT employees are willing to go the extra mile for employers, the same percentage as their straight counterparts, and 71% consider themselves very ambitious, compared with 73% of heterosexuals. Two-thirds of LGBTs are eager to be promoted, slightly higher than their straight counterparts. And although there are few out gay senior executives in corporate America today, LGBTs aspire to the executive suite almost as often as straight employees (52% vs. 56%).
Being out makes all the difference to a career. While the numbers of out and closeted LGBTs in middle management are roughly the same — 51% out, 49% not — their ongoing career paths diverge wildly. LGBT employees who stay on track and make it into senior management are much more likely to be out than closeted: 71% compared to 28% of their closeted counterparts.
The constant need to shield professional ambition from the personal revelations that can sabotage it may partly explain why closeted LGBT employees feel so much more stymied in their career paths than those who are out. More than half of those in the closet, or 52%, said they felt stalled in their careers, compared with 36% for out employees (and 49% of heterosexuals). Just under half are satisfied with their rate of advancement and promotion compared with two-thirds of those who are out. The gap widens even further for gay men especially: 54% of closeted gay men feel stalled vs. just 32% of out gay men. Only 34% of closeted gay men feel satisfied with their rate of promotion vs. 64% of those who are out.
The resulting flight risk is arguably one of the most significant for corporations. LGBTs frustrated with their current rate of promotion or advancement are three times more likely than those who are satisfied to plan to leave their companies within the next year. Compared to their out counterparts, closeted and isolated LGBT employees, burdened with the stress of daily secret-keeping, are 73% more likely to say they intend to leave their companies within the next three years than those who are out.
Few companies can afford losing their top talent. An LGBT talent drain will be inevitable unless employers change their work environment, warns University of San Francisco professor Nicole Raeburn, author of Inside Out: The Struggle for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Rights in the Workplace. "Now that we live in more inclusive times, where people know they can pick and choose employers, there's a high likelihood of a costly brain-drain among LGBT top talent," she says. "They will simply go elsewhere rather than work in a closeted environment."
"From the time I came out, I became exponentially more productive and more energetic and more motivated," recalls Erika Karp. "I just became better at everything I did." Karp credits her decision to come out with much of her career success: Today, she is managing director and head of global sector research for UBS Investment Bank.

Lesbian Loses Court Battle in Child Custody Case With Former Partner

2011-07-19T06:50:00.000-04:00

By Dave Bohon -

An Ohio lesbian has lost her legal battle to share custody of the child to which her former same-sex partner gave birth in 2006. The decision by the Ohio Supreme Court highlights the legal nightmare that appears to be evolving as homosexual “families” begin to fracture.
By a four-to-three margin the state high court ruled that the biological mother, Kelly Mullen, could retain sole custody of the child, name Lucy, who is now five years old. Until their split in 2007 Mullen had shared parenting and financial responsibility for the girl with her lesbian partner, Michele Hobbs. “Hobbs argued that the jointly planned pregnancy plus documents citing Hobbs as Lucy’s ‘co-parent’ — including a ceremonial birth certificate and will — created a contractual agreement between the women,” reported the Associated Press. “A magistrate who initially reviewed the evidence ruled the pair had a binding agreement.” But an appeals court subsequently decided in favor of the biological mother, a ruling the state supreme court affirmed in its decision.
Writing for the majority, Justice Robert Cupp (pictured above) explained that Mullen’s argument for sole custody outweighed the evidence offered by Hobbs that she should share custody with her former partner. “The court noted that all the documents created by Mullen which purported to give Hobbs some custodial responsibilities not only were revocable, but were, in fact, revoked by Mullen,” wrote Cupp. “Testimony supported Mullen’s statement that she did not intend to relinquish sole custody of the child to Hobbs.” He noted that Mullen had “consistently refused to enter into or sign any formal shared custody agreement when presented with the opportunity to do so.”

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Paul Pfeifer wrote that Hobbs had marshaled sufficient evidence to prove that the pair had, indeed, intended to serve together as Lucy’s parents. “Can an agreement that another person is a co-parent in every way possibly not include a right to custody?” Pfeifer asked in his opposing opinion. “It cannot. The trial court seems to agree, and thus turns its emphasis on the fact that the documents were revocable. But the question before the court was whether Mullen agreed to share custody of her child with Hobbs, not whether she eventually came to regret that decision.”

As reported by the Cincinnati.com news site, Mullen and Hobbs “lived together as a couple and decided to have a child, agreeing the younger Mullen would give birth. They took out a second mortgage on the house they built together to pay for the $12,000 in-vitro procedure.” Mullen even signed an array of documents that seemed to prove that “she wanted Hobbs to have parental rights ‘in every way’ over the child. But each time Mullen had the opportunity to memorialize those wishes in a binding, written contract, she refused.”

Mullen’s attorney, Douglas Dougherty, pointed out that under Ohio law Hobbs is not considered Lucy’s parent, and when the couple’s relationship ended Mullen terminated any custody rights her former homosexual partner had. “The court recognized that parents have a constitutional right to raise their children … and those parental rights can be limited or terminated,” Dougherty said of the ruling. “A nonparent has no constitutional [parental] rights.”

Dougherty emphasized that his client was still living a homosexual lifestyle, and the case had nothing to do with the issue of sexual orientation. “My client is a lesbian and proud of it, and she thinks lesbians should have all the rights that straight people have, and so do I,” he said. “The problem here wasn’t that it was a lesbian or gay relationship, it was that they didn’t love each other anymore, and very sadly didn’t respect each other anymore, and my client felt a clean break was in the best interest of the child.”

In his dissenting opinion Pfeifer noted that the decision demonstrates the unique problem that exists in homosexual relationships where the “family” includes children. “The law has not caught up to our culture, and this court has failed to craft a rule that addresses reality,” he wrote. “Mullen and Hobbs employed a well-versed lawyer who represents people in their situation, and with his advice did all they could do to protect Hobbs. A maternal relationship existed between Hobbs and Lucy. Mullen taught her daughter to call another woman `Momma’ and to love her as a mother. She now wishes she hadn’t, and for the majority, that’s enough. It shouldn’t be.”

LifeSite News noted that the recent case “bears a striking resemblance to that of Lisa Miller, a Christian and an ex-lesbian who fled the United States with her daughter in 2009 before a court could transfer custody to her former lesbian partner. Miller had given birth to her daughter Isabella, now eight years old, while living in a Vermont civil union with sex partner Janet Jenkins. Isabella was conceived through artificial insemination, and Jenkins never adopted the child.”

Matthew Staver, founder of the conservative legal advocacy group Liberty Counsel and dean of the Liberty University School of Law, said the ruling represented “a great victory for parental rights.” Staver, who filed an amicus brief in support of Mullen’s parental rights, said in a statement, “A person who is neither the biological parent nor an adoptive parent cannot be a de facto parent by merely alleging an emotional bond to the child.”

NYC Mayor Bloomberg To Officiate Same-Sex Wedding

2011-07-19T06:36:00.000-04:00

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg will preside at the wedding of advisers John Feinblatt and Jonathan Mintz.

In a ‘quiet moment,’ gay judge makes history

2011-07-19T02:36:00.000-04:00

By Dana Milbank -

The remarkable thing about what happened on the Senate floor Monday night was that it was utterly unremarkable.
The matter under consideration – the nomination of the first openly gay man to serve on the federal bench – would at one time have been a flashpoint in the culture wars. But Paul Oetken was confirmed without a word of objection on the Senate floor and with hardly a mention in the commentariat.

Even some of the chamber’s most ardent social conservatives – Tom Coburn, John Cornyn, Jeff Sessions, Jon Kyl – cast votes for Oetken. When the lopsided vote tally of 80-13 was read out, there was no cheer or reaction of any kind. Senators continued their conversations as if nothing unusual had happened.
It would be premature to believe that Oetken’s easy confirmation heralds some new post-sexual era in American politics; the fight over gay marriage continues undiminished. But it was a signal moment nonetheless. The nominee’s sexual orientation was deemed unimportant -- or at least less important than his moderate politics and his pro-business record (he’s a corporate lawyer, with Cablevision).
“As the first openly gay man to be confirmed as a federal judge,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told a nearly empty chamber before the vote, “he will be a symbol of how much we have achieved as a country in just the last few decades. And importantly, he will give hope to many talented young lawyers who until now thought their paths might be limited because of their sexual orientation. When Paul becomes Judge Oetken, he will be living proof to all those young lawyers that it really does get better.”
But Schumer observed, correctly, that this bit of history was an “otherwise quiet moment” for the Senate. The ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley (Iowa) gave a brief speech in support of Oetkin, mentioning the nominee’s Iowa roots but nothing about his homosexuality.
The proceedings were so routine that Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy made only a spare mention of this “important milestone” before using his floor time to deliver an unrelated speech about the FBI director. Because there were no more speakers, most of the 30 minutes allotted for debate were passed in a quorum call.
Closeted gay men have probably served as judges since the beginning of the Republic. And a lesbian, Deborah Batts, has been a federal judge since 1994. But when Batts went before the Judiciary Committee, her homosexuality was left unmentioned in the confirmation hearings.
Oetkin, by contrast, downplayed nothing about his sexual orientation: his work with Lambda Legal and the ACLU Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Project, or his co-authorship of a Supreme Court amicus brief opposing an anti-gay law. At his confirmation hearing, he introduced Grassley to his partner.
Opposition was relegated to where it belongs: in the dark recesses of the Internet. “A vote to confirm this nominee is in effect a vote to subject New York by force of judicial fiat to the homosexual agenda, lock, stock, and barrel,” wrote one commentator on World Net Daily. The posting warned of “Oetken’s homosexuality on the sleeve approach” and said “he is likely as well to harbor animosity toward the proponents of traditional sexual morality.”
Tellingly, it was signed by “Frank J. Bleckwenn” – a pseudonym.
Grassley and his colleagues had no use for such poison. “Mr. Oetkin grew up in my state of Iowa,” Grassley said, calling the candidate a “consensus nominee.” He recited Oetkin’s credentials, including his Yale Law degree and Supreme Court clerkship. “I support this nomination and congratulate him on his professional accomplishments,” Grassley said.
To his credit, that is all Grassley thought relevant.

Gay marriage, bishops and the crisis of leadership

2011-07-17T22:16:00.000-04:00

The vote approving same-sex marriage in New York is the latest and most glaring confirmation of some gloomy news for the Catholic church in the United States, and it’s not that gays have achieved the right to marry.

Rather, affirmed in the recent vote is the disturbing reality that the Catholic hierarchy has lost most of its credibility with the wider culture on matters of sexuality and personal morality, just as it has lost its authority within the Catholic community on the same issues. There are reasons -- and they have little to do with secularism, relativism or lingering influences of the wild 1960s -- why people are no longer listening to the bishops.

While we don’t want to minimize the seriousness of the concern of some over a societal redefinition of marriage, there are reasons we think the bishops’ hyperbolic reaction to laws such as that enacted in New York are not only wrong-headed but counterproductive.
First, even if bishops retained the stature they once had in the wider culture, it is evident in polls and politicians’ votes that neither most of the Catholic world nor the wider culture buys the church’s teaching that homosexuals are disordered and are thus relegated to sexless lives in order to remain in the Christian community.

A recent Quinnipiac University poll of registered New York voters found that 70 percent of voters say protestations of the law from religious leaders made no difference in their decision to support or reject it. According to Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, “On gay marriage, many of the people in the pews split with their bishops.”

That attitude does not spring so much from a stance of defiance, as some bishops would assert, but more from the experience of gays and lesbians themselves and their parents and siblings, extended family and friends who increasingly understand gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons as far more than the sum of their sexual orientation while also understanding that sexuality is at the core of a person’s identity.

To parents of a gay child, the idea that a group of men can claim to know the mind of God so perfectly that they can proclaim with unyielding certainty that God deems a significant portion of creation “disordered” is absurd. The label is not only demeaning but to contemporary Christians has no resonance with the heart of the Gospel.

To be sure, legislative battles are messy affairs. In Albany, the state’s bishops were embarrassingly outmaneuvered by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a divorced Catholic and parent; by the pro-gay-marriage lobby; and by both Democrats and Republicans. The bishops’ lobbying apparatus is a fangless relic. It is not a formidable opponent to seasoned political operators and elected officials, and it lacks any real threat of reprisal, the currency of politics.

If the bishops actually want laws to reflect Catholic values, they need a new, more sophisticated and potent model of legislative engagement.

Second, even if the bishops had a persuasive case to make and the legislative tools at their disposal, their public conduct in recent years -- wholesale excommunications, railing at politicians, denial of honorary degrees and speaking platforms at Catholic institutions, using the Eucharist as a political bludgeon, refusing to entertain any questions or dissenting opinions, and engaging in open warfare with the community’s thinkers as well as those, especially women, who have loyally served the church -- has resulted in a kind of episcopal caricature, the common scolds of the religion world, the caustic party of “no.”

As if on cue, after the vote Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio declared by fiat that his diocese is “not to bestow or accept honors, nor to extend a platform of any kind to any state elected official, in all our parishes and churches for the foreseeable future.”

In their reaction to the vote, the Catholic bishops of New York wrote: “While our culture seems to have lost a basic understanding of marriage, we Catholics must not. We must be models of what is good, holy and sacred about authentic sacramental marriage.”

The statement might raise legitimate alarms if, indeed, the state law signaled that the Catholic ideals and sacramental life were actually under attack. They aren’t. Nicholas Cafardi has some excellent advice for the bishops (see story) regarding their ongoing battle over same-sex marriage: “We need to give it up. This is not defeatism. This is simply following Jesus in the Gospels, who besides telling us not to act on our fears, also told us to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. Civil marriage is Caesar’s. If Caesar wants to say that you can only get married on Tuesdays, wearing a blue suit and a red tie, that is Caesar’s call. The sacrament of matrimony is God’s. It is valid only when invoked between a baptized man and a baptized woman, in the presence of two witnesses and the spouses’ proper ordinary or pastor or his delegate. Caesar has no say in this.”

The larger problem for the hierarchy, of course, is not persuading the secular culture of its point of view on sacramental marriage, but persuading its own adherents, and particularly young Catholics who now tend to drift off in scores before adulthood, that staying attached to the church is a compelling good, that the church is in fact relevant and will draw them closer to Christ and thus the freedom and fullness of a life of faith.

The bishops have little credibility in the wider culture and diminished authority within the church because in the case of sexual violence against young people by members of their clerical culture, they responded in ways that any reasonable and healthy segment of society would have considered disdainful.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan, he of the wide smile, ready handshake and outsized laugh, was to be the church’s antidote to the cool and distant manner of his predecessor, Cardinal Edward Egan, who was a public relations nightmare from the start. But a love for beer and a hot dog from the cart outside the cathedral will only get you so far.

Dolan’s rising star presumably carries with it a stamp of papal favor. The show “60 Minutes,” in its own hyperbolic burst, dubbed him the “American pope.” And senior NCR correspondent John Allen, who has conducted a book-length interview with Dolan, has written that in other circumstances the archbishop of New York “could easily have been a U.S. senator or a corporate CEO.”

That may or may not be the case, but as senator or CEO, Dolan would be held to standards of accountability that no bishop will ever face. Politicians, we know, can be run out of office and business leaders are held, however imperfectly, to standards of performance and ethics. Some of them land in jail.

In reaction to the marriage vote, Dolan stretched to call up the specter of what remains of the Red menace. On his blog he wrote that in China and North Korea “government presumes daily to ‘redefine’ rights, relationships, values and natural law.” In those countries, he says, government dictates the size of families, who can live and die, and what defines marriage. “Please, not here!” he begs. The comparison, of course, is absurd on its face, a kind of hysteria that demands that someone listen when so few are.

The vote in New York sends a strong message to Catholic leadership. The danger is not in the vote itself. The danger they face is far deeper -- a crisis of leadership and authority for which they have only themselves to blame.

SUPPORT EQUALITY - Dave Koz sings "This Guy's in Love With You", directed by Graham Streeter

2011-07-17T15:10:00.000-04:00

Six-time Grammy nominated jozz saxophonist Dave Koz, A&M Records Executive, trumpeter, eight Grammy Award Winner Herb Alpert, and film director Graham Streeter release music video in the name of marriage equality. Production Crew: Director/Cinematographer - Graham Streeter, Executive Producer - Alex Lebosq, Producer - Eric Vega, Assistant Director - Anthony Allen Brown, Documentarian - Luis Alcazar, Production Assistant - Jon Kay, Group Leader - John Wilner, Crowd Wrangles - Jim Graham, Kimberly Campbell, Alex Carillo, Lian Munoz, Troy Holtsclaw, Christopher Els, Valerie Polacek, BJ Korres, Marcella William, Brad Hudson, Theresa Roberts, and Jo Young.

San Diego sailors march in gay pride parade

2011-07-16T23:47:00.000-04:00

Military personnel march down University Avenue during the San Diego gay pride parade July 16 in San Diego, California. About 200 active-duty troops and veterans from every branch of the military participated for the first time in the march as the ban on the government policy on homosexuals serving in armed forces, or "Don't ask Don't Tell", remains in flux in the justice system.

By Rich Shulman -

Seems like they are ignoring "Don't ask Don't Tell" in San Diego.

Many of the active-duty troops said they were moved to come out because it is time to end the military's ban on openly gay troops. The march comes a day after a federal appeals court reinstated the "don't ask, don't tell" policy but with a caveat that prevents the government from investigating or penalizing anyone who is openly gay.

Ben Cohen, Michael Irvin, Hudson Taylor, Nick Youngquest Talk Gay Rights

2011-07-16T05:56:00.000-04:00

Five openly straight professional athletes – Ben Cohen, Michael Irvin, Hudson Taylor, Nick Youngquest and Mike Chabala – talk gay rights in the latest issue of gay glossy Out.

A shirtless Irving graces the cover of the magazine's sports issue.

In his profile, the NFL Hall of Famer talks about his late brother, who was gay, and how his sexual orientation was not discussed in the family, and relates a story about how he found out his brother was a cross-dresser.

Driving with his father at the age of 12, they came upon his older brother Vaughn walking down the street wearing women's clothes.

“My dad looked back at me and said, 'Yes, that's your brother. And you love your brother,'” Irving said.

Irving added that he's ready to support an openly gay professional athlete.

Cohen retired from playing rugby in the UK earlier this year to head his anti-homophobia campaign, the Ben Cohen Stand Up Foundation.

“The time is right now to retire from rugby and follow my new passion,” Cohen said during a videotaped interview. “People have the right to be happy and, you know, to be loved and love others.” (The video is embedded in the right panel of this page.)

Twenty-seven-year-old Houston Dynamo Mike Chabala posed last year for the NOH8 Campaign, which raises awareness and funds for gay rights causes.

He told the magazine that he would support an openly gay soccer player.

“The treatment of gay people isn't a liberal or conservative issue,” he said, “it's a human rights issue.”

Australian rugby player Nick Youngquest also talked about supporting an openly gay teammate. The six-foot player with a huge gay following added that he believes in marriage equality: “I don't see any reason why gay people shouldn't be able to marry. I think it should be a union of two people in love. Why not?”

Columbia University wrestling coach Hudson Taylor is doing more than talking; he started Athlete Ally to fight homophobic speech in sports.

“There are a lot of ways you can be an ally, but for what I'm aiming at in sports, it's a pretty simple equation: making the sports community more respectful simply by being conscious of your words,” Taylor told the magazine.

STEVE HAYES: Tired Old Queen at the Movies - #79

2011-07-16T00:55:00.002-04:00

SUNDAY, BLOODY SUNDAY (1971)
An unconventional three-way love affair is the basis of John Schelsinger's landmark film SUNDAY, BLOODY SUNDAY. Taken from an original script by Penelope Gilliatt, it deals with a young bi-sexual artist (MURRAY HEAD) who is having simultaneous affairs with a middle-aged doctor (PETER FINCH) and a thirtyish career woman (GLENDA JACKSON). Both love the artist, both want him exclusively, both want him to settle down, and both are unhappy at having to settle for what he can give them. All three are decent people in need of love, passion and understanding. All three are unable to satisfy the people that love them, let alone themselves. Nominated for 4 Oscars including Finch, Jackson, Gilliatt and Schesinger as Best Director, it's all about love in all its madness and messiness and one of the most intelligent films on the subject ever made.

Ireland Confronts the Vatican

2011-07-15T00:30:00.000-04:00

Throughout the long scandal of sexual abuse by rogue priests, the Vatican has blatantly resisted the idea that civil law must trump church rules in confronting criminal acts. This was evident again in the revelation that the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland continued to cover up abuse cases long after it had issued rules to protect children in 1996.
“The law of the land should not be stopped by crosier or by collar,” Prime Minister Enda Kenny declared after receiving a detailed report on Wednesday showing that abuses were occurring as recently as 2009.
A principal factor in the cover-up, the government study found, was a Vatican letter in 1997 warning Irish church leaders against full cooperation with law enforcement authorities. The papal representative wrote that the anti-abuse policies conflicted with church law and should be considered “merely a study document.”
This turned criminal law on its head and, as the study noted, gave bishops “freedom to ignore” the tougher rules and protect abusers in the church. In the diocese of Cloyne, investigated in detail by the Dublin government, church officials did not act on complaints against 19 priests in the 13 years after the rules were put in place.
The new findings showed that the abuse was not confined to previous generations. “This is about Ireland now,” said Frances Fitzgerald, Ireland’s minister for children. As usual, apologies were offered, this time by John Magee, the longtime bishop of Cloyne, who resigned last year. Bishop Magee had been accused of improperly embracing a seminarian, but that allegation was dismissed.
With the pedophilia scandal under investigation worldwide, Vatican officials point to new, tougher rules. But the rules, which do not require dioceses to report allegations of crimes to the police, are considered only advisory guidelines to bishops. The Dublin government has enacted a new law making it a crime for anyone, church officials included, to fail to report child abuse to civil authorities. The Vatican has a valuable lesson to learn in Ireland.

The Gay Golden Years

2011-07-15T00:27:00.000-04:00

By Tim Louis Macaluso -

Pittsford residents Marvin Ritzenthaler, left, and Steven Jarose.

When Bud, an elderly gay man who lives in a Rochester-area residential community for seniors, posted news clippings outside his door regarding same-sex marriage, the reaction he got from other residents was not overwhelmingly positive.
"Some of the pictures were taken down," he says. "Once someone pinned note paper covering over a picture."
It was a little intimidating, Bud says. It's also an example of a culture that can be deeply entrenched in some traditional nursing and assisted-living homes: prejudice that can have a profound emotional impact on elderly members of the LGBT community.
Though Bud, who recently celebrated his 84th birthday, is out, he's still cautious. He lives alone and he asked that his last name not be printed.
"I've always been me," he says. "But I've been careful not to out myself to the wrong people."
Bud is certainly not the first gay man to move into a senior-living community. But he is part of a population of seniors that is gradually becoming more visible both nationally and locally.
Gay culture is sometimes criticized for its exaggerated emphasis on youth, but there is growing awareness about older members of the LGBT community - people who have reached their mid-60's, and are living into their 70's, 80's, and 90's. What do we know about them? What are their concerns? Are senior-living communities and nursing homes becoming more accepting of their gay clients? And how do they treat gay couples?
After New York passed same-sex marriage legislation last month, Bud found a message posted outside his door. Someone wrote a note saying, "Congratulations on gay marriage. I'm so proud to live in a state that's leaning toward equality."
"That really put a smile on my face," he says.
But Bud's experience of gradual acceptance, though a good sign, is not shared by all LGBT seniors. In some respects, LGBT seniors face the same issues and daily trials that many seniors face: less mobility, limited incomes, and managing illnesses.
But LGBT seniors often confront those issues along with the injustices and abuses that accompany discrimination. And elderly LGBT people frequently find themselves in a strange and unexpected predicament: while they have lived through the liberating gay-rights movement, they often discover that they stand to lose some of those freedoms in what are supposed to be their golden years.
"Many elderly LGBT people were not out through most of their lives, and they learned the importance of hiding," says Scott Fearing, program director for the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley. "Some [LGBT seniors] tend to go back into the closet," he says.
Unlike LGBT youth today, who are used to seeing gay characters positively portrayed on television and in film, LGBT seniors remember a time when it wasn't safe to be out.
In the early 20th century, homosexuality was viewed as something beyond scandalous, and could result in the loss of a job or housing. Given the history of discrimination toward LGBT people, it's understandable why many LGBT seniors are reluctant about being out.
Part of it, too, may be due to an increased sense of vulnerability that sometimes comes with aging, Fearing says.
Hiding may also help explain why it is sometimes difficult to find solid data concerning LGBT seniors. According to "Outing Age 2010," a publication by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, most of the research until recently has focused on elderly gay males. Much less research has been done on lesbians, and relatively little research has focused on bisexual and transgender seniors. This can present problems in health care, Fearing says. Little is known, for example, about the long-term use of hormones among transgender seniors, he says, or how the hormones will interact with other medications.
Researchers estimate that there are between two million and seven million elderly LGBT people living in the US today. And studies indicate that living in social and economic marginalization extracts a toll from LGBT seniors. Compared to their heterosexual peers, LGBT seniors are at greater risk of isolation, poverty, and homelessness.
The majority of LGBT seniors live alone, while their heterosexual peers are much more likely to live with their children or a caretaking family member. And research shows that seniors who live alone are at much greater risk of serious injuries, depression, and alcohol abuse.
And contrary to the stereotype that often portrays gays as financially secure with plenty of disposable income, research indicates that a significant percentage of LGBT seniors face financial difficulties in their later years.
Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders in New York City reported that about 35 percent of its clients in 2009 were Medicaid eligible with annual pretax incomes below $10,000. The situation is especially troubling for transgender seniors. Though they are typically more educated than the general population, transgender seniors are twice as likely to live below the poverty line, according to the California-based Transgender Law Center.
While many LGBT seniors slip back into the closet, others struggle to remain out: they dread transitioning into a nursing home or assisted living community, says Brian Hurlburt of Rainbow SAGE of the Genesee Valley. Many LGBT seniors have wrestled for years with being honest about their sexual orientation, Hurlburt says, and they don't want to go back in time.
"They really fear that they can't be who they are during these years," Hurlburt says.
For instance, they might be afraid to share close living quarters with heterosexual seniors who, for personal or religious reasons, still look at LGBT people through a 1950's lens.
"Fear of having to go back into the closet is overwhelming for them," Hurlburt says. "Some just can't do it."
Rainbow SAGE, the local chapter of the national SAGE organization, is one of several local groups working to alleviate these fears. The group holds social activities such as pot lucks, picnics, and holiday celebrations.
But SAGE is also active in advocacy and cultural competency training. Members speak to health-care workers, caregivers, and nursing and assisted-living workers who are in daily contact with LGBT seniors.
"The big word everyone wants to hear is ‘acceptance,'" says Saundra Ehman, SAGE member and a long-time Rochester advocate for LGBT seniors. "We're pigeon-holed. When you say the words ‘gay' and ‘lesbian,' many straight people immediately focus on the person's sexuality. That's just a small part of what we're talking about. We're talking about making the person comfortable being themselves. They deserve that."
Ehman says she remembers hearing a nurse in one home refer to an elderly gay man as "just an old queer." She says the incident was so disturbing that she couldn't forget it.
"That kind of abuse is why people are afraid," she says. "And this is what we're trying to change."
LGBT seniors who need to enter a nursing home want to be assured that they are going to be treated with respect, Hurlburt says. When LGBT couples aren't allowed to share a room, it only increases the sense of isolation for both people, he says.
But there are signs that cultural sensitivity training may be working.
"We're always trying to make sure that we're culturally aware and sensitive to all segments of the [senior] community," says Mary Kanerva, Catholic Family Center's director of aging adult services.
The organization's mission is to help people remain independent for as long as possible, she says.
"I think it's very important that we alleviate the fears," she says. "We really try to meet every person where they are."
And in some regions of the country - California, Arizona, and Florida, for example - there are a few "affinity" retirement communities, designed with the LGBT client in mind. The 10-acre Fountaingrove Lodge in Santa Rosa, California bills itself as the first gay continuing-care retirement community in the country.
Though progress is being made, society still has a long way to go before meeting the needs of LGBT seniors, says local attorney Jennifer Gravitz. And much of the problem, she says, is linked to institutionalized homophobia and discrimination.
As well-meaning as the medical, legal, and social-work communities are, she says, the problems are deeply entrenched.
Institutionalized homophobia creates its own unique form of suppression on LGBT seniors, Gravitz says, and it tends to impact them at the worst possible time - when they are living on limited incomes, coping with a chronic illness, or when a partner needs long-term care.
"First, we have to consider the mindset of people who are in their 60's, 70's, and 80's," she says. "They may not be aware of their choices, or they are fearful if they share who they are, they'll be further marginalized, punished, or denied services that they truly need."
The institutionalized challenges LGBT seniors face range from laws affecting inheritance to benefits. LGBT couples have no automatic right to inherit from a partner or spouse. They face higher taxation on an inheritance on deferred benefits, such as an IRA or pension. And surviving LGBT partners are not always eligible to receive deferred benefits.
"There are many benefits still today that domestic partners cannot receive, the military's being one of them," Gravitz says. "The preclusion of being able to receive Social Security from a deceased partner is another."
Gravitz is also troubled by an actuarial issue, particularly as it relates to financial and long-term planning. Most of the planning models are designed for heterosexual couples where it is well known statistically that women tend to outlive their husbands by about seven years.
"But what happens to those models when you have a family of two men?" she says.
Statistically, the two could become critically ill and pass away within a few years of each other. A family of two women, however, could each live, according to statistics, for years with disabling illnesses. What's the unique impact on each of those families, she says, when the planning models used are not typically designed with their needs in mind?
But the biggest discriminatory hurdle most LGBT seniors face has to do with Medicaid. While a short list of states have legalized same-sex marriage, the Defense of Marriage Act still prevails. The federal legislation signed into law in 1996 by former President Bill Clinton defines marriage as an act between one man and one woman, and it has direct influence over Medicaid rules.
Medicaid was designed to care for the truly poor, Gravitz says, who require the chronic care of a nursing home. A heterosexual couple can spend down or transfer assets to, for example, help the wife qualify to enter a nursing home. But the husband is allowed to keep the house and all of its equity, which can amount to thousands of dollars. The law does not impoverish the husband or the heterosexual "community spouse" in order to make sure the patient or wife receives the care she needs.
But domestic partners or legally married LGBT couples aren't recognized by Medicaid law.
"They are legal strangers to one another," Gravitz says. "It means that the house that they purchased decades ago and is paid off now has to be divided in half. And the community partner, the person not going into the nursing home, now has to buy back his or her own house."
Joint accounts are presumed to be the assets of the person requiring Medicaid, unless the community partner can prove ownership of half of the money, she says.
"That's just how the Medicaid rules are written," Gravitz says. "Unlike the community heterosexual spouse who is permitted to keep a certain amount of income, savings, and a car, all of that has to be liquidated. And the gay or lesbian community partner gets nothing. We've accomplished the opposite of what Congress intended for the heterosexual spouses."
This means the LGBT senior and community partner, who may be emotionally and physically frail, too, could now be made destitute so the ill partner will qualify for Medicaid and accepted into a nursing home.
"I can think of nothing more cruel or inhumane," Gravitz says.

Obama Administration Asks Court To Reconsider Order Blocking DADT

2011-07-15T00:09:00.000-04:00

The Obama administration asked a federal appeals court in California to reconsider its order last week temporarily blocking the U.S. military from enforcing its "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on gays and lesbians serving in the military. U.S. officials have been moving ahead with dismantling the policy but had objected to having the courts force the government to officially repeal it at this time.

Governor Brown Signs Historic Gay History Bill in CA

2011-07-14T20:44:00.002-04:00

By Evan Wagstaff -

California has become the first state in the nation to require public schools to teach students about the historical contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday morning signed SB 48, which adds LGBT people — as well as various ethnic minorities and people with disabilities — to the list of groups that social studies classes must cover. It also prohibits discrimination against those groups in school-sponsored activities and instructional materials.

The Legislature had approved the bill last week, voting largely along party lines.

"History should be honest," Brown said in a statement. "This bill revises existing laws that prohibit discrimination in education and ensures that the important contributions of Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life are included in our history books."

Democratic state Sen. Mark Leno of San Francisco, who sponsored the bill, said it is an important step toward "first-class citizenship" for the LGBT community. "Denying LGBT people their rightful place in history gives our young people an inaccurate and incomplete view of the world around them," he said in a statement.

On a conference call with reporters Thursday afternoon, Leno said that "we have been censoring an important chapter of American history."

He told a story about a sixth grader who beat one of his classmates to death in 2008 for being "too girly," adding, "We are failing our students if we do not instruct them that there are differences between us. When we deny them that, they determine they have a license to kill."

The law applies to classes from kindergarten through high school and will go into effect Jan. 1, 2012, though textbooks will not be reprinted to meet the requirement for several years, Leno said. Exactly how it is implemented will be up to individual school districts and classrooms.

“Of course, our eyes and ears are everywhere,” he said. “If there are classrooms ignoring this, it will become known and there will be attention brought to that.”

The bill had strong support among LGBT advocacy groups at a time when bullying of LGBT students gained national attention. “Today marks a monumental victory for the LGBT equality movement as the struggle of the diverse LGBT community in California will no longer be erased from history,” Equality California Executive Director Roland Palencia said.

It was opposed by Republicans, including Assemblyman Tim Donnelly of San Bernardino, who said it promoted a "homosexual agenda." The measure also provoked passionate debate among parents.

This isn't the first time the Legislature has prescribed lessons, according to the Associated Press. Past educational mandates have included the Irish potato famine and the Holocaust.

We have good news!

2011-07-14T11:19:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we had a big win.

Last week, we told you about a couple in California, Doug and Alex, who were facing a nightmare scenario -- the deportation of Alex, a Venezuelan citizen, despite his marriage to American citizen Doug. If Doug and Alex were straight, they'd have no problem at all -- American citizens sponsor their opposite-sex partners every day.

Yesterday, as their life together hung in the balance, Doug and Alex got good news. After 17,000 petition signatures and a 75-person rally outside the courthouse, the immigration judge who heard their case ruled that -- unless the government opts to drop their case altogether -- she will defer the case until a later hearing...in September 2013!

While this result certainly doesn't solve the threats of deportation, living in the shadows, green card denials, and forced exile, it's welcome news for the tens of thousands of couples living in the shadows from the Statue of Liberty to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Each of these cases -- Josh & Henry, Doug & Alex, and so many more -- help to chip away at the lived discrimination that LGBT Americans face each day. Each time we stand up for ourselves, for our families, for our friends, for our neighbors -- we stand up to the bigotry and intolerance that has haunted LGBT lives for so long.

It was an honor to organize with our friends at Stop the Deportations, Out4Immigration, Marriage Equality USA, and so many others -- and we were happy that yesterday, for the first time in a long time, Doug and Alex were finally able to smile.

These cases continue to unfold each day, and we'll continue to let you know about them -- and about ways to take action in order to impact the result. For today, though, we rest and we celebrate -- and we thank you for all you do to help us GetEQUAL!

For equality,

Heather Cronk

Managing Director, GetEQUAL

Vatican Reverses Stance On Gay Marriage After Meeting Tony And Craig (from the Onion)

2011-07-13T16:16:00.000-04:00

Vatican called "Tony&Craig a truly great match."

VATICAN CITY—In a stunning and unexpected reversal of long-standing doctrine, Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed the Roman Catholic Church's unequivocal support for gay marriage Tuesday, just hours after meeting Stonington, CT couple Tony Ruggiero and Craig Housinger.
The papal decree—which authorizes priests to administer the sacrament of holy matrimony to same-sex partners and explicitly states that "homosexual relations between two consenting adults is not, and never has been, a sin"—was reportedly a direct result of the pope sharing an afternoon of engaging conversation and hearty laughter with the gay couple.
"Not only are Tony and Craig complete sweethearts, but anyone who spends more than two minutes with them can see they're clearly perfect for each other," said Benedict, who in the past has described homosexual behavior as a grave disease that threatens all of humanity. "They're fun, gracious, and simply wonderful company. And you can tell they have something special just by the way they look at each other."
"They're soulmates, really," added the pope, smiling. "Allowing them to formalize their union in the Church is the least we could do for them."
Vatican officials said the vacationing couple and the Supreme Pontiff met during a routine papal audience at St. Peter's Basilica, and "really hit it off" after discovering shared interests in photography, the piano, and Spanish cuisine.
Though sources said the 84-year-old Benedict, a lifelong scholar of antigay ecclesiastical law, initially appeared skeptical upon meeting the pair, he was reportedly put at ease after Housinger spoke a few humorous lines to the pope in his native German and Ruggiero effusively complimented his gold cuff links, touching off a friendly conversation that effectively upended 2,000 years of Roman Catholic teachings.
"They were witty and cultured, but also very friendly—I really don't meet too many people like that," the pope said of the couple, who excitedly suggested to him several off-the-beaten-path sights and "to die for" restaurants after he mentioned an upcoming trip to Buenos Aires. "Craig has a great passion for Italian painting, and I learned a lot from him about the Church's collection of Caravaggios. He's a real Renaissance man."

Pope Benedict XVI claims that any law
respecting the wishes of Tony and Craig
is "a law I support wholeheartedly."

"I know what scripture says about homosexuals, but when I stop to think about it, I can't get past the fact that the Bible is just a book, and Tony and Craig are real people," Benedict added. "Love is love. Man-woman, man-man, woman-woman—who cares? The Catholic Church recognizes it's not the Stone Age anymore."
Invited on a personal tour of the Vatican, Housinger and Ruggiero were said to have charmed the College of Cardinals with amusing anecdotes from their seven-year relationship, displaying a playful yet tender affection for each other that deeply moved the clergy.
High-ranking officials within the Holy See said they were pleased to learn both partners were practicing Catholics who attend mass regularly, and were surprised to discover Housinger was employed as a general contractor, a profession none of them considered gay at all.
According to reports, the highlight of the afternoon came when the couple shared photographs of their adopted 14-month-old Cambodian daughter, Lorraine, whom the swooning clergy universally described as "angelic."
"Even if you just meet Tony and Craig for a few minutes, it's easy to see how supportive and patient they are," said the Most Rev. Francesco Coccopalmerio, the Vatican's top expert on canon law, who noted the two partners have a stronger bond than some of the married couples he knows. "You can tell they've created a perfect household for a child to grow up in. I just wish everybody could be raised by parents as devoted and caring as them."
Following a warm farewell in which Ruggiero hugged Benedict—an incident the Holy Father described as "not even weird or anything"—Vatican leaders are said to have unanimously agreed that it was "completely hypocritical" for anyone, especially those who have taken a vow of celibacy, to tell people whom they can or cannot share their lives with.
"If Tony and Craig want to exchange vows before God and their friends and family, where's the harm in that?" Benedict said. "It's not as if they're offending the sanctity of life, like those wicked birth control users who will toil for all eternity in hellfire."