06.29.06
Posted in Advocate Articles at 1:55 pm by pikapp44
At the Teamsters 27th International Convention on Tuesday it was announced that the union was amending its constitution to prohibit membership discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The Teamsters constitution already prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, physical ability, and national origin.
Along with the pro-gay antidiscriminatory provision was an amendment cementing the union’s dedication to increasing diversity. The new portion reads, “The International Union is proud of its history of unifying a diverse group of working men and women from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds in order to advance their economic social and political interests. We are committed to the development of an organization which values and encourages the participation of women, individuals of various sexual orientations, and members of racial, cultural, and ethnic groups in the policymaking and leadership roles at all levels of the International Union and its affiliated bodies.”
Teamsters general president Jim Hoffa said, “These changes to our constitution make the Teamsters one of the most progressive unions in the American labor movement. I am proud that our great union has taken these important steps to protect and defend our members. These actions show that the Teamsters are truly united in moving forward together.”
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06.28.06
Posted in Advocate Articles at 12:43 pm by pikapp44
New information released by the Department of Defense shows that the government conducted more extensive surveillance of student groups protesting “don’t ask, don’t tell” than previously indicated. Documents provided earlier this month to counsel representing the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an advocacy group for gay and lesbian service personnel, show that e-mails sent by student organizers were intercepted and monitored by the Pentagon and that an undercover agent apparently attended a protest at Southern Connecticut State University.
The other schools at which protests were surveiled are the University of California at Berkeley, the State University of New York at Albany, and New Jersey’s William Paterson University. All the protests were against either the military’s ban on openly gay personnel or the war in Iraq.
“Federal government agencies have no business peeping through the keyholes of Americans who choose to exercise their First Amendment rights,” said C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of SLDN. “Americans are guaranteed a fundamental right to free speech and free expression, and our country’s leaders should never be allowed to undermine those freedoms. Surveillance of private citizens must stop.”
In a nod to apparent concerns by the Pentagon, Osburn added, “It is the suppression of our constitutional rights, and not the practice of them, that undermines our national security. It is patently absurd that this administration has linked sexual orientation with terrorism.”
None of the Defense department documents indicated any terrorist activity on the parts of the students who were monitored. Earlier reports of such surveillance were released by the department only after SLDN filed a Freedom of Information Act request.
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06.27.06
Posted in E's Thoughts at 2:39 pm by pikapp44
Gayscape is a gay & lesbian search tool that provides over 102,000 indexed sites.
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Posted in Gay Rights at 8:12 am by pikapp44
The question of whether same-sex couples from Rhode Island can marry in Massachusetts returns to court Monday. An anti-interracial-marriage law dating back to 1913 was recently upheld by the state’s supreme judicial court in a case involving gay and lesbian couples from other states wishing to marry in Massachusetts.
The antiquated law says that marriage licenses cannot be given to out-of-state couples if their marriages would not be legal in their home states, but following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that laws barring interracial couples from marrying were illegal, the Massachusetts statute fell into disuse.
After same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts, however, Republican governor Mitt Romney resurrected the old law to order local clerks not to issue marriage licenses to couples from outside the state. In upholding the law in March, the state supreme judicial court noted that all the states from which the appellants came, with the exception of Rhode Island, have laws specifically banning same-sex marriage and that in the case of couples from Rhode Island, the matter should return to the lower court for a ruling.
Whatever that court rules, the decision is expected to be appealed and will likely wind up again before the supreme judicial court.
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06.26.06
Posted in E's Thoughts at 3:40 pm by pikapp44
FOR MANY BIG city gay people, the idea of traveling outside the borders of urban development fills them with dread. Add to that the paralyzing fear of the Midwest, and it’s a wonder gay people can even locate those areas on a map.
Gay comedian ANT is the force behind the gay cable channel Logo’s new series “U.S. of ANT.” During the half-hour weekly show, which premiered on June 19, the comic travels into the heartland, searching for signs of intelligent gay life.
“We all seem to rush to the coasts to the big cities,” ANT says of gay people. “I wondered what gay life is like in a small town.”
IN THE PREMIERE episode, ANT travels to big sky country in Montana.
He tools around Butte and Bozeman, Mont., approaching random people and asking where the gay life is. Although you’d expect the small-town westerners to spit, turn their backs or pull out their guns, nothing of the sort happens. Everyone answers politely that they had no idea there was any gay scene within the city limits. That reaction was most of what ANT got while filming, he says.
During one episode, he decided to walk up to a bunch of hard-core bikers to ask about gay life in town.
“The production crew was like, ‘Oh my God, those are Hell’s Angels,’” says ANT. When he approached them, one told him that he would call his gay brother and ask him where to find the gay scene.
“It’s amazing how we touch so many people’s lives,” ANT says.
He’s traveled all over the country searching out rural-living gay men and lesbians. He met a lesbian couple in North Carolina adopting children; a lesbian construction worker in Alabama who’s out to her friends and family; lesbian witches in Mississippi who did a “queening” ritual for ANT, making him an official queen; also in metaphysical Mississippi was the encounter with the gay haunted house.
He also met two high school aged twin boys, one gay and one straight, who stuck up for one another through bouts of teasing and bullying in New Hampshire.
“I never really believed there was a gay community,” ANT says. “Now, I truly believe there is one. The fabric of it is so strong and so beautiful. We quilt a beautiful fabric.”
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06.25.06
Posted in D's Thoughts at 2:18 pm by pikapp44
Circa - The complete lifestyle club created for the modern professional gay man. Make friends and business contacts.
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06.24.06
Posted in Gay Rights at 7:33 pm by pikapp44
Outspoken Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen apologized Wednesday for using a derogatory term in referring to Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti, then kept up his criticism of the writer.
Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, right, argued with home plate umpire Mike Everitt after Brian Anderson and Pablo Ozuna were hit by pitches during the sixth inning of a baseball game in Chicago, June 20, 2006. Guillen went into a profanity-laced tirade against Mariotti before Tuesday night’s game against St. Louis and called him a number of names, including a “fag.”
Before Wednesday night’s game, Guillen acknowledged that his use of the word might have offended some.
“I shouldn’t have mentioned the name that was mentioned, but I’m not going to back off of Jay,” Guillen said, using another profanity to describe Mariotti.
“The word I used, I should have used something different. A lot of people’s feelings were hurt and I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Jay, I think I made this guy a lot of money and he’s famous. If not for Ozzie Guillen, no one would have heard of him,” Guillen said. “If I hurt anybody with what I called him, I apologize.”
Mariotti, who appears on the ESPN show “Around the Horn,” said his Thursday column will call for Guillen to be suspended.
“I’m a big guy. I have to accept the criticism,” Mariotti said in a phone interview Wednesday night. “I’m appalled that he can use these ugly slurs and think it’s an acceptable form of retaliation in American life. It’s not.”
Guillen was asked Wednesday if he would be open to taking some sensitivity training considering his recent comments.
“I’ve been here for 20 years, but people have to know that I grew up in a different country. That’s not an excuse. I called the guy that name, but, no, that’s the way I grew up, that’s the way I’ve learned that language,” he said.
“I don’t have an excuse to say that, I have been here enough to know you can use so many words in the States. That’s not an excuse, but I wasn’t calling people that. I was calling him that.”
Guillen, who led the White Sox to their first World Series title in 88 years last season, has gotten into trouble several times with his comments.
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06.21.06
Posted in Gay Rights at 7:33 pm by pikapp44
SUMMARY: Policy makers, feeling Anglican heat over their choice of a female leader, OK a nonbinding pact to “exercise restraint” on the gay-bishop issue.
Episcopal delegates approved a last-ditch attempt by their chief pastor Wednesday to salvage worldwide Anglican unity, voting to adopt a resolution that calls on U.S. church leaders to “exercise restraint” when considering gay candidates for bishop.
The nonbinding measure stops far short of the moratorium on gay and lesbian bishops that Anglican leaders demanded to calm conservative outrage over the 2003 consecration of Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, who lives with his longtime partner.
But it may leave open the chance for discussion between leaders of the Episcopal Church and other members of the Anglican Communion, who are badly at odds over gay and lesbian clergy. Traditionalists hold that the Bible specifically prohibits gay sex.
The legislation passed in the final hours of an anguished nine-day General Convention. It asks Episcopal leaders to “exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration” of candidates for bishop “whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church.”
The House of Deputies, comprised of more than 800 lay people and clergy members, voted for the compromise resolution one day after killing stronger legislation that would have urged dioceses to refrain from choosing bishops in same-gender relationships.
The vote came after direct pleas from outgoing Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold and Nevada Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who will become presiding bishop in November, that deputies approve something to signal that they understand the anger of Anglican leaders.
“Unless there is a clear perception on the part of our Anglican brothers and sisters that they have been taken seriously in their concerns, it will be impossible to have any genuine conversation,” Griswold said Wednesday in a special joint session that he called of both houses.
Still, the resolution is not binding and Bishop John Chane of the Diocese of Washington, D.C., said immediately after it passed that he would not follow it.
“My own understanding of my responsibility as a bishop is to live into the integrity of my office,” Chane said in a statement.
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06.20.06
Posted in Gay Rights at 12:58 pm by pikapp44
Episcopal clergy and lay delegates Tuesday rejected a demand from fellow Anglicans that they temporarily stop electing gay bishops, leaving little chance the proposal could be revived at a national church meeting.
Anglican leaders, angered by the 2003 consecration of an openly gay Episcopal bishop, had asked the Episcopalians pass a moratorium — at least for now — on homosexuals leading dioceses.
But in a complex balloting system, a majority of the Episcopal House of Deputies voted against the measure, which church leaders had seen as critical to keeping the embattled Anglican Communion together.
The critical debate in the Episcopal Church came on a day when another American Protestant denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), coincidentally planned to decide on whether to allow leeway on the ordination of gay clergy and lay elders and deacons.
Mainline Protestant groups, including the Methodists and the largest U.S. Lutheran branch, have been struggling for decades over the traditional Christian prohibition on gay sex as lesbians and gays push for full inclusion in their churches. The issue has frequently dominated debate at national Protestant assemblies.
The Episcopal General Convention ends Wednesday, and the House of Bishops could still try to resurrect the ban on gay bishops. But such a measure would still need the approval of the very same deputies who have now rejected it.
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06.16.06
Posted in D's Thoughts at 6:50 pm by pikapp44
Sexual orientation included in contracts policy
The Palm Beach County School Board on May 31 voted unanimously to adopt a commercial nondiscrimination policy that includes sexual orientation.
The new policy prohibits the school board from accepting bids or engaging in business with “any business firm that has discriminated on the basis of race, gender, religion, national origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or any other form of unlawful discrimination.”
It was the first time that the Palm Beach County School Board unanimously approved a nondiscrimination policy that included sexual orientation, according to Rand Hoch, founder of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council.
“Every other vote, there has been at least one or two votes against it,” Hoch said. “It’s been a long haul to get to this stage.”
Notably, school board member Tom Lynch, who has opposed gay rights efforts on the board in the past, voted for the new nondiscrimination policy. In March 2003, when the board voted to add sexual orientation to the school board’s anti-harassment policy, Lynch voted against that measure. Last month, Lynch angered gay activists when he referred to gay students as a protected “species.” He later apologized for the remark.
School board member Mark Hansen left the room prior to the vote, and board member Sandi Richmond did not attend the meeting.
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