06.25.07
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 4:15 pm by pikapp44
Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards, kicked off San Francisco’s annual gay pride parade Sunday by splitting with her husband over support for legalized same-sex marriage.
I don’t know why someone else’s marriage has anything to do with me, Mrs. Edwards said at a news conference before the parade started. ”I’m completely comfortable with gay marriage.”
She conceded her support puts her at odds with her husband, a former senator from North Carolina who she said supports civil unions for gay couples—but not same-sex marriages.
John believes that couples in committed long-term relationships should enjoy the same rights, benefits, and responsibilities regardless of whether they are straight couples or same-sex couples,Edwards said earlier during her speech. He supports civil unions.
When John Edwards was asked about same-sex marriage during a debate earlier this month, he emphasized his support for civil unions and partnership benefits but said, ”I don’t think the federal government has a role in telling either states or religious institutions, churches, what marriages they can bless and can’t bless.”
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06.22.07
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Portal at 7:06 pm by pikapp44
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, has decided to curb its support of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) organizations after conservative Christian groups threatened a boycott, and after some of its own employees expressed disapproval.
The move comes a year after Wal-Mart had put on a gay-friendly smile. The company joined the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. It sponsored the annual convention of Out & Equal, a group that promotes gay rights in the workplace, and sold gay-themed jewelry in stores.
“We are not currently planning corporate-level contributions to GLBT groups,” said Mona Williams, the company’s senior vice president of corporate communications. Individual stores can still donate to gay groups.
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06.21.07
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 1:03 pm by pikapp44
Under heavy police guard, gay activists marched in a Pride parade in downtown Jerusalem on Thursday, sparking a noisy counter-demonstration by ultra-Orthodox Jews and denunciations by Muslim and Christian leaders.
A 32-year-old ultra-Orthodox man carrying what police called “a homemade explosive device” was arrested before the parade’s kickoff, and city officials forced the cancellation of a planned post-parade Pride rally, citing a slow-down strike by firefighters.
But no violence was reported during the late-afternoon event, a welcome change from previous years.
The activists, some wearing rainbow skullcaps or waving rainbow flags, cheered and sang as they walked just a few hundred yards along a street that passes in front of the historic King David Hotel.
Seven thousand police and 200 paramedics were deployed to protect an estimated 2,500 marchers.
“We came to defend an important cause: freedom of speech and democracy. Jerusalem is our capital as well and we have the right to march here,” tech professional Tal Weisberg told Agence France-Presse.
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06.20.07
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 11:35 am by pikapp44
The Democratically-controlled New York State assembly passed Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s bill to legalize same-sex marriage Tuesday night in a decisive 85-61 vote. Gay rights advocates hailed it as a victory even though the bill stands almost no chance of being voted on in the state senate, where Republicans hold a slim two-seat majority.
“The assembly has demonstrated once again that it is the leader on civil rights and providing equality for our community where it didn’t exist before in New York,” said Empire State Pride Agenda executive director Alan Van Capelle.
Assembly member Teresa Sayward, from the more conservative upstate New York, has a gay son and was the only Republican co-sponsor of the bill.
“My son didn’t want to be different. Lord knows he wanted to change,” said Sayward during the floor debate. “It is not a life choice. My God loves my son. And as sure as I’m standing here tonight, this is certainly not for me, nor should it be for any of us, anything other than a civil rights issue.”
New York’s legislative session ends on Thursday and the Republican senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno has said that he has no intention of taking up the bill.
“If the senate Republican leadership persists in thwarting a vote on marriage, I predict that the gay community will mobilize in unprecedented fashion to raise a tremendous amount of money and provide an army of volunteers to defeat Republican Senators and elect pro-marriage Democrats in 2008,” says Geto.
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06.19.07
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 6:30 pm by pikapp44
Sen. Hillary Clinton went a long way this month toward neutralizing her one lingering Achilles’ heel with LGBT voters when she shifted her stance on the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 bill signed into law by her husband that grants state governments the right not to recognize same-sex marriages or civil unions performed in other states.
Clinton’s new stance on DOMA may also be an attempt to establish a separate identity from that of husband Bill Clinton, whose presidency left somewhat of a best-of-times, worst-of-times aftertaste in the mouths of LGBT Americans. While the gay population’s historic role in electing Bill Clinton launched us on to the national political stage, his statutory legacies to us were the military’s antigay “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and DOMA.
Senator Clinton’s change on DOMA came to light when her advisers released the text of her candidate questionnaire for the Human Rights Campaign.
DOMA contains two provisions: one that gives states autonomy on marriage and one that prohibits federal recognition of same-sex marriages. With the precision of a neurosurgeon, Clinton cut herself free of the second plank of the law while continuing to embrace the first plank, essentially saying that she would let states decide their own destiny on marriage but leave the door open for federal recognition of same-sex unions.
“Senator Clinton believes that each state should make its own decisions regarding marriage or civil unions, but once a state legalizes such relationships, these relationships should receive full federal recognition and benefits,” Ethan Geto, senior national adviser to Senator Clinton on LGBT Issues, explained in an e-mail to The Advocate. “As several states have legalized gay marriage or civil unions, Senator Clinton has come to believe that the restrictions imposed by DOMA on federal government recognition of same-sex relationships are unfair.”
The position represents a marked departure from her comments to a group of about 40 LGBT leaders in New York last October during her Senate reelection campaign, where she stood firm on the strategic importance of DOMA in helping to defeat the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have constitutionally denied the right of marriage to gay and lesbian couples.
“One of the strongest arguments we had against the constitutional amendment, which kept Democrats and even some Republicans from voting for it, was DOMA—that [the FMA] was not necessary; marriage has always been the province of states,” Senator Clinton said during that meeting. “I feel very good about the strategy we took on DOMA,” she added.
While cynics may roll their eyes at “strategy,” and many LGBT activists criticized Clinton for not being more outspoken about gay families during the FMA debate, Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, has credited Senator Clinton as a strategic force in defeating the FMA in 2006.
Prior to the vote, Senator Clinton called Solmonese unsolicited and suggested HRC conduct polling about the issue, which ultimately showed that while support for marriage equality had risen, voters were “enraged” that Congress would spend time debating the FMA rather than the Iraq War. Based on that data, HRC advised Democratic congressional leaders to argue during the floor debates that the GOP was ignoring the most pressing issues facing the nation.
Clinton’s advisers also seem keen to further delineate the distinction between Hillary and Bill on gay issues. Her new position on DOMA means that she now stands opposed to the two most damning pieces of legislation that are the legacy of her husband’s presidency.
“It is instructive to know that Hillary Clinton publicly called for repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ in 1999, while President Clinton was still in office, effectively breaking with him over this policy,” Geto wrote in his e-mail. “This is a further manifestation of her personal commitment to equality and fairness as her guiding principles.”
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06.18.07
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 5:40 pm by pikapp44
Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York federal court late last week on behalf of a same-sex couple after the self-described “America’s #1 home loan lender” refused to add one partner to the other’s existing mortgage and then threatened to foreclose on their home.
“Everyone from kids to creditors knows what it means when two people say they are married,” David S. Buckel, Marriage Project Director for Lambda Legal and attorney on the case, said in a release. “If these two women had been able to marry in New York, this never would have happened. Instead, they were told they had 30 days to come up with almost $80,000 or else they were going to lose their home.”
Adola DeWolf, 49, a teacher for juveniles in the justice system, and Laura Watts, 42, a college administrator, have been in a committed relationship since 2004. When they decided to move in together in 2005, Watts sold her house and moved into DeWolf’s home outside of Rochester, N.Y. In an attempt to make sure both partners were protected in case of death, and to share the responsibility for the mortgage, they contacted DeWolf’s mortgage company, Countrywide, to add Watts as a party responsible for the monthly payments.
Countrywide provided instructions to the couple, including a requirement that Watts be added to the deed. After the couple followed the instructions to change the mortgage, Countrywide responded by stating that the couple had breached their agreement with the lender by changing the deed and stated that the lender did not recognize domestic partners as family. Countrywide then told the couple that they would foreclose on the house if the $80,000 balance on the mortgage were not paid in 30 days.
“We fell in love and made a commitment for life. The next step was to share the responsibility for home ownership, but Countrywide said our relationship didn’t count and then threatened to take away our home,” said Watts.
“We spent weeks constantly scrambling to make sure that we didn’t lose our home, all the time knowing that if we’d been married, it would have been so simple,” said DeWolf.
One of the claims in this case is under the federal Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which requires that creditors not discriminate against applicants based on marital status.
This week New York Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell officially introduced Governor Spitzer’s bill that would allow same-sex couples to marry. The case is called DeWolf and Watts v. Countrywide.
Buckel, director of Lambda Legal’s Marriage Project is attorney on the case along with cooperating attorneys Beau W. Buffier, James L. Garrity Jr. and David M. Sollors of Shearman & Sterling LLP.
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Posted in D's Thoughts at 7:22 am by pikapp44
“There are some things that we were able to discuss that we weren’t able to discuss with Rosie, like heterosexual sex.”
—Barbara Walters to Ryan Seacrest on his KISS-FM radio show On-Air with Ryan Seacrest Wednesday, about how The View had changed since Rosie O’Donnell’s departure.
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Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 7:19 am by pikapp44
In a key victory for the marriage rights movement, the Massachusetts Legislature Thursday narrowly defeated a bid to place a marriage ban on the 2008 ballot. The 151-45 vote against the proposal means marriage opponents could not place another ban on the ballot until 2012.
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06.14.07
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 3:01 pm by pikapp44
Massachusetts lawmakers blocked a proposed ballot measure Thursday that would have let voters decide whether to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage in the only state that allows it.
The narrow vote was a victory for marriage equality advocates and a blow to efforts to reverse the historic court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in the state. More than 8,500 gay couples have married in Massachusetts since it became legal in May 2004.
To get the proposed ban on the 2008 statewide ballot would have required 50 votes. It got 45, with 151 lawmakers opposed. There was no debate.
As the tally was announced, the halls of the statehouse erupted in applause.
”We’re proud of our state today, and we applaud the legislature for showing that Massachusetts is strongly behind fairness,” said Lee Swislow, executive director of Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders.
Opponents of same-sex marriage vowed to press on, but Thursday’s defeat after more than three years of sometimes wrenching debate could prove insurmountable. Any effort to mount a new ballot question would take years at a time political support in Massachusetts is swinging firmly behind marriage equality.
For gay couples, the vote marked what could be the end of a struggle that began in 2001, when seven same-sex couples, denied marriage licenses, sued in Suffolk superior court.
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06.13.07
Posted in Gay Rights at 11:38 am by pikapp44
Under federal tax law, same-sex couples who receive domestic partner benefits have to pay taxes on those benefits — but opposite-sex couples get their spousal benefits tax-free. To end this injustice, a new bill has been introduced in Congress, the Domestic Partner Tax Equity for Health Plan Beneficiaries Act.
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