05.30.08
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 5:53 pm by pikapp44
The attorneys general of 10 states are urging the California Supreme Court to delay finalizing its ruling to legalize same-sex marriage.
The attorneys general say in court documents filed Thursday that they have an interest in the case because they would have to determine if their states would recognize the marriage of gay residents who wed in California.
They want the court to stay its ruling until after the November election, when voters likely will decide whether to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage.
California Attorney General Jerry Brown is urging the court not to grant the stay.
The states involved are Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah.
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05.29.08
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 4:55 pm by pikapp44
Same-sex marriages legally performed elsewhere will be recognized in New York in response to a state court ruling this year.
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05.28.08
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 4:55 pm by pikapp44
Same-sex couples in some California counties will be able to marry as soon as June 14, the president of California’s county clerks association said.
Clerks would be authorized to hand out marriage licenses as soon as that date, which is a Saturday and exactly 30 days after the California supreme court ruled that gay marriage should be legal.
The court’s decisions typically
take effect after 30 days, barring further legal action.
It would be up to each county clerk to decide whether to open their offices to gay and lesbian couples on that Saturday or to wait until the following Monday.
Some clerks have said they would try to accommodate couples at the earliest possible date, depending on their staffing and anticipated demand, he said.
If the court’s decision does take effect on June 14, couples could, in theory, plan to obtain their licenses and take their vows at 12:01 a.m. that day.
An effort, however, is under way to stay the supreme court’s decision until voters can decide the issue with an initiative planned for the November ballot. The measure would overrule the justices’ decision and amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage.
Justices have until the ruling’s effective date to weigh the request, but could give themselves longer to consider it, attorneys have said. Another complicating factor is that the supreme court also directed a midlevel appeals court that upheld the state’s one man-one woman marriage laws a year ago to issue a new order legalizing same-sex marriage, and it’s not clear when the appeals court would comply.
Massachusetts is the only other state to legalize gay marriage, something it did in 2004. More than 9,500 same-sex couples in that state have wed.
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05.27.08
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Portal at 5:18 pm by pikapp44
Germany on Tuesday inaugurated a memorial to the thousands of homosexuals persecuted and killed under the Nazis, a monument meant both to honor a long-ignored group of victims and to make a statement against ongoing intolerance.
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05.25.08
Posted in D's Thoughts at 3:49 pm by pikapp44
Seems that one of the new york gay dating sites - Pride Dating - we like was recently reviewed via video on vidilife.com. CHECK IT OUT HERE - New York Gay Dating
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05.23.08
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Portal at 5:24 pm by pikapp44
With Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in theaters now, Smithsonian anthropologist Dr. Jane MacLaren Walsh, a crystal-skull expert and a lesbian, is getting international attention.
Nineteen years after Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones is back in the highly anticipated Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, in theaters now. Trademark fedora intact, Harrison Ford once again toplines as the adventurous archaeologist, this time on the hunt for the Crystal Skull of Akator, a legendary skull believed to hold the power of world domination for whoever can unlock its secrets.
In the real world, Indy’s altar ego may well be Dr. Jane MacLaren Walsh, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, whose research focus is—yes!—crystal skulls. The objects have attracted a growing legion of fans over the years—from New Age devotees to psychics—who say the skulls have supernatural healing powers. But Walsh’s work has shown that no crystal skull has ever been excavated from a documented archaeological site. Still, despite their inauthenticity, skulls of all sizes, usually made from rock crystal, have been displayed as ancient artifacts in museums and private collections worldwide.
Everyone wants to talk to Walsh these days, given her real-life connection to a major summer blockbuster.
They expect me to have insider knowledge of the film and the plot. But unfortunately, I don’t. All of the writing I’ve done about skulls has been in terms of them being fakes. And crystal skulls are relatively modern fakes. I originally wrote about this in Archaeology magazine, and since the 1970s the interest in skulls has really exploded.
My own feeling is that we are fascinated with our own mortality and these skulls are a representation of us and our mortality. Since the Renaissance, skulls have often been depicted in paintings to reflect impermanence and the fragility of life. One example of this is that you often see priests contemplating skulls. In addition, they are made of these materials, rock and crystal, that Europeans find very valuable.
How did you become an expert on crystal skulls in the first place?
It happened essentially because someone sent us one in the mail, an anonymous, unsolicited package. I had been doing some archaeological collections work here and I had just started doing research on crystal skulls. I grew up in Mexico, did my BA and MA there, and crystal skulls were objects I had never seen in any collection of artifacts that had ever been excavated from a site. That raised a flag early on in my research, but when we received this skull, it opened up an entirely new avenue of research for me.
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05.22.08
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 1:56 pm by pikapp44
Republican congressman Paul Broun of Georgia announced Tuesday that he plans to submit a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. He cited the California supreme court’s May 15 ruling in favor of gay marriage as the reason for his action, according to The Southern Voice.
“What the activist judges in California have shown is that the traditional definition of marriage is under assault by a cadre of lawyers and judges who hold the will of the voters in contempt,” Broun said in a press release. “As a result, a political and social question that should be resolved at the ballot box is being imposed by a handful of liberal elites.”
Broun, a freshman representative elected in 2007, is currently seeking reelection
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Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 12:47 pm by pikapp44
In a 8-4 vote, the Miami-Dade County Commission approved a county-wide domestic-partnership registry, providing recognition to all non-married couples who register in the county. The measure includes shared health insurance for county employees, as well as family visitation rights for partners at county health care facilities.
While all twelve Miami-Dade County Commissioners expressed support for domestic partnership benefits at the Commission meeting Tuesday, the measure was met with wh at seemed to be a thinly - veiled attempt by Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz to derail it by broadening the language, thereby postponing the measure and perhaps never allowing it to come to vote.
“This is a darn good first step,” said Commissioner Sally Heyman. “ To delay it is irresponsible.”
About 100 gay rights supporters waved “jazz hands” silently above their heads (protocol, in lieu of clapping in the commission chambers) to celebrate the vote which makes Miami-Dade the fourth–and largest– county in Florida to provide domestic partnership benefits.
“It’s a good policy for the county and for the state,” said Heddy Pena, executive director of SAVE. “ It’s a win–win all the way for county, for employees.”
But despite seemingly unanimous support for domestic partnership rights from the commissioners, the vote to approve the ordinance once and for all did not come easy.
Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz tried to delay the passage by amending the ordinance to include all family members into the measure, citing adults who raise grandchildren. At one point he called the domestic partnership ordinance “reverse discrimination.”
“I think the issue is to be inclusive and not set one group against another,’ Diaz said, making sure to say that he does not oppose providing domestic partnership rights.
But at a heated moment in his speech, Diaz claimed it was “unfair” to give rights to one group and not another. “If this were the other way around,” he said, “the ‘domestic partners’would be crying discrimination.”
Commissioners voted against Diaz’s amendment, after a lengthy discussion that seemed to pit providing health care to “families” against people who live in “domestic partnerships”– exactly what Diaz said he did not intend to do. However, Commissioner Katy Sorenson lambasted the Commission for considering a delay on the registry vote.
“This [ordinance] does not pit anyone against anyone,” said Sorenson. “It corrects an injustice.”
Elizabeth Schwartz, a Miami-Dade family law attorney, was present at the hearing in support of the measure. She claims Diaz was purposely trying to distort the issue, under the guise of politically- correct language.
“What ires them is legally recognizing [GLBT] relationships and families,” said Schwartz. “ To throw in everyone else dilutes the issue.”
Diaz, and commissioners Natacha Seijas and Rebeca Sosa, asked County Attorney R. A. Cuevas to find a way to attach an amendment to the ordinance include families into the resolution to be voted on Tuesday. Cuevas said the only way to amend the ordinance was by re- introducing it with Diaz’s suggestions, and thus delaying the process.
After his amendment was struck down, Diaz continued to question county staff about the ordinance, suggesting that it was not properly vetted and that economic studies were inadequate.At one point,he suggested changing the definition of domestic partners to include all members of a family.
“Domestic partners can be anything,” he said. “ There is no registered trademark on domestic partners.”
Diaz’s attempt to broaden the definition of domestic partners mirrors the failed attempt in the State Legislature to add specific language to protect GLBT students in the antibullying bill that was passed into law without specific categories. Even during the debate, the only Commissioner to acknowledge the GLBT community was Joe Martinez, who claimed the rest of the panel was dancing around the fact that the measure was “really about same-sex couples,” not domestic partnerships in general. He later voted to postpone the vote;when that was denied, he was one of the four Commissioners to vote against the measure.
Chip Arndt, of Freedom Democrats, said he was “”pleasantly shocked” to see the commission’s stance on GLBT issues.
“It’s wonderful that everyone agreed with us on the record,” Arndt said. “ This is pure politics. The big win was no commissioner stated they were against us.”
And while the vote represents a significant victory for Miami-Dade’s GLBT community, most of those who attended the commission meeting were well aware that domestic partnership benefits could be dismantled if the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage passes in November. Although she said she was pleased with the county commission vote, Pena remained wary.
“What’s important now,” she said. “Is that we defeat Amendment 2.”
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05.21.08
Posted in Gay Rights at 9:27 pm by pikapp44
The military cannot automatically discharge people because they’re gay, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday in the case of a decorated flight nurse who sued the Air Force over her dismissal.
The three judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not strike down the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. But they reinstated Maj. Margaret Witt’s lawsuit, saying the Air Force must prove that her dismissal furthered the military’s goals of troop readiness and unit cohesion.
The “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue, don’t harass” policy prohibits the military from asking about the sexual orientation of service members but requires discharge of those who acknowledge being gay or engaging in homosexual activity.
Wednesday’s ruling led opponents of the policy to declare its days numbered. It is also the first appeals court ruling in the country that evaluated the policy through the lens of a 2003 Supreme Court decision that struck down a Texas ban on sodomy as an unconstitutional intrusion on privacy.
When gay service members have sued over their dismissals, courts historically have accepted the military’s argument that having gays in the service is generally bad for morale and can lead to sexual tension.
Under this ruling, military officials “need to prove that having this particular gay person in the unit really hurts morale, and the only way to improve morale is to discharge this person,” said Aaron Caplan, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state who worked on the case.
“When the government attempts to intrude upon the personal and private lives of homosexuals, the government must advance an important governmental interest … and the intrusion must be necessary to further that interest,” wrote Judge Ronald M. Gould.
Gay service members who are discharged can sue in federal court, and if the military doesn’t prove it had a good reason for the dismissal, the cases will go forward, Caplan said.
Another attorney for Witt, James Lobsenz, hailed the ruling as the beginning of the end for “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
“If the various branches of the Armed Forces have to start proving each application of the policy makes sense, then it’s not going to be only Maj. Witt who’s going to win,” Lobsenz said. “Eventually, they’re going to say, ‘This is dumb. … It’s time to scrap the policy.”‘
An Air Force spokeswoman said she had no comment on the decision and directed inquiries to the Defense Department.
Lt. Col. Todd Vician, a Defense spokesman, said he did not know specifics of the case and could not comment beyond noting that “the DOD policy simply enacts the law as set forth by Congress.”
Witt joined the Air Force in 1987 and switched from active duty to the reserves in 1995. She cared for injured patients on military flights and in operating rooms. She was promoted to major in 1999, and she deployed to Oman in 2003 in support of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
A citation from President Bush that year said, “Her airmanship and courage directly contributed to the successful accomplishment of important missions under extremely hazardous conditions.”
Her suspension and discharge came during a shortage of flight nurses and outraged many of her colleagues — one of whom, a sergeant, retired in protest.
“I am thrilled by the court’s recognition that I can’t be discharged without proving that I was harmful to morale,” Witt said in a statement. “I am proud of my career and want to continue doing my job. Wounded people never asked me about my sexual orientation. They were just glad to see me there.”
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Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Portal at 4:52 pm by pikapp44
Portland, Ore., is now the largest U.S. city with an openly gay mayor with the election Tuesday of city commissioner Sam Adams to the post. The mayor-elect avoids a November runoff race by having won 58% of the vote, according to the Associated Press.
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