A Gay Blog….Just Two Gay Women Giving Our Opinions…Very Exciting Stuff;)
Richard Grenell was appointed spokesperson for the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations by President Bush more than seven years ago and became the longest-serving public servant to hold that post.
But when it came to having his partner of six years listed alongside the spouses of other U.N. diplomats, his dedication to the job didn’t carry much weight with the State Department.
A proposal by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to expand federal protections for health care workers’ religious beliefs could threaten the care that patients receive, several organizations are arguing.
LGBT people are at particular risk if the proposed “provider conscience” regulation goes into effect, the groups assert, because the rule would allow workers, on the basis of their faith convictions, to refuse care to patients.
“Existing law already protects workers against religious discrimination,” Lambda Legal senior counsel Jennifer C. Pizer said in a statement. “The law requires ‘reasonable accommodation’ of religious beliefs — and that’s a fair approach because religious freedom matters a lot. But the changes that HHS proposes are so broad, vague, and confusing that they risk inviting health workers with antigay beliefs to refuse treatment and otherwise to discriminate against very vulnerable patients.”
Rebecca Fox, director of the National Coalition for LGBT Health, says the proposed regulations will affect more than just gay people. “HHS’s proposed regulations will have a negative impact on health care for the majority of Americans,” Fox said in a statement.
“In a country where so many people struggle to access quality health care, HHS is creating another barrier. These regulations would be particularly harmful for LGBT Americans, many of whom already struggle to find and afford respectful, good-quality medical care.”
In August, HHS secretary Mike Leavitt unveiled the proposed regulation, saying in a statement that the new rule would allow health care professionals to “practice according to their conscience.”
He continued, “Doctors and other health care providers should not be forced to choose between good professional standing and violating their conscience. Freedom of expression and action should not be surrendered upon the issuance of a health care degree.”
Other critics of the measure include 13 state attorney generals, who argue it will limit access to abortion and birth control for victims of sexual assault.
San Francisco-based Levi Strauss & Co. said Thursday that it will co-chair with Pacific Gas & Electric a group designed to encourage opposition to California’s gay marriage ban within the business community.
According to the Associated Press, the move is in step with the philosophy of Levi Strauss, the first Fortune 500 company to ever offer health benefits to the domestic partners of gay employees.
In July, public utilities company PG&E donated $250,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Levi Strauss has pledged $25,000 to Equality for All, the coalition leading that campaign, company spokesman E.J. Bernacki told the AP.
The companies’ support for marriage equality was met on Thursday with a vow of support for the No on 8 campaign from the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, a business advocacy group in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles. The organization’s board voted “by a significant margin” to oppose the ballot initiative, said President Stuart Waldman. “The most eloquent argument we got from an employer is they spend so much on human resources dealing with different benefits under domestic partnership rules versus married employees,” he said.
A new study from the Williams Institute at UCLA has found that providing domestic-partner benefits to federal employees in a same-sex relationship would add $43.5 million to the federal budget in the first year of coverage and about $675 million over the course of the next decade.
The Senate Committee of Homeland Security and Government Affairs held a hearing Wednesday morning on the bill that would provide DP benefits to federal employees, the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act. Committee chairman Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a sponsor of the bill, was expected to reference the report’s findings during the hearing, thereby entering them into the record. GOP senator Susan Collins of Maine also helped organize the hearing.
The benefits for federal employees would include family health insurance, pension and survivor benefits, and relocation expenses for families who are transferred. For State Department employees abroad, it would also include access to anti-terrorism and language training, medical facilities, and evacuation services. “Adding partners to health care coverage is the most expensive part of the bill,” said study coauthor Naomi Goldberg, the Peter J. Cooper Public Policy Fellow at the Williams Institute.
“But the cost increase of $43.5 million in year one is only 0.4% of total health care expenditures, a tiny fraction that is consistent with the experience of the thousands of private employers offering domestic-partner benefits.” More than 30,000 employees with same-sex partners would benefit if Congress enacts this bill, according to the study
Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign is reportedly launching a “Faith, Family, and Values Tour” next week that will include Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec as one of the campaign’s surrogates. Kmiec wrote an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle this summer in which he urged support for passing California’s marriage ban, Proposition 8.
The Christian Broadcasting Network is reporting that the Obama campaign next week will kick off “Barack Obama: Faith, Family, and Values Tour,” designed to woo the votes of left-leaning Catholics, progressive Evangelicals, and some conservative mainline Protestants. If LGBT people find the tour eerily reminiscent of the South Carolina gospel tour the campaign arranged last year with antigay “ex-gay” gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, their instincts may not be far off.
CBN names Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec as one of the religious surrogates who will hit the road stumping for Obama. Kmiec wrote a June 13 op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle supporting California’s Proposition 8, the ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage, titled “On Same-Sex Marriage: Should California Amend Its Constitution? Say ‘No’ to the Brave New World.” Kmiec’s first two sentences in the piece read, “The California ballot initiative intended to set aside the state supreme court’s judicial invention of same-sex marriage deserves public support. Maybe it is enough to say, as many do in conversation, that it merely re-secures a millennia of tradition and common sense.”
In the op-ed, Kmiec says the state supreme court ignored the separation of church and state in its ruling and argues that allowing gay marriage serves to separate the institution of marriage from procreation.
He concludes his op-ed: “When carefully assessed, the acquisition of unnatural reproductive means often advances the interests of the very affluent through a libertarian exercise that would threaten all hope of democratic equality. In a depopulating world, the claim that there is a universal right to marry regardless of gender becomes a frightening ally of a claimed universal right to access to genetically engineered children. People should reject this claim by returning traditional marriage to its rightful place.”
Kmiec’s views run counter to those of Obama, who voiced his opposition to Proposition 8 in a letter addressed to San Francisco’s Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club. “I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states,” the Illinois senator wrote.
Contacted by The Advocate for comment, Obama campaign spokesperson Shin Inouye confirmed CBN’s report, reiterated Obama’s support for LGBT rights, and echoed the theme of diversity that Obama often trumpets himself.
A woman whose dogs viciously attacked and killed her neighbor in the hallway of their apartment building seven years ago was sentenced Monday to 15 years to life in prison.
Marjorie Knoller was convicted of second-degree murder in the 2001 mauling death of Dianne Whipple, but a judge later reduced the charge to involuntary manslaughter and sentenced her in 2002 to a four-year prison term.
But the California Supreme Court last year said the trial judge was wrong and sent the case back. Last month, Superior Court Judge Charlotte Woolard reinstated the murder conviction, for which Knoller was sentenced Monday.
The case is the California’s first murder conviction connected to a dog mauling, prosecutors say.
The case turned into a tabloid sensation because of the viciousness of the attack - the dogs tore all of Whipple’s clothing from her body and left her with more than 70 bites - and the seemingly cavalier attitudes of Knoller and her law partner and husband, Robert Noel, who blamed Whipple for the attack.
The couple also said they were keeping the canines on behalf of a white supremacist accused of running an attack dog ring from his state prison cell. The couple eventually adopted the prisoner, Paul “Cornfed” Schneider, as their son.
Knoller, who has served three years in prison, will have to serve 12 more years before she can apply for parole.
In denying Knoller’s plea for probation, Woolard noted that Knoller didn’t call 911 or otherwise try to help Whipple during the 10-minute attack. The judge said Knoller knew the dogs were dangerous, ignored numerous warnings to train them and hasn’t expressed remorse for the attack.
“She has blamed the victim and has held her dogs in higher regard than humans,” Woolard said.
Whipple’s partner, Sharon Smith, addressed Knoller before she was led off to jail. Smith called Knoller’s relationship with the two dogs and the prisoner “perverted” and expressed satisfaction with the lengthy prison sentence.
“It is very hard to find forgiveness for someone who doesn’t accept responsibility,” Smith said.
Steven Spielberg and his spouse, Kate Capshaw, followed in the footsteps of Brad Pitt and chipped in a $100,000 donation to fight Proposition 8, the constitutional marriage amendment that would take away the rights of gays and lesbians to marry in California.
“By writing discrimination into our state constitution, Proposition 8 seeks to eliminate the right of each and every citizen in our state to marry regardless of sexual orientation,” the couple said in a written statement released Monday. “Such discrimination has NO place in California’s constitution, or any other.”
Despite a recent spate of celebrity gifts to defeat the ban, backers of the measure are still winning the money game, outraising the ‘No’ on 8 campaign $17.8 million to $12.4 million, according to Tuesday’s LA Times.
Financial backing is critical to the ability of both sides to air ads promoting their position, with weekly spots costing anywhere from $3.5 million to $5 million in order to ensure state voters view them 7 to 10 times.
Alongside the cash injection from the entertainment industry, the LA Times reports that San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom will attend a $5,000-per-person New York fundraiser Thursday with Gov. David Paterson, a long-time supporter of marriage equality.
High schools in Abbotsford, British Columbia, are being blocked by the local school board from teaching a new social justice course that includes curriculum on issues dealing with everything from homophobia to animal rights, reports the Vancouver Sun.
The school board says it wants to review the course’s content after religious groups objected to the teachings, saying they would be too subject to individual the beliefs of teachers.
One high school swiftly modified the course, eliminating information about gay and lesbian rights, after the board said it couldn’t be taught this semester.
A letter from the board about the course indicated they thought a number of the subjects were better suited to college students. “Many of the issues and topics are very sensitive and encroach on areas of family values, beliefs and practices,” reads the letter, according to the Sun. “Some resources and related discussions may leave students feeling alienated or threatened rather than feeling accepted and respected for their opinions and perspectives.”
The Social Studies Department head at the high school, Leanne Abrey, said she was frustrated by the board’s action.
“[I] kind of questioned why a ministry-approved course would need to have board approval,” she told the Sun. “I don’t think it reflects well on our community. It sort of defeats the purpose of a social justice course when it can’t be offered.”
A same-sex commitment ceremony was held in a synagogue in Sydney, an Australian first.
The pair, who had a secular commitment ceremony six years ago, exchanged rings, smashed a glass and walked around each other three-and-a-half times.
The celebration follows a decision in May 2007 by the Council of Progressive Rabbis of Asia, Australia and New Zealand to allow its rabbis to officiate at same-sex commitment ceremonies.
“We wanted to be recognized by our community and officiated by our rabbi, that was important to us. he told the Sydney Star Observer, a gay newspaper.
In a recent letter to congregants, Rabbi Kamins defended his decision: “Contemporary knowledge from biology, psychology and other fields has led to a far deeper understanding of human sexuality.
“Gay or lesbian relationships are not ‘deviant’, but part of human behavior.”
He noted that Orthodox Judaism would not endorse the violation of Shabbat “but neither would it shun a person who drove on Shabbat.”
Dayenu, a gay and lesbian Jewish group, held a Shabbat dinner Friday night in honor of the couple.
It is still illegal for homosexual couples to marry under Australian law.
Brad Pitt has donated $100,000 to fight California’s November ballot initiative that would overturn the state Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage.
It’s the first time voters will be asked to ban same-sex marriage in a state where gay couples already have won the right to wed. Same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts and California.
It’s the first time voters will be asked to decide the issue in either California or Massachusetts — the states where gays have won the right to wed.
“Because no one has the right to deny another their life, even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn’t harm another and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8,” Pitt said Wednesday.