12.18.08
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 8:50 am by pikapp44
Progressives are up in arms over the Obama transition team’s announcement that the Reverend Rick Warren has been selected to deliver the invocation at his inauguration in January. Warren, the founder and senior pastor of California’s Saddleback Church, was a vocal supporter of Prop. 8.
Moments after the announcement was made, Huffington Post went wild with Op-ed’s calling for Obama to remove Warren from the inauguration. The Human Rights Campaign sent a letter to president elect Barack Obama Wednesday expressing their disappointment in the selection of Warren.
“Our loss in California over the passage of Proposition 8 which stripped loving, committed same-sex couples of their given legal right to marry is the greatest loss our community has faced in 40 years,” the letter reads. “And by inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table.”
Equality California followed with an email blast to supporters with a petition calling on Obama to “immediately rescind this despicable invitation.”
Early in his campaign, Obama ran up against criticism from LGBT Americans for his inclusion of antigay political figures in his faith tour and on campaign stops. “Reformed gay” gospel singer Donnie McClurkin performed at an early event for Obama, drawing jeers from LGBT activists.
McClurkin has long claimed that God saved him from homosexuality.
Weeks later, the press latched on to Obama’s friendship with antigay minister James Meeks, from whom Obama had long claimed to seek regular “spiritual counsel.” This association led a number of on-the-fence LGBT voters to rally behind Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries.
The HRC’s letter to Obama goes on to say, “Rev. Warren spoke out vocally in support of Prop. 8 in California saying, ‘there is no need to change the universal, historical definition of marriage to appease 2 percent of our population … This is not a political issue — it is a moral issue that God has spoken clearly about.’”
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12.17.08
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 2:22 pm by pikapp44
LGBT leaders are meeting with members of the Obama transition team to push for appointing an out cabinet secretary and brief them on LGBT policy. Though no promises have been made, activists are hopeful more gay appointees will be added to the list.
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12.16.08
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 5:10 pm by pikapp44
President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for education secretary supported a proposal this year for a Chicago public high school that would be geared to gay students.
Arne Duncan, the Chicago school superintendent, approved plans for the Pride Campus of Social Justice High School, which was set to be voted on by the school board in November, only to be pulled by organizers at the last minute after controversy.
Duncan, CEO of Chicago Public Schools since 2001, was nominated by Obama for the cabinet post at a press conference Tuesday morning, CNN reports.
The 44-year-old Harvard graduate helped write the president-elect’s education platform and has frequently advised him on educational matters, according to The New York Times.
In June, bolstered by grim statistics, a group of Chicago teachers, administrators, and education experts presented a groundbreaking proposal to the Chicago public school board: A new Pride Campus, affiliated with the existing Social Justice High School, eventually serving 400 to 600 students, would provide a safe and accepting place for LGBT kids and their allies.
The public charter school would have been only the third of its kind in the country, after Milwaukee’s Alliance School and New York City’s Harvey Milk High Schoo
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Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 9:32 am by pikapp44
New York Governor David Paterson has issued a directive requiring the Health Department to allow a gay couple to have both partners’ names added to a birth certificate. What a momentous statement! Finally! A step toward the adoption of children by gay couples!
So, what is so great about gay adoption? Think about it! Gay families have shown to have just a good a chance of succeeding as straight families. And these couples come together despite some severe adversity, and out of love, not obligation. There are probably only islands of places where two women or two men feel they must partner up out of cultural stymies. There is no wed-lock, little chance of eloping because of the legal process. And when they decide to have a child, despite all odds, it is out of love.
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12.12.08
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 7:04 pm by pikapp44
The Reverend Richard Cizik spoke in support of gay civil unions during a December 2 broadcast of Fresh Air on National Public Radio and said his attitude toward LGBT people is shifting.
The evangelical organization was quick to distance itself from Cizik. He has become an increasingly outspoken opponent of some of the association’s positions in recent years — in particular, its stand on the environment and global warming.
With money from evangelicals second only to donations from Mormons in the successful effort to pass California’s Prop. 8, the Reverend Richard Cizik’s resignation Thursday from the National Association of Evangelicals after publicly supporting same-sex unions highlights the divide between conservative churches and gay interest.
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12.10.08
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 2:19 pm by pikapp44
A Democratic aide has confirmed to The Advocate that President-elect Obama will be naming Los Angeles deputy mayor Nancy Sutley, who is gay, as a senior member of his environmental team, as reported Wednesday by the Los Angeles Times.
Sutley, who currently serves as deputy mayor of energy and the environment, will be named chairwoman of the Council of Environmental Quality, which helps develop environmental policy and advises the White House on such matters.
Nancy Sutley has a rich background in environmental public policy at both the federal and state levels, having served on the California State Water Resources Control Board, as energy adviser to Gov. Gray Davis, and as the deputy secretary for policy and intergovernmental relations within the California Environmental Protection Agency. As an appointee to the EPA, she helped shape water and air pollution policy, lobbied congressional leadership, and formulated budget and legislative priorities.
Denis Dison of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund said he was pleased to see an LGBT appointee added to Obama’s roster but still has his sights set on a higher prize.
“I think the community is still hoping that we will see an openly LGBT cabinet secretary,” Dison said. “There are still names out there that we would like to see appointed, like John Berry.”
Berry, who is director of the Smithsonian National Zoo and former executive director of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, is reportedly under consideration for secretary of the Interior, the governmental steward of all U.S. public land. The Victory Fund’s Gay and Lesbian Leadership Institute has been collecting and vetting LGBT candidates who are qualified to serve in the administration through its Presidential Appointments Project.
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12.08.08
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 3:05 pm by pikapp44
The Iowa supreme court is ready to hear oral arguments Tuesday in a gay marriage case that USA Today reports “could echo throughout the nation and be far more difficult to challenge at the ballot box than a high-profile ruling in California, legal experts say.”
If Varnum v. Brien is decided in favor of the six same-sex couples who filed the case, Iowa will become the first Midwestern state to legalize gay marriage,.
Iowa legislators passed a Defense of Marriage Act in 1998, but the state currently has no constitutional prohibition against gay marriage. Passing an antigay constitutional marriage measure retroactively would be an involved process requiring a simple-majority vote of both the Iowa house and senate in two consecutive legislative sessions followed by a majority approval of voters in the next general election.
“This is the heartland of America — a place where family values are revered,” University of Iowa law professor Angela Onwuachi-Willig, who signed a court brief supporting gay marriage rights, told USA Today. “It would be an incredibly strong signal for the Iowa supreme court to find that same-sex marriages are legal.”
Last week reports began to surface that New York State senate Democrats may have secured control of their chamber by bargaining away a promised same-sex marriage bill.
In California the supreme court has agreed to hear challenges to the just-passed Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
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12.07.08
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 9:22 pm by pikapp44
New York State senate Democrats may have secured control of their chamber by bargaining away marriage equality.
Democrats won a two-seat majority in the chamber after decades of Republican rule, three conservative members of the caucus had threatened to defect to the GOP unless they received more power. But a handshake deal in New York City apparently gave the holdouts what they wanted, The New York Times reports.
For one, Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr. of the Bronx, the concessions may have included postponing a vote on marriage equality until 2010 at the earliest, according to the paper.
New York assembly member Daniel J. O’Donnell, who is gay and carried a same-sex marriage bill that passed his chamber in 2007, told the Times that he expects momentum to continue for marriage equality regardless of what transpired.
“All civil rights movements have moments where they move forward, and moments of perceived setbacks,” O’Donnell, who represents Manhattan, told the paper. “If in fact our civil rights were bargained away, that’s deplorable. But in the end, I think justice and fairness will prevail.”
Still, Freedom to Marry’s executive director Evan Wolfson says its important to remain positive.
“Don’t buy into the idea that marriage is being put on the backburner,” he told Advocate.com “Politicians always float trial balloons. There are those who want us to surrender and walk away, and expect less. We’ve only just begun to fight, and we can’t give up before we’ve started.”
Alan Van Capelle, head of Empire State Pride Agenda, said he and his team were awaiting more details about the deal. “We would expect that any rumors that marriage equality was somehow a part of this deal are just that — rumors,” Van Capelle said in a statement. But, he cautioned, “civil rights should never be a bargaining chip in any political leadership battle, and we would be outraged if the issue of marriage equality was even part of the discussions.”
A same-sex marriage bill has yet to pass New York’s senate.
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12.04.08
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 8:14 pm by pikapp44
When Gov. Charlie Crist legally weds his longtime girlfriend Carole Rome on Dec. 12, St. Petersburg’s First United Methodist Church will be packed with cheering family members, friends and the most inside of Florida insiders.
Outside the church, in nearby Williams Park, hundreds of supporters of equal marriage rights—the outsiders of the Nov. 4 vote in Florida—will also cheer the governor and his bride. But it will be a double-edged celebration.
“We want to say ‘congratulations governor—when can I get married?’” said Lorna Bracewell, spokeswoman for Impact Florida, a grass roots activist group organizing the protest.
Impact Florida is a chapter of Join the Impact, a national movement formed by GLBT activists when state amendments banning same sex marriage passed in California, Arizona, and Florida in the Nov. 4 election.
Bracewell, a singer songwriter from Indian Rocks, Fla., lives with her partner of three years, whom she said she would love to marry.
“We’re very much in favor of marriage,” Bracewell said. “We’d just like that opportunity available to all Floridians regardless of gender or sexual orientation.”
The Rome/Crist wedding, she said, presents a “perfect opportunity” for same sex marriage supporters to point out the injustice and hypocrisy of Florida’s marriage laws.
“His decision to support Amendment 2 and his failure to speak out against it does represent his dropping the ball,” she said. “As the governor he’s supposed to be there insuring that the rights of all Floridians are protected.”
Crist announced his support of the anti-gay marriage measure in August, after originally saying he had a neutral, “live and let live” attitude about the issue. He had also ordered the State Republican Party to stop funding Florida4marriage.com, chief proponents of the measure. His conflicting statements, combined with looming rumors about his sexual orientation, have made him an ironic central figure in the gay marriage debate.
Those gay rumors boiled over when Crist announced his plan to marry Rome, while the bachelor governor was on Sen. John McCain’s short listed of for Vice President. The timing of the marriage plans appeared to some critics as if it could be a staged wedding, to solidify his “family values” image.
McCain went on to nominate Sarah Palin, and now the election is over—but the wedding is still on, and guests have received pink-and-cream invitations to the Dec. 12 nuptials, as well as to a lavish reception at St. Petersburg’s Renaissance Vinoy Resort. Rome has gushed about feeling blessed because of her love for Crist.
Bracewell says the demonstrators will form a candle light vigil near the resort, near the entrance to the reception at the Vinoy Resort. Impact Florida is asking demonstrators to wear pink shirts in honor of the wedding’s theme. They want it to be “a festive occasion,” Bracewell said.
Impact’s first demonstration was the national day of protest Nov. 15, where nearly 1 million people across the country demonstrated for equal marriage rights. Impact is organizing the Dec. 12 rally through its online social network, www.impactflorida.ning.com. More than 400 people attended the Nov. 15 protest in St. Petersburg; Bracewell said she hopes to double that for the wedding demonstration.
“Our ultimate goal is to see Amendment 2 repealed,” Bracewell said. “We know one demonstration is not going to accomplish the goal. But our goal is to be visible to let them see whose lives are being affected by amendment 2.
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12.03.08
Posted in Advocate Articles, Gay Rights at 2:09 pm by pikapp44
The Vatican has come out against a United Nations resolution that calls on all governments to decriminalize homosexuality. The resolution, Archbishop Celestino Migliore said, would “add new categories of those protected from discrimination” and could lead to the decline of heterosexual marriage, Reuters reported Tuesday.
“If adopted, they would create new and implacable discriminations,” Migliore said. “For example, states which do not recognize same-sex unions as ‘matrimony’ will be pilloried and made an object of pressure.”
France will propose the resolution this month on behalf of the 27-member European Union. The Vatican is not a member, but it uses the Euro.
“No other religion in the world is granted this type of status on the world stage,” Catholics for Choice president Jon O’Brien told Advocate.com on Tuesday.
The Vatican has a nonvoting seat at the U.N., but the Holy See’s opinions can be influential.
“Other major religions are granted a voice in the United Nations,” O’Brien said, “but they’re often treated as nongovernment organizations.”
While more nations, especially those in Latin America, are moving toward separating church and state, the Vatican’s stance may prompt other leaders from other religions to pressure political officials. Still, Catholicism is the only major religion with a mouthpiece at the U.N.
“You won’t find an imam sitting at the U.N. pretending that they’re a part of a state,” O’Brien added. “You don’t find that kind of manifestation in other world religions. We certainly have seen folks like the Mormons and those of extreme Muslim beliefs and überconservatives backed by the Vatican trying to form a lobby together.”
Italian newspaper La Stampa said the city-state’s stance was “grotesque,” figuring that the Vatican feared a chain reaction in legally instituting marriage equality, especially in Italy, where there is no law banning same-sex marriage.
“The French resolution … has nothing to do with gay marriage. It is about stopping jail and the death penalty for homosexuals,” Franco Grillini, president of Italy’s leading gay rights activist organization Arcigay, told Reuters.
Homosexuality is still punishable in at least 85 countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, and Ghana. Some countries kill those who are found guilty of such an offense.
All the European Union member nations have backed France’s proposed resolution. Just this past weekend, the Catholic Church in England and Wales urged priests and churchgoers to be tolerant and welcoming to LGBT people in a new pamphlet being distributed across the country.
“The laudable change of tone is undermined by the homophobic content of the Catholic catechism and by the pope’s frequent endorsement of legal discrimination against lesbian and gay people,” U.K. gay rights advocate Peter Tatchell said in a statement on Monday. “The Vatican’s policy of denouncing loving, stable same-sex relationships risks undoing the good, kind intentions of this leaflet.”
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