A Gay Blog….Just Two Gay Women Giving Our Opinions…Very Exciting Stuff;)
More than 429 Florida Leaders Have Already Endorsed Amendment 2
See Names and Pictures including Governor Charlie Crist and Attorney General Bill McCollum.
Site “Yes2Marriage.org: http://www.yes2marriage.org/about-us/endorsements/
Law enforcement agencies reported a slight decrease in hate crimes last year, despite an increase against gays and lesbians.
The FBI reported more than 7,600 hate crime incidents in 2007, down about 1 percent from last year.
Racially motivated hate crimes accounted for more than half of that total. Religious bias was the second-leading motive for hate crimes, followed by prejudice against sexual orientation.
Within those categories, the FBI report found most hate crimes tended to be anti-black, anti-Jewish and anti-gay.
When the largest and oldest health insurance provider speaks out against Amendment 2 people listen. And Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida (BCBS-FL) has been speaking out against the deceptively named “marriage protection” amendment quite a bit.
Their clear and public stand has earned them high points for courage and integrity but it has also earned them the animosity of the far right backers of Amendment 2.
Since publicly announcing their opposition to this discriminatory amendment, BCBS-FL has been targeted by the far right. They stood up for all Floridians and now we need to stand up for them.
Send a Thank You message to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida and let them know that we will stand with them everytime they support fairness and equality.
Far right backers of Amendment 2 are already starting challenges to municipalities’ domestic partnership benefits. David Caton, of the Florida Family Association, has already started laying the groundwork to challenge partner benefits that the City of Tampa provides to police officers, firefighters and all municipal employees.
Proponents of the Michigan amendment claimed that it was only about marriage - just as those pushing the Florida Amendment are now doing. Then, those very same people turned around and challenged Michigan Domestic Partner Benefits programs and stripped away the rights and benefits of thousands of couples.
Write to BCBS-FL today and tell them how much we appreciate their principled stand.
Talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres spoke out against Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin on her show Wednesday. Palin said Saturday that she would support a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
“Maybe it’s because I’m gay that we should all be equal, but I feel that we’re all equal,” DeGeneres said on her show. “I don’t know what people are scared of. Maybe they think their children will be influenced. I gotta say, I was raised by two heterosexuals, I was surrounded by heterosexuals, everywhere I looked were heterosexuals, and they did not influence — I mean I dabbled in high school, who didn’t? Everyone dabbled. People are going to be who they want to be, and we have let them love who they want to love.”
DeGeneres married her partner of four years, Portia de Rossi, this August in Los Angeles.
Republican presidential nominee John McCain opposes the Federal Marriage Amendment, supporting states’ rights to decide whether to grant marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has mobilized followers to give an estimated 77% of donations to support California’s proposed marriage ban.
Californians Against Hate released figures Tuesday showing that $17.67 million was contributed by 59,000 Mormon families since August to groups like Yes on 8. Contributions in support of Prop. 8 total $22.88 million. Additionally, the group reports that Mormons have contributed $6.9 million to pass a a similar law, Proposition 102, in Arizona.
“It is a staggering amount of money and an even more staggering percentage of the overall campaign receipts,” Fred Karger of Californians Against Hate said in a press release. “The Mormon Church, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, has hijacked the campaigns in both California and Arizona, where voters face constitutional amendments to end same-sex marriage.”
Karger said Californians Against Hate came up with the figures by cross-referencing donor information from the California secretary of state with Brigham Young University alumni lists, church memberships, and other personal documentation that could identify Mormon Church members. He said the surge in support has been an attempt to boost the church’s social standing among the greater religious community.
“For whatever reason, they’re trying to get some respect from other religions,” he told The Advocate Tuesday. “They’ve always been looked down upon by the Christians, the Catholics, and evangelicals.”
Success with the marriage amendment would give the church credibility, Karger said.
The Latter-day Saints Church says it has approximately 770,000 members in California, accounting for about 2% of the state’s population. Senior church elders broadcast a call to Mormons October 8 for increased volunteer efforts and donations for the marriage fight. The hour-long message went out to churches in Utah, Hawaii, and Idaho as well as California.
Members of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, the second-highest church governing body, explained their plan to pass the ballot initiative. They asked each California congregation to commit 30 volunteers to donate four hours a week to Proposition 8. They also urged young people to use technology — such as social networks, text messaging, and blogging — to spread the word.
Democratic vice presidential hopeful Joe Biden sat down with Ellen DeGeneres Monday afternoon to campaign for Barack Obama. During his visit to the show, he made clear that if he were a resident of California, he would be voting no on Proposition 8.
Gov. Palin took time this weekend to revisit the merits of another anti-gay federal law that, unlike DADT, failed to make it’s way into the books: the Federal Marriage Amendment. Palin told David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network that she supports passing a federal law that would constitutionally define marriage as a union between a man and a woman and deny same-sex couples the right to marry.
“In my own state, I have voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman,” Palin told CBN. “I wish on a federal level that that’s where we would go because I don’t support gay marriage.”
A mid-level New York State appeals court in Albany heard arguments Wednesday in a challenge to the state’s health benefit policy for spouses of gay state workers, the Associated Press reports.
The challenge was brought by taxpayers represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative group. The four plaintiffs, a group of taxpayers the AP says are not state workers, say whether to allow spousal benefits should be left up to the state legislature. Brian Raum, who is representing plaintiffs Kenneth and Denise Lewis and Robert and Elaine Houck, said that former governor Eliot Spitzer’s 2007 authorization of the policy is “completely at odds” with current law and that the change should have been “left up to the democratic process.”
Assistant solicitor general Sasha Samberg-Champion said that lawmakers considered but did not adopt legislation to reverse the policy, which affects only state employees who were legally married in jurisdictions that grant same-sex marriages, including Canada, Massachusetts, and now California and Connecticut. A lower court earlier this year upheld the benefits policy. The appeals court’s decision is expected in about a month.
Another battle over recognition of same-sex marriages is ongoing in the state courts. The New York supreme court ruled September 9 that current governor David Paterson acted within his powers when he issued an executive order requiring state agencies to recognize for legally married same-sex couples all rights afforded to heterosexual married couples in the state. The Alliance Defense Fund had filed suit to fight the May 14 directive.
Justice Lucy Billings wrote in her opinion, “When partners manifest the commitment to their relationship and family, by solemnizing that commitment elsewhere, through one of life’s most significant events, and come to New York, whether returning home or setting down roots, to carry on that commitment, nothing is more antithetical to family stability than requiring them to abandon that solemnized commitment.” This ruling is also under appeal; in New York State, the top-level appeals court, not the supreme court, is the highest court.
New York State does not currently marry gay couples; while the state assembly passed a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in 2007, the senate has yet to vote on the proposed legislation.
Remember the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., mayor who wanted to spend $230,000 on a “robo-toilet” to cut down on the number of men who have sex with men in public restrooms?
His name is Jim Naugle. He’s been mayor since 1991. New term limits in Fort Lauderdale mean that come spring 2009, after 18 years in office, the homophobic mayor will bid adieu to City Hall.
Presently, there are four men vying for the office, two are gay men.
Earl Rynerson, a local businessman and relative newcomer to Fort Lauderdale and its political scene, and longtime city LGBT activist Dean Trantalis, who is an attorney and a former one-term city commissioner.
They both consider themselves Democrats and they both say they’re mayoral candidates who happen to be gay.
Ellen DeGeneres has stepped up her participation in the No on Prop. 8 campaign by recording a TV ad asking voters to oppose the proposed anti-gay marriage California constitutional amendment.
Patrick Guerriero, campaign director for No on 8, made that announcement during a phone conference with LGBT press on Tuesday.
“She’s filmed an ad that could be used in ways that we’ll determine over the next day or so. Certainly you’ll see it on the Web and virally, and potentially on TV,” said Guerriero, who read a transcript that he said is close to the finished product.
“Hi, I’m Ellen DeGeneres,” Guerriero quoted from the transcript. “I got to do something this year I never thought I’d ever be able to do. I got married. It was the happiest day of my life. There are people out there raising millions of dollars to try to take that right away from me. You’ve seen their ads on TV. They’re twisting the truth, and they’re trying to scare you. I believe in fairness. I believe in compassion. I believe in equality for all people. Proposition 8 does not. Please, please vote no on Prop. 8.”
“I think you’re going to see some breakthrough gifts in the next few days,” Guerriero said. Since the No on Prop. 8 campaign put out an SOS roughly a week ago, donations have been running close to $1 million per day — a remarkable feat, he said, and one that has No on 8 poised to cross the $20 million mark shortly.
However, Guerriero stressed, donations need to keep rolling in at that rate through Election Day, at least, in order to get the pro-LGBT side back in the fight monetarily — and of 1 million LGBT adults in California, only 30,000 have contributed so far — and that not a single LGBT demographic or region in the state had given what would be required to win the battle.
“When you do the math, if we have a million adults and we have 30,000 donors, that means 970,000 have not given a dollar yet,” he said. “That means there’s not a single neighborhood, there’s not a single street, there’s not a single congressional district, there’s not a single county where we’re getting enough support from LGBT Californians.”