Save those on the fringes, it’s hard to believe anyone could think that debating, yet again, a state constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage is a good idea. And yet there are some state senators who want to do this dance again. Senator John Eichelberger of Blair County has introduced Senate Bill 707, which would codify discrimination against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community into our state constitution, Pennsylvania’s “declaration of rights.” We’ve defeated this effort twice before, in 2006 and 2008. Are you ready to....
Trans Bathroom Scare Smear used against Gay Gainesville, FL Candidate
Readers may remember last year's battle in Gainesville, Florida where anti-LGBT forces came together.... The fierce battle at the ballot box included tons of odious transphobic statements, mailers, and commercials, yet the anti-LGBT forces were defeated, thanks in large part to the great campaign run by the equality advocates in..
New Hampshire Representative Nancy Elliott became youtube/Sally Kern famous last week when she gave a detailed rant on gay male sex and made the ridiculous claim ....
"GayAsylum" Advocate Lauds 'Haram Iran' : London Calling
Omar Kuddus, a prominent human rights advocate in the forefront of the United Kingdom's 'GayAsylum' , has praised Chicago attorney Jay Paul Deratany's play 'Haram Iran', which depicts the true story of two Iranian youths slated for execution for the 'crime' of homosexuality in 2005 Tehren. Kuddus, who has taken on the British government before the British House of Lords, as in this noted case fights on behalf of Iranians who face execution upon deportation. He has praised Mr. Deratany's play - which he discovered through a Gnosis Arts Multimedia New York press release, giving the work's history and providing a....
Fighting for HIV/AIDS funding in a troubled economy; how much education is enough for medical professionals?
In a series of condemnations and action alerts to raise public awareness of bad legislation, Kentucky Equality Federation, now joined by the Kentucky HIV/AIDS Advocacy Action Group condemned House Bill 350 this week. House Bill 350 would end the requirement that physicians, nurses, surgeons, etc. receive HIV/AIDS training and education as a condition to maintaining a license to practice in Kentucky. Kentucky Equality Federation is the only statewide LGBTI advocacy organization to issue action alerts and condemnations of legislation impacting those living with HIV/AIDS. This is usually a routine practice for....
A doctor in South Africa is pushing a radical new idea that he believes will wipe out the AIDS epidemic in 40 years.
“Our immediate best hope is to use ART not only to save lives but also to reduce transmission of HIV. I believe if we used ART drugs we could effectively stop transmission of HIV within five years,” Dr Williams said. “It may be possible to stop HIV transmission and halve AIDS-related TB within 10 years and eliminate both infections within 40 years,” he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego, California, according to an article in The Independent.
Using anti-retroviral treatment “dramatically lower the concentration of HIV within a person’s bloodstream,” according to the article. It protects patients from AIDS and reduces the ability to spread the virus to other people.
“The problem is that we are using the drugs to save lives, but we are not using them to stop transmission,” Williams said. “The concentration of the virus drops 10,000 times [with ART] … This probably translates into a 25-fold reduction in infectiousness. But if you did this it would be enough essentially to stop transmission.”
Activists lean on HRC over Don't Ask, Don't Tell
The White House had quieted, to a degree, complaints from gay rights advocates with the formal consideration of a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell by military leadership.
But advocates are turning the heat back on the White House, via Human Rights Campaign, the large gay rights group that's often tried to defend Obama to a restive community. Early "momentum has turned to confusion," writes Americablog's John Aravosis, who organized a "blogswarm" today to flood the group's switchboard with demands that it, in turn, demand Obama commit to personally involving himself in getting repeal done this year:
As we painfully learned last year during health care reform, nothing happens in Congress unless the President leads. And when the President doesn't lead, disaster is guaranteed.
Whatever HRC has been telling the White House about DADT, it clearly isn't working. In spite of the President's positive comments during the State of the Union, no one knows where President Obama stands on repealing "Don't Ask Don't Tell" this year. All the while, unnamed administration officials are telling the media that it could be years before repeal finally happens. The White House clearly didn't get HRC's message, and as a result, we are losing this historic momentum.
A spokesman for HRC, Brad Luna, e-mails in defense of the group:
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has to be repealed this year. That has been the Human Rights Campaign’s position from the start, and at this point there is no one in the White House who does not know it. We and the community to whom we are accountable agree: This is the year.
We firmly support including repeal in the annual Department of Defense Authorization bill, and have not only indicated as much, but continue to make that case, all while working to gain support for the Military Readiness Enhancement Act....
We have been lobbying the White House relentlessly, and we’ve seen more movement in recent weeks than in the previous 16 years. Our nation’s top defense officials testified, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should be repealed. That did not happen in a vacuum.
These events are just the start. There is a clear path to repeal, and that’s the one we’re on.I'm Gay License PlateAn Oklahoma student is suing his state’s tax commission over its rejection of his request to put the words “I’m Gay” on his license plate.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Keith Kimmel argues that the denial violates his First Amendment rights, and that it represents a double standard because license plates with messages such as STR8FAN and STR8SXI have been approved in the past.
Last fall the tax commission turned down his request for the “I’m Gay” license plate, arguing that it violated an internal rule against tags that “may be offensive to the general public.”
The Oklahoma City Community College student filed a lawsuit in response to the denial last week, asking for his application to be granted. His attorney calls the state agency’s decision “viewpoint discrimination.”
In the interview below with The Oklahoman, Kimmel discusses the “double standard,” including plates referencing heterosexuality and sex toys that “slipped through," according to the state agency.Nitro, whats up?I was sitting here trying to decide what to write about when my granddaughter called with some disturbing news. My subject comes from her. She is a student at Nitro High School and she got word that the school had decided not to allow LGBT students to attend the Prom or other school functions as couples. She is angry and I am way past being angry. I am enraged.Talk about going back in time. Forty-five years ago when I was a high school student no one would dare think about letting anyone know they were gay. If you did your family might have you committed to a hospital for the mentally ill. You were considered crazy.Fast forward 17 years and my daughter is in high school and it was still not accepted but it was a little better but you still hide your sexuality.Fast forward another 20 years and my granddaughter attends high school and is told she cannot attend the Prom with her girlfriend. What is wrong with this picture???Do you really think the “Don’t ask Don’t tell” rule will be reversed when our LGBT students can’t even go to a dance as a couple. Will gay marriage ever be widely accepted??? Will we ever be anything but second class citizens???I have been fighting for equal rights most of my life. Sometimes it seem like we have come a long way, but when stuff like this happens it is clear we have barely scratched the surface. Our lives will get better only if we stand up to this kind of discrimination. These students are our future. If we don’t stand beside them there is very little hope that the world’s view of us will ever change.We have an opportunity to make our voices heard loud and clear. The Far Right is always saying they need to protect the children. Well, I’m telling YOU, we have to protect children, too. All kids deserve to be treated with respect and not be discriminated against. It doesn’t matter what sexual identity a student embraces. They have the right to love whoever they want, just as adults do.It is past time for this biased treatment to stop. Please send emails to the address I will provide at the end of my article. When a petition is available, I’ll make sure to post it on my face book page. I’m asking everyone who reads this to pass it on to all your friends and email your support letters showing these students that they are not alone. If there is a protest, I’ll make sure the word gets out. Don’t close you eyes tonight without responding and encouraging these young adults not to give in to the bigotry and hatred directed toward them. We will walk beside them and protect their backs.The email address in support of our young LGBT students is: facelessprotests2010@hotmail.comMy email is: bfairyduff@msn.comI would love to hear from you about this situation and what you want to do about it.
Not long after the San Francisco Chronicle revealed the “open secret” that Prop 8 trial Judge Vaughn Walker is gay, the National Organization of Marriage freaked out.
In response to the news, they basically called Judge Walker biased and incompetent.
This is nonsense.
If sexual orientation automatically creates a bias within a judge that cannot be overcome, then we literally can’t have any rulings on gay marriage – because either the judge will be gay or bisexual and thus biased, or the judge will be straight, and thus – biased.
Gayness simply doesn’t make someone less able to reason. It doesn’t make someone less objective. It doesn’t make someone more emotional or less logical. Just as no one expects a judge to be automatically recused from an affirmative action case because he’s black or white, so in this case sexual orientation has no bearing on Walker’s judging.
NOM doesn’t understand that someone’s sexual orientation has no bearing on their ability to do their job. But that doesn’t mean the judge is biased. It means NOM is.
Here’s NOM’s letter (thanks to 365gay reader BrigidsBlest!!)
Got Bias? San Francisco Chronicle Reports Prop 8 Judge Vaughn Walker is Gay
Monday, February 8, 2010 5:56 PM
From:
“Brian Brown”
Dear Friend of Marriage,
In a story this Sunday (Feb. 7), the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Prop 8 Judge Vaughn Walker is gay and called his orientation, “The biggest open secret in the landmark trial over same-sex marriage.”
We have no idea whether the report is true or not. But we do know one really big important fact about Judge Walker: He’s been an amazingly biased and one-sided force throughout this trial, far more akin to an activist than a neutral referee. That’s no secret at all.
Protect Marriage, the defendants in this case are effectively being held hostage by Judge Walker and cannot really comment.
But Judge Walker’s bias from the bench includes:
A series of rulings permitting deep and deeply irrelevant “fishing expeditions” into the private and personal motivations and secret campaign strategy of campaign proponents. It wasn’t six guys at Protect Marriage that passed Prop 8 it was 7 million Californians. But Judge Walker went so far as to order the Prop 8 campaign to disclose private internal communications about messages that were considered for public use but never actually used. He even ordered the campaign to turn over copies of all internal records and e-mail messages relating to campaign strategy.
Even though the Prop 8 supporters were forced to turn over private, internal documents and emails, Walker has refused to demand the same from opponents of the measure. In fact, Walker has refused to even rule on a motion to compel the discovery of this information, even though he has already closed testimony in the case. That alone is an unbelievable tilting of the playing field.
Walker has presided over a show trial designed to generate sympathetic headlines and news coverage for gay marriage supporters. Witness after witness was allowed to testify about their “expert” opinion that homosexuals have been discriminated against, that they feel badly when society does not validate their relationships, and that the passage of Prop 8 was simply an echo of historic prejudice and bigotry foisted on society by religious zealots.
To show the lengths that Walker has gone to create a “record” favoring the plaintiffs, he even allowed one “expert” witness — a gay man from Colorado who has never lived in California and was never exposed to any Prop 8 campaign messages — to testify that his parents’ efforts to change his sexual orientation failed.
But the most egregious, and damaging, of all of Judge Walker’s rulings was his determination to violate federal rules to broadcast his show trial worldwide. The US Supreme Court eventually blocked Walker’s efforts (and rapped his biased knuckles sharply!) finding that he improperly changed the rules “at the eleventh hour” in violation of federal law. (Unfortunately, however, but by the time the Supreme Court issued a permanent stay two days into trial, the supporters of Prop 8 had already lost two-thirds of their expert witnesses who feared retaliation from the publicity).
Judge Walker’s bias has been so extreme, he’s earned a rare judicial “twofer.” Key elements of his “fishing expedition” rulings were already reversed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (notably one of the most liberal in the nation) and the Supreme Court had to step in to block his illegal attempt to broadcast the trial.
It is highly unusual for a higher court to have to intercede in a trial judge’s handling of a trial while it is going on — yet Walker has had that “distinction” twice in the same case — and we’re not yet even at closing arguments.
There’s only one saving grace to Judge Walker’s bias. It’s so big, and so obvious, not only the American public but the Supreme Court itself is already aware we have bias in the trial judge presiding.
Brian Brown
Faithfully,
Brian S. Brown
Executive Director
National Organization for Marriage
20 Nassau Street, Suite 242
Princeton, NJ 08542
bbrown@nationformarriage.org
America's shift on gays in the military
For many younger members of the military – those doing the bulk of the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq – it’s hardly a debate at all. Polls show they care little about sexual orientation in their ranks.
Views in the wider society have evolved; gay marriage is now legal in five states and the District of Columbia. Opinion surveys say a majority of Americans think it’s OK for gays to serve in uniform.
“Do I care if someone is gay? I have no qualms,” said Army Sgt. Justin Graff, serving with the 5th Stryker Brigade in southern Afghanistan.
Jason Jonas, a former Army staff sergeant from Tempe, Ariz., said openly gay soldiers served in his intelligence unit at Fort Bragg, N.C., and their presence never affected unit morale.
“I don’t think it is anybody’s right to say who can and who can’t fight for their country,” said Jonas, 28, who served in Afghanistan before being injured. “Nobody cares. ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ is kind of a joke.”
It will not go unnoticed among military members that their most senior uniformed leader, Adm. Mike Mullen, told a Senate panel Tuesday that he personally believes it is time to allow gays to serve openly. It’s just wrong, Mullen said, that gays must “lie about who they are” to defend their country.
Although Obama said he would work to change the law this year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates gave him some extra leeway by telling Congress the Pentagon would need at least a year to implement the changes. Gates’ comment gave the impression that he thinks repeal is almost inevitable, although a leading Republican voice on defense matters, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, opposes the change.
“I fully support the president’s decision,” Gates said. “The question before us is not whether the military prepares to make this change, but how we best prepare for it,” adding that the final decision rests with Congress.
In the meantime, Gates said he is seeking latitude in how the law is enforced, and there are indications that the military already is honoring the ban mostly in the breach.
According to figures released Monday, the Defense Department last year dismissed the fewest service members for violating the policy in more than a decade. The 2009 figure – 428 – was sharply lower than the 2008 total of 619.
Overall, more than 10,900 troops have been discharged under the policy.
The list of countries that permit gays to serve openly in uniform has grown to 28, including Canada, Israel, Australia and most of Europe. Many of those nations have troops fighting alongside U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, and Mullen said he has seen no indication that the different policy on gays by the allies in Afghanistan has hurt the war effort.
Yet in the U.S., there remains a powerful rhetorical weapon for opponents of lifting the ban – fear that it would weaken a military at war.
It’s a question that cuts to the heart of why sexual orientation has been such a sensitive topic in the military in the past – and remains so among those who see repeal of the 1993 ban on allowing gays to serve openly as putting still more stress on a military strained by years of conflict.
Mullen said he shares that concern, even as he became the first sitting chairman of the Joint Chiefs to publicly advocate allowing gays to serve openly. He told the Senate Armed Services Committee “there will be some disruption in the force” if the law is changed.
“Our plate is very full” already, he said.
Obama entered the White House as an advocate of repealing the ban, but he let it rest for a year. Last week, in his State of the Union address, he vowed to work with Congress this year “to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are.”
When President Bill Clinton took office in 1993, he ignited a political firestorm by trying to use his executive powers to end the policy – not written into law at that point – of discriminating against gay service members in the military.
Congress stopped him by passing a law that does not explicitly prohibit gays or lesbians from serving but requires them to serve in silence. If they acknowledge their sexual orientation or engage in a homosexual act, they can be expelled. But if not asked, they need not disclose it.
The 1993 statute calls the military a “specialized society” in which life is “fundamentally different from civilian life.” And so it is. But the cultural differences are not necessarily as stark as in 1993.
Walter Slocombe, a defense consultant who was a senior Pentagon policy officer during the Clinton administration, says most military members “won’t care one way or another” if the ban is lifted.
All branches of the military struggle to some extent with racial, religious and gender tensions, he noted, but “that’s a result of having a military that reflects the diversity of the country.”
Let's Have a Look at Justice (?) in Little Rock, Arkansas
Alice Lightle was elected to the bench last year when she ran as an openly lesbian candidate and she gained the support of the gay electorate and was heavily endorsed by state legislator Kathy Webb and the Stonewall Democrats. However, it now seems that Alice has forgotten how she got into office and I, for one, am glad I did not vote for her. I did not feel that she was qualified then and now I am sure that she is not qualified to represent the Arkansas GLBT community as an elected official. You will see where I am going if you continue reading.
About three months ago I had made plans to meet someone at Kanis Park to go out to dinner in Little Rock. As I waited for him to show up I sat in my truck and read a book. I was approached by a very good looking man who stated a conversation with me and told me that he was out enjoying the beautiful weather. I got out of my truck and we continued talking and walked a bit at which point he told me was bisexual and looking for fun and openly propositioned me. When I replied he informed me that he was a Little Rock police officer and arrested me. He said if I went with him he would take my information and I would be free to go. This was not the case. I was transported to central lock up where I was photographed and fingerprinted, arrested and then released on my own recognizance with a trial date before Judge Alice Lightle. A month later when I arrived at court, I discovered that there were eleven other arrests made that day on the same charges—loitering, indecent exposure and pandering for sex. Everyone but myself pleaded guilty and Lightle imposed fines of $2500 to those arrested and no was given the right to speak in their own defense. When I was called to the bench I entered a plea of not guilty and given another trial date—November 5, 2009. I was given a public defender who never made.... Read