Day 2: Is Prop 8 like the Anita Bryant crusade?

(San Francisco) Attorneys challenging the California ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage painted the “Yes on 8” campaign as a modern day copycat of Anita Bryant’s late 1970s campaign to “Save the Children.”

Through testimony by gay history scholar George Chauncey of Yale University, the plaintiffs’ legal team discussed, in U.S. …

Gay skiers want to return to Park City

A group of gay skiers plan to resume their trips to Park City in 2010, saying the ill will between gays and Utah stemming from California’s gay-marriage ballot measure will likely have subsided by next year.

Next year’s Utah Gay & Lesbian Ski Week is tentatively scheduled Jan. 6-10. An Internet site indicates the skiers plan to visit each of the three local resorts, hold cocktail and social hours and have a party. A dinner is scheduled at the Wasatch Brew Pub.

The 2010 event is scheduled one year after organizers were forced to cancel this year’s annual visit.

They said few gay skiers signed up for the 2009 trip because they were unhappy with the role The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints played in the passage of Proposition 8, the California ballot measure. After Election Day, gays and their supporters called for a boycott of Utah. This year’s trip would have been the ninth consecutive year visiting Park City.

One of the organizers, John Harriott, a bisexual who lives in West Hollywood, Calif., said there remains a possibility of the 2010 event being canceled. He said, though, there is a three-in-four chance that it will be held. A decision will not be finalized until early December.

Much depends on the political climate by early 2010, he said. Similar boycotts typically do not last longer than a year, he said.

“I have a feeling this will be a lot of water under the bridge,” he said, adding, “I have a feeling Prop. 8 will be a distant memory by next year.”

California courts are expected to consider the validity of the ballot measure in 2009, likely shifting some of the emotions from Utah to the state where Proposition 8 passed.

See Gay skiers want to return to Park City
Park Record, UT

Published by

Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/02/gay-skiers-wa…

Gays, lesbians hopeful despite inaugural pastor

Hope – and the idea that the country’s new leader would break down barriers of discrimination – overshadowed the disappointment many gays and lesbians felt when an outspoken critic of same-sex marriage gave the invocation at President Obama’s inauguration Tuesday.

“I am completely hopeful, optimistic, relieved, enthusiastic – even knowing that he’s going to disappoint,” said Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Obama’s decision to have the Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural prayer dampened Kendell’s expectations “of how culturally competent Obama is on gay and lesbian issues,” she said. “I think it’s a reminder of how much work we have to do.”

Warren, Evangelical pastor of the Saddleback Church in Orange County, was a chief proponent of Proposition 8, the California ballot measure approved last year that bars gays and lesbians from marrying.

He also has equated same-sex marriage to incest, polygamy and pedophilia and has said that gays and lesbians should resist the urge to act on their sexuality. Warren made no such references during the globally broadcast invocation.

Instead, he spoke of the need to pursue commitment to “justice for all” and “civility in our actions, even when we differ.”

Gays, lesbians hopeful despite inaugural pastor