Voter ‘animus’ to be issue in Calif marriage case

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an amendment to the Colorado Constitution that outlawed discrimination protections for gay people, same-sex couples could not enter into civil unions or domestic partnerships anywhere in the nation, much less get married.

But as they seek to persuade a federal judge to strike down California’s ban on gay marriages, lawyers for two unmarried gay couples are using that 13-year-old decision as their road map — one they expect will eventually lead the high court to take up the marriage issue.

In the Colorado case, Romer v. Evans, the Supreme Court majority held that voters’ dislike of gays and the laws that several cities had approved to shield them from bias motivated the state amendment. Such “animus,” it said, was incompatible with the section of the U.S. Constitution that requires the government to treat its citizens equally absent a compelling reason to do otherwise.

The attorneys behind the challenge to California’s Proposition 8 plan to argue during a pretrial hearing Thursday that by stripping gays of the right to wed, the voter-approved ban runs afoul of America’s founding framework in the same way — and for the same reason.

“Romer is a strikingly similar situation to what we have here. You had a ballot initiative, a majority vote of the people, taking away a right,” said Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a member of the legal team led by former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and veteran trial lawyer David Boies. “And there was no justification or rationale other than disapproval by that majority of that group.”

U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker on Tuesday issued a tentative order to fast-track the case in his San Francisco court.

Among the questions he said he wants covered at trial are whether sexual orientation is unchangeable, if permitting same-sex marriage “destabilizes” traditional unions and whether Proposition 8′s ballot history demonstrates the measure had “discriminatory intent.”

California Attorney General Jerry Brown, a defendant in the case, has sided with gay rights advocates and declined to defend the ban, which overturned a California Supreme Court ruling that had legalized same-sex marriages. The state Supreme Court five weeks ago upheld the measure, saying it represented a valid exercise of voters’ authority to amend the California Constitution.

Proposition 8′s sponsors, a coalition of religious conservative groups called Protect Marriage, has been given permission to intervene in the federal case. In court papers, the group’s lawyers rejected the assertions that anti-gay attitudes fueled the November measure and that the 1996 Colorado case was applicable.

“Nothing in California law, either Proposition 8 or otherwise, indicates that Californians harbor animus towards gay and lesbian individuals,” they wrote.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision, attorneys for gay rights and Christian conservative groups have debated whether the Romer decision could be used to expand gay rights. The ruling marked the first time the Supreme Court determined that the Constitution’s equal rights guarantees extended to gays and lesbians.

“The basic point of Romer is that government cannot ever act out of hostility toward a group of people, and whether that is in the context of marriage or anti-discrimination law, the point carries over,” said Suzanne Goldberg, who worked on the case and now directs Columbia Law School’s Sexuality and Gender Law Program.

The ruling has been cited, though so far unsuccessfully, in past challenges to gay marriage bans in Nebraska and Florida. At the same time, gay rights groups mostly have shied away from pursuing federal marriage cases in favor of pursuing marriage rights in state courts.

Legal observers on both sides of the debate agree, however, that California’s Proposition 8 presents novel questions

that could make the issue ripe for federal action.

See Voter ‘animus’ to be issue in Calif marriage case
San Francisco Chronicle

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A Long Road Traveled

The last time I got as close to the White House as I did this week was many years ago—six years after the Stonewall riots, when I was a 13-year-old National Spelling Bee participant from St. Margaret’s School in Lowell, Mass. We spelling bee kids didn’t make it into the White House that day—we stood outside as first lady Betty Ford spoke to us from a balcony. By then I already knew I was gay. Raised in a staunch Catholic home and taught (and tormented) by nuns, I was certain that an open homosexual (that was the only term I knew back then) could never be allowed inside the White House. I knew nothing of the nascent gay-rights movement—it hadn’t reached Lowell in 1975. All I knew was that that whatever words there were to describe what I was, it would have to be suppressed forever. I assumed that I would have to either become a priest or figure out some other way to hide.

Thankfully, time marched on, and I eventually became a politicized college student rather than a candidate for the priesthood—and ultimately I kicked open my closet door and came out. But I can’t help thinking about that personal history as I replay the reel of yesterday’s visit to the White House in my head. As the executive director of SAGE, an advocacy group for LGBT senior citizens, I was invited, along with some 200 other LGBT leaders, to join the Obamas in commemorating gay pride—which falls this year on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

I was accompanied by three SAGE members: a lesbian couple who are 86 and 91, who reminisced about voting for FDR and described Barack Obama as “the most inspiring politician since Adlai Stevenson,” and a Stonewall veteran and founder of the Gay Liberation Front, an activist group formed in the aftermath, who proudly chose his SAGE T shirt over the ties worn by every other man in the room.

Apart from celebrating, we had gone to the White House to make a point: that older people have to be included in the Obama agenda for LGBT progress. And we did what we came to do, with one of our members (the Stonewall vet) even receiving a personal meeting with the president and Mrs. Obama. But as I stood with my partner, in the front row, some five feet from the presidential podium, I realized how intensely personal this experience was for me. I thought about how each member of the SAGE contingent has had our own life’s journey—and each of us was moved deeply and differently by that moment.

See A Long Road Traveled Newsweek

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China Internet filter challenged in rights uproar

A Chinese lawyer has demanded a public hearing to reconsider a government demand that all new personal computers carry Internet filtering software, adding to uproar over a plan critics say is ineffective and intrusive.
Li Fangping, a Beijing human rights advocate who often embraces controversial causes, has asked the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to allow hearings on the “lawfulness and reasonableness” of the demand, which takes effect from July 1 and was publicized only this week.
“This administrative action lacks a legal basis,” Li wrote in a submission to the ministry that was sent to reporters by email on Thursday.
“Designating that the same software must be installed in all computers affects citizens’ rights to choose.”
Li’s demand, and denunciations of the plan from Chinese rights groups, have expanded a public battle over the “Green Dam” filtering software, despite a state media effort to promote the software as a welcome way to prevent children being exposed to pornography. See China Internet filter challenged in rights uproar
Washington Post

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Dismay Over Obama’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Turnabout

When Barack Obama sought the presidency, he pledged to reverse the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy preventing gays and lesbians from serving openly in the U.S. military. Yet on Monday, the Supreme Court rejected a gay Ohio soldier’s challenge to the law — with the legal backing of none other than the Obama Administration.
James Pietrangelo II, the former Army infantryman and lawyer whose case the high court declined to review, reserved most of his ire for President Obama instead of the court. “He’s a coward, a bigot and a pathological liar,” Pietrangelo said in an interview with TIME shortly after the high court declined to hear his appeal. “This is a guy who spent more time picking out his dog, Bo, and playing with him on the White House lawn than he has working for equality for gay people,” he added. “If there were millions of black people as second-class citizens, or millions of Jews or Irish, he would have acted immediately” upon taking office to begin working to lift “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Pietrangelo fought in Iraq in 1991 as an infantryman, and returned as a JAG officer for the second Iraq War, before being booted out in 2004 for declaring he was gay as he was readying for a third combat tour. He was representing himself before the high court. (See pictures of the gay rights movement.)
The Obama Administration, in its brief in the case last month, said a lower court acted properly in upholding the gay ban. “Applying the strong deference traditionally afforded to the Legislative and Executive Branches in the area of military affairs, the court of appeals properly upheld the statute,” argued Elena Kagan, who as Solicitor General represents the Administration before the Supreme Court. The bar on gays serving openly is “rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion,” her 12-page filing added.
The endorsement of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” by the Administration marks the latest rightward tack by Obama. The President denounced many of George W. Bush’s national-security policies during the campaign, but in office has adopted more conservative positions, including endorsing military commissions to try purported terrorists, and declining to release a second batch of photographs depicting alleged U.S. maltreatment of Iraqi detainees. His stance on “Don’t ask, don’t tell” may be more surprising, because Obama aides have made clear the President wants the ban lifted eventually. (Watch a gay marriage wedding video.)
Pietrangelo doesn’t buy the line from Obama aides — and the Pentagon — that they’re too busy grappling with a faltering economy and two wars to handle the gay ban right away. “It’s a complete lie that he has too much stuff on his plate — this is the guy who criticized Bush for not being able to multitask,” Pietrangelo says. “We have an old saying in the military — the maximum effective range of an excuse is zero meters.” See Dismay Over Obama’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Turnabout TIME

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LOS ANGELES: All Saints, Pasadena, clergy opt out of civil marriages until gay couples can legally wed

Clergy at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, are opting out of performing civil marriages until gay couples can legally wed–and are encouraging other clergy to do likewise, according to the Rev. Ed Bacon, rector.
“At the heart of Jesus’s moral vision and All Saints’ historic mission is respecting the dignity of every human being,” Bacon said in a June 3 press release announcing the decision, which is effective immediately.
“The California Supreme Court in its recent opinion has ruled that those of same-gender affections are second-class citizens,” Bacon added. “Denying fundamental rights to a certain classification of humanity is blatant discrimination with which our governing board, the other clergy of All Saints, and I will not participate. We invite other clergy and congregations to join us in this stand for marriage equality.”
Bacon referred to the May 26 state Supreme Court ruling that upheld the controversial Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment providing that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid in California.” Their decision sparked nationwide rallies by both advocates and opponents of the measure.
The Rev. Susan Russell, an associate at the Pasadena congregation known for its social activism and progressive politics, said on June 4 that clergy are meeting with couples whose nuptials were already planned “to explain the new policy and hold pastoral conversations about the impact on them.
“We only do member weddings, so folks married here at All Saints typically share our values of inclusion and would be on board, we think, with making arrangements to have the civil part of their marriage take place external to All Saints clergy,” said Russell, who is president of Integrity USA, an advocacy group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Episcopalians.
But she added that: “We will continue to serve and marry them civilly if that’s what the couple prefers for whatever reason because that was the contract going in.”
All Saints vestry, at its June 2 meeting, had unanimously passed a resolution declaring that “the sacramental right of marriage is available to all couples, but that the clergy of All Saints Church will not sign civil marriage certificates so long as the right to marry is denied to same-sex couples.”
The vestry’s decision acknowledged “our active participation in the discriminatory system of civil marriage is inconsistent with Jesus’s call to strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.” The resolution states “civil marriage in the State of California is, as a result of Proposition 8 and the Court’s decision, a constitutionally-mandated instrument of discrimination, which furthers injustice and denies same-sex couples the fundamental dignities to which each human being is entitled,” Bacon said. Russell said there was little discussion in the vestry meeting. “It was just a no-brainer that of course we want to take steps that keep us from being complicit in state-sponsored discrimination.
“I keep thinking I couldn’t be prouder to work at All Saints church than I already am and then our leadership keeps taking steps that make me even prouder,” Russell said. “It was it is such a part of the DNA of All Saints Church to stand with those in need of solidarity. This stand is so deeply rooted in our baptismal covenant, it gives us such a strong theological place to stand. It feels like very firm foundation, indeed.”
The Rev. Neil Thomas of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) in Los Angeles, a petitioner in the Proposition 8 case, said the 40-year-old 500-member congregation likewise is observing a moratorium on signing civil weddings.
“We will not sign the paperwork” for civil marriages, said Thomas, whose ministry is primarily, but not exclusively, to the LGBT community. He is also the president of California Faith for Equality, a progressive interfaith movement of about 6,000 clergy, which submitted an amicus brief advocating that the California Supreme Court overturn Proposition 8.
– The Rev. Pat McCaughan is Episcopal Life Media correspondent for Provinces VII and VIII and the House of Bishops. She is based in Los Angeles.

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Sen. Jeff Sessions Irked By Lesbian Mom’s Crying Child: “Enough With The Histrionics” (VIDEO)

Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee had a hearing on the Uniting American Families Act, a bill that will “amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to eliminate discrimination in the immigration laws by permitting permanent partners of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents to obtain lawful permanent resident status in the same manner as spouses of citizens and lawful permanent residents and to penalize immigration fraud in connection with permanent partnerships.” Of course, some of the discrimination that the bill would eliminate would benefit same-sex couples, so, CONTROVERSY!

One of the people who testified in support of the bill was a woman named Shirley Tan, who is in a same-sex relationship and thus caught in the crosshairs of existing law. The New Republic‘s James Kirchick documents her circumstances thusly:

Testifying was Shirley Tan, a Fillipino woman who has been with her American partner for 23 years. Together, they are raising twelve-year-old twin boys. She originally left the Phillipines after suffering a violent attack from a man who murdered her mother and sister (one of the reasons why Tan does not want to return to her native country, aside from the fact that her partner and children live in the U.S., is that the man who brutalized her has since been released from prison.) Tan was originally scheduled to be deported on April 3rd, but won a reprieve after Senator Diane Feinstein introduced a private bill allowing her to stay in the country temporarily.

Almost right from the start of Tan’s testimony, one of Tan’s young children started crying. The committee chairman, Pat Leahy, paused the testimony and offered the child some measure of comfort. According to Kirchick, these kindly sentiments were not shared by everyone on the committee:

For most people, the sight of a 12-year-old boy in tears at the prospect of his mother being deported halfway around the world would invoke some sympathy. Unmoved, however, was Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions, ranking minority member of the Committee and the only Republican to bother to attend the hearing. At the sight of the weeping boy, according to a Senate staffer who was at the hearing, Sessions leaned towards one of his aides and sighed, “Enough with the histrionics.” Sessions’s press secretary did not return a call seeking comment.

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How to Sell Marriage Equality

Last week, the gay-marriage movement in San Francisco sent volunteers to Fresno to start canvassing for the support of voters in more conservative parts of California. Here are some tips for how to win over people who live in conservative counties:

• Don’t start a conversation by saying, “Your God is a lie.”

• The connection between the persecution of gays and the situation in Palestine is not as clear as you think.

• Don’t refer to stuff you did at Burning Man.

• No one will be impressed by all the gay celebrities you can name.

• Try saying, “You have a very nice lawn” instead of “How do you live in this godforsaken hellhole?”

• “Christian” is not regarded as an insult in all parts of the country.

• Shouting “Fascist!” is not an appropriate way to say, “We’d like to count on your vote.”

• That hilarious story you tell about how stupid someone has to be to join the military isn’t funny to veterans.

• In many parts of California, citizens do not believe that you can judge a person by their carbon footprint.

• Try to keep the focus strictly on the right of gay people to love one another, instead of branching out into the need for legalized pot.

• Try to avoid mentioning astrology … even if you’re really, really sure that the guy with the American flag on his front lawn is a Libra and thus open-minded.

See How to Sell Marriage Equality

SF Weekly

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When asked, this gay soldier told

TUSTIN In a calm corner of his garage, a soldier rummages through reminders of the last ten years of his life. Silver coins. A Middle Eastern sash. An Army pistol. Only a few of the souvenirs in Dan Choi’s war chest will fit into his travel duffel.

As he packs, his mom walks in. She reaches around her son’s boulder-sized biceps for a hug.

“Are you staying for dinner?”

“I’m not sure.”

By nightfall, though, Choi will surely be gone. He’s getting out of Tustin, maybe for good.

Monumental change has unsettled the 28-year-old combat veteran and his family. In March, on national television, he said, “I am gay.”

That was news to a lot of people, including his bosses. And, the three short words thrust Choi into the limelight, booked his calendar with equal-rights rallies – and earned him a pink slip from the military.

But all the cameras and microphones that have trailed Choi since then have captured only part of the story. They haven’t been privy to his parents’ distress, his past anxieties or his newfound sense of liberation.

Thousands of other troops have gotten booted for outing themselves (or being outed) as gay or lesbian. But, like clockwork, most have disappeared from public view. Choi figures he will too at some point.

But he’s not going away now, and he’s not going away quietly.

HIGH SCHOOL LOWS

Over loudspeakers, he ranted.

It was 1998, and President Clinton was getting grilled by national media for his then-alleged affair with a 22-year-old intern. At Tustin High School, Choi, 17, took on the role of Clinton scold. He locked himself in a room and commandeered the public address system to decry the commander-in-chief’s weakness and offer what he saw as a cure-all: faith in Jesus Christ.

Choi’s sister, Grace, then a freshman, recalls her brother’s outburst as “surprising, but not embarrassing.”

Their dad, a Baptist minister who fought in the South Korean Army, helped raise his three kids to battle against injustice and sin. Years later, that duty to speak out would inspire Choi to talk about his sexuality – and throw a crimp in their father-son relationship.

“I always think of the story of a throng of people telling Christ to silence his disciples,” Choi says, adding: “And Christ said, ‘… if they keep quiet, the rocks will cry out.’”

But, in high school at least, Choi’s bold talk came with a cost. The acne-faced student body president lost his job as morning news announcer, and was forced into a sabbatical from student government.

Graduation cleaned his slate. Reinstated as president, the straight-A student gave a parting address to his peers. And, bound for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Choi left a rousing, two-page letter in the back of his own yearbook.

“Leave your kingdom,” he wrote to himself, “to be a lonely plebe down in the dump.”

STANDING UP

In a forest near the academy, Choi smeared earth-tone paint on his face and hunkered down with his rifle. Energy-sapping practice missions, he says, were key to his college experience.

On campus, Choi studied environmental engineering. Critically, he also began mastering Arabic.

And he held onto his faith. He led Bible studies in the dorms and recited the “Cadet Prayer” every Sunday with the West Point choir. “Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong,” he prayed, “and to never to be content with a half truth when the whole can be won.”

Still, Choi concealed a truth. Since fourth grade, he had begged God to take away his attraction to other males. In college, he says, he remained unwilling to “explore” his sexuality.

In 2003, the Iraq War kicked into gear. Choi, now clear-faced and brawny, was soon sent to serve in the Persian Gulf.

There, he says he “greased hands” with elder Muslim Sheikhs, patrolled the Triangle of Death and designed a reverse-osmosis water plant for Baghdad citizens. He also passed on his knowledge of Arabic, as a teacher to thousands of American troops.

Throughout it all, compelled by the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, Choi kept mum about his sexual preference.

His final wartime task, delivering backpacks full of cash to contractors, kept him awake at night. It was around the time of that mission, sleepless in the desert, that he started asking a tough question:

Do I really want to keep lying?

When his tour ended, he wanted to boomerang back to Iraq. But that dream was brought to a halt in March when, on behalf of scores of West Point alumni and active-duty servicemembers, he went public with his sexual orientation.

WAR IN PEACE

On his last afternoon in town, rice steams in the kitchen as, upstairs, Choi sorts through a box of Army accolades.

“Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll be one of those stodgy old veterans wearing all his stuff,” he says, laughing, clutching a handful of medals.

Proud but tired of the half-truth, the highly decorated soldier returned from Iraq in 2008 and ditched reenlistment. Instead, he became a platoon leader in the National Guard. Stationed in New York, he met someone, parked down the street and lived in his car to be close to his first boyfriend.

Then Choi came home to Tustin to come out to his mom and dad – 19 times in fact, to show he wasn’t bluffing. He handed his dad a copy of the book “Loving Someone Gay.” A few days later he discovered it unopened on the floor of his closet.

“They don’t accept it,” Choi says. “And I don’t think they will anytime soon.”

Neither will the military. After his first of several prime time TV appearances, Choi, the rare Arabic-speaking serviceman, received an ultimatum from his employer – accept discharge or stand trial.

His chances before a judge seem slim, based on the dismissal of 12,500 past soldiers.

But he believes the fortunes of an estimated 65,000 gay and lesbian members of the armed forced could be changed if Congress were to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a move President Obama favors. So, Choi keeps talking to news anchors and shouting to crowds, which strains his home life – and, recently, compelled him to pack up and move.

“Silence is not a right,” Choi says.

“Silence is an unacceptable, inexcusable wrong.”

See When asked, this gay soldier told

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Alta. to enshrine gay protections – but let parents pull kids from class

EDMONTON — Alberta introduced changes Tuesday to recognize sexual orientation in the province’s human rights laws.

But the move to expand protections under the Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act was accompanied by a provision allowing parents to pull their kids from school discussions of religion, sexuality or sexual orientation — a move that could let parents yank students from classes on such topics as evolution.

“There’s nothing that’s in our curriculum that’s contentious or controversial really,” Culture and Community Minister Lindsay Blackett said after he tabled the bill in the legislature. “There’s very few parents that go and have their children opt out, (and) nothing’s going to change that.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a stampede of people going to the human rights commission because there’s nothing to go for.”

See Alta. to enshrine gay protections – but let parents pull kids from …

Ottawa Citizen -

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Recognizing Same-Sex Marriage: Group Calls for Citywide Referendum in DC

A group of ministers and same-sex marriage opponents filed a request today calling for a citywide referendum on whether the District should recognize gay marriages performed in other states.
The group, Stand 4 Marriage, said it will begin collecting signatures to try to force the issue onto the ballot. Earlier this month, the City Council and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) agreed to recognized gay marriages performed elsewhere.
The opponents formally requested today that the Board of Elections convene a meeting to decide whether the issue is eligible for a referendum. If the Board agrees, the opponents will have to collect signatures from 5 percent of registered voters. If an election is called, the legislation will be stayed until that referendum occurs, the opponents say.
“The recognition of same-sex marriages in the District of Columbia is a bad idea for our citizens. At a minimum, it should not be allowed without the approval of voters,” said Bishop Harry Jackson, Senior Pastor of Hope Christian Church “Thirty states in America have voted on whether gay marriage should be legalized, and every state has opposed it because legalizing gay marriage has significant consequences for society. It is only right that voters in the District of Columbia also be allowed to vote on this important issue before it is imposed on its residents.”
Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), the sponsor of the legislation to recognize gay marriages performed elsewhere, said he is bewildered by Jackson’s strategy. Noting the District’s progressive reputation, Mendelson predicted District voters would reject efforts to stop same-sex marriage. See Recognizing Same-Sex Marriage: Group Calls for Citywide Referendum Washington Post – United States * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual