Conviction in shooting death of transgender woman
Dwight DeLee, 20, of Syracuse, faces 10 to 25 years in prison for killing Lateisha “Teish” Green, 22, outside a house party in November.
Transgender activists said DeLee is just the second person in the Unites States to be found guilty of a hate crime that involved the death of a transgender victim.
See Conviction in shooting death of transgender woman
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LA Times Editorial: A court battle California doesn’t need
The Supreme Court’s ruling last week in the case of a grandiosely unethical West Virginia justice opened a new field of constitutional review — the high court may now consider when an elected state court jurist has been so tainted by politics that due process requires him to recuse himself from a case.
In West Virginia, a coal executive spent more than $3 million to unseat a sitting state Supreme Court justice; it was money well spent, as the justice was defeated by voters and replaced by Brent Benjamin. Benjamin then did what was expected of him and cast a deciding vote in overturning a $50-million jury award against the executive’s coal company.
Indeed, California has wrestled with this problem before — and quite possibly could again.
California’s system for selecting Supreme Court justices is much better than West Virginia’s. Candidates for the court here are nominated by the governor, confirmed by a state commission and then placed on the bench. They must periodically stand for retention, but they are not, as they are in West Virginia, subject to direct challenge by rival candidates. A retention election can cost a justice his or her seat, but it does not let voters kick out one justice and install their own replacement.
California’s rules have helped balance the judiciary’s independence with the public’s fair insistence on accountability, but even this state’s reasonable retention process has been subject to tilt. Most notable was the 1986 retention election that removed Chief Justice Rose Bird and two associate justices, Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin. Much reflection has gone into that race in the decades since, and opinions differ on its merits. Two truths, however, stand the test of deep inquiry: The forces arrayed against Bird were not motivated solely by her opposition to the death penalty — that was cover for a second complaint, which was her defense of consumer rights against corporate power — and Reynoso and Grodin were victims of a special-interest crusade against a vulnerable chief.
Would that we could relegate that episode to California’s history. In fact, the state rumbles with discontent over its high court and chief, and those stirrings contain alarming echoes of the battle of 1986.
At issue are the court’s rulings on same-sex marriage and Proposition 8, and its chief justice, Ronald M. George. In May 2008, the court overturned the state’s ban on gay marriage, striking a victory for civil rights in the grandest tradition of constitutional protection of minorities. A few months later, after voters approved Proposition 8 and amended the state Constitution to ban the same institution that the court had upheld, George and his colleagues upheld the amendment. Both times, George wrote for the majority. He thus angered opponents of gay marriage in 2008 and supporters of it in 2009.
By California’s rules, George faces a retention election in 2010, and some predict that he could face challenges from either side — or even both — in this polarizing debate.
That would be a shame for the state’s judiciary, an unfortunate attack on judicial independence and an unfair castigation of one of this state’s most principled and admirable public officials. In the gay-marriage cases, George’s votes demonstrated conscience, professionalismand restraint. He voted to uphold same-sex unions out of the strong conviction — which this page shares — that the Constitution does not allow society to deny the protection of marriage to gay couples any more than it once denied it to those united across race. The ruling was right on the law, and will certainly be validated over the long march of history.
Months later, voters tacked in the other direction, narrowly rejecting gay marriage and amending the Constitution to allow California to recognize only the unions of heterosexual couples. That was challenged, naturally, and the lawsuit offered the court the opportunity to extend its earlier ruling, though on shaky constitutional grounds — advocates for same-sex marriage argued that Proposition 8 was such an affront to the rights of Californians that it revised the Constitution rather than merely amending it. Scholars split on the merits of that argument, and although the strong consensus of legal opinion rejectedit, an opportunistic justice might have seized the chance to solidify his legacy.
Instead, George subordinated his politics — as evidenced by his writing — to the weight of constitutional opinion. He voted to uphold the proposition, even though it undid his own work. Permitted latitude within the strictures of the Constitution in the first case, George was able to vote his conscience; bound by the Constitution in the second case, he yielded.
Such is the lot of a principled judicial officer, but those concerned only with results already have signaled their unhappiness with George. The moneyed interests that supported Proposition 8 last fall are considering whether to finance a campaign against George next year. Supporters of gay marriage, who championed his heroism in 2008, were bitterly disappointed when the court upheld the hateful initiative.
This is not West Virginia. Corporate interests are not knocking off justices who disagree with them and seating more accommodating replacements. But intimidation has no place in our judicial life any more than it does in Appalachia. The 1986 campaign against Bird and her colleagues now stands for many as a reminder that well-intentioned systems of accountability may be hijacked by special interests, a lesson learned too often and at great cost in California. It was misguided in its first iteration; it would be regrettable in its second.
See A court battle California doesn’t need
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Lt. Dan Choi, Gay Arabic Translator Discharged From Army, Gives Speech
Nearly a hundred protesters assembled Wednesday outside the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, CA where President Obama hosted a Democratic Party fundraiser.
Protest organizers called for Obama to repeal the government’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that exempts openly gay men and women from serving in the military.
Lt. Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and an Arabic translator, was discharged from the Army when he declared he was gay on national television. His conviction that the military’s policy is “a deadly poison” inspired him to lead the protest on Wednesday.
“There is a message that I want to give to Obama,” said Choi. “Stop forcing our soldiers to hide. Let them be free to serve.”
Undeterred by Tuesday’s decision by the California Supreme Court to uphold the ban on gay marriage passed by voters in November, Choi said to the crowd, “We can’t wait for somebody else to give us rights…. if we want rights, we have to fight for it. We have to earn it.” Choi ended his speech the same way it began, chanting, “Love is worth it.”
Pro-peace and anti-torture protesters took part in the demonstration as well. See Lt. Dan Choi, Gay Arabic Translator Discharged From Army, Gives Speech
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Verdicts upheld in murder of transgender teen
NEWARK — A state appeals court upheld the murder convictions of two East Bay men today for their roles in battering and strangling a transgender teenager after learning she was biologically male.
The killing of 17-year-old Gwen Araujo of Newark in 2002 drew national attention to incidents of violence against transgender people, which often include defense claims that the victim provoked the attack by having sex under false pretenses.
In this case, lawyers for both defendants argued that the slaying was manslaughter at most, because their clients had acted in the heat of passion when they learned the person with whom they had had oral and anal sex was born male. But the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco ruled 3-0 that the Alameda County trial judge had defined the crimes properly to the jury, and that the panel had substantial evidence for second-degree murder convictions.
Mark Greenberg, a lawyer for defendant Michael Magidson, said he would appeal to the state Supreme Court.
See Verdicts upheld in murder of transgender teen
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‘Gay man’ disinterred in Senegal BBC News
he body of a man believed to be homosexual has twice been dug up from a Muslim cemetery in Senegal.
The man, in his 30s, was first buried on Saturday before residents of the western town of Thies dug up his body and left it near his grave, police say.
His family then reburied him, but he was once more exhumed by people who did not want him buried there. His body was dumped outside the family house.
Senegal outlaws homosexual acts but there is a tradition of effeminate men.
A police officer told the AFP news agency that the body was eventually buried away from the cemetery.
The state-owned Le Soleil newspaper reports that it was buried within the grounds of the family home.
“Goor-jiggen” (men-women) dress up as women, socialise with females and have long been tolerated in Senegal, a majority Muslim country. However, attitudes seem to be changing.
The AFP news agency reports that local imams, as well as some newspapers and radio stations, have denounced homosexuals after an appeals court last month overturned the conviction of nine people for homosexual acts.
‘Gay man’ disinterred in Senegal
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Activists, family hope good can come from Zapata’s death
A Colorado jury’s conviction of the man who murdered a transgender woman is a bittersweet moment for activists and the victim’s family, who are hoping while mourning that some good can come from the tragedy.
On April 22, Allen Andrade of Thorton, Colo., was convicted of first-degree murder and a hate crime for killing Angie Zapata, who was transgender, by beating her to death with a fire extinguisher in her Greeley, Colo., apartment.
Defense attorneys argued that Andrade, 32, killed Zapata, 18, while in a sort of “trans-panic” mindset after they agreed to meet for sex and he discovered she was transgender. But prosecutors argued that the murder was premeditated and Andrade murdered Zapata because he hated LGBT people. See Activists, family hope good can come from Zapata’s death
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Phillipsburg resident Dale Rissmiller draws three-year sentence in for gay bashing
A Phillipsburg man convicted in a 2006 gay-bashing case drew a three-year state prison today in state Superior Court.
Dale Rissmiller, 27, apologized to the judge before sentencing.
“I’m sorry for what happened to the victim,” he said.
Rissmiller — who has a history of assault convictions — pleaded guilty in February to bias intimidation and aggravated assault. “I clotheslined him,” Rissmiller told Superior Court Judge John Pursel during the plea hearing.
The term refers to striking someone on the throat with a forearm.
Rissmiller admitted he attacked Bryan Wesselius because the victim is gay. The clotheslining incident occurred after Rissmiller launched a 1:46 a.m. barrage of anti-gay comments at Wesselius and the victim’s two gay companions in the bar, authorities said.
Drunk and angered after a bartender bounced him, Rissmiller attacked Wesselius at the door, followed him outside and punched him, authorities reported.
Phillipsburg resident Dale Rissmiller draws three-year sentence in …
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Ruth Gledhill: Sorry bishops, but a diocese is not a church.
Dr Williams wrote: ‘The organ of union with the wider Church is the Bishop and the Diocese rather than the Provincial structure as such. Those who are rushing into separatist solutions are, I think, weakening that basic conviction of Catholic theology and in a sense treating the provincial structure of The Episcopal Church as if it were the most important thing - which is why I continue to hope and pray for the strengthening of the bonds of mutual support among those Episcopal Church Bishops who want to be clearly loyal to Windsor.’
So the Anglican Communion Institute bishops, who along with Fulcrum and the people over at Covenant form a sort of neo-orthodox trinity trying to find a way to be at one and three all at the same time, could be forgiven for believing they are merely being true to Windsor and doing what the Archbishop of Canterbury has wanted all along.
But are they? I’ve got some seriously bad news for them.
Apparently the sands have shifted. That letter to Howe was written in 2007. Now is 2009, nearly two whole years later. The covenant is in its third draft and there can be no doubt, reading it, that when it speaks of ‘church’, as it does many times, it means a national church, or a province.
Ecclesiastical polity is a many-layered complex thing. Even when we imagine we’re still in the land of Richard Hooker it is changing all the time. Yet on one level, that of true polity, it remains exactly the same as it was in Hooker’s day.
I have it on good authority that things are deemed to have moved on rather substantially, but some things cannot change, otherwise we truly will not be a ‘proper church’, not even an ecclesial community, but just a rather drippy federation.
There is absolutely no way the ACI bishops will be enabled to perform some sort of subtle non-schismatic ecclesiological split manoeuvre on The Episcopal Church, leaving their orthodox dioceses at the centre of a covenental Communion along with Cantuar and the conservatives, with the liberal pro-gay majority forced to dance around on the edges in some ‘outer circle’ of recognition.
Whichever side you’re on, either you’re for them or against them, folks. It just will not be possible for either side to have it both ways if the Covenant is to work. It’s called having your communion and eating it too.
See Sorry bishops, but a diocese is not a church. Times Online Blogs
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SENEGAL SCARE: Gay Witch Hunts & Lynchings Queerty
In Uganda, anti-gay hatred is manifested by newspapers printing of the names and faces of “gay suspects” and activists “storming Parliament” with their message to rid the nation of gays. But across the continent in Senegal, things aren’t any better for the gays. They’re being hunted down Jim Crow-style, with threats of lynchings.
Even though nine AIDS activists were just released from prison after their attorneys successfully argued the evidence for “unnatural acts” charges was insufficient, the climate is anything but tolerant. Rather, you have youth leaders calling for the lynching of gay men: “The homosexuals will not escape lynching. They will be fish food,” one told Dakar newspaper L’Observeur, according to GlobalPost.
See SENEGAL SCARE: Gay Witch Hunts & Lynchings
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Gays under threat in Senegal
DAKAR, Senegal — A mob gathered near a mosque outside Dakar. They were there to hunt down and kill nine men accused of homosexual acts.
Earlier this week the nine Senegalese AIDS activists were freed from eight-year-prison terms for alleged homosexual acts, but they went into hiding because of death threats from Muslim religious leaders and the general population.
“The homosexuals will not escape lynching. They will be fish food,” Dakar newspaper L’Observeur quoted a local youth leader as saying.
“Gay men will never be free in Senegal. They expose us all to danger,” said Imam Mbaye Niang, a prominent religious leader and member of parliament. “The judges should understand that Senegalese people need to protect their children, their families from homosexuality.”
In Senegal — where 95 percent of the population is Muslim — homosexual acts are punishable by fines and up to five years in prison. In January, the nine men received the harshest sentence yet for such an offense in Senegal, getting the maximum of five years and an additional three for criminal conspiracy.
Though widely supported in Senegal, the conviction was condemned by international human rights groups and foreign governments, most notably France.
“They were judged and condemned very severely, surely on the basis of public outcry, therefore the justice was neither objective nor founded in law,” said lead defense attorney Barim Sassoum Sy, who called the initial ruling hasty and emotional.
A Dakar appeals court overturned that decision Monday, citing violations of legal protocol.
Acting on an anonymous tip, police had arrested the men — most of whom do HIV prevention work in the “men having sex with men” community — in December at the home of a prominent gay activist. But the police did not have a search warrant, nor did they catch the men in the act, which is required by the Senegalese law prohibiting “indecent acts against nature.” The judge hearing the appeal therefore declared their convictions null and void, Sy said.
Yet even as smiling attorneys and supporters celebrated in the packed courtroom Monday and exchanged congratulations, plans were already in place to get the freed men into hiding outside Dakar.
“The first judge sentenced them to eight years,” said Imam Niang. “He had the courage to say it. The judge that let them go was much less courageous. He yielded to international pressure.”
See
Gays under threat in Senegal
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