Gay incident reopens Salt Lake City’s Main Street plaza wounds
It’s the wound that won’t heal. The rift that won’t close. And earlier this month, two gay lovers’ purportedly innocuous late-night kiss — though LDS Church officials insist it was far more amorous than that — ripped it wide open. Utah’s simmering religious divide boiled over — once again — at the geographical and philosophical intersection of church and state: the Main Street Plaza in downtown Salt Lake City. “It is a scab that will continue to be peeled away — and may never heal,” says Dani Eyer, the former ACLU director who fought to preserve First Amendment rights on the plaza. Matt Aune and Derek Jones say they held hands, kissed and then squabbled with security guards on the LDS Church-owned square. Salt Lake City police issued a ticket for trespassing. In protest, supporters of the couple staged a “kiss-in” last Sunday outside the plaza and plan another such demonstration today. The LDS Church — a faith to which 60 percent of Utahns belong — defended its right to regulate “inappropriate behavior” on the plaza. “What we’re seeing now is a manifestation of what should have been obvious from the very beginning,” says former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson. “This block of Main Street never should have been conveyed to the LDS Church. It was a recipe for ongoing resentments between the LDS Church and those who are not members.” The church bought the strip of Main — from North Temple to South Temple — in 1999 after then-Mayor Deedee Corradini and the City Council, with the only two non-LDS members dissenting, signed off on the $8.1 million deal. But the controversy burned for five more years as federal courts were asked to settle the prickly issue of whether the church could govern expression on the plaza and whether the city could retain a public right of way (as outlined in the original deal). “It was meant to be for everybody,” Eyer says. “Where people come and go their constitutional rights go with them.” After a 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 2002, First Amendment activities returned to the plaza. But demonstrations by anti-Mormon protesters — including cries of “whore” and “harlot” hurled at newlywed brides — “sustained divisions” that “reached to the point of hatred” between Mormons and non-Mormons, Anderson says. In the end, he agreed to trade the public easement for cash and LDS land to build a west-side community center.
* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/07/gay-incident-…
Sotomayor avoids saying whether marriage should be issue for federal courts
Sen. Charles Grassley had a testy exchange Wednesday with Judge Sonia Sotomayor about the federal government’s authority over marriage law.
During the Iowa Republican’s second turn at questioning the Supreme Court nominee, Grassley referred to a 1972 Supreme Court decision, Baker v. Nelson, in which the justices declined to consider a gay-marriage case. He asked whether she thought federal courts lacked authority to hear civil-rights cases involving marriage.
Sotomayor said the issue is pending in several courts, before Grassley cut her off.
“I thought I was asking a very simple question,” he said.
He ticked off a list of cases Sotomayor had referenced as precedent during her testimony on Tuesday. “You said these are precedents,” Grassley continued, raising his voice. “Now, are you saying to me that Baker v. Nelson is not a precedent?”
“It’s not that I’m attempting not to answer your question, Senator Grassley,” she said.
Grassley interrupted again, “Why are you hedging on this?”
Finally, Sotomayor said it had been since law school that she had reviewed the case, prompting Grassley to move on to another topic.
See Sotomayor avoids saying whether marriage should be issue for federal courts
The Des Moines Register
* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/07/sotomayor-avo…
Gates Plan May Be Beginning of the End of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — In the wake of yesterday’s unexpected Pentagon announcement about gays in the military, experts say the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy may be on the brink of irreversible change that would speed up its demise. After speaking with President Obama last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked military lawyers to explore how to modify enforcement of the policy in ways that are “more flexible until the law is changed.” The President Monday reiterated his intention to end discrimination against gay troops, saying he is working with Congress and the military to do so.
Christopher Neff, political director of the Palm Center, said the remarks by Secretary Gates marked the first time the Defense Secretary has made clear that the Pentagon is onboard with the President’s determination to lift the ban. “‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ is a package — both a law and a policy — that hasn’t been penetrated for fifteen years,” Neff said. “This is a crack in humpty dumpty, and it gets the ball rolling for a political solution since it gives cover to lawmakers who have been waiting for a nod from the Pentagon.”
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/07/gates-plan-ma…
Schwarzenegger, AG Brown oppose bid to immediately block Prop 8
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown on Thursday urged a federal judge to keep Proposition 8 in force for now, arguing that it would create too much uncertainty across the state to put the voter-approved ban on gay marriage on hold while the latest legal challenge unfolds in the federal courts.
In court papers, state lawyers argued against an injunction that would freeze the current gay marriage ban, opposing a request filed in federal court in San Francisco last month by two gay couples seeking the right to marry. Backed by former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and renowned lawyer David Boies, the couples moved to counterract the California Supreme Court’s recent ruling upholding Proposition 8, arguing that it violates equal protection rights under the federal constitution.
Brown and Schwarzenegger argued separately that it would create too much havoc to put the law on hold until the constitutional issues are resolved, perhaps eventually by the U.S. Supreme Court. The governor and attorney general did not take a position on the federal constitutional questions, focusing only on whether Prop 8 should be blocked while the case is litigated, a move that would allow same-sex couples to resume marrying in California.
Brown had previously urged the California Supreme Court to overturn Prop 8, and Schwarzenegger has said publicly he believes the courts eventually will permit gay marriage.
See Schwarzenegger, AG Brown oppose bid to immediately block Prop 8 San Jose Mercury News
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/06/schwarzenegge…
New Prop. 8 court challenge brings former legal rivals together
The California Supreme Court failed to protect gay couples’ fundamental right to marry when it upheld Proposition 8, forcing same-sex couples to appeal to the federal courts to remedy the injustice, two prominent lawyers said today in announcing a lawsuit on behalf of two gay couples.
Former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, a renowned conservative, and David Boies, who opposed Olson in Bush v. Gore in the 2000 fight over the presidential election, cast their collaborative effort to restore the right of gays to marry in California as a moral imperative to correct an injustice. Their suit seeks an immediate injunction on Prop. 8′s ban, thereby allowing same-sex marriages to resume while the case makes its way through the federal court system.
But Olson’s role in the gay rights mission prompted much speculation about his motives. The former Bush administration official, who lost his wife in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, conceded that the federal courts might not be ready to recognize sexual orientation as a class in need of protection from discrimination, but he said he hoped “that people don’t suspect my motives,” vowing to demonstrate his commitment to equal rights by winning the challenge.
Boies vouched for Olson as “committed in heart and soul to equality and committed in heart and soul to the Constitution.” See New Prop. 8 court challenge brings former legal rivals together Los Angeles Times * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/new-prop-8-co…
Gay rights advocates rip suit to undo Prop. 8
Gay rights advocates Wednesday blasted two veteran attorneys for filing a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn Proposition 8, California’s voter-approved same-sex marriage ban, saying the move is premature and could be disastrous for the marriage movement.
While they knew of the objections, attorneys Theodore B. Olson and David Boies – who opposed each other during the 2000 Bush v. Gore presidential election case – filed the suit Friday in San Francisco on behalf of two same-sex couples who wanted to be married but were denied because of Prop. 8.
The suit claims the voter-approved measure, which the California Supreme Court affirmed Tuesday, denies same-sex couples the basic liberties and equal protection under the law guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. It asks for a preliminary injunction against Prop. 8 until the case is decided.
Olson said he filed the case not only on behalf of his clients, who include Berkeley residents Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, but on behalf of gay couples elsewhere who want to get married but can’t.
“We can’t tell them to wait, what, five years” for their state to approve same-sex marriage, he said, but acknowledged that it could take two years for his case to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
While Olson shares the same end goal as same-sex marriage advocates, he doesn’t share their political strategy – to win states individually, with ballot initiatives or laws approved by state legislatures. Several same-sex marriage advocates intend to put the issue to voters in November 2010.
Olson thinks both strategies can work simultaneously. But many gay legal advocates are urging same-sex couples to avoid filing federal lawsuits because federal courts have not been as friendly to gay rights issues See * Gay rights advocates rip suit to undo Prop. 8 San Francisco Chronicle Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/gay-rights-ad…
Another possible first: An OPenly LGBT Supreme Court Justice?
Among the people whose names are being floated for the Supreme Court is Stanford Law Dean Kathleen Sullivan, a top constitutional scholar who has been active in gay rights battles in the Supreme Court, and who as the blog of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund writes, would be the first openly gay person on the court.
The group Lambda Legal wrote Obama in January pressing the appointement of “‘out’ LGBT judges.”
Human Rights Campaign emails over a statement from its legal director, Lara Schwartz, that the group “looks forward to seeing more openly-LGBT people appointed to the federal courts and other positions” but that “what’s most important is a nominee must have a track record that demonstrates her or his ability to consider and decide cases fairly.”
Politico -
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/another-possi…
Court stays two men on birth certificate
Conflict between state laws mean case will wend its way through Federal courts. Adopted in NY.
Court stays two men on birth certificate
Conflict between state laws mean case will wend its way through Federal courts. Adopted in NY.
54 federal bench vacancies await Obama decision
(New York City) When Barrack Obama is sworn in on Tuesday one of his first tasks will be filling 54 vacancies in federal courts.
In letters this week to the new President and the leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lambda legal stressed the need for fair and impartial nominees to …
