First openly gay member joins AF Academy board
(Colorado Springs, Col.) A Colorado Democrat who last year became the first openly gay non-incumbent elected to Congress took his place Friday on the U.S. Air Force Academy’s supervisory board.
Rep. Jared Polis was appointed earlier this month to the Academy’s Board of Visitors, which meets Friday and Saturday in Colorado …
Tags: Academy Board, Air Academy, Air Force Academy, Board Of Visitors, Colorado Springs, Congress, Democrat, Gay Member, Incumbent, Jared Polis, S Board, Supervisory Board, U S Air, U S Air ForcePolis becomes first openly gay advisor to Air Force Academy
COLORADO SPRINGS — A sign gays may be inching closer to acceptance in the military: the U.S. Air Force Academy is welcoming its first openly gay member of its oversight board.
Democratic Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado was appointed earlier this month to the Academy’s Board of Visitors, which meets Friday and Saturday in Colorado Springs.
The Board of Visitors is made up mostly of members of Congress who review the nation’s service academies and suggest changes to the Pentagon and Congress.
See Polis becomes first openly gay advisor to Air Force Academy Daily Camera
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Gays Step Up Efforts to Reverse Gay-as-Godless Stereotype
A groundbreaking survey about the faith lives of gay Americans that the Barna Group put out last week got surprisingly little attention. In my latest God & Country column for U.S. News Weekly, I tied the Barna survey’s fascinating portrait of gay religious life to the gay rights movement’s recent efforts to ratchet up outreach and messaging. Much of the work is aimed at reversing the gay-as-Godless stereotype.
Here’s the top:
Though he was raised in the United Methodist Church, Harry Knox knew he couldn’t become a minister in his denomination because it doesn’t ordain openly gay members. He enrolled in a seminary of the more liberal United Church of Christ but was eventually denied ordination anyway. “My whole career as an activist is an accidental ministry,” says Knox, 48, who now works at the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights group. “I would rather be a local pastor.”
Instead, since 2005, Knox has built HRC’s “religion and faith program,” which works to combat the stereotype of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community as antireligious. “For far too long, LGBT organizations did not put religious allies at the forefront of our efforts,” Knox says. “That’s a mistake we’re making less often now.”
Those religious allies may be more plentiful than most Americans think. A Barna Group survey out last week shows that most gay Americans lead pretty robust faith lives. While 72 percent of straight American adults describe their faith as “very important” in their lives, so do 60 percent of gays and lesbians. Almost as many, 58 percent, say they’ve made a personal and ongoing commitment to Jesus Christ.
And though they are much less likely than straights to share the beliefs of born-again Christians—which comes as no surprise, since most churches in the born-again tradition condemn homosexuality—the Barna survey found that 27 percent of gays do hold those beliefs. “Many in the Christian community assume there’s this significant gap between heterosexuals and homosexuals in terms of faith beliefs and activities,” says George Barna, the country’s top pollster on religious issues, who supervised the survey. “While there are statistically significant differences, it’s the narrow size of the gap that’s most surprising.”
The poll unleashed a torrent of hate mail, mostly from believers furious with Barna’s conclusion: that many gays are Bible-believing Christians. But more and more gay rights organizations are joining HRC in stepping up efforts to highlight the faith beliefs of many gay Americans, largely through religious outreach programs. And some religious traditions and denominations are taking steps to welcome gay and lesbian members.
Gay rights activists say that the 2004 election, when voters in 11 states passed gay marriage bans that were heavily promoted through churches, was a wake-up call. To help counter the image of the gay marriage battle as a fight between gays and religious Americans, HRC, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and other national gay rights groups quickly hired religious outreach staff.
Read the full story here.
See Gays Step Up Efforts to Reverse Gay-as-Godless Stereotype
U.S. News & World Report
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Walsh: A step back for gay Utahns
Reading the headlines, the news isn’t good for gay Utahns.
Former Equality Utah Director Mike Thompson has moved to San Francisco, taking his organizing skills from Holladay to the Haight. He says it’s personal, not professional.
Then, Pride Week opened with what looks like a hate crime.
Christopher Vonnegut Allen was arrested after allegedly beating his gay neighbors — a man and a woman — bloody in Ogden. One victim needed surgery. You may not have heard of it. Prosecutors charged Allen with only one count of burglary.
And this week, two nice Mormon ladies from Santa Cruz decided to give their unwilling church one more chance to reconcile with its gay members and the LGBT community outside the flock.
While the rest of the country moves forward — New Hampshire, New York, Iowa, for goodness sake — this place seems perpetually stuck.
It probably helps that Thompson missed the headlines. Still, he’s optimistic.
“You can’t have a defeatist attitude,” he says. “You’ve got to press against it in order to even hope for a change.”
He points to Salt Lake City’s nondiscrimination ordinance and domestic partners registry, an anti-bullying law, polls that show Utahns supported the Common Ground Initiative (even if lawmakers didn’t).
“Maybe they’re not significant in some people’s minds, but there are measurables there,” he says. “People are having conversations. Change is going to come sooner or later.”
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Walsh: A step back for gay Utahns
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Obama to extend some benefits to gay partners of federal employees
John Berry, director of the White House Office of Personnel Management and the highest-ranking gay member of the administration, called the move “long overdue progress in our nation’s journey to equality.”
The setting will cast an especially bright light on the president’s action, but many expressed disappointment that the president was not taking bolder steps, particularly in the area of healthcare benefits.
“This is not enough. I want to be able to add my wife to my policy in the same way that every other federal employee can add their spouse to their policy,” said Kate Kuykendall , a federal worker Los Angeles. She noted that the federal government is the only employer exempt from a California law that requires companies to extend benefits to same-sex partners.
Berry said Obama’s move would allow employees’ domestic partners to be added to the government’s long-term insurance program, which covers such illnesses as Alzheimer’s disease. The memorandum also would allow employees to use sick leave to take care of domestic partners and children, and would let the same-sex partners of diplomats use medical facilities at foreign posts.
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Obama to extend some benefits to gay partners of federal employees
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Closeted politicians stir filmmaker’s ‘Outrage’
Of the many insinuations in “Outrage,” Kirby Dick’s sad, devastating new documentary about closeted gay politicians - OK, alleged closeted gay politicians - the one that’s most disturbing is the case made against a former Southern congressman.
As a young liberal, the politician used his fraternity house “as his gay bar,” a former alleged hookup tells the filmmakers. Yet in pursuit of elected office, the politician got married, went to church, and voted Republican, never quite shaking his same-sex attraction but never doing much legislatively to acknowledge or advance the civil rights of gay people. On numerous occasions, in fact, he voted to suppress those rights.
Such alleged hypocrisy is the crux of “Outrage.” Dick speculates on the homosexuality of several current and former public officials which hasn’t been corroborated by the men themselves.
His charges aren’t new; they’ve certainly surfaced in the alternative press and online. But in accordance with Globe ethics poilcy, I can’t repeat those names here.
While dwelling on political contradiction, the movie unfolds at a unique juncture of psychological and moral character: the perverse place where a politician’s relentless personal drive and a closeted gay man’s shameful desire may meet.
In tying the purported secret gay sex lives of these putatively straight elected officials - the movie focuses almost exclusively on men - to their voting records, a caustic portrait emerges of self-deluded souls. Dick goes into scandals involving the married Idaho senator Larry Craig and the now openly gay former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey, who sits down and unburdens himself for the camera (he talks about “living your truth” with an abandon that suggests either lots of therapy or lots of disco). Former Arizona congressman Jim Kolbe talks about how much happier he was after he revealed he was gay (we never hear from his ex-wife, although Mrs. McGreevey does speak).
“Outrage” is armed with commentary and insights from openly gay members of Congress like Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin, activists like Larry Kramer (of course) and Rodger McFarlane, who died last month, and such Washington insiders as Hilary Rosen. The movie never allows you to forget its aim. It wants to hold these men accountable - if the speculation is true - not for their conservatism but for their double standard. “Outrage” tries to put the officials on a couch and determine why so many are Republicans. Someone likens their alleged behavior to playground politics, where potential outcasts help bullies persecute kids to keep the bullies off their trail. How could I be gay?, the thinking goes, I’ve voted with my party to block the passage of so many gay-friendly bills. See Closeted politicians stir filmmaker’s ‘Outrage’
Boston Globe
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Clinton Says His View On Gay Marriage Is “Evolving”
ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: This afternoon in Toronto, former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush shared a stage for a “conversation with presidents” at Toronto’s Convention Centre, in a ticketed event (with a hefty payday for both ex-presidents) that was open to the general public.
It was a fascinating discussion — these two 62-year-old men with a combined 16 years in the presidency, talking about current and past events as probably no one else alive can, for the first time in a public forum.
While President Bush mostly kept to his promise not to criticize his successor, he bristled at the suggestion — advanced by President Obama, among others — that Iraq distracted the nation from the war in Afghanistan.
“I don’t buy the premise that our attention was diverted” by Iraq, Bush said. “I think it’s false. Matter of fact, I know it’s false. I was there.”
And while President Clinton mostly kept to his promise to “thwart” efforts to get 42 and 43 to tangle with each other, he offered an interesting insight into his thinking on gay rights.
On the issue of gay marriage — which Clinton, like President Obama, personally opposes — Clinton said of his position: “Frankly, it’s evolving” as he sees more committed gay couples raising kids.
As ABC political director David Chalian has pointed out, Clinton isn’t the only Democrat whose position on gay marriage is moving.
Clinton also expressed optimism that the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell policy” — which he helped enact — will eventually come off the books, allowing gay members of the armed services to serve openly.
“I think that time will lead to a repeal of this ban,” Clinton said.
That’s one of many areas where the former presidents disagree. But mostly, this event was a lovefest.
Clinton heaped praise on Bush for his AIDS initiative and the diversity of his Cabinet. Bush urged Clinton not to be so hard on himself over Rwanda.
Bush welcomed the audience to “the Bill and George show.” Clinton teased that while the pair was facing expectations that they would “devour each other,” “we’ll do our best to thwart them.”
See Clinton Says His View On Gay Marriage Is “Evolving”
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Uproar in DC as Same-Sex Marriage Gains Washington Post
After the vote, enraged African American ministers stormed the hallway outside the council chambers and vowed that they will work to oust the members who supported the bill, which was sponsored by Phil Mendelson (D-At Large). They caused such an uproar that security officers and D.C. police were called in to clear the hallway.
Yesterday’s action could be a precursor to a debate later this year over whether to legalize same-sex marriage in the city. “There is no turning back,” said Catania, who plans to introduce a broader gay marriage bill in a few months.
Barry, who said he supports gay rights and civil unions, warned after the vote that the District could erupt if the council does not proceed slowly on same-sex marriage.
“All hell is going to break lose,” Barry said. “We may have a civil war. The black community is just adamant against this.”
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) has said he will sign the bill recognizing same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. The council’s action puts the matter before Congress, which under the Home Rule Charter has 30 days to review District legislation. The bill could present the House and Senate with their biggest test on the same-sex marriage issue since Congress approved the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. …
“I am representing my constituents,” said Barry, who later told reporters that “98 percent of my constituents are black, and we don’t have but a handful of openly gay residents.”
Civic activist Philip Pannell, who is openly gay and lives in Ward 8, called Barry’s remarks offensive. “He of all people, coming out of the civil rights movement, should understand the need to fight for the rights of all minorities to be protected,” Pannell said.
Catania and Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) are the two openly gay members of the council, and Catania made it clear that he took offense at Barry’s stance.
“This issue is whether or not our colleagues, on a personal level, view me and Jim Graham as your equals,” Catania said, “if we are permitted the same rights and responsibilities and obligations as our colleagues. So this is personal. This is acknowledging our families as much as we acknowledge yours.”
Barry, visibly upset, fired back that he has been a supporter of gay rights since the 1970s.
“I understand this is personal to you and Mr. Graham. I understand because I have been discriminated against,” Barry said. “. . . I resent Mr. Catania saying either you are a bigot or against bigotry, as though this particular legislation represents all of that.”
Catania replied: “Your position is bigoted. I don’t think you are.”
Video: D.C. Votes to Recognize Gay Marriage
See Uproar in DC as Same-Sex Marriage Gains
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California gay rights timeline
As gays and lesbians have fought for rights and won elected office, public opinion has shifted. Back in 1977, singer Anita Bryant of Florida was leading a Bible-based campaign against homosexuals, claiming they were sinners and a threat to children and family life. When pollsters asked more than 1,000 Californians – face to face, in their homes – whether they agreed with her, 45 percent said yes. Emotions still run high on the issue, but more Californians now say they know gays and lesbians, and approve of same-sex marriage. The shift is particularly pronounced among residents ages 18 to 29. Following are notable twists and turns in the history of California’s gay rights movement.
1951: The Mattachine Society, one of the first gay advocacy organizations in the United States, is incorporated in Los Angeles to combat oppression of homosexuals.
1955: The Daughters of Bilitis, a national lesbian organization, is founded in San Francisco.
1961: José Sarria runs for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, becoming what is believed to be the nation’s first openly gay candidate for public office.
1975: Assembly Bill 489, by Assemblyman Willie Brown, decriminalizes sexual acts performed in private by consenting adults in California.
1977: The state Legislature overwhelmingly votes to define civil marriage as a contract between a man and a woman. Harvey Milk later becomes the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California, winning a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
1978: Voters defeat Proposition 6, the Briggs initiative, named for Sen. John Briggs, which would have barred gays, lesbians and their supporters from teaching in public schools.
1979: Gov. Jerry Brown issues an executive order barring discrimination against state employees based on sexual orientation.
1984: Gov. George Deukmejian vetoes Assembly Bill 1, the first bill that would have banned job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
1989: Senate Bill 202, by Sen. Diane Watson, requires law enforcement agencies to report hate crimes, including those in which a motivating factor is the victim’s sexual orientation.
1991: Gov. Pete Wilson vetoes Assembly Bill 101, by Assemblyman Terry Friedman, prohibiting discrimination against gays in the workplace.
1992: Wilson signs Friedman’s narrower measure, Assembly Bill 2601, which adds sexual orientation protections to the Labor Code.
1994: Sheila Kuehl is elected to the Assembly, becoming the state Legislature’s first openly lesbian or gay member.
1999: Assembly Bill 26, by Assemblywoman Carole Migden, creates the first statewide domestic partnership registry, allowing the partners of gay state employees to receive health benefits.
1999: Assembly Bill 1001, by Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, adds sexual orientation to anti-discrimination provisions of the state Fair Employment and Housing Act.
1999: Assembly Bill 537, by Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl, makes it illegal to harass students in public schools because of sexual orientation.
2000: Voters pass Proposition 22, which banned same-sex marriage.
2001: Migden’s Assembly Bill 25 greatly expands the rights of domestic partners to include health benefits through private group insurance, death benefits, sick leave, tax deductions and adoption of stepchildren.
2002: The nation’s first legislative Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus is formed in the Legislature. It comprises Assembly members Kuehl, Migden, Jackie Goldberg and Christine Kehoe.
2002: John Laird and Mark Leno are elected to the Assembly, becoming the first openly gay men in the Legislature and members of the LGBT Caucus.
2003: Assembly Bill 205 by Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg extends to registered domestic partners nearly all the same rights and responsibilities provided to opposite-sex spouses in California.
2004: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom orders city officials to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. More than 4,000 couples receive licenses and are married before the California Supreme Court orders a halt to the process until its constitutionality can be determined.
2004: Assembly Bill 2208, by Assemblywoman Christine Kehoe, bars insurance providers from discriminating against domestic partners.
2005: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoes Assembly Bill 849, by Assemblyman Mark Leno, which would have legalized same-sex marriage. Schwarzenegger urged gay rights advocates to wait for court rulings on Proposition 22 or ask the voters to repeal the ban.
2008: In a 4-3 decision May 16, the California Supreme Court rules that the state constitution gives gays and lesbians the right to marry. On Nov. 4, voters approve Proposition 8, the ban that’s now being challenged.
Sources: Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life; the American Civil Liberties Union; Encyclopedia Britannica; World Book Encyclopedia; Bee news archives.
Bee research/Aurelio Rojas, Pete Basofin and Micaela Massimino.
See California gay rights timeline
Sacramento Bee - CA, USA
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Anti-gay group headed to Plattsburgh again
PLATTSBURGH — Controversial anti-gay church leader Fred Phelps and his followers are planning another visit to Plattsburgh.
Phelps and crew are planning to picket at Plattsburgh High School and Plattsburgh State Friday, March 6, for 40 to 45 minutes at each site.
The anti-gay members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, are protesting the High School’s Gay/Straight Alliance and a performance of the play “The Laramie Project” at the college.
“The Laramie Project” depicts the story of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man from Wyoming who was killed in 1998 because of his sexuality. See Anti-gay group headed to Plattsburgh again
Plattsburgh Press Republican, NY
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