Empire State Pride Agenda, New York’s leading gay rights group, will select Brian Ellner to be its next leader, according to the New York Times’ City Blog. [1]

Ellner is the senior counselor for community affairs for Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

Says The Times:

“The selection is part of a broader move within the organization to restructure after a bill to legalize same-sex marriage failed decisively in the State Senate late last year.

“Mr. Ellner would assume leadership of the organization at a time when it is trying to regroup after suffering the most significant setback of its 20-year history. A Harvard and Dartmouth graduate who ran unsuccessfully for Manhattan borough president [2] in 2005, Mr. Ellner would help coordinate the next effort to pass legislation to legalize same-sex marriage in Albany.”

[1] http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/gay-rights-group-to-choose-a-new-leader/
[2] http://www.brianellner.com/

Gay rights group demands apology from Newsweek

(Los Angeles) A gay rights group is demanding an apology from Newsweek magazine for a recent story that the group says suggested gay actors can’t play straight characters.

“An actor’s personal life should not be a factor in their believability in a role,” said Jarrett Barrios, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. “That would be tantamount to audiences not buying Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl as lovers in their upcoming film ‘Killers’ because the two are happily married to different people in real life.”

GLAAD spokesman Rich Ferraro said the magazine has not offered the apology sought by the group, but that the topic was discussed with Barrios and Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “Milk,” during a Q&A with Newsweek on Wednesday. He said he believed that discussion would be published in the next issue.

Some Hollywood stars blasted the magazine and writer Ramin Setoodeh for an April 26 story that said it was OK for straight actors to play gay roles, but “it’s rare for someone to pull off the trick in reverse.”

In the story, Setoodeh criticized Sean Hayes’ latest leading-man performance on Broadway, writing that the openly gay actor “comes off as wooden and insincere, like he’s trying to hide something, which of course he is.”

Ryan Murphy, creator of the hit Fox series “Glee,” called for a boycott of the magazine until it apologizes to its gay readers, Hayes and “and other brave out actors who were cruelly singled out in this damaging, needlessly cruel and mind-blowingly bigoted piece.”

Kristin Chenoweth, who stars opposite Hayes in “Promises, Promises” on Broadway, defended her co-star and denounced the Newsweek article in a letter to the editor.

“No one needs to see a bigoted, factually inaccurate article that tells people who deviate from heterosexual norms that they can’t be open about who they are and still achieve their dreams,” she wrote.

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, however, defended the magazine and its writer in an essay published Wednesday by The Huffington Post website.

Sorkin blamed the tabloid-fueled drive to know every detail about performers’ personal lives and the institutionalized homophobia found in the American military, and national marriage and adoption laws.

Newsweek did not respond to a call and e-mail seeking comment Wednesday.

Philippine gay group fights to contest elections

(Manila, Philippines) A Philippine gay rights group is waging a legal battle to be allowed to run in next year’s polls after the Elections Commission ruled it cannot register as a political party on grounds that it advocates immorality.

The decision last week against Ang Ladlad (Out of the Closet), a …

Miss Calif. pageant gives ad time to gay group

(San Francisco) The Miss California USA pageant director who became embroiled in a war of words with former title holder Carrie Prejean has donated 30-seconds of free ad time to the state’s largest gay rights group.

Equality California announced Thursday that it would be airing a spot featuring a teenage girl …

IDs of gay partnership foes could be released next week

Order: Gay partnership foe names don’t have to be released

The names of people who signed petitions seeking to overturn Washington’s “everything but marriage” same-sex domestic partner law won’t be released publicly following a federal judge’s temporary restraining order.

Sponsors of Referendum 71 went to U.S. District Court in Tacoma Wednesday seeking the order. U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle has set a full hearing on the matter for Sept. 3.

The names of everyone who signed Referendum-71 petitions are publicly available under open-government laws. A gay-rights group says it wants to post all the names online. But the R-71 campaign says that could lead to harassment.

Nick Handy, state elections director, said in a statement: “Referendum petitions become public records under the law once they have been turned over to us by sponsors. Our consistent practice has been to make these available upon public request. By early next week we will be in a position to make these available, and absent a court order, our intent has been to respond to public records requests in a timely way.”

Backers of R-71 turned in about 138,000 signatures Saturday. They need 120,577 valid voter signatures to qualify for the fall ballot.

Election officials suggest submitting about 150,000 signatures to offset any invalid signatures. Dave Ammons, spokesman for the secretary of state’s office, said usually about 18 percent of signatures checked turn out to be invalid.

The process of counting and verifying the signatures could go until the last week of August.

See IDs of gay partnership foes could be released next week Seattle Post Intelligencer

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Wash. gay partnership foes try to shield signers

State officials won’t resist a temporary restraining order that would block public release of petition signatures for a gay-partnership referendum.

The case centers on Referendum 71, which would ask voters to approve or reject expanded partnership rights for gay couples.

The names of everyone who signed R-71 petitions are publicly available under open-government laws.

A gay-rights group is planning to post all the names online, so partnership supporters can talk to those people about the referendum.

But the R-71 campaign says that could lead to harassment. So they’re asking a federal judge to keep the petitions secret, until they can make their argument in court.

See Wash. gay partnership foes try to shield signers

Seattle Times

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Backers of Gay Marriage Rethink California Push

LOS ANGELES — Discouraged by stubborn poll numbers and pessimistic political consultants, major financial backers of same-sex marriage are cautioning gay rights groups to delay a campaign to overturn California’s ban on such unions until at least 2012.

Earlier this year, many supporters of same-sex marriage seemed eager to mount a 2010 campaign to overturn Proposition 8, which was passed by California voters in November and defined marriage as “between a man and a woman.”

But the timing of another campaign has since been questioned by several of the movement’s big donors, including David Bohnett, a millionaire philanthropist and technology entrepreneur who gave more than $1 million to the unsuccessful campaign to defeat Proposition 8.

“In conversations with a number of my fellow major No on 8 donors,” Mr. Bohnett said in an e-mail message, “I find that they share my sentiment: namely, that we will step up to the plate — with resources and talent — when the time is right.”

“The only thing worse than losing in 2008,” he added, “would be to lose again in 2010.”

The issue of when to go back to the polls was also the central topic at a contentious “leadership summit” held Saturday at a church in San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles, where about 200 gay rights advocates gathered to discuss their next step. It was the second large meeting of gay leaders since late May when the California Supreme Court ruled against a legal challenge to Proposition 8, which passed with 52 percent of the vote.

Shortly after the court’s decision, officials at Equality California, one of the largest gay rights groups in California, issued an online plea for donations for a possible 2010 campaign, citing a need to capitalize on anger over the decision and on the seeming momentum from the recent legalization of same-sex marriage in several other states.

But that thinking has apparently evolved.

Marc Solomon, marriage director for Equality California, said he spent June and early July asking the opinions of nearly two dozen California political consultants and pollsters and had been surprised by the almost unanimous opinion that a 2010 race was a bad idea.

“I expected having watched the protests and the real pain that the L.G.B.T. community had experienced that there would be some real measurable remorse in the electorate,” Mr. Solomon said, referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. “But if you look at the poll numbers since November, they really haven’t moved at all.”

A major factor in any California balloting, of course, is money; campaigns here are remarkably expensive, with a number of costly media markets. The Proposition 8 campaign, for example, cost more than $80 million, with opponents spending some $43 million.

Sarah Callahan, ch

See Backers of Gay Marriage Rethink California Push

New York Times

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Gay Rights Groups Seek to Intervene in Federal Challenge to Calif. Same-Sex Marriage Ban

Gay rights groups’ attempt to intervene in a federal challenge of California’s Proposition 8 has created a rift with the high-powered attorneys heading the case, turning erstwhile allies into head-butting competitors.

Both sides have diverging visions of legal strategy. The gay groups are pushing a cautious, narrow approach based on the circumstances of Prop 8, while Theodore Olson, David Boies and their backers are seeking a decisive victory for all gay couples under the U.S. Constitution.

The civil rights groups — the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union — are also worried that the Olson/Boies team is underestimating the importance of U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker’s insistence on a fully developed factual record. They moved this month to intervene (pdf) so they can present evidence of historic discrimination against gays and lesbians and answer Walker’s questions, such as whether sexual orientation can be changed and whether same-sex marriages destabilize opposite-sex marriages.

See Gay Rights Groups Seek to Intervene in Federal Challenge to Calif …

Above the Law

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Old Game, New Buzz, Gay Community Outraged

Pink News reports on gay groups becoming re-outraged over a game which requires players to shoot gay men. The game is called “Watch Out Behind You, Hunter”, and was originally launched in 2002 by frenchie Stéphane Aguie. The game is banned in France, but that hasn’t stopped it from making the rounds and finding a new host.

The gay group Gay Armenia said it was “completely disgusted” by the game, adding that it was created by “those religious-minded people in Tbilisi, Georgia… who constantly cite Bible to ‘justify’ their homophobia and hatred. A post on the gay group’s blog added: “Is this their ‘orthodox’ way of bringing up children by creating an image of an enemy and teaching them how to deal with it?”
The website’s owner, Jean Christophe Calvet, has rebuked claims of prejudice, saying that he “really didn’t understand why the association was attacking us” . He told news site France24.com: “The guy who came up with the game, Stéphane Aguie, wanted to mock hunters and rednecks, not gay men”.

He continued: “Our games are not politically correct. They’re aimed at teenagers and it’s true that they’re of a juvenile humour”. Mr Calvet said that while the game was removed from French websites after legal action from gay rights groups, it is “impossible to wipe it from all foreign sites too”.

He added: “Incidentally, not everyone in the gay community was supportive of banning the game. “I realise now that this one in particular could be found shocking, but I believe that you should be able to make this kind of joke in the name of freedom of speech.” The site has faced backlash for its games before. In 2001 it was criticised by American groups for a game entitled ‘New York Defender’ where the object was to protect the Twin Towers from plane attacks.

Mr Calvet also commented that the site was attacked over its depiction of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the French National Front. He took the creators to court after the game involved users throwing axes at his face. He was not the only celebrity depicted in the game, but for him, the axes were changed to swastikas. He added: “In the end, its all a bit of fun.”

See Old Game, New Buzz, Gay Community Outraged

Ve3d.com

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