Human Rights Campaign PAC, Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund Endorse Anthony Woods For U.S. Congress
The Human Rights Campaign PAC, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, and the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, which works to grow the number of openly LGBT elected officials across the U.S., announced today the endorsement of Anthony Woods for U.S. Congress. Woods, who is running in the September 1 Special Election for California’s 10th Congressional District, earned the Bronze Star after serving two tours in Iraq in the U.S. Army. He was honorably discharged after challenging the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law.
“The Human Rights Campaign is proud to endorse Anthony Woods, a veteran of the Iraq war and steadfast advocate for our community, to become the next U.S. Congressman from California’s 10th district,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “Anthony hasn’t just shown his support on issues of LGBT equality, he’s lived them — especially the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ Anthony’s support of marriage equality will also be important as we work to repeal Proposition 8, which stripped marriage rights away for California’s same-sex couples. There is no doubt that Anthony will be a role model for LGBT youth, and we applaud his continuing service to our country.”
“Anthony Woods is an exciting candidate with a tremendous record of accomplishment. He’s also running an impressive campaign. Anthony has assembled a solid campaign team that understands what it will take to win this extremely competitive race. We need more leaders like Anthony Woods in the U.S. Congress, so we are proud to endorse him,” said Chuck Wolfe, president of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund. “His will be an authentic voice not only for the people of California’s 10th Congressional District, but for the millions of Americans for whom the promise of equality remains unfulfilled.”
“I am honored and proud to earn the support of Human Rights Campaign and the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund,” said Anthony Woods, candidate for California’s 10th Congressional District. “They’re working to make sure America lives up to its promise of equality under the law, which is something I’ll fight for in Congress.”
Anthony Woods was born and raised in Fairfield, California. He is a graduate of West Point and earned his masters degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In addition to his years of service in the Army, Woods has worked on economic policy issues in both the public and private sectors. To learn more visit: www.AnthonyWoodsForCongress.com.
The Human Rights Campaign is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. By inspiring and engaging all Americans, HRC strives to end discrimination against LGBT citizens and realize a nation that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all.
The Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund is the only national organization dedicated to increasing the number of openly LGBT elected officials at all levels of government in the U.S.
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Congressional Race in California Draws a High-Profile Cast
WALNUT CREEK, Calif. — With competitive races in Congress a rarity in California, the unexpected availability of a seat here has set off a sudden and furious chase, with at least a dozen candidates and a mélange of political styles and personal storylines.
California’s 10th Congressional District, a sprawling inkblot made up of a collection of suburbs east of San Francisco, has been represented since 1997 by Ellen O. Tauscher, a Democrat who resigned after being confirmed on June 25 to a top post in the State Department.
The field to succeed her includes the lieutenant governor, two state lawmakers, a decorated Iraqi war veteran who is openly gay and a former newspaper reporter. And that does not even include the Republican candidates in this Democratic-leaning district.
The crush of hopefuls, said Henry Brady, a professor and dean of the public policy school at University of California, Berkeley, might stem in part from the diversity of the district, which extends from the liberal Bay Area to more conservative territory inland.
“These seats don’t come available very much, and the reason is very simple: geography,” Dr. Brady said. “The Democrats are primarily on the coast, and the Republicans are in the Central Valley and the mountains, so it’s very hard to build a competitive district. But this has the potential to be one.”
The lieutenant governor, John Garamendi, is considered the early favorite to replace Ms. Tauscher. Mr. Garamendi, a Democrat who had considered running for governor next year, said he opted instead for Congress in large part because of the abbreviated campaign. A primary, followed by a special election, to complete Ms. Tauscher’s term must be held within 126 days of the governor setting the date. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a proclamation Friday declaring Nov. 3 the date for the special election.
“I thought, How am I going to spend two valuable years of my life?” said Mr. Garamendi, 64, who previously served as the deputy secretary of interior in the Clinton administration as well as the California’s first elected insurance commissioner. “Am I going spend two years dialing for dollars, or am I going to spend four months out ringing doorbells and campaigning person to person and the other 20 months working on issues?”
Mr. Garamendi’s principal challengers among the Democrats, some polls show, are State Senator Mark James DeSaulnier and Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan. Both were elected to their current posts last fall.
Mr. DeSaulnier, 57, is a former mayor, city councilman and assemblyman, who says his career comes in spite a devastating personal experience with politics: a scandal involving his father, Judge Edward J. DeSaulnier Jr., who was removed from the bench of the Massachusetts Superior Court and disbarred in 1972 after being accused of rigging a sentence for the Mafia. The older Mr. DeSaulnier was never charged with a crime but was disgraced nonetheless and committed suicide in 1989.
“I’ve been very affected by my father’s journey,” said Mr. DeSaulnier, who worked as a restaurateur before running for office. “And I’ve loved my public life.”
The rest of the Democratic field is not as well known, though one candidate has attracted some national attention: Anthony Woods, a 28-year-old graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and a veteran of the Iraq war who was awarded the Bronze Star for two tours of duty. Shortly after his return from combat, while at Harvard working toward his master’s degree, Captain Woods told military superiors that he is gay, resulting in an honorable discharge.
While considered a long shot for the Congressional seat, Mr. Woods would be the first openly gay black man in Congress, though he has been careful on the campaign trail to trumpet more than his sexuality.
“The first thing I talk to voters about is their priorities, universal health care and economic security,” he said. “I’m not hiding who I am, but they’re just as interested in talking about the issues as I am.”
See Congressional Race in California Draws a High-Profile Cast
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DC pride festival honors gay rights pioneer Kameny
(Washington) Fresh off his doctorate from Harvard, Franklin Kameny had been a government astronomer for just five months when he was asked to meet with federal investigators. They said they had information that he was a homosexual. He was promptly fired.
In that moment in 1957, more than a decade before …
Tags: Dc Pride, Decade, Doctorate, Federal Investigators, Five Months, gay rights, Government Astronomer, Harvard, Homosexual, Kameny, Pioneer, Pride FestivalThe impact of ‘Christian’ homophobia: New Research Reveals Young Americans Losing Their Religion In Staggering Numbers
New research shows young Americans are dramatically less likely to go to church — or to participate in any form of organized religion — than their parents and grandparents.
“It’s a huge change,” says Harvard University professor Robert Putnam, who conducted the research.
Historically, the percentage of Americans who said they had no religious affiliation (pollsters refer to this group as the “nones”) has been very small — hovering between 5 percent and 10 percent. However, Putnam says the percentage of “nones” has now skyrocketed to between 30 percent and 40 percent among younger Americans.
Putnam calls this a “stunning development.” He gave reporters a first glimpse of his data Tuesday at a conference on religion organized by the Pew Forum on Faith in Public Life.
The research will be included in a forthcoming book, called “American Grace.”
This trend started in the 1990s and continues through today. It includes people in both Generation X and Y.
While these young “nones” may not belong to a church, they are not necessarily atheists.
“Many of them are people who would otherwise be in church,” Putnam said. “They have the same attitidues and values as people who are in church, but they grew up in a period in which being religious meant being politically conservative, especially on social issues.”
Putnam says that in the past two decades, many young people began to view organized religion as a source of “intolerance and rigidity and doctrinaire political views,” and therefore stopped going to church.
This movement away from organized religion, says Putnam, may have enormous consequences for American culture and politics for years to come.
“That is the future of America,” he says. “Their views and their habits religiously are going to persist and have a huge effect on the future.”
See New Research Reveals Young Americans Losing Their Religion In Staggering Numbers
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A first gay justice?
President Barack Obama is looking to advance diversity with his pick to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter — and early speculation has focused on whether he’ll pick a woman, or perhaps the first Hispanic justice.
But gay rights groups — disappointed that Obama didn’t pick an openly gay man or woman for his Cabinet — are pushing him to put the first openly gay justice on the Supreme Court.
Within hours of word of Souter’s departure, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund was hailing the candidacy of a First Amendment scholar and former dean of Stanford Law School, Kathleen Sullivan. “Out lesbian a contender for Supreme Court,” one of the group’s web sites declared.
Another Stanford law professor on the “frequently mentioned” lists, Pam Karlan, has been open about being a lesbian, colleagues and former students say. In response to an e-mail from POLITICO, Karlan expressed no reticence about discussing her sexual orientation, though she downplayed talk about being a possible nominee.
“It’s no secret at all that I’m counted among the LGBT crowd,” she wrote, using a common acronym for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community. As for the possibility she’d be nominated, Karlan said, “Given the landscape, I’m flattered, but not fooled, by having my name tossed around.”
Unrelatedly, a rave for Karlan as “(1) brilliant, (2) broadly knowledgeable — Cass Sunstein aside, I can’t think of anyone who knows so much about so many different legal fields — and (3) a spectacularly gifted writer” from a right-leaning Harvard Law professor, William Stuntz.
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Red State Porn Purchasing Power
More subscribers to online pornography live in traditionally conservative red states than blue states, according to a study published last week in the American Economic Association’s Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Utah leads the country with 5.47 subscribers per 1,000 broadband users, followed by Alaska (5.03) and Mississippi (4.30). California ranked 39th at 2.46.
“The most natural interpretation is that conservatives are buying disproportionately much online adult entertainment,” said Benjamin Edelman, the study’s author. “Though, to be sure, it’s also possible that the minority of liberals in the same regions are the ones making these purchases.”
Edelman, an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, said he adjusted his data to compare states with varying populations and Internet usage, in order to place them all on a level playing field.
Edelman obtained a list of zip codes associated with credit card subscribers from what he described as a “top-10 seller of online adult entertainment” from 2006 to 2008. The company agreed to let Edelman analyze the information if he agreed to keep the company’s name anonymous, he said.
The researcher also found a marginally higher rate of porn subscribers in the 27 states that had passed “defense of marriage” amendments to keep same-sex marriages unconstitutional compared to states that had no such laws.
Red State Porn Purchasing Power
San Francisco Chronicle
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Businessman offers $100M toward AIDS vaccine research
The hunt for an AIDS vaccine, a scientific quest that has stumped infectious disease researchers for two decades, is receiving a $100 million boost from a Massachusetts technology magnate, whose gift will create a Boston institute fusing the expertise of doctors, engineers, and biologists.
Stunned by scenes of desperation he witnessed in HIV-ravaged South Africa, Phillip Terrence Ragon is spending a considerable chunk of his fortune to accelerate research for a vaccine that would slow the relentless spread of the virus that causes AIDS and now infects more than 33 million people worldwide.
The money, $10 million a year for the next decade, will go to Massachusetts General Hospital but be shared with other research powerhouses, including Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An announcement of the gift, the largest in Mass. General’s history, is expected this morning from Ragon, 59, the founder and sole owner of InterSystems, a Cambridge company that provides database software to hospitals and other industries.
See Businessman offers $100M toward AIDS vaccine research
The Boston Globe
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Businessman donates $100 million to AIDS research Reuters
A Massachusetts businessman has donated $100 million to fund research into the development of an AIDS vaccine, according to Massachusetts General Hospital, which received the gift.
Phillip T. Ragon, provider of the gift, is the chief executive of a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based software company called InterSystems Corp. The money will establish the Phillip T. and Susan M. Ragon Institute, to be based at MGH.
The gift, which will flow through MGH, will be shared with Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.
See Businessman donates $100 million to AIDS research
Reuters
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America’s top civil rights groups and legal scholars agree: Invalidate Prop 8
(San Francisco, CA, January 21, 2009) In the last round of an expedited briefing schedule, final briefs were filed today by both petitioners and respondents in the lawsuits challenging Proposition 8. The briefs filed today by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lambda Legal, and the ACLU responded to the more than 60 amicus curiae, or “friend of the court,” briefs filed in the case last week.
Those amicus briefs highlight the extraordinary breadth of support for Petitioners’ argument that Proposition 8 is invalid. The supporters represent the full gamut of California’s and the nation’s civil rights organizations and legal scholars, as well as California legislators, local governments, bar associations, business interests, labor unions, and religious groups.
In amicus briefs filed last Thursday, the nation’s leading legal scholars argued that Proposition 8 is invalid because it seeks to eliminate a fundamental right only for a targeted minority, which cannot be done through the initiative process. Professors from the most prominent universities and law schools in California and the country authored briefs urging the Court to invalidate Proposition 8, including scholars from Harvard University, Stanford University, Yale University, University of California (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Hastings, Davis, Irvine), University of Southern California, University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University, University of San Francisco, Loyola Law School, Santa Clara Law School, Chapman University, and Pepperdine University.
A brief authored by Hastings Law Professor Donna Ryu and joined by 20 constitutional law experts, argued: “Proposition 8 represents the first time that the California initiative process has been wielded to abolish a fundamental freedom for an unpopular minority group and to alter the Constitution so as to mandate governmental discrimination against that group. In this way, Proposition 8 attempts to breach some of the most elemental textual and structural promises of our state Constitution. It revokes a fundamental right that, in the words of the Constitution, is “inalienable.” It dismantles constitutional equality for a single group of Californians – a group that, because of its history of oppression and stigma, is entitled to the highest level of constitutional protection against discrimination.”
Another brief authored by Professor Karl Manheim, one of the foremost authorities on California’s initiative process, stated: “Proposition 8 . . . improperly attempts to revise the Constitution by taking the unprecedented step of singling out a suspect class and depriving that class – and only that class – of a fundamental right.”
On January 15, 2009, 43 friend-of-the-court briefs urging the Court to invalidate Prop 8 were filed, arguing that Proposition 8 drastically alters the equal protection guarantee in California’s Constitution, and that the rights of a minority cannot be eliminated by a simple majority vote.
Other briefs supporting the legal challenge to Prop 8 were filed on behalf of 652 current and former California legislators; dozens of bar associations, legal aid organizations; and numerous California municipal governments.
In May of 2008, the California Supreme Court held that laws that treat people differently based on their sexual orientation violate the equal protection clause of the California Constitution and that same-sex couples have the same fundamental right to marry as other Californians. Proposition 8 eliminated this fundamental right only for same-sex couples. No other initiative has ever successfully changed the California Constitution to take away a right only from a targeted minority group. Proposition 8 passed by a bare 52 percent on November 4.
The National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lambda Legal, and the ACLU filed this challenge on November 5, representing Equality California, whose members include many same-sex couples who married between June 16 and November 4, 2008, and six same-sex couples who want to marry in California. The California Supreme Court has also agreed to hear two other challenges filed on the same day: one filed by the City and County of San Francisco (joined by Santa Clara County and the City of Los Angeles, and subsequently by Los Angeles County and other local governments); and another filed by a private attorney. These three cases are jointly under review by the California Supreme Court.
Serving as co-counsel on the case with NCLR, Lambda Legal, and the ACLU are the Law Office of David C. Codell, Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.
On November 19, 2008, the California Supreme Court granted review in the legal challenges to Proposition 8, and established an expedited briefing schedule, under which briefing was completed on January 21, 2009. The California Supreme Court has stated that it may schedule oral argument as early as March 2009.
The case is Strauss et al. v. Horton et al. (
S168047).
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Harvard tackles TG workplace rights
Harvard tackles TG workplace rights
Tags: Harvard, Workplace Rights
