House subcommittee approves benefits for same-sex partners
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Human Rights Campaign Calls on the LGBT Community and Allies to Participate in National, Grassroots Push to Lobby Congress Face-to-Face
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, today launched a national, grassroots campaign called “No Excuses” to demand action from Congress on key issues of equality. Designed to take advantage of the congressional summer recess, when members are in their local offices and meeting with constituents, “No Excuses” will mobilize HRC’s 750,000 members and their allies to meet directly with lawmakers and push for federal legislative change. Members and supporters can get involved by visiting: http://noexcuses.hrc.org.
“While we salute and acknowledge the heroic members of Congress who have worked tirelessly on our behalf, far too many have dragged their feet on basic matters of fairness and equality that have lingered too long and hurt too many LGBT people and their families,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “Yes, there are many challenges facing this Congress and this president. But LGBT people often face additional hardship protecting their families, their loved ones and their jobs, and too few in Congress are willing to champion these issues of basic fairness. Now, more than ever, members of the LGBT community need to make their voices heard face-to-face and in the districts where they live.”
Using innovative online tools, one-on-one trainings and staff and volunteer follow-through, HRC members will press lawmakers to end discrimination in the military, treat all legally married couples equally, pass immigration reform that recognizes and honors LGBT families, outlaw workplace discrimination for LGBT employees, and treat all federal employees’ compensation equally.
The interactive “No Excuses” website allows supporters to download a meeting toolkit, schedule a meeting and report back on how it went. To take action, visit: http://noexcuses.hrc.org.
The in-district meetings will focus on the following key legislative priorities in the 111th Congress:
–Repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which denies legally married lesbian and gay couples more than 1,000 federal protections;
–Prohibit workplace discrimination for the LGBT community by passing an inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA);
–Repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to ensure that service members who contribute to our nation’s security are no longer summarily discharged for who they are;
–Pass immigration reform that recognizes permanent same-sex couples and ends the painful separation of families;
–And provide health benefits equally to the nearly 3 million federal government employees, including same-sex domestic partners.
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States with more Catholics more favor gay rights
Want to predict which state might move next to legalize same-sex marriage? You might count Catholics. The higher their percentage of the population, the more likely the state is to… support gay rights.
This counter-intuitive finding is brought to you with a tip of two hats — mine to Mark Silk at Spiritual Politics and his to Robbie Jones who led Silk to a new study soon by be published by two Columbia University political scientists.
Jeffrey Lax and Justin Phillips examined public support and resulting political policy on eight issues including marriage, housing, adoption and hate crimes.
The main thrust of the study was to examine whether there is “pro-gay bias in policy making” (the authors conclude no) or a tyranny of local majorities “in which anti-gay majorities trump minority rights” (the authors again say no).
See States with more Catholics more favor gay rights
USA Today -
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IDs of gay partnership foes could be released next week
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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Pro-gay marriage group spent big in Vermont
Vermont Freedom to Marry says it spent more than $293,000 lobbying lawmakers and the public on the same-sex marriage bill that was approved by the Legislature, far outspending its opponents.
In lobbyist disclosure forms filed Monday with the Vermont Secretary of State’s office, the pro-gay marriage group reported spending about $65,000 between April 1 and June 30 — some of it in the week leading up to the Legislature’s April 7 vote.
Take It to The People, which opposed the measure, spent about $10,000 altogether but none in the reporting period.
See Pro-gay marriage group spent big in Vermont Boston Herald
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‘Two-Track’ Church Suggested by Archbishop of Canterbury
PARIS — The Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, said profound differences among the world’s 77 million Anglicans over gay clergy and same-sex unions could divide their church into a “two-track model” yielding “two styles of being Anglican.”
The formula could avert a formal breach between liberals and conservatives but bring new strains in the relationship between the global Anglican Communion and American Episcopalians who resolved this month to open the door to ordaining openly gay bishops and to start the process of developing rites for same-sex marriages.
Archbishop Williams insisted that the issue should not be debated “in apocalyptic terms of schism and excommunication but plainly as what they are — two styles of being Anglican.”
In a lengthy message published Monday on his Web site, the archbishop offered a detailed and nuanced response to events at the Episcopal convention in Anaheim, Calif., this month when gay-rights advocates in the United States chalked up major victories over conservatives on sexual issues. The Episcopal Church is the official branch of the Anglican Communion in the United States.
The developments were seen by liberals and conservatives as likely turning points in the history of the divided Episcopal Church, reflecting the profound rifts over sexual issues within Anglicanism — the world’s third largest network of Christian churches after the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. The differences have crystallized around the Episcopal Church’s consent in 2003 to the consecration of the church’s first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.
The Episcopalians had agreed to a moratorium on the election of gay bishops, but it was lifted at the convention in Anaheim.
The archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, which is composed of 38 provinces worldwide. The Episcopal Church claims about 2.3 million members.
In his message, Archbishop Williams repeated his view that “a blessing for a same-sex union cannot have the authority” of the full Anglican Communion, any more than a blessing for a heterosexual couple living outside marriage would have.
That, in turn, means that as long as the broader church “as a whole does not bless same-sex unions, a person living in such a union cannot without serious incongruity have a representative function in a Church whose public teaching is at odds with their lifestyle.”
The issues have confronted the archbishop with deep divisions not simply between liberals and conservatives in the United States but also across the broader church with its many followers in Africa, Britain and elsewhere. Four conservative dioceses in the United States and many individual Episcopal churches have broken away from the national denomination to forge alliances with conservative Anglican groups such as the Anglican Church of Nigeria.
Archbishop Williams said: “There is at least the possibility of a twofold ecclesial reality in view in the middle distance: that is, a ‘covenanted’ Anglican global body, fully sharing certain aspects of a vision of how the Church should be and behave, able to take part as a body in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue; and, related to this body, but in less formal ways with fewer formal expectations, there may be associated local churches in various kinds of mutual partnership and solidarity with one another and with ‘covenanted’ provinces.”
The archbishop has promoted the idea of covenant — described by some analysts as a kind of good-behavior guide for churches — to overcome the rift.
“This has been called a ‘two-tier’ model, or, more disparagingly, a first- and second-class structure,” the archbishop’s message said. “But perhaps we are faced with the possibility rather of a ‘two-track’ model, two ways of witnessing to the Anglican heritage, one of which had decided that local autonomy had to be the prevailing value and so had in good faith declined a covenantal structure.”
The message continued: “It helps to be clear about these possible futures, however much we think them less than ideal, and to speak about them not in apocalyptic terms of schism and excommunication but plainly as what they are — two styles of being Anglican, whose mutual relation will certainly need working out but which would not exclude cooperation in mission and service of the kind now shared in the Communion.”
See Anglican Sees ‘Two-Track’ Church @ New York Times
- Archbishop warns ordination of gay clergy could lead to two-tier … guardian.co.uk
- Anglican Head Warns Of Two-Tier Church After Gay Vote On Top Magazine Archbishop of Canterbury responds to General Convention actions on … Austin American-Statesman
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Should Proposition 8 recall be put to voters in 2010?
Marriage-equality advocates are split about the timing of a ballot question to overturn the California’s Proposition 8 constitutional marriage ban. Some major backers, including David Bohnett, believe it’s better to postpone a possible 2010 vote rather than risk another defeat. But an informal poll of leaders affiliated with the Courage Campaign shows support for putting the repeal question on next year’s ballot. The deadline to file the question with the state attorney general is Sept. 25. The New York Times (7/26) , San Francisco Chronicle/Politics blog (7/25)
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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
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Diocese of Niagara to offer same-sex blessings
As of Sept. 1, the diocese of Niagara will allow its priests to bless same-gender couples who have been civilly married.
Niagara becomes the second diocese in the Anglican Church of Canada, after the Vancouver-based New Westminster, to offer a sacrament for same-sex blessings. (The diocese of New Westminster, which allowed same-sex blessings in 2002, currently limits the rite to eight parishes.) The issue of same-sex blessings continues to deeply divide Anglicans in Canada as well as worldwide.
“The Niagara Rite is intended for the voluntary use of priests who wish to offer a sacrament of blessing regardless of the gender of the civilly married persons…” the diocese of Niagara said on its Web site, www.niagara.anglican.ca
The rite may also be used for the blessing or renewal of vows for couples “celebrating a significant moment in their married life together,” said an introduction to the Niagara Rite.
The approval of the rite came five years after the diocesan synod of Niagara passed a motion allowing civilly-married gay couples, “where at least one party is baptized,” to receive a church blessing. The diocesan bishop at that time, Ralph Spence, had refused to implement the motion. In January 2008, a similar motion was approved by Niagara’s diocesan synod, and this time, Bishop Spence gave his approval, but said he reserved the right to determine when the same-sex blessings would move forward.
Last fall, Bishop Spence’s successor, Michael Bird, informed a meeting of the Canadian house of bishops that he intended to develop the rite, saying, “I believe we are among those who have been called by God to speak with a prophetic voice on this subject.”
Under a list of protocols outlined by Bishop Bird, a cleric who wishes to offer the Niagara Rite must contact the bishop’s office “so that a conversation can take place between the bishop and the cleric involved.” The cleric is expected to provide details about the couple the cleric intends to bless “and should be prepared to have a conversation about the response of the parish to the blessings,” the list added. “A date for such a blessing should not be confirmed with the couple until after this conversation with the bishop has taken place.”
A parish is not required to get the approval of its vestry before it can offer such blessings.
Two other dioceses – Montreal and Ottawa – have also informed the house of bishops about their intention to move ahead with same-sex blessings. At that meeting, the house of bishops issued a statement saying that a “large majority” of its members could affirm “a continued commitment to the greatest extent possible” to a moratorium on the blessing of same-sex unions. But it acknowledged that the moratorium, which had been sought by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the primates of the Anglican Communion, would be difficult for some dioceses “that in confidence have made decisions on these matters.”
The issue of whether dioceses can offer same-sex blessings is likely to be revisited at the 2010 meeting of General Synod, the governing body of the Anglican Church of Canada. In 2007, General Synod had agreed that blessing rites for gay couples are “not in conflict” with core church doctrine, but refused to affirm the authority of dioceses to offer them. General Synod delegates had also voted to study revising the marriage canon (church law) to allow priests to marry all legally qualified persons. Marriage for gay people has been legal in Canada since 2005.
Last spring, Council of General Synod (CoGS), the church’s governing body in between General Synod meetings, decided not to ask General Synod 2010 to amend the marriage canon to allow for the marriage of same-sex couples. The decision was made after the faith, worship and ministry committee, which was asked by CoGS to prepare “a theological rationale to allow for the marriage of all legally qualified persons,” said that it found the request problematic. Janet Marshall, committee chair, told CoGS that some members felt uncomfortable about being asked to create a rationale for only one side of the argument.
See Diocese of Niagara to offer same-sex blessings
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Maine campaign heats up
With the prospect of a November referendum on same-sex marriage in Maine all but certain, pro-equality advocates are gearing up for a bruising battle to preserve the state’s marriage equality bill, signed by Gov. John Baldacci in May. Since January, Maine Freedom to Marry has been ramping up a vast field campaign to identify pro-equality voters. Without a presidential or gubernatorial race to bring voters out, Maine Freedom to Marry campaign manager Jesse Connolly said grassroots fieldwork is essential to finding voters who support marriage equality and to turning them out at the polls on Election Day.
“This campaign is really about having one-on-one conversations with Maine voters. … We’re raising money, we’re building a campaign, but we’re really excited about this great work the field effort has been doing,” said Connolly.
Yet campaign finance reports suggest that pro-equality advocates may face an uphill battle. Thus far, anti-gay activists have outpaced pro-equality advocates in fundraising. Much of that money has come from the national religious right organizations that backed the successful campaign to pass California’s Proposition 8 last year. See Maine campaign heats up
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