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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India: Legal gay sex ruling challenged
A landmark ruling that legalized gay sex between consenting partners in India was challenged Thursday in the country’s high court, lawyers said.
The supreme court issued a notice to the nonprofit Naz Foundation that had won a lower-court verdict after a seven-year legal fight to decriminalize gay sex.
Notices also were issued to the federal government and the New Delhi high court, which ruled last week that consensual sex between partners of the same gender was legal.
An astrologer filed a petition challenging the ruling. The petitioner argued that no constitutional right is violated by the Indian penal code’s Section 377, which had outlawed gay sex, said his lawyer Praveen Agrawal.
The petition also cited Indian culture and health as grounds for seeking a stay on last week’s ruling, he said.
The supreme court posted the next hearing for July 20.
Last week’s ruling meant the law — Indian penal code section 377, which had previously criminalized consensual homosexual acts between adults — was partly struck down but remains in place as far as forced homosexual acts are concerned.
The verdict affects law enforcement all around India because it deals with a law enacted by the federal parliament.
See India: Legal gay sex ruling challenged
CNN Internationa
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For Gay Iranian Refugees, a Matter of Life or Death
NOTE: This is the second of two parts, the first, on the election revolt, was on EDGE in June.
The international media clamor surrounding last month’s Iranian election, which saw the contentious re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad result in weeks of protests, demonstrations and violence, may have died down, but the unstable atmosphere lives on for residents of the Islamic republic.
They continue to face major restrictions on free speech and threats to their safety if they choose to speak out. And they will not soon forget the street violence that resulted in the death, imprisonment and harassment of many protesters, activists and journalists–all part of the worst unrest the country has seen in thirty years.
This is particularly true for gay and lesbian Iranians, both those who remain inside the country and those who have escaped. They are familiar with oppressive treatment from their government, one which continues to outlaw homosexuality and crack down against any outward display of queerness. The first story (published here June 30, 2009,) examined the environment facing the Iranian queer community, particularly in light of the government’s attempts to silence any post-election voices of dissent.
Building from that story, we now take a look at the climate facing queer Iranians who have fled the country with the hopes of seeking asylum in the West. Forced, in many cases, to leave behind their families, friends and the culture of their blood, their dreams of living in freedom still face a number of challenges.
When gay Iranian refugees and asylum seekers leave, they are sent to live temporarily to a number of a different places, though most end up in small Turkish towns known as “satellite cities,” far from the larger cities like Ankara or Istanbul. They file a request to be granted official refugee status with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in order to legally move West, and then they wait. In many cases, that waiting period can last up to three years, a time during which employment is difficult to find and harassment is not unusual.
See For Gay Iranian Refugees, a Matter of Life or Death
EDGE Boston
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Federal Judge Stresses Trial Record on Calif. Gay-Marriage Ban
Whatever Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker winds up deciding on Proposition 8, it’s clear he wants an airtight trial record to support it.
Holding his first hearing Thursday on the controversial measure that outlawed same-sex marriage, Walker repeatedly stressed the importance of establishing a record that will stand the test of time.
He told a packed courtroom that he was “reasonably sure” that the challenge launched by two high-profile litigators is “only touching down in this court” and merely a “prelude” for things to come.
“How we do things here,” Walker said, “is more important than what we do.”
He noted that other courts have rendered decisions on same-sex marriage without holding full trials, which he suggested was a “problem.”
Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 09-CV-2292, was filed in May by Theodore Olson, who represented George W. Bush in the landmark Bush v. Gore case, and David Boies, who represented Al Gore. Boies wasn’t present on Thursday. The suit attacks Prop 8 on equal protection and due process grounds.
Walker had already issued a tentative order allowing Prop 8 proponents to intervene and denying a preliminary injunction (pdf). He stood by both orders during Thursday’s 50-minute session.
Olson, a partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Washington, D.C., office who has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court 55 times, nonetheless made a fleeting attempt to persuade Walker to change his mind on the injunction.
“Every day that Prop 8 is enforced perpetuates a tragic injustice” on gays and lesbians, he argued, saying it “brands” them as “second-class citizens, unworthy and different.”
“The Supreme Court,” Olson argued, “has held again and again and again that the right to marry is the most important relationship in life.”
Representing the Prop 8 proponents, Washington attorney Charles Cooper, who was a top Justice Department lawyer during the Reagan administration, warned that the lawsuit could “sweep away” not only Prop 8, but the definition of marriage in 43 states and the federal government.
The Cooper & Kirk partner also argued that marriage has by tradition always been the union of a man and a woman, and said that every Supreme Court case that describes marriage has noted that its central purpose is procreation.
See Federal Judge Stresses Trial Record on Calif. Gay-Marriage Ban Above the Law
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Voter ‘animus’ to be issue in Calif marriage case
When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an amendment to the Colorado Constitution that outlawed discrimination protections for gay people, same-sex couples could not enter into civil unions or domestic partnerships anywhere in the nation, much less get married. But as they seek to persuade a federal judge to strike down California’s ban on gay marriages, lawyers for two unmarried gay couples are using that 13-year-old decision as their road map — one they expect will eventually lead the high court to take up the marriage issue. In the Colorado case, Romer v. Evans, the Supreme Court majority held that voters’ dislike of gays and the laws that several cities had approved to shield them from bias motivated the state amendment. Such “animus,” it said, was incompatible with the section of the U.S. Constitution that requires the government to treat its citizens equally absent a compelling reason to do otherwise. The attorneys behind the challenge to California’s Proposition 8 plan to argue during a pretrial hearing Thursday that by stripping gays of the right to wed, the voter-approved ban runs afoul of America’s founding framework in the same way — and for the same reason. “Romer is a strikingly similar situation to what we have here. You had a ballot initiative, a majority vote of the people, taking away a right,” said Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a member of the legal team led by former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and veteran trial lawyer David Boies. “And there was no justification or rationale other than disapproval by that majority of that group.” U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker on Tuesday issued a tentative order to fast-track the case in his San Francisco court. Among the questions he said he wants covered at trial are whether sexual orientation is unchangeable, if permitting same-sex marriage “destabilizes” traditional unions and whether Proposition 8’s ballot history demonstrates the measure had “discriminatory intent.” California Attorney General Jerry Brown, a defendant in the case, has sided with gay rights advocates and declined to defend the ban, which overturned a California Supreme Court ruling that had legalized same-sex marriages. The state Supreme Court five weeks ago upheld the measure, saying it represented a valid exercise of voters’ authority to amend the California Constitution. Proposition 8’s sponsors, a coalition of religious conservative groups called Protect Marriage, has been given permission to intervene in the federal case. In court papers, the group’s lawyers rejected the assertions that anti-gay attitudes fueled the November measure and that the 1996 Colorado case was applicable. “Nothing in California law, either Proposition 8 or otherwise, indicates that Californians harbor animus towards gay and lesbian individuals,” they wrote. Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision, attorneys for gay rights and Christian conservative groups have debated whether the Romer decision could be used to expand gay rights. The ruling marked the first time the Supreme Court determined that the Constitution’s equal rights guarantees extended to gays and lesbians. “The basic point of Romer is that government cannot ever act out of hostility toward a group of people, and whether that is in the context of marriage or anti-discrimination law, the point carries over,” said Suzanne Goldberg, who worked on the case and now directs Columbia Law School’s Sexuality and Gender Law Program. The ruling has been cited, though so far unsuccessfully, in past challenges to gay marriage bans in Nebraska and Florida. At the same time, gay rights groups mostly have shied away from pursuing federal marriage cases in favor of pursuing marriage rights in state courts. Legal observers on both sides of the debate agree, however, that California’s Proposition 8 presents novel questions that could make the issue ripe for federal action.
San Francisco Chronicle
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LGBT discussion takes on a new tone in the Ohio Statehouse
Columbus–As the House State Government committee considered a bill to outlaw discrimination by sexual orientation or gender identity, State Rep. Cliff Hite of Findlay challenged Crystal Curry of the anti-gay Concerned Women for America.
“You and the other [Equal Housing and Employment Act opponents] have testified that homosexuals are only about three percent of the population,” said Hite, a Republican. “So how is it that three percent represents such a threat?”
“They’re not,” Curry answered, “unless we give them civil rights and allow them to marry. Then they are a threat. Three percent is not harmful unless they keep pushing and pushing and take on rights.”
Curry then told lawmakers that because LGBT people use the word “gay” instead of “homosexual” and Will and Grace has gay characters, homosexuality will “become accepted.”
“Kids will grow up and try it,” she complained.
The exchange caused a visible reaction in Hite and other committee members, both Democrats and Republicans.
This illustrates what might be the most significant development in the bill’s movement through the Ohio legislature:
The measure’s opponents can no longer make wild, unsubstantiated and long-debunked claims about the lives of LGBT people without challenges from both sides of the partisan aisle.
See LGBT discussion takes on a new tone in the Ohio Statehouse
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In DC, Judge Asked to Block GAY MARRIAGE Decision
Opponents of gay marriage filed a lawsuit in D.C. Superior Court yesterday hoping to force a referendum on whether to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions.
The civil suit against the District’s Board of Elections and Ethics asks Judge Judith E. Retchin to overturn an election board ruling Monday that blocked a proposal to put the issue before the voters. Citing a District election law prohibiting votes on matters covered under the 1977 Human Rights Act, which outlaws discrimination against gay men, lesbians and other minority groups, the board said that a referendum would “authorize discrimination.”
The plaintiffs asked for an expedited hearing. If the court or Congress does not intervene, recognition of same-sex marriages performed elsewhere will become law early next month, at the end of the required congressional review period.
See GAY MARRIAGE Judge Asked to Block Decision
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Africa: Gay and lesbian voices in African blogosphere
Homosexuality is perceived as a new phenomenon in Africa and a taboo. It is outlawed in many African countries. Many African leaders have condemned homosexuality as being un-African. The Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe once described gays as worse than dogs and pigs. Former Namibia’s President, Sam Nujoma, once stated that “Homosexuals must be condemned and rejected in our society.”
Nigeria introduced a bill in 2007 banning same sex marriage. According to Rod 2.0 the bill is the most comprehensive homophobic legislation ever proposed in the world. Early this year homosexuals in Nigeria stormed the National Assembly seeking for legislation that will guarantee the protection.
Lifestyle, culture and religion have become the invisible fence to many homosexuals in Africa barring them from their freedom of sexual expression. A Kenyan blogger, Wilde Yearnings, was quite optimistic after US President Barack Obama officially declared June being a gay pride month and decriminalizing of homosexuality all over the world earlier this month. He posted Obama’s speech on his blog:
My Administration has partnered with the LGBT community to advance a wide range of initiatives. At the international level, I have joined efforts at the United Nations to decriminalize homosexuality around the world…NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2009 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to turn back discrimination and prejudice everywhere it exists.
Naughy Feeling commented on the post:
It is great our comrades in America are getting recognition. In our dear country we can’t stick our necks in the sand and tell ourselves all will be well. The gigantous task ahead demands of us that we kid not ourselves of the responsibility ahead of us. It may require sacrifices but all for the greater good. May God bless LGBT kenya n give us strength for what is ahead. But hey, look on the bright side, we can still have fun at it.
But will culture, religion and lifestyle factors derail the decriminalisation of homosexuality in most African countries or will it be as Wilde Yearnings described “meanwhile in Kenya… The struggle continues…”?
It has been said that homosexuality is a lifestyle adapted by Africans from the West, SebaSpace a Ugandan blogger tries to points out that his “sexuality” and “him ” are one, that homosexuality cannot be a lifestyle because for him to be involved with someone it has to be sexually, emotionally and spiritually bringing the fact that homosexuality is a physiological function too.
SebaSpace has been on a constant war with an anti-gay blogger also from Uganda and the war is always revolving around religion, culture and lifestyle. This created a stir in the LGBT blogosphere and another gay Kenyan blogger wrotes a post to answer the three questions The Red Pepper had asked. The questions were:
1. If you try to drink water through the ear, you naturally spoil it because it was created by God to do the hearing function. That’s physical harm.
2. when they discovered you were gay. You know very well how we love having grandchildren in Africa. Imagine what goes on in your parents’ minds to know that you will never give them grandchildren (I am assuming that you a die-hard gay man but if you are bi, please forgive me). So that is emotional harm.
3. Spiritual harm. You tamper with God’s plan of procreation. Understand that the main reason of creating the sexual organs was procreation purposes. For you in an attempt to be very creative, you put your organs at the disposal of pleasure only (I hope it is fun).If you have radical parents, they can start questioning God as to why he gave them such a child. I know parents of a gay boy who visited scores of witchdoctors thinking that their child had been bewitched. I can give you as many reasons as possible. I hope you are an objective gentleman who looks at things objectively.With so much hate from all sides, will the African Leaders put their priorities in order from all the pressure by the UN, IMF and World Bank and speak out for the sexual minorities or will still hold them in this invisible cage?
His answers:
The Ugandan rag called Red Pepper has been engaging Afro gay, a fellow Gay blogger from Uganda in arguments regarding the situation on Homosexuality in Uganda. Follow this link to see the full post. Recently, the editor of red pepper wrote to Afro arguing that he (Afro) was causing Physical, emotional and Spiritual harm to his family by being gay.
I promised Afro that I will write my responses to the Editor on my blog and link back with him. I have taken their questions, edited without altering the message and I have responded to each question.
I tend to disagree with you when you say that homos have never done anybody physical, emotional or spiritual harm.
Without any prejudice I want to tell you that they are guilty of all the three accounts.
Count 1. If you try to drink water through the ear, you naturally spoil it because it was created by God to do the hearing function. That’s physical harm.
Red pepper has made three elementary mistakes (assumptions) 1) The common one that homosexuality is equal to sodomy (their shallow analogy of the ear above) 2) Following number 1 above that sodomy is practiced only by homosexuals and 3) That all homosexuals engage in anal sex.
I will deal with the last one first. Is the paper saying they are ok with someone with homosexual orientation as long as they don’t engage in sex? Have they ever heard of celibate gay people and gay people who don’t engage in anal sex? Well, I have and know both types.
It’s worth noting, that from the very beginning sodomy and homosexuality were two categorically separate things. The correct definition of sodomy–then and now–is simply non-procreative sex, whether practiced by heterosexuals or homosexuals. It includes oral sex, masturbation, mutual masturbation, contraceptive sex, coitus interruptus, and anal sex–any sex in which semen does not find its way into a uterus.
The anal sex thing is one elephant in the room, but it’s not an inherent part of being gay, it isn’t an activity engaged in exclusively by gay people.
SebaSpace refused to answer the questions from Red Pepper. He gives reasons for his refusal: @ Africa: Gay and lesbian voices in African blogosphere
Global Voices Kenya
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Gay bishop says faith groups key to NH gay marriage vote
New Hampshire became the sixth state to legalize gay marriage on Wednesday (June 3) in part because faith leaders testified that the measure would not impinge on religious rights, according to V. Gene Robinson, the state’s openly gay Episcopal bishop.
When credible Christians, Muslims and Jews advocated for same-sex marriage, it “had a lot of sway with legislators in terms of giving them cover,” said Robinson. “Our message was loud and clear: religious organizations have nothing to fear from civil marriage for same-gendered folks.”
Robinson, who was elected bishop of New Hampshire in 2003, joined his longtime partner in a civil union last year. Under the New Hampshire law, their union will automatically be considered a marriage on Jan. 1, 2010.
“I’m still about 30 feet off the ground, hovering somewhere on high,” Robinson said in a conference call with reporters on Thursday.
The legislation signed by Gov. John Lynch on Wednesday contains explicit legal protections for religious groups that object to same-gender relationships and makes Rhode Island the only state in New England that does not allow gay marriage.
Robinson said separating the civil and religious aspects of marriage and making clear that religious groups would not be required to sanction same-gender weddings was key to the effort.
“We made sure that our … bill here stated and overstated and restated the fact that no religious liberties would be abridged in the embrace of civil marriage — that no religious institutions would be required to do anything against its own beliefs,” Robinson said. “It largely undercut the argument from the other side.”
Two separate studies released on Wednesday concluded that anti-gay marriage groups relied heavily on religious language to successfully push for ballot initiatives in Michigan in 2004 and California in 2008 that outlawed gay marriage.
“A religious opposition requires a religious response,” said the Rev. Rebecca Voelkel of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and an author of one of the reports.
Robinson said, “I think it’s about emboldening legislators to see people like them who identify as Roman Catholic or American Baptist or Methodist or Lutheran (and) say `OK, this … is clearly a person of faith, so despite what the denomination says as a whole I’ve got a fairly firm piece of ground to stand on here.”
See Gay bishop says faith groups key to NH gay marriage vote
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Gay Divorce Still Legal in California
Gay and lesbian couples who took advantage of California’s brief fling with gay marriage last year to tie the knot, but now can’t stand the sight of one another, will be relieved to hear that gay divorce remains an option.
Frederick Hertz, a lawyer in Oakland, Calif., who specializes in same-sex family law, told The Lede that since California’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that same-sex marriages that took place in 2008, before voters approved a ban in November, will remain “both valid and recognized,” that means “all the rules of marriage apply, including divorce.” That said, the state’s new law explicitly outlawing same-sex-marriage does create something of a gray area for couples who live in California, but were married in another state, or nation, and now want to get a divorce. As Mr. Hertz explains, the problem for unhappily married same-sex couples living in a state that bans same-sex marriage, is that “getting a divorce requires a recognition of the marriage.”
In an article explaining how the legal patchwork of state laws makes it nearly impossible for some same-sex couples to get divorced, the Los Angeles Times reported that a lesbian couple from Rhode Island who got married in Massachusetts were later denied a divorce in their home state, since the courts there can not recognize their marriage. See Gay Divorce Still Legal in California
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