Jim Gibbons, In Midst Of Messy Divorce, Plans To Veto Gay Partners .Bill to Stand Tall For Traditional Marriage!

The Nevada legislature has successfully passed two gay rights bills, one that outlaws job discrimination based on sexual orientation, and another that establishes domestic partnerships for gay couples.

But Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons has said he will veto the domestic partnership bill, which would give same-sex couples equal rights to married partners in areas like estate planning, medical decisions, community property and child custody.

“The governor believes that government has no business in your medicine chest or your bedroom,” spokesperson Daniel Burns said. With good reason: Gibbons who filed for divorce in 2008, allegedly had having an affair with playboy model Leslie Durant, as well as sending more than 860 text messages to another woman, Kathy Karrasch, from his state-owned cell phone. When Gibbons was running for governor, he was accused of sexually assaulting a cocktail waitress.

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Group Renews Fight for Same-Sex Marriage in California

SAN FRANCISCO — As the California Supreme Court mulls the fate of a 2008 ballot measure outlawing same-sex marriage, one of the state’s largest gay rights groups is laying the groundwork for a campaign to overturn the measure, perhaps as soon as next year.

The announcement by the group, Equality California, comes almost a year after the court’s initial decision to legalize same-sex marriage, a ruling that voters negated in November when they passed the ballot measure, Proposition 8. The proposition has since been challenged in court, but gay rights advocates worry the court will uphold it, and are preparing for the next stage of the fight.

“We’re hoping the court rules the right way, but we’re not counting on it,” said Marc Solomon, Equality California’s newly hired marriage director. “And we believe that 2010 is the right time to go back to the ballot.”

The possibility of a ballot measure to overturn Proposition 8 has been floated online and elsewhere since the election, but the announcement is a concrete signal that California might soon be embroiled in another electoral fight over same-sex marriage. The November campaign ranked as one of the most divisive and expensive ballot measure fights ever, with the two sides spending more than $80 million combined.

Opponents of same-sex marriage said a second campaign would be a mistake. “The fact is that the people of California have already spoken,” said Brian S. Brown, the executive director in National Organization for Marriage, in Princeton, N.J. “And they don’t like being told they were wrong the first time.”

Mr. Solomon, who came to California after several years of working on behalf of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, the first state to legalize such unions, in 2004, stopped short of announcing of a formal campaign to put the issue on the California ballot, which would require an extensive signature-gathering effort. See Group Renews Fight for Same-Sex Marriage in California New York Times * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual

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‘Gay man’ disinterred in Senegal BBC News

he body of a man believed to be homosexual has twice been dug up from a Muslim cemetery in Senegal.

The man, in his 30s, was first buried on Saturday before residents of the western town of Thies dug up his body and left it near his grave, police say.

His family then reburied him, but he was once more exhumed by people who did not want him buried there. His body was dumped outside the family house.

Senegal outlaws homosexual acts but there is a tradition of effeminate men.

A police officer told the AFP news agency that the body was eventually buried away from the cemetery.

The state-owned Le Soleil newspaper reports that it was buried within the grounds of the family home.

“Goor-jiggen” (men-women) dress up as women, socialise with females and have long been tolerated in Senegal, a majority Muslim country. However, attitudes seem to be changing.

The AFP news agency reports that local imams, as well as some newspapers and radio stations, have denounced homosexuals after an appeals court last month overturned the conviction of nine people for homosexual acts.

‘Gay man’ disinterred in Senegal

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Burundi criminalizes homosexuality

(Bujumbura) Burundi has become that latest African nation to outlaw homosexuality.

The provision makes homosexuality a criminal offense with up to three years in prison and heavy fines. It has the backing of President Pierre Nkurunziza, who said Monday he will sign the legislation as soon as it reaches his desk …

Gay marriage effort shifts back to New England

(Montpelier, Vt.) Vermont was the first state to outlaw slavery. Neighboring New Hampshire declared its independence from England before any other colony. Maine led the way with Prohibition.

These days, Yankee activism has another cause – gay rights.

Two states in New England already allow same-sex marriage, and lawmakers in three more …

Gay, married and outlawed

The questions and answers volleyed back and forth last week during the California Supreme Court’s televised proceedings on Prop 8, the state’s recently enacted ban against gay marriage.

And in a dark classroom at Chapman University, watching it all with a focused intensity, was law student Tiffany Chang.

In Chang’s view, the discussion was riveting. Did Prop. 8 simply “take away the label of marriage,” as one justice put it? Chang has heard all of the arguments, including those that say that same sex couples enjoy domestic partnership rights in California, so why insist on the designation of “marriage.”

You could say there was twice as much at stake for Chang, who tracks the legal debate for reasons both scholarly and personal.

Two years ago, in front of friends and family in Long Beach, Chang and her partner Lindsey Etheridge exchanged marriage vows in an unofficial, non-legally binding ceremony. Then, exactly a year later, on July 14, 2008, during the short window when same-sex marriages were legal here in California, Chang and Etheridge filed for “official marriage paperwork.” Then they married in a legal ceremony.

Chang says the event was life changing.

“We were in the clerk’s office and there were people there we don’t know, but they represented the government, validating our relationship,” says Chang, 28. “After it was all done, that sense of security, it was tenfold at least.

“I never could have known what that felt like, to truly be equal in our society,” she adds. “I don’t think you know what that feels like until you’ve got it.”

Chang was part of a “friend of the court” brief filed with the state’s Supreme Court in support of those who have legally challenged Prop. 8. And, in her declaration, she elaborated that on the day “I walked out with my head held higher than I thought was even possible.”

The brief was drafted by attorneys Katherine Baird Darmer and Ronald Steiner, who are also law professors at Chapman, and includes declarations from other people connected to Chapman, as well as from members of the Orange County Equality Coalition, a community group that says it educates and advocates for marriage equality in California.

For Chang, Prop. 8 isn’t just a matter of nomenclature; it’s a matter of denying a minority group the rights afforded to all others. Since the law passed in November, Chang has been speaking out in public. She says she’s come to realize that until a person is treated like a second-class citizen it’s difficult for them to understand what it’s like to be on the other side.

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Gay, married and outlawed

OCRegister

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Another seismic shift emanates from California — this time on gay …

The ground trembled again last week, another aftershock of one of the wrenching seismic shifts that always seem to start in California and skitter across the nation’s political and cultural plates. This time it was same-sex marriage, as the state Supreme Court took up the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the November ballot initiative that outlawed such unions.

The court hearing was the latest chapter in a saga that has enmeshed California, off and on, for nine years. In 2000, voters banned same-sex marriage. Last year, acting after San Francisco became the first city in the state to marry gay couples, the Supreme Court cleared the way for such unions. Opponents returned fire with Proposition 8, which put the ban into the Constitution. Statements of some justices during Thursday’s court hearing indicated that the proposition probably will stand — at least for now.

There was an odd familiarity to it all. As with the modern conservative movement, the antitax rebellion of the 1970s and a host of other less important, if useful, things — the hula hoop comes to mind — California was first in the mix.

Despite our conceit that the sun shines brighter on California’s golden denizens, residents here are really not so different from people everywhere else. Ponder surveys of voters taken last November in California and nationally, and the surprising conclusion is how similar we are. We are less white and more Latino, slightly richer and more educated, and we go to church a bit less. But we resemble the rest of the nation on many other measures — our age range, the number of kids living in our homes, and even our views on whether government, rather than businesses and individuals, should solve problems in a pinch.

The state does differ from the other 49, though, in its quest for change.

“California is the magnet for people from all the states who come here to dream, hope, or fit in,” said Bob Mulholland, who since landing here via Philadelphia and Vietnam 39 years ago has been a Democratic party advisor and unofficial electoral historian.

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Los Angeles Times

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Burundians Demand Homosexuality Be Criminalized Advocate.com

ens of thousands of people from Burundi, an impoverished East African nation, demonstrated Friday in their capital of Bujumbura to demand the outlawing of homosexuality, reports Agence France-Presse.

The demonstration, which drew up to 20,000 people, follows the government’s failure to implement a law that would have criminalized homosexual acts. On February 17, senators voted through a draft criminal code law that abolished the death penalty, but rejected an amendment that outlawed homosexuality.

At Friday’s protest, Jeremie Ngendakumana, the ruling party’s chairman, said, “[We are] protesting today to support the [view of the] majority of Burundians that homosexuality should be punished by law. Homosexuality is a sin. It is a culture which has been imported to sully our morals and is practiced by immoral people.”

See Burundians Demand Homosexuality Be Criminalized Advocate.com

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California Court Weighing Gay Marriage Ban

SAN FRANCISCO — Under intense pressure from both sides in the debate over same-sex marriage, the California Supreme Court began hearing arguments Thursday morning on the future of a ballot initiative passed by voters last November that outlawed such unions.
Supporters and opponents of the measure, Proposition 8, began lining up in front of the courthouse in San Francisco before dawn, bringing with them signs, banners and a sense of tense anticipation.
“We knew we had to be here to see it with our own eyes,” said Katherine Stoner, 61, who had traveled from Monterey, with her partner of 34 years, Michelle Welsh.
Several ardent — and outnumbered — opponents of same-sex marriage also held signs with messages like “Gay = Pervert” and “A Moral Wrong Can’t be a Civil Right.”
Don J. Grundmann, a member of the American Warrior Ministry in San Leandro, Calif., said he believed that homosexuality was a “emotional pathology” that he feared would be taught to children.
“That’s the real objective,” Mr. Grundmann said.
Mr. Grundmann said he wanted to support traditional marriage between a man and a woman, which Proposition 8 affirmed in the November election, passing with 52 percent of the vote. Opponents have sued, saying the ballot measure violates the state constitution, setting up Thursday’s hearing.
The three-hour hearing is a critical legal test for both sides. But opponents of Proposition 8 also used Thursday’s hearing as a prime moment to rally their forces and demonstrate resilience after a stinging election loss that many among them believe could have been avoided. See California Court Weighing Gay Marriage Ban
New York Times – United States * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual

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California Ban on Same-Sex Marriage Has Its Day in Court

SAN FRANCISCO — Under intense pressure from both sides in the debate over same-sex marriage, the California Supreme Court will hear arguments Thursday on the ballot initiative passed by voters last November that outlawed such unions.

For opponents of the measure, Proposition 8, the three-hour hearing is a critical legal test. But it is also, they say, a prime moment to rally their forces and demonstrate resilience after a stinging election loss that many among them believe could have been avoided.

“It’s a need for the community to show that we will not be passive participants to our own struggle,” said Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. “I think it goes to the heart of what we’ve seen since Nov. 5, and what we’ve come to appreciate as the critical importance of everyone stepping up and stepping out.”

To that end, Thursday’s hearing is being treated by some activists as a combination of Election Night and Super Bowl. In San Francisco, for example, Proposition 8 opponents have erected a Jumbotron screen in front of the courthouse for spectators unable to squeeze into the courtroom.

“This is our lives on the line,” said Molly McKay, media director of the volunteer group Marriage Equality USA. “We don’t want them to have to worry about getting in.”

See California Ban on Same-Sex Marriage Has Its Day in Court
New York Times