How long has Seattle supported gay rights?
Seattle: 1st in gay rights
Seattle has been at the vanguard of gay rights for at least three decades. Remember Anita Bryant? While she was getting cities across the county to repeal gay rights ordinances in the 1970s, Seattle voters held the line — the first city in America to vote in favor of gay rights. The City of Seattle adopted a fair employment ordinance in 1973 which specifically prohibited discrimination against gay people in the workplace, followed by a fair housing ordinance in 1975. But in 1978, Initiative 13 attempted to repeal the ordinances. It went down in defeat, and Seattle voters successful stopped the national movement to turn back the clock of gay rights. Since then, the cities of Tacoma, Spokane, and others followed suit; Seattle has elected openly gay city council members for decades and is considered to have one of the largest gay populations in the nation.
– Leonard Garfield
Sunday’s gay pride parade marks the event’s 32nd year. See photos from the event here.
Learn more about Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry at seattlehistory.org.
See How long has Seattle supported gay rights?
Seattle Post Intelligencer
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Study: Gays not ‘godless Christian bashers’
This breaking news in from The Barna Group — a chronicler of religious life and habits, particularly of the Christian variety: Gay folks’ attitudes about spirituality aren’t much different from straight folks. These and other “surprising insights” were in Barna’s spiritual profile of gays released Monday. In it was a bit of a political heeding for gay-bashers:
“People who portray gay adults as godless, hedonistic, Christian bashers are not working with the facts,” wrote George Barna Monday. “A substantial majority of gays cite their faith as a central facet of their life, consider themselves to be Christian, and claim to have some type of meaningful personal commitment to Jesus Christ active in their life today.”
“It is interesting to see that most homosexuals, who have some history within the Christian Church, have rejected orthodox biblical teachings and principles — but, in many cases, to nearly the same degree that the heterosexual Christian population has rejected those same teachings and principles,” Barna said. “Although there are clearly some substantial differences in the religious beliefs and practices of the straight and gay populations, there may be less of a spiritual gap between straights and gays than many Americans would assume.”
Now there will be some quibbling with a couple of Barna’s assumptions. Like how Barna pegs the LGBT population at about 3 percent of the adult population. No, he doesn’t believe in the 1-in-10 stat, but then again, LGBT population scholar Gary Gates says it’s more like 5 percent, depending how you count.
That aside, the Barnanians found that “out of the 20 faith-oriented attributes examined in the Barna study, there were just a few in which there were no significant differences between the heterosexual and homosexual populations.”
Hmm. “No significant differences between the heterosexual and homosexual”(s)? Does Donald Wildmon know about this?
One big diff, according to the study: “While seven out of every ten heterosexuals (71 percent) have an orthodox, biblical perception of God, just 43 percent of homosexuals do. In fact, an equal percentage possesses a pantheistic view about deity — i.e., that ‘God’ refers to any of a variety of perspectives, such as personally achieving a state of higher consciousness or maximized personal potential, or that there are multiple gods that exist, or even that everyone is god.”
Another diff: “Heterosexuals were twice as likely as homosexuals to strongly agree that the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches.”
And in the timeliness is next to godliness (OK, and cleanliness) dept: On Monday a crew of organizations supporting same sex marriage are launching their Get Engaged Tour of California — a pump-priming tour of the state in advance of an expected 2010 ballot measure campaign expected later this year. We told you about it a while back. Faith leaders will be prominently featured on this tour, as opposed to last year’s anti-Proposition 8 campaign, when they were largely invisible.
“Our faith-based values require us to love our neighbor as ourselves,” said Pastor Samuel Chu, of California Faith for Equality. “Gay and lesbian people are our neighbors and they should be able to enjoy the dignity, respect and commitment that come with marriage.”
| June 22 2009 at 12:25 PM
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Gays and aging: Halsted center serves surging population of gay … Chicago Tribune
Windows on the second floor of the Center on Halsted frame an ever-changing portrait of gay life in 2009: Same-sex couples walk hand in hand; cross-dressing young men strut with confidence; rainbow banners herald a neighborhood that embraces gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people of any age.
Behind those windows every Tuesday sit Chicagoans in their 60s, 70s and 80s, many on the tailing arcs of lives spent denying their true sexual identity. Women and men who married opposite-sex partners, had children and only late in life felt comfortable telling the world that they’re lesbian or gay. Men and women who chose solitary lives over the possibility of being outed.
They’re a population celebrating still relatively newfound openness, while also confronting issues that rarely appear on the radar of a youthful gay-rights movement focused on the right to marry.
Some have only recently come out and are trying to find their way in a new community. Some have been out for years but are now in nursing homes where their sexuality has again become a stigma. See Gays and aging: Halsted center serves surging population of gay …
Chicago Tribune
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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
Gay People Chronicle -
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Homosexual behaviour widespread in animals according to new study
The pairing of same sex couples had previously been observed in more than 1,000 species including penguins, dolphins and primates.
However, in the latest study the authors claim the phenomenon is not only widespread but part of a necessary biological adaptation for the survival of the species.
They found that on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, almost a third of the Laysan albatross population is raised by pairs of two females because of the shortage of males. Through these ‘lesbian’ unions, Laysan albatross are flourishing. Their existence had been dwindling before the adaptation was noticed.
Other species form same-sex bonds for other reasons, they found. Dolphins have been known engage in same-sex interactions to facilitate group bonding while male-male pairings in locusts killed off the weaker males.
A pair of “gay” penguins recently hatched an egg at a German zoo after being given the egg that had been rejected by its biological parents by keepers.
Writing in Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Dr Nathan Bailey, an evolutionary biologist at California University, said previous studies have failed to consider the evolutionary consequences of homosexuality.
He said same homosexual behaviour was often a product of natural selection to further the survival of the species.
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Homosexual behaviour widespread in animals according to new study
Telegraph.co.uk
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The cost of gay marriage – in dollars and cents
Provincetown, Mass. – Maghi Geary might have some peculiar advice for Californians: Gay marriage is good for business. The co-owner of Provincetown Florist has 20 to 30 weddings booked this summer, and the reason for that decent return is evident in the next customer who walks through the door – a lesbian couple from Kansas desperately in need of some carnations for their wedding.
Tuesday, the California Supreme Court made the most recent in a series of legislative and judicial decisions on gay marriage nationwide: It upheld Proposition 8, a measure that bans gay marriage in the state. But here in Massachusetts, gay marriage has been legal since 2003, and in Provincetown, more than 2,000 same-sex couples have tied the knot since then.
In some ways, this farthest fingernail of Cape Cod is emblematic of the economics of gay marriage: a big impact, but only at the margins.
Massachusetts estimates that gay marriage has added money to its coffers – but only about $37 million a year, or less than 1 percent of the annual state budget.
In the private sector, the wedding industry could grow by more than $16 billion if gay marriage were expanded to all 50 states, according to a 2004 study by Forbes magazine.
But Massachusetts’ experience suggests that money would be concentrated in cities with a significant gay population, like Provincetown. See The cost of gay marriage – in dollars and cents Christian Science Monitor
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The Church and Gay Marriage: Are Mormons Misunderstood?
Last November, Jay Pimentel began hearing that people in his neighborhood were receiving letters about him. Pimentel lives in Alameda, Calif., a small, liberal-leaning community hanging off Oakland into the San Francisco Bay. Pimentel, who is a Mormon, had supported Proposition 8, the ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage. And that made him a target. “Dear Neighbor,” the letter began, “Our neighbors, Colleen and Jay Pimentel” — and it gave their address — “contributed $1,500.00 to the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign. NEIGHBORS SHOULD BE AWARE OF THEIR NEIGHBORS’ CHOICES.” The note accused the Pimentels of “obsessing about same-sex marriage.” It listed a variety of local causes that recipients should support — “unlike the Pimentels.”
Pimentel, a lawyer and a lay leader in the small Mormon congregation in Alameda, is markedly even-keeled. Yet the poison-pen note still steams him, even though in May the California Supreme Court validated Prop 8 as constitutional. He is bothered less by the revelation of his monetary contribution, which he stands by, than the fact that the letter’s author didn’t bother to find out that every other Saturday for 15 years, he or someone else from Alameda’s 184-member Mormon ward has delivered a truckload of hot meals to the Midway Shelter for Abused and Homeless Women and Children — one of the organizations the Pimentels allegedly wouldn’t support. “The church does a lot of things in the community we don’t issue press releases about,” he says. “And when people criticize us, we often just take it on the chin. I guess you could say I’m not satisfied with the way we’re seen.”
Across the country, that’s the dilemma facing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With 13 million members worldwide (by its own count), the LDS is the fourth largest church in the country, the richest per capita and one of the fastest-growing abroad. The body has become a mainstream force, counting among its flock political heavyweights like former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid, businesspeople like the Marriotts and entertainers like Glenn Beck and Twilight novelist Stephenie Meyer. The passage of Prop 8 was the church’s latest display of its power: individual Mormons contributed half of the proposition’s $40 million war chest despite constituting only 2% of California’s population. LDS spokesman Michael Otterson says, “This is a moment of emergence.”
See The Church and Gay Marriage: Are Mormons Misunderstood?
TIME
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Gay New Yorkers Head to Greenwich for Weddings
GREENWICH, Conn. — They wanted a New York wedding. “Our lives are here; our friends are here,” said Janis Castaldi, 56, who lives in Westchester County with Lizz Endrich, the woman she married on May 21.
But New York has not approved same-sex marriage. “It got to the point where it doesn’t look 100 percent good right now. When you have Greenwich, Conn., 20 minutes away, I said, ‘Why are we waiting?’ ”
And so another couple from outside Connecticut made what is becoming a familiar pilgrimage to this border town of wealth and privilege, the first municipality over the state line by Interstate 95 or Metro-North.
From Nov. 12, 2008, the day same-sex marriages became legal in Connecticut, through the end of May, 139 same-sex couples applied for a marriage license and wed in Greenwich. All but three of them were been from out of state, most from New York City, according to Barbara Lowden, the town’s assistant registrar of vital statistics.
The town has the most same-sex marriages in Connecticut; statewide figures through February, the most recent available, showed Greenwich as the wedding spot for one in every five gay couples, though it has only 2 percent of the population.
Best known for its old- and new-money families stretching from the Long Island Sound to its fabled back country, Greenwich has been vexed in the past by its proximity to the border. In 2001, the crowds of people buying tickets for the Powerball lottery game, not available in New York, grew so big that town officials suspended sales for a day.
These days, by contrast, local businesses would like Greenwich’s new wave of toe-dippers to stick around a little longer than they have been. Most couples have a brief ceremony in a Town Hall meeting room or outside on the grounds, then leave immediately for receptions back in New York or honeymoons elsewhere.
Thomas C. Delaney, the general manager of the Hyatt Regency Greenwich, said the hotel had advertised on some gay and lesbian Web sites in hopes of attracting more business. The Hyatt averages 70 weddings a year, he said, but this summer only two same-sex weddings are scheduled so far. “We’d like to have a lot more,” he said.
June, the traditional month for wedding bliss, is coinciden
See Gay New Yorkers Head to Greenwich for Weddings
New York Times
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Conservatives Shift In Favor Of Openly Gay Service Members
A new Gallup poll shows that 69 percent of Americans are now in favor of openly gay men and women serving in the military, up from 63 percent five years ago. Support among liberals and Democrats remains high — around 86 percent and 83 percent respectively — but the biggest shift in support occurred among conservatives and Republicans. Fifty-eight percent of people who identify as conservatives say they support gays serving in the military, up from 12 points from 46% in 2004. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans support what is essentially a repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
While a majority of Americans still oppose legalizing gay marriage, the shift in support for gays serving in the military “suggests the political playing field may be softer on this issue, and President Barack Obama will be well-positioned to forge ahead with his campaign promise to end the military ban on openly gay service members with some support from more conservative segments of the population,” Gallup writes.
Repealing the policy is a promise Obama made on the campaign trail and is one that gay rights groups have recently been more vocal in urging him to fulfill. While the administration to date has not taken action on the issue, the Gallup Poll data indicate that the…
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AlterNet
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Poll: Conservatives, churchgoers do about face on DADT
Solid majorities of self-identified conservatives and weekly churchgoers now favor allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the U.S. military, a striking turnaround in just the last four years, according to a new Gallup poll. Overall, 69% of U.S. adults surveyed support a change in the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, an increase of six percentage points since late 2004.
According to Gallup:
The finding that majorities of weekly churchgoers (60%), conservatives (58%), and Republicans (58%) now favor what essentially equates to repealing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy implemented under President Clinton in 1993 is noteworthy for several reasons. First, the data show that these traditionally conservative groups are shifting on this issue, supporting it to a far greater extent than they support legalized gay marriage. Second, it suggests the political playing field may be softer on this issue, and President Barack Obama will be well-positioned to forge ahead with his campaign promise to end the military ban on openly gay service members with some support from more conservative segments of the population. To date, it is estimated that more than 12,500 servicemen and servicewomen have been discharged under the policy, including more than 200 since Obama took office.
See Poll: Conservatives, churchgoers do about face on DADT
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