Argentina became the first Latin American country to legalize gay marriage and adoption.

Empire State Pride Agenda to hire new leader

Empire State Pride Agenda, New York’s leading gay rights group, will select Brian Ellner to be its next leader, according to the New York Times’ City Blog. [1]

Ellner is the senior counselor for community affairs for Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

Says The Times:

“The selection is part of a broader move within the organization to restructure after a bill to legalize same-sex marriage failed decisively in the State Senate late last year.

“Mr. Ellner would assume leadership of the organization at a time when it is trying to regroup after suffering the most significant setback of its 20-year history. A Harvard and Dartmouth graduate who ran unsuccessfully for Manhattan borough president [2] in 2005, Mr. Ellner would help coordinate the next effort to pass legislation to legalize same-sex marriage in Albany.”

[1] http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/gay-rights-group-to-choose-a-new-leader/
[2] http://www.brianellner.com/

Killings of gays increase in Mexico, report says

(Mexico City) Killings of gays and lesbians have risen in Mexico despite a government tolerance campaign and a law legalizing same-sex marriage in the capital, according to a report released Thursday by a coalition of civic groups.

A review of more than 70 newspapers in 11 Mexican states found an average of nearly 30 killings a year motivated by homophobia between 1995 and 2000, compared to nearly 60 a year between 2001 and 2009, the report said.

Ricardo Bucio, president of the government’s National Council for the Prevention of Discrimination, backed the report, saying it gave visibility to a lingering problem.

The government launched a radio campaign in 2005 to promote tolerance of homosexuals.

In December, the Mexico City legislature approved the first law in Latin America explicitly giving gay marriages the same status as heterosexual ones. The legislation, affecting only the capital, also allows same-sex couples to adopt children.

Mexico City’s annual gay pride parade draws tens of thousands of people, and in some neighborhoods gays openly hold hands.

But violence against gays seems to have increased as more become public about their sexual orientation, said Alejandro Brito, director of Letter S, one of the groups that released the report.

Mexico City had the most homophobia-motivated killings, with 144 between 1995 and 2009, according to the report.

Despite the federal government’s push to promote tolerance, President Felipe Calderon’s conservative administration campaigned against the Mexico City law allowing same-sex marriage.

Pope calls abortion, gay marriage insidious threat

(Fatima, Portugal) Pope Benedict XVI has called abortion and same-sex marriage two of the most “insidious and dangerous” threats facing the world today.

Benedict made the comments Thursday to Catholic educators, social workers and others after celebrating Mass before an estimated 400,000 people in Fatima, one of the most important shrines in Christianity. He was interrupted by applause several times.

Benedict’s visit to Fatima was the spiritual centerpiece of his four-day visit to Portugal. It was cast by Vatican officials as evidence that Benedict had turned a page in weathering the clerical sex abuse scandal that has dogged him for months.

The pope returns to the Vatican on Friday after celebrating Mass in Porto, the country’s second-largest city.

Rep. Deb Mell: ‘You can’t legislate who you love’

Rep. Deb Mell, a state legislator in Illinois (and, full disclosure, a friend of my partner) said Tuesday on a local Chicago TV news show that she would be announcing her engagement to her partner Christin Baker on the floor of the Illinois House of Representatives.

Mell and Baker were engaged April 10; but at the moment, they would not be able to marry in Illinois.

[1]

“I want to spend the rest of my life with her, and I want to get married in Illinois,” Mell said on Chicago Tonight on Tuesday evening. “I mean, we could go to Iowa and Iowa’s great… I went to school in Iowa. But you know what? It’s not the state where I represent, and it’s not the state where I grew up in.”

She plans to tell her fellow legislators, “That you can’t legislate who you love and can’t punish people for it,” she said. “That we are a regular couple, pay taxes, own a home, have a great belief in God.”

Wrote Carol Marin, a local legend among Chicago journalists, in the Chicago Sun-Times [2]:

“What will make this moment historic in the annals of Illinois politics is that Mell’s fiancee, Christin Baker, is a woman.

“Unlike only five states, Illinois has never come close to approving civil unions, much less same-sex marriage.

“Bills to change that are buried in committee with no prayer of being passed this session. They wouldn’t even if this weren’t an election year.”

Marin noted that Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn his Republican rival Sen. Bill Brady are both opposed to same-sex marriage (as is former Illinois legislator Barack Obama).

Mell said that she hopes to start a conversation in Illinois about gay marriage – but most likely, she and Baker will be marrying in Iowa in 2011.

[1] http://www.365gay.com/wp-content/uploads/news-deb-mell-christin-baker-top.jpg
[2] http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/2207618,carol-marin-mell-same-sex-marriage-042810.article

Neff: In Texas, only gay marriage is til death do they part

Spouses can’t always take that bit about “till death do us part” literally.

And judges and lawyers don’t always take that bit about “till death do us part” literally either. Some dedicate their workdays dissolving such vows.

Yet in some states that don’t recognize same-sex marriages, same-sex marriages could last till death do they part.

Oh, these funny times.

A Dallas man, identified only as J.B. in court papers and the press, is trying to divorce a man he married four years ago in Massachusetts and separated from — amicably enough — two years ago.

J.B. was winning his case for divorce before District Judge Tena Callahan, when the Texas Attorney General tried to intervene and stop the process. It seems that because the state of Texas does not recognize same-sex marriages, the court shouldn’t divorce the two men, according to the AG.

Callahan ruled against the AG, which appealed her decision.

“My client is a married man and he needs a divorce. But for the actions of the attorney general, there would already be one less same-sex marriage in Texas,” attorney Jody Scheske told a three-judge appeals court panel in a hearing last week.

Oh, these funny times.

“The parties lack standing to file a divorce because they are not married. If you are not party to a marriage, you cannot file for a divorce,” an assistant Texas solicitor general argued last week before the federal appeals court.

The assistant Texas solicitor general said, the court should “void” the union not divorce the men.

An annulment, then, is Texas’ preferred alternative to a gay couple’s divorce.

Oh, these funny times.

The stakes in this Texas case are considerable, because in finding that she has standing to hear the gay man’s request for a divorce, Callahan also found that Texas’ 2005 constitutional amendment that defines marriage exclusively as a union between a man and a woman violates the right to equal protection and therefore violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Had the Texas Attorney General not tried to intervene and block the court from hearing the divorce case, the district court judge might not have deemed the anti-gay amendment unconstitutional. We don’t know really. Callahan might have taken up the constitutional issue, or she simply might have granted the divorce.

Attorneys for J.B. say they didn’t want a constitutional fight or a federal case — just a divorce for their client.

“My client’s very private matter has become a public spectacle,” Scheske told the court last week.

Oh, these funny times.

J.B., seeking to end his marriage, is at the forefront of a legal dispute that could tear down a ban against gay marriage in Texas.

And opponents of gay marriage are worried, which is why the Plano-based right-wing Liberty Institute argued alongside the attorney general against what it called “judicial activism at it’s worst.”

Opposing J.B.’s divorce, Liberty Institute attorney Hiram Sasser said a gay divorce is an attack on same-sex marriage.

Oh, these funny times.

And Sasser, who said he represented the two authors of the anti-gay amendment that 76 percent of Texas voters supported in 2005, cited Bill Clinton in his defense of the Texas ban and his opposition to the gay couple’s divorce.

Clinton signed the federal Defense of Marriage Act that allowed states to refuse to honor another state’s same-sex marriage and defined marriage at the federal level as the union of one man and one woman.

“I think President Clinton said it best when he said we have to honor the decisions of the states,” Sasser said.

The former president, however, has said that his position on same-sex marriage is evolved and he “didn’t like signing DOMA.”

Oh, these funny times.

Culhane: Why do gays and lesbians care about marriage?

How did marriage, of all things, become the cause célèbre of the LGBT rights movement? Let’s face it: There are good historical reasons for us to eschew and pooh-pooh this institution, which doesn’t exactly have a glorious track record.

“Since When is Marriage a Path to Liberation?” was the provocative question that lesbian activist Paula Ettelbrick raised in an influential article more than 20 years ago. Her article slammed what was then the emerging focus on same-sex marriage as a misguided effort that would secure gay and lesbian “equality” within the stifling confines of an inherently unequal and patriarchal institution.

Yet there we were, Ettelbrick and I, together in 2007 on a panel discussing LGBT legal issues, and she was arguing for marriage equality. What happened?

I had the chance to ask her about this dramatic about-face during a cab ride to the train station after the event. Had she been possessed by the spirit of Andrew Sullivan? Well, kind of. All of the same-sex couples making their clear and passionate case to have the state recognize their unions had convinced her to value reality over ideology, and (here I’m guessing) perhaps to see that same-sex marriages have the potential to revitalize the institution, and to help transform it into a more egalitarian partnership.

But why is it so important for the state to recognize our unions in the first place? Let’s start by considering the alternatives. The first of these is a religious union. For many lesbian and gay couples, getting married in their church, synagogue, or mosque is deeply meaningful. But it’s not enough. Some (straight and gay) couples don’t derive spiritual nourishment from such ceremonies. And even for those who do, “the power vested in” clergy to legally solemnize marriages can’t solemnize theirs.

So what about a “secular substitute” for marriage, such as the civil union, that confers all the benefits of marriage but not the title?

Do I really need to ask this question?

First, the civil union doesn’t confer all of the benefits of marriage. It’s not recognized at the federal level, so that even if the obnoxious Defense of Marriage Act were repealed, couples in a civil union wouldn’t have any of the federal benefits of marriage, which are the most significant ones.

But it’s not just about the benefits, either. In some paradoxical way, the civil union is worse, because it’s pure discrimination. The state has given up all of the arguments against equality in conferring the civil union status, but still insists on a separate label. In In re Marriage Cases, The California Supreme Court hit the bull’s-eye in rejecting this kind of “virtual equivalence:

“[A]ssigning a different designation for the family relationship of same-sex couples…poses at least a serious risk of denying the family relationship of same-sex couples such equal dignity and respect.”

By this point, some of you are likely muttering: “OK, marriage, fine. But what about discrimination, social justice, and the real economic barriers to equality? Aren’t these the things that should be concerning us instead of this mostly abstract equality debate?”

Well, you probably didn’t mutter exactly that, but the point is fair anyway. Why all this emphasis on marriage?

First, many of us are, at heart, assimilationists who want to fit in with the most traditional structures. Think marriage and – the prom! Those gay and lesbian teens [1]who demanded to attend their proms are radical and traditional at the same time, as are those seeking marriage equality. It’s that scary incursion of the outlandish into “safe” structures that explains, at least in part, the sometimes vicious resistance we find in everyone from Maggie Gallagher to those parents who engineered the fake prom [2] that Constance McMillen was sent to.

The other part of this fight for equality has to do with the government’s role in the discrimination. Remember that many of the most important achievements of both the civil rights and women’s movements were ending government-sponsored discrimination in voting, unfair marriage laws, and segregated public facilities and schools. If government is willing to declare that members of a group are second-class citizens, then private and social discrimination is fair game.

Since laws prohibiting same-sex intimacy have now been declared unconstitutional, the most important state-sponsored formal discriminations we face are DADT and the ban on our marriages. So, while marriage may never be a path to liberation – much less to robust social and economic fairness – it’s a vital part of our rights as citizens. That’s why it matters.

John Culhane is Professor of Law and Director of the Health Law Institute at Widener University School of Law in Wilmington, Delaware. He blogs about the role of law in everyday life, and about a bunch of other things (LGBT rights, public health, sports, pop culture, philosophy and lots of personal stuff) at: http://wordinedgewise.org. Here’s a fuller bio [3]. He will be blogging the week-long Equality Forum [4] from Philadelphia later this month.

[1] http://www.365gay.com/blog/ruby-sachs-prom-politics/
[2] http://advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/04/05/ACLU_Investigating_Fake_Prom/
[3] http://law.widener.edu/Academics/Faculty/ProfilesDe/CulhaneJohnG.aspx
[4] http://equalityforum.com

Poll: California residents support gay marriage

The latest Los Angeles Times/USC [1] poll found more evidence that the majority of Californians support same-sex couples’ right to marry.

The poll found 53 percent of the state’s residents support same-sex marriage, while 40 percent oppose it.

[2]

The results are similar to previous polls. The poll cited divisions along party lines, with Democrats and liberals supporting marriage equality and Republicans and conservatives opposed.

In addition, age appeared to be a factor – most voters younger than 30 voiced support; those older than 64 were opposed to marriage equality.

Does mean this that Proposition 8 would be rejected if voted on now? Not exactly. Older voters are more likely to turn out on Election Day than younger voters, a problem gay rights advocates must contend with.

[1] http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/04/majority-in-california-support-gay-marriage-times-usc-poll-finds.html
[2] http://www.365gay.com/wp-content/uploads/news-tuxedo-boys-top.jpg

Videos urge LGBT participation in Census

Ten new videos released by the U.S. Census Bureau urge the LGBT community to fill out and return Census forms [1].

“What I tell folks in the bureau is that this is a powerful, important part of American society,” Tim Olson, a Census Bureau assistant division chief helping to oversee the campaign, told the Associated Press [2].

[3]

“We have to reach out and engage this part of the population. Anything less than that is a failure.”

Five states and Washington, D.C., have legalized same-sex marriage, but the Census Bureau encourages any same sex couples who consider themselves to be married to check the “husband” or “wife” boxes. And “unmarried partner” box is also available.

Conservatives are angry about the move because they feel it legitimizes and redefines marriage.

Watch all of the videos at Logo Online [4].

[1] http://www.365gay.com/news/get-counted-why-the-census-is-crucial-to-gays/
[2] http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GAYS_CENSUS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
[3] http://www.365gay.com/wp-content/uploads/news-census-pie-top.jpg
[4] http://www.logotv.com/video/misc/499724/ben-de-guzman.jhtml?id=1635376

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