Wash. gay partnership foes try to shield signers

State officials won’t resist a temporary restraining order that would block public release of petition signatures for a gay-partnership referendum.

The case centers on Referendum 71, which would ask voters to approve or reject expanded partnership rights for gay couples.

The names of everyone who signed R-71 petitions are publicly available under open-government laws.

A gay-rights group is planning to post all the names online, so partnership supporters can talk to those people about the referendum.

But the R-71 campaign says that could lead to harassment. So they’re asking a federal judge to keep the petitions secret, until they can make their argument in court.

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Gay partnership foes turn in referendum signatures

Opponents of a measure that passed the Legislature this year giving same-sex domestic partners all the rights of married people turned in signatures to the secretary of state’s office Saturday in attempt to overturn the new law through a citizen referendum.

Referendum 71 needs 120,577 valid voter signatures to qualify for the fall ballot. Exactly how many signatures the R-71 camp turned in Saturday wasn’t immediately clear. The secretary of state’s office said it received the first batch a little after 3 p.m. Saturday.

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.

He said Saturday that R-71 backers were cutting it very close.

“They’re definitely running on fumes, in terms of trying to get their pad,” Ammons said.

The process of counting and verifying the signatures could go until the last week of August.
If R-71 proponents don’t have enough signatures, the domestic partnership expansion will immediately take effect. If the measure does qualify, voters will be asked to either approve or reject the new law.

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Wash. gay partnership foes say “too close to call”

OLYMPIA, Wash. —

Washington state’s latest expansion of domestic partnerships for gay couples was hanging in limbo Friday as opponents announced a final push to force a public vote, calling their effort so far “too close to call.”

In a statement to supporters, organizers of the Referendum 71 campaign said they believe they will have at least the minimum 120,577 petition signatures needed by Saturday to qualify for the ballot.

However, R-71 organizer Gary Randall said the campaign doesn’t have enough extra signatures to act as a cushion for erroneous or duplicate petition signatures, which must come from registered Washington voters.

To help meet the deadline, Randall appealed to R-71 supporters to gather additional signatures and drive them to the state Capitol on Saturday afternoon.

“We’re not trying to have a rally or anything,” Randall said later by telephone. “We need the signatures, we truly do.”

The new “everything but marriage” expansion of domestic partnerships is scheduled to take effect Sunday, but the law will be delayed if referendum sponsors turn in their petitions.

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BLACK GOLD: A New Film by Nick Francis and Marc Francis

THE SYNOPSIS

As westerners revel in designer lattes and cappuccinos, impoverished Ethiopian coffee growers suffer the bitter taste of injustice. In this eye-opening expose of the multi-billion dollar coffee industry, Black Gold traces one man’s fight for a fair price.

THE STORY

Multinational coffee companies now rule our shopping malls and supermarkets and dominate the industry worth over $80 billion, making coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil.

But while we continue to pay for our lattes and cappuccinos, the price paid to coffee farmers remains so low that many have been forced to abandon their coffee fields.

Nowhere is this paradox more evident than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Tadesse Meskela is one man on a mission to save his 74,000 struggling coffee farmers from bankruptcy. As his farmers strive to harvest some of the highest quality coffee beans on the international market, Tadesse travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price.

Against the backdrop of Tadesse’s journey to London and Seattle, the enormous power of the multinational players that dominate the world’s coffee trade becomes apparent. New York commodity traders, the international coffee exchanges, and the double dealings of trade ministers at the World Trade Organisation reveal the many challenges Tadesse faces in his quest for a long term solution for his farmers.

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Seattle Judge: Gay city workers names don’t have to be released, for now

A King County judge has temporarily barred the release of the names of Seattle city employees involved in a city-sponsored group for gay and lesbian workers to an anti-gay rights activist.

Superior Court Judge John Erlick ordered that some requested documents be released Monday, with the names of meeting attendees redacted. The identities of city employees who received a “public benefit” through the group — likely wages on other compensation — may be released following a hearing later this year.

At issue Thursday was a request made by Seattle City Light employee and self-described “civil rights leader” Philip Irvin, who had filed a public-disclosure request for the membership list and meeting minutes for the department’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Questioning and Friends Club. Irvin, who says he wants to start a similar group for formerly gay employees, asserts that the club has discriminated against him for his opposition to gay rights.

In issuing his order, Erlick acknowledged that releasing the employees’ identities could discourage others from joining the LGBTQF group. But, he said there remains a clear public interest in knowing who is receiving state benefits, and payment for meeting attendance or other compensation to group members, Erlick said, “is a public benfit.”

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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.

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Gay rights mean different things to different generations of community

Before there were domestic-partnership registries and commitment ceremonies, before same-sex marriages and civil unions — before the gay-rights movement, even — John McCluskey and Rudy Henry met, fell in love and harbored the notion that they could spend their lives making one another happy.

And for 50 years, the Tacoma men went about doing just that, all the while longing for social acceptance.

Even in gay-friendly San Francisco where they first lived together, they found it necessary to hide their relationship from prospective landlords, and on job applications they would sometimes lie about their marital status to avoid raising suspicion.

Decades later in 2006, at a coffee-shop concert on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, Amy Balliett and Jessica Trejo met and they, too, eventually fell in love.

In their 20s, the two had come out as lesbians at a time when young people could find support in groups on high school and college campuses, when they had gay role models in politics and on television, and when their parents probably knew people who were openly gay. By the time the two married in California last October, legal bonds between gays and lesbians were possible in several states.

Balliett and Trejo, Henry and McCluskey are like generational bookends to this modern gay-rights movement, launched 40 years ago this week after a group of activists at a small Manhattan bar called the Stonewall Inn stood up in violent protest to ongoing police harassment.

While older gays and younger ones share much the same agenda of equality, their needs within the movement are also divergent.

Young people, who have at times referred to their own post-gay movement, seek the protections of marriage equality as they form relationships and start families, while gays of their grandparents’ generation are more concerned about issues of aging — like survivor benefits and long-term care.

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Nunn: Probably time to review gays in military policy

Sam Nunn, a former Democratic senator from Georgia, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that it’s “probably time” to review the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy concerning gay people in the military.

Nunn, a conservative Democract who was one of his party’s experts in military matters, was a key advisor to President Barack Obama during the transition.

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Nunn: Probably time to review gays in military policy

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Citing law, city reluctantly argues for release of gay employees’ names

Anti-gay-rights activist wants names of city-sponsored LGBT club

As attorneys for all sides prepare to square off in court, the City of Seattle and a self-described “civil rights leader” seeking the release of the names of gay and lesbian city workers involved in a city-sponsored club have lined up on the same side of the issue.

In separate court filings, the city and the Seattle City Light employee requesting the records argue that the state public-records act requires that the city release the records. City of Seattle employees associated with the department’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Questioning and Friends Club have asked the court to order the city not to release their names.

Reiterating statements made by Seattle City Attorney Tom Carr shortly after the suit was filed, lawyers for the city now assert, reluctantly, that the records requested by City Light employee Philip Irvin.

“The city sympathizes with the concerns that plaintiffs have expressed,” Assistant City Attorney Gary T. Smith said in court documents. “Nonetheless, the city believes that the Public Records Act obligates it to disclose the records at issue.”

Irvin, who claims he’s been barred from attending LGBTQF club meetings because he is heterosexual and opposed to gay rights, has requested that the city release the names of employees belonging to or attending the Seattle Public Utilities-sponsored group.

According to the city’s filing, the department sponsors eight such “affinity” groups for employees “with similar concerns.” Included in the array are groups for employees of different ages or ancestry, including European. Each group is provided with up to $1,000 annually for events, and members are allowed to spend two work hours a month toward group activities.

In arguing that the records should be released, attorneys for the city assert that earlier appeals-court rulings have shown that employee information must be released even if it could result in harassment. The city cites a 2002 case in which King County was ordered by the state Court of Appeals to release a list of sheriff’s deputies’ names.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs assert that the employees’ identities are not releasable under the law, in part because they are of no legitimate public interest.

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Identities of gay city employees to remain private for now

SEATTLE – Should the names of members of a city gay and lesbian group be released to the public?

A King County Judge has blocked the release of names of Seattle City Gay and Lesbian employees for at least a week.

Judge John Erlick continued a Temporary Restraining Order to block the names from release, until further hearings are held on a Public Disclosure request for the information.

Longtime City Light employee Philip Irvin, a self-described Christian and activist, has requested the list of names.

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