ACLU demands schools allow access to gay Websites In Tennessee
Students and parents are demanding Metro Nashville’s public schools stop blocking access to Web sites about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. They complained to the American Civil Liberties Union, which on Wednesday gave Metro and Knox County schools an April 29 deadline to announce plans to open access to the non-sexual sites. A letter to the districts threatened lawsuits if they don’t comply.
Metro parents previously complained to the school district about the lack of support for gay and lesbian students, the teasing and the fatal results.
Clare Sullivan, a parent of a lesbian daughter who attended Metro schools, cited recent news reports of students who committed suicide after constant harassment for being gay.
“You have students struggling with these issues,” she said. “If you cut off avenues for discussion, and it’s taboo in schools, where else can they go?”
Sullivan is a member of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, one of the groups whose Web site Metro blocks. Others include the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
Metro uses an outside company that filters Internet access, district spokeswoman Noelle Mashburn said. See ACLU demands schools allow access to gay Websites The Tennessean * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Some fear anti-gay words will lead to anti-gay sticks and stones
Sen. Chris Buttars called gay activists “the meanest buggers” and alleged they have no morals. America Forever, in full-page newspaper ads, compared gay men and lesbians to “druggies” and “hookers.”
Just words. No sticks. No stones. But such talk does hurt. It can leave emotional scars and, some observers warn, inspire others to inflict physical ones.
Utah hit a national “hate watch” list twice in recent weeks for headline-grabbing onslaughts of anti-gay rhetoric.
“It’s not the kind of America we want,” said Heidi Beirich, spokeswoman for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. “You can have a difference of opinion over somebody’s lifestyle but to put them in a position of threat — that’s going too far.”
The national civil rights organization monitors hate groups, such as white supremacists, and publishes “Hatewatch,” a newsletter and blog that spotlighted the comments from Buttars, R-West Jordan, and America Forever.
“The kinds of things they’re saying,” Beirich said, “can give credence to others who would like to take their actions further than speech, into the realm of violence.”
The FBI reports that in 2007, the most recent year of available data, Utah had nine hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation bias.
Not that those who oppose gay rights mean to incite violence.
See Some fear anti-gay words will lead to anti-gay sticks and stones
Salt Lake Tribune -
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House bill offers DP benefits for federal workers
Out U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., this month is expected to introduce the Domestic Partner Benefits & Obligations Act, which would offer domestic-partner benefits to the same-sex partners of federal workers. The measure will be co-sponsored in the House by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., and in the Senate by Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, both of whom backed a similar bill in the previous session, said Baldwin spokeswoman Jerilyn Goodman. Washington Blade* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Illinois Mormons against civil unions?
Gay rights advocates fear that Mormons in Nauvoo might try to undermine civil unions up for debate in Springfield today. They point to the church’s overwhelming financial support of California’s Proposition 8, the successful ballot measure that made it illegal for lesbian and gay couples to marry.
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, accused the Latter-day Saints of sending a private e-mail to Illinois members, urging them to contact state legislators and voice opposition to the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act, a bill that would define “civil union” as a legal relationship between two persons, of either the same or opposite sex. It would also entitle both parties of a civil union to the same legal obligations, responsibilities, protections, and benefits afforded to spouses.
The bill has been scheduled for a hearing in the Illinois House of Representatives Youth and Family Committee today. If the bill is voted out of committee, it becomes eligible for a vote before the full Illinois House of Representatives.
But Kim Farah, a spokeswoman for the national church, said the e-mail was not part of a church wide opposition campaign. The church’s engagement with political causes is evaluated on a case-by-case basis. It is unclear if the Illinois legislation would violate church doctrine as interpreted by Latter-day Saints.
“As is widely known, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believes in the sanctity of traditional marriage,” she said in a statement. “The Church has not taken a position on any legislation currently being considered by the Illinois State Legislature … An e-mail was sent from a local Illinois Church leader to his congregation – one of 129 congregations in the state — who was free to express his own views.”
The e-mail in question was sent to at least one Mormon ward in Illinois and authorized by Bishop Chris Church of Nauvoo.
The message warns recipients that the legislation would “empower the public schools to begin teaching this lifestyle to our young children regardless of parental requests otherwise.”
MORE @ The Seeker – Chicago Tribune Blog
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Gay Montclair University Student Protests Ban on Donating Blood
A 20-year-old sophomore at Montclair State University, Weinstein signed up to donate blood last November at a Red Cross blood drive on campus because, he said, “I thought it would be a nice thing to do.”
But when Weinstein, who is gay, answered “yes” on a questionnaire asking whether or not he had had sexual relations with another man since 1977, American Red Cross volunteers running the drive told him that he was ineligible to be a donor.
“My initial reaction was absolute shock. I thought, there’s no way,” Weinstein, a Randolph native, said last week.
For the past several months, blood supplies around New Jersey have hit critically low levels. Karen Ferriday, a spokeswoman for Community Blood Services in Oradell, said blood stores, which optimally provide three to five days worth of blood, have fallen to half-day supplies for the past several months.
Still, donors like Weinstein have found themselves turned away from donating because a Food and Drug Administration regulation born at the height of the AIDS scare in 1983 still places a lifetime ban on blood donations by gay and bisexual men.
Women who have had sex with a gay or bisexual partner are out, too.
See
Gay Montclair University Student Protests Ban on Donating Blood
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Gay Episcopal priest to be ordained in Denver, ending ban on gay ordiantions by Episcopal Diocese of Colorado
Ending several years of restraint by the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado in ordaining openly gay and partnered priests, Bishop Robert O’Neill will ordain Mary Catherine Volland, along with three others, to the priesthood at St. John’s Cathedral on Saturday.
Volland, a longtime resident of Colorado and partnered lesbian, was a candidate for ordination in the Diocese of Minnesota, but has been called to serve as an assistant priest at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Denver, said Beckett Stokes, spokeswoman for the 30,000-member Colorado Diocese.
Despite nationwide controversy that has splintered Episcopalians, the church does ordain gay and lesbian priests. The bishop has the option of deploying them to Colorado congregations when it makes sense, Stokes said. Several Colorado congregations are served by gay priests.
O’Neill, who previously had suspended gay ordination out of sensitivity for churc See Gay Episcopal priest to be ordained in Denver Denver Post
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Virus vaccine maker seeks approval for males
(Trenton, New Jersey) Drugmaker Merck & Co. has asked federal regulators to approve use in males for its vaccine against the human papillomavirus, which causes cervical and other sexually transmitted cancers.
The application was submitted in late December, Merck spokeswoman Amy Rose said this week.
It was long planned as part of …
