House subcommittee approves benefits for same-sex partners
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Kalamazoo gay-rights issue will be revisited
KALAMAZOO — The Kalamazoo City Commission is expected to take the first step Monday night in a process that could lead to voters deciding whether Kalamazoo should grant “protected-class” status to gays, lesbians and transgender individuals.
The commission will consider for first reading a new city ordinance that includes revisions from the first anti-discrimination measure that members unanimously approved in December. A subsequent citizen petition drive challenged the measure and resulted in commissioners rescinding it and establishing a subcommittee to attempt to reach a compromise on a new ordinance.
The language coming back to the commission Monday does not change the basic premises, however. It essentially will make it a municipal civil infraction to discriminate against someone in the city in issues of housing, public accommodation and employment because they are gay. Violators could face up to a $500 fine, plus court costs.
The local proposal to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity represents an expansion of existing state and federal laws that prohibit discrimination based on factors such as race, color, religion and sex.
Proponents of the local ordinance — including the Kalamazoo Alliance for Equality, which proposed the original concept — say they’ll support the new measure.
See City gay-rights issue will be revisited
Kalamazoo Gazette – MLive.com
* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Gay marriage advocates to reach out to churches Ventura County Star
Ventura County advocates for gay marriage plan to visit churches and synagogues as part of their effort to put the issue back on the California ballot in 2010.
“We don’t want to get into screaming and yelling matches, we just want to tell our stories,” said Lisa Hughes, a member of Equality Ventura County’s faith outreach subcommittee.
Equality Ventura County met Thursday night at the Ventura County Rainbow Alliance offices in Ventura to discuss its next step, now that the California Supreme Court has upheld the voter-approved Proposition 8 prohibiting gay marriage.
EVC is a task force that was organized to defeat Proposition 8. Its mission now is to return the issue of gay marriage to the voters.
Hughes, 49, has a 16-year-old daughter who is gay. She believes her story will touch others in various houses of worship.
Hughes said they are not going to “preach to the choir” by speaking to church groups who already support gay marriage. They also will not be targeting fundamentalist churches.
The subcommittee’s plan is to visit area mainstream churches and host panel discussions on what it’s like to be gay, or to be the relative or parent of a gay individual.
See Gay marriage advocates to reach out to churches Ventura County Star * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Look Who’s in Bed Together on Gay Marriage Fight
L ying on his cot in the Longworth House Office Building in the small of the night, Jason Chaffetz had a scary dream: The conservative Republican from Utah had beaten the odds, defeated an incumbent and made it to Washington, only to end up by some bizarre twist of events arm-in-arm with Marion Barry, the crack-smoking laughingstock former mayor of the District of Columbia.
“Oh man, if I had run a campaign saying I’d be working closely with Marion Barry, I don’t know that I would have been elected,” Chaffetz says.
The nightmare turns out to be reality: Chaffetz, once the placekicker on the Brigham Young University football team, is now the ranking Republican on the House subcommittee in charge of D.C. affairs, and in that role he is leading the rush against the District’s decision to recognize same-sex marriages. The freshman congressman is utterly confident that his is the moral position on the issue, but he admits to a certain frisson of doubt when he learned that his accidental ally in this fight is the former Mayor for Life, an erstwhile champion of gay rights who has decided that same-sex nuptials are immoral.
Chaffetz has never met Barry, but he’s willing to have lunch with the man — if Barry is willing to meet at Five Guys Burgers and Fries, the only Washington restaurant the congressman frequents. (This may prove to be a stumbling block, as Barry leans more toward fruit juices and health foods these days.)
If the two do break bread, they’ll discover that they share a view that gay couples ought to have the same legal rights as any other Americans, but should not be permitted to marry. They’ll take comfort in the fact that their views are both based on the biblical definition of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. They’re both happy to point to the fact that President Obama is also opposed to gay marriage.
But the lunch is destined not to be a lovefest. It’s not just that Chaffetz and Barry come from wildly disparate backgrounds or represent very different Americas, although it is true that Chaffetz’s district is 88 percent white and only 25 percent of his constituents have a college degree, whereas Washington is 56 percent black and 45 percent of its residents have a bachelor’s or beyond.
See Look Who’s in Bed Together on Gay Marriage Fight
Washington Post* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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UTAH GOP Rep wants to kill gay marriaeg in DC
Update: Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) rejected Chaffetz’s blustering. “For this to be overturned, it’d have to pass both houses and be signed by the president, and that’s highly unlikely,” he said.
Yesterday, the DC Council overwhelmingly approved a bill recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states, by a vote of 12 to 1. It is the latest victory for LGBT rights, coming just days after the state legislatures in New Hampshire and Maine approved gay marriage, after Vermont became the fourth state to make gay marriage legal last month.
Marriage equality in the nation’s capitol, however, is too much for freshman Rep. John Chaffetz (R-UT, above), who is refusing to let the issue “go softly into the night“:
“Some things are worth fighting for, and this is one of them,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah), the ranking Republican on a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee that oversees the District. “It’s not something I can let go softly into the night. … I recognize the Democrats are in the majority, but I represent the majority of Americans on this issue.”
The City Desk noted Chaffetz’s Twitter explanation for why he would use Congress to intervene: “Why am I involved? Congress is set up to oversee the affairs of D.C. I am one of the Members of the relevant committee.”
Chaffetz’s disrespect for the District’s citizens by no means a new development. Opposing a bill to give DC residents a voting member in the House, Chaffetz insisted “the best” proposal was simply to give the city to Maryland:
The best alternative is retrocession of residential areas of D.C. back to Maryland, as was done with Arlington, Va. Under this option, D.C. residents would receive not only a vote in the House and two in the Senate, but a state legislature, a governor and many other benefits.
In March, Chaffetz railed, “Keep government limited, keep it out of our way, and empower the American people.” Apparently, he meant to add, “so long as they’re not gay.”
- See Chaffetz leads fight against DC gay marriage law
Deseret News - - Chaffetz: Federal Funding Means Congress Can Nix DC Gay Marriage Bill Washington City Paper
- Chaffetz: Gay Marriage Rights In DC Are ‘Not Something I Can Let … Think Progress
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Tenn. bill delayed that would gag gay students, teachers
(Nashville, Tennessee) Tennessee lawmakers have put off voting on a bill that would bar elementary schools from “any instruction or materials discussing sexual orientation other than heterosexuality.”
The House of Representatives K-12 Subcommittee took up the bill this week, deciding Wednesday to send the measure for more study.
A similar bill died …
Subcommittee on gay-rights ordinance to meet Friday
KALAMAZOO — A subcommittee formed to study a possible compromise in the city of Kalamazoo’s recently rescinded gay-rights ordinance will conduct its first meeting Friday.
Commissioners David Anderson, Don Cooney and Stephanie Moore will review means for getting public input regarding the ordinance that was meant to protect gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people from discrimination in city housing, public accommodations and employment.
The city repealed the ordinance last month, but Kalamazoo Mayor Bobby Hopewell said he still hoped to find a compromise.
See Subcommittee on gay-rights ordinance to meet Friday
Kalamazoo Gazette – MLive.com, MI -
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/02/subcommittee-…
