GLAA Forum

GLAA's "Out History" Contest Entry

 Hello.

The Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, DC would like your help as we put together our Out History "Since Stonewall: Local Histories Contest" entry. Our entry will be a presentation of almost 40 years of gay activism inside our nation's capital (and the draft of which can be viewed here). 

We are currently soliciting your personal stories to be included in our contest entry. Please check out our special Out History section on GLAA Forum by clicking here.

DEADLINE TO SUBMIT YOUR STORY: 

4pm on Saturday, March 20, 2010

Thank you.

NOM Robo-Calling About Marriage Equality in DC

The National Organization for Marriage is sponsoring robo-calling of DC residents asking if they think marriage should be between only one man and one woman.   Since marriage equality is now a fact in the city the reasons for this survey might not be apparent.  There have been many polls on the issue already which show a majority of DC voters approve of same-sex marriage.  And while opponents have had success at the polls in state-wide elections they typically do not carry the urban areas.  And now that same sex marriage is legal, the fear mongering that the opponents resort to will not have the same effect.  Gay people tend to have the same issues about marriage that heterosexuals have.  So what could be the reasoning for such a survey?

The best guess would be fund-raising.  While it might be expensive to send a fund raising letter to every voter in DC, it will be much more cost-effect to target people who have indicated they are opposed to equal treatment of gay people.  When the banks of telephone solicitors start gearing up it will be most beneficial to place calls to the homes where people support your position.  Opponents of same sex marriage have been very ineffective at stirring up city voters to support their position (Harry Jackson announced his last protest, to be held at the Capitol Visitors Center, but the event never came off.  He probably thought he would look silly there alone.)  B that doesn't mean they have given up on making a buck off of it.

It should also be noted that Stand4MarriageDC failed to report it's contributions and expenditures on March 10th.  They had a considerable surplus of funds on hand according the the January 31st filing.

Sex abuse scandal reaches the Pope (again)

AP reports:

Germany's sex abuse scandal has now reached Pope Benedict XVI: His former archdiocese disclosed that while he was archbishop a suspected pedophile priest was transferred to a job where he later abused children.

The pontiff is also under increasing fire for a 2001 Vatican document he later penned instructing bishops to keep such cases secret.

The revelations have put the spotlight on Benedict's handling of abuse claims both when he was archbishop of Munich from 1977-1982 and then the prefect of the Vatican office that deals with such crimes - a position he held until his 2005 election as pope.

And they may lead to further questions about what the pontiff knew about the scope of abuse in his native Germany, when he knew it and what he did about it during his tenure in Munich and quarter-century term at the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Actually, the sex abuse scandal reached the former Cardinal Ratzinger years ago. As I wrote in 2002:

To see that the Church is more interested in preserving its authority than in ending abuse, one need only contrast the case of the liberal Weakland with that of eight former members of the Legion of Christ, 10 a conservative international congregation that strongly defends papal authority. They have struggled for a quarter century to get Rome to take seriously their accusations that the Legion's founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, had sexually abused them as seminarians. Unluckily for them, Maciel is a close ally of the Pope's doctrinal enforcer, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Even after the charges were made against Maciel, the Pope honored him and made him his special representative to a Latin American synod. When ABC News' Brian Ross asked Ratzinger about Maciel recently, Ratzinger literally slapped Ross' hand. He is not used to being questioned.

(Hat tip: Michael Crawford)

Former Musgrave staffer attends gay-rights luncheon

Colorado State Representative B.J. Nikkel

The Denver Post reports:

Want proof that the times they are a changin’? A lawmaker who once worked for former Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave attended a gay-rights luncheon today.

Rep. B.J. Nikkel, of Loveland, was among the nine or so Republican lawmakers at the One Colorado event. She was Musgrave’s district director from 2003 to 2006....

One Colorado Education Fund is a statewide nonprofit that says it is continuing the discussion about issues affecting the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. The luncheon was held near the Capitol.

“Why shouldn’t I be here?” Nikkel said, after greeting several gays who came up to talk to her. “They’re all Coloradans, and I think it’s important to understand their issues.”

Musgrave, who lost the 2008 election to Democrat Betsy Markey, was perhaps best known as a co-sponsor of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

(Hat tip: Towleroad)

Tutu: "Exclusion is never the way forward"

The great-spirited Archbishop Desmond Tutu writes about the worsening situation for gay people across Africa:

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans-gendered people are part of so many families. They are part of the human family. They are part of God's family. And of course they are part of the African family. But a wave of hate is spreading across my beloved continent. People are again being denied their fundamental rights and freedoms. Men have been falsely charged and imprisoned in Senegal, and health services for these men and their community have suffered. In Malawi, men have been jailed and humiliated for expressing their partnerships with other men. Just this month, mobs in Mtwapa Township, Kenya, attacked men they suspected of being gay. Kenyan religious leaders, I am ashamed to say, threatened an HIV clinic there for providing counseling services to all members of that community, because the clerics wanted gay men excluded.

Uganda's parliament is debating legislation that would make homosexuality punishable by life imprisonment, and more discriminatory legislation has been debated in Rwanda and Burundi.

These are terrible backward steps for human rights in Africa.

Our lesbian and gay brothers and sisters across Africa are living in fear.

And they are living in hiding -- away from care, away from the protection the state should offer to every citizen and away from health care in the AIDS era, when all of us, especially Africans, need access to essential HIV services. That this pandering to intolerance is being done by politicians looking for scapegoats for their failures is not surprising. But it is a great wrong. An even larger offense is that it is being done in the name of God. Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God.

There are not enough people like Desmond Tutu in the world. Sadly, if unsurprisingly, not everyone agrees.

Dept. of Degraded Public Discourse

Just now I stumbled upon this blog entry:

Neither Rain, Sleet, Snow or Wife With a Broken Neck Will Keep Harry Reid From His Appointed Rounds of Screwing America.

The blogger, one Doug Powers, does pause to say he's glad that the injuries to Reid's wife and daughter from yesterday's car accident are not life threatening. How nice, after stooping to using it to throw a political dart.

Petrelis rips cut-and-paste job on State Dept. country reports

The State Department yesterday released its 2009 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. Michael Petrelis, who along with Barrett Brick and Margaret Cantrell had persuaded State in 1991 to include anti-gay incidents in its annual reports, quickly checked the report for Jamaica. He comments:

Let's talk cut-and-paste human rights accountability from the State Department under President Obama, and the annual country reports. While this year's survey of gay and HIV/AIDS related citations and abuses is probably the largest ever, it's maddening to see that the report for Jamaica and its serious violations against gay people, is not nearly as reflective of what happened in 2009 as it ought to be.

As this blog has well documented, as have so many other gay blogs and news outlets, 2009 was another year of hostilities and violence for gay Jamaicans, and the only significant difference in the latest Jamaica report over last year's is that it mentions the murder of a white non-Jamaican, the British honorary consul John Terry.

I certainly don't intend to belittle that citation, but there was plenty of new violence and troubles for native, black Jamaicans, and the annual human rights report from the U.S. State Department has done a piss-poor job of accurately informing Congress and the American public about the continuing anti-gay violations.

Questions must be raised as to why Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton think it is acceptable to cut-and-paste Jamaica's annual gay human rights record, with marginally changes. We've got to advocate for reality of the previous year to be truly reflected in the annual surveys.

I comb through the reports myself every year, and have noticed some of the same thing being done before. The more detailed and up-to-date the annual country reports are, the more valuable they will be. It is time to push for an upgrade.

BE COUNTED

 April 1st is the Census 2010 deadline.

As many of you learned from a letter you received this week, Census forms will be mailed to you, and everyone else in the United States, next week.

This year, GLBT Couples will have the opportunity to fill out their form in a certain way to ensure proper documentation.

GLAA member Ron Swanda prepared these basic instructions for us:

The only way for the GLBT community to be visible is for same-sex couples, living together, to complete their Census forms as follows:

If you are a committed couple, you are considered “married” in this Census (no matter the state or district, "married" is the only choice)

Person 1: check “male” or “female”

Person 2: same gender as person 1

Person 2: Select the box "husband or wife"

Do not indicate that your partner is your “roommate”

The race of the household member who fills-out the Census form (Person 1) determines the racial characterization of the family

Here is an example of the two key boxes that need to be checked for Person 2. In this example, Person 1 is a male. Person 2, Person 1's partner, should mark the two boxes shown with a red "X" below.

For now, this is the only way – in the Census form – to distinguish same-sex couples from “roommates.” Unfortunately, there is no way for single GLBT people to be represented explicitly on the form, maybe in ten years… Ironclad privacy is assured. For more information, please visit http://www.queerthecensus.org (A project of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force). And here is a link to the 2010 Census form (.pdf): http://www.Census.gov/schools/pdf/2010form_info.pdf

And finally, mark your calendars for "ROCK SKATE ROLL BOUNCE: Make Our Census 2010 Count," sponsored by the International Federation of Black Prides, the DC Sentinels, the DC Coalition, and the Community Education Group.

This event will take place at the Temple Hills Skate Palace (3132 Branch Avenue, Temple Hills, Maryland) on Wednesday, March 31st from 7 to 11pm. Free Admission to LGBT Census 2010 participants (skate rental is $3.00). There will be Census presentations held throughout the entire evening. This night also marks the return of GLBT night at the Skate Palace, which had been closed for a two-year renovation. The Community Education Group will also be conducting free HIV testing at the event.

Photo of gay kiss earns defenders, subscribers

WaPo ombudsman Andy Alexander follows up on the controversy over last Thursday's photo of two men kissing:

Tuesday's Omblog noted that The Post had taken heat from readers upset by the March 4 photo taken outside D.C. Court as the District began accepting license applications for same-sex marriages. In calls and e-mails, many readers said the image had offended their sensibilities. More than two dozen canceled their subscriptions.

But the Omblog item prompted a backlash. It was picked up by bloggers, wire services and broadcast outlets, prompting hundreds of e-mails, calls and online comments praising The Post. Those I’ve received are running more than 10-to-1 in support of the decision to run the photo. They’re coming from around the globe.

“It happened, it’s fact, and the photo was in no way offensive,” e-mailed Dylan Lacey of Brisbane, Australia. “I regret that you lost subscribers and that the Post will be financially worse off in some way, but hopefully your news subscribers will more than make up for it.”

Nearly 20 people who e-mailed or offered online comments said they wanted to fill the void left by those who canceled.

McDonnell issues toothless directive on discrimination

WaPo reports:

Hoping to quell a growing uproar on Virginia's college campuses over gay rights, Gov. Robert F. McDonnell issued a directive to all 102,000 state employees Wednesday that prohibits discrimination in the state workforce, including on the basis of sexual orientation, and warns he will reprimand or fire anyone who engages in it.

McDonnell's directive comes a week after Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) distributed a letter to the state's public colleges and universities asking them to remove references to sexual orientation from their campus nondiscrimination policies. Cuccinelli says that only the General Assembly has the authority to extend legal protections to gays.

McDonnell (R) has said he supports the legal reasoning of that opinion, which mirrored his advice on the issue as attorney general. The governor said Wednesday that he continues to believe that without legislative approval, universities and state agencies cannot issue orders that would allow employees or others to sue in state court over discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

HRC Back Story writes:

This is a big step in the right direction – Gov. McDonnell’s directive seems to counter the Attorney General’s actions, it acknowledges that employment discrimination is a challenge faced by LGBT Virginians, and it tries to articulate his intention for no one to be discriminated against.

But the directive doesn’t go nearly far enough. As worded, it doesn’t give Virginia’s LGBT state employees any more protections than the U.S. Constitution already provides. But as hundreds of cities and counties, 21 states and hundreds of private companies across the United States have already determined, it is absolutely necessary to have laws and policies that clearly and explicitly protect LGBT people by prohibiting employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression, and by providing clear mechanisms to report such discrimination.