Via Freedom to Marry

On March 8, Ron Wallen lost his husband and partner of 58 years, Tom Carrollo, to leukemia.

Even as he grieves, Ron also faces the loss of the home he and Tom shared. Unfairly denied the Social Security coverage his husband earned -- payments he would receive were it not for the so-called Defense of Marriage Act's "gay exception" -- Ron cannot afford to keep his home.

The sad truth is that Ron's story of discrimination isn't unique. Doug Gentry, married to a Venezuelan citizen named Alex Benshimol, faces the possibility of being torn apart from his husband because DOMA treats their marriage with contempt. If Doug and Alex weren't gay, Doug could sponsor Alex for American citizenship but, because of DOMA, they are treated as strangers under federal law. "It's gut-wrenching," Doug says.

Couples send us stories like these -- each heartbreaking, each infuriatingly unjust -- and the remedy is clear: We must overturn DOMA now.

http://freedomtomarry.org/OverturnDOMA

Freedom to Marry has worked closely with members of Congress on a bill to repeal this discriminatory law, which denies married same-sex couples federal protections that touch every area of life -- from birth to death, with taxes in between.

We stood with congressional leaders a few weeks ago when they introduced the repeal bill, the Respect for Marriage Act, in the Senate and House. But now we need to grow the support, make the case, build momentum, and add co-sponsors to the bill.

Will you take action now? Ask your senators and representative to co-sponsor the Respect for Marriage Act. Send a letter today:

http://freedomtomarry.org/OverturnDOMA

On behalf of couples like Ron and Tom and Doug and Alex, and because discrimination has no place in America, Freedom to Marry will not stop until we've wiped this discriminatory law from the books. But we can only do it with your help.

Thanks for all you do,

Evan Wolfson
President, Freedom to Marry

Via JMG: Crazy Eyes On Gay Marriage

"In 5,000 years of recorded human history... neither in the east or in the west... has any society ever defined marriage as anything other than between men and women. Not one in 5000 years of recorded human history. That's an astounding fact and it isn't until the last 12 years or so that we have seen for the first time in recorded human history marriage defined as anything other than between men and between women." - Rep. Michele "Crazy Eyes" Bachmann, speaking yesterday before the Iowa hate group, Family Leader.

Bachmann went on to describe her 2003 reaction to Massachusetts legalizing same-sex marriage: "I heard the news on my local Christian radio station in Minneapolis/St. Paul, and I was devastated. And I went across the street and I took a walk and I went to prayer, and I said: 'Lord, what you have me do in the Minnesota State Senate?' And through prayer I knew that I was to introduce the marriage amendment in Minnesota."

Minnesota presently does not have a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, but that may change soon now that the GOP dominates both chambers of the state legislature.

Labels: bigotry, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, crazy people, hate groups, Iowa, Michele Bachmann, Minnesota, religion

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Via JMG: UAFA To Be Reintroduced In House

The Uniting American Families Act will be reintroduced in the U.S. House this Thursday by Rep. Jerrold Nadler and several other Democrats. Via press release from Nadler's office:

On Thursday, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, and Representatives John Conyers (D-MI), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Jared Polis (D-CO), Mike Honda (D-CA), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), Jackie Speier (D-CA), and others will announce the re-introduction of the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA). This overdue legislation would allow gay and lesbian Americans to sponsor their permanent partners for legal residency in the United States, a right currently enjoyed only by married heterosexuals under immigration law. Because the U.S. does not legally recognize gay and lesbian couples and their children as families, many same-sex binational couples are torn apart. The announcement will take place at 1:00pm on Thursday, April 14th at the House Triangle in Washington D.C.

Like the latest edition of ENDA, advocates have dim hopes of the bill's approval in the GOP-dominated House.

Labels: immgration, Jerrold Nadler, LGBT rights, U.S. House

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Via JMG: HomoQuotable - Fred Karger

"While governor of Arkansas, 11 years ago, [Mike] Huckabee commuted the 108-year prison sentence of Maurice Clemmons. Clemmons then went on a crime spree and ended up in Seattle, Washington, where on 19 November 2010, he casually walked into a coffee shop early one morning and shot and killed four police officers while they were eating breakfast. He fired at point blank range, killing all four instantly. Mike Huckabee has the blood of those four police officers on his hands. He has never even apologised to the families of the slain officers, or showed any remorse for what happened in Seattle that day.

"One year ago, Mike Huckabee said terrible things about my community and me. He compared gay marriage to incest, polygamy and drug abuse. He said that gay couples should not be able to adopt: 'These are not puppies, raising children is not an experiment.' Who the hell is he to cast aspersions on others?" - Openly gay GOP presidential candidate Fred Karger, comparing the above-cited murders to Michael Dukasis' 1988 "Willie Horton" incident, which Karger used against Dukakis in his role on the committee to elect George H.W. Bush.

Labels: 2012 elections, Arkansas, Fred Karger, GOP, HomoQuotable, Mike Huckabee

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Via JMG: Out Magazine's 50 Most Powerful Gays

Out Magazine has issued this year's list of the 50 "most powerful" gay people. New Apple "acting" CEO Tim Cook heads the list on his first appearance. Billionaire GOProud moneyman and libertarian whackadoodle Peter Thiel ranks at #7. Another GOProud member and the 21st century Roy Cohn, Ken Mehlman, debuts at #37. Hit the link for bios on everybody.

Labels: Apple, GOProud, Out Magazine

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Via AmericaBlogGay: Demographer attempts to explain new gay polling data

John wrote about the importance of the LGBT community being counted. The demographer, Dr. Gary J. Gates, who came up with the "3.5% of adults are LGB" -- or rather, 3.5% of adults are willing to admit to a stranger that they're LGB -- number has an article in the Washington Post detailing why it is so important to come up with an accurate number and basically admits to several glaring problems and inconsistencies while attempting to justify his data. 

I recently reviewed findings from 11 large surveys conducted since 2004, seven in the United States and four internationally. Averaging across the U.S.-based surveys, I found that nearly 9 million Americans (3.8 percent of adults) self-identify as LGBT. That’s equivalent to the population of New Jersey.

An estimated 19 million Americans (8.2 percent) report having engaged in some same-sex sexual behavior, and nearly 26 million (11 percent) report some same-sex sexual attraction. The latter figure is equivalent to the population of Texas.

But as a population scientist, I don’t want to have to comb research for pertinent data to average. I’ve attended dozens of meetings with representatives from federal statistical agencies to ask them why they are not counting the LGBT population. They tell me that they worry about survey respondents refusing to answer such questions or, even worse, terminating the survey. They also wonder exactly what questions to ask.

Should they count only those who explicitly identify themselves using terms such as “lesbian,” “gay” or “bisexual”? Or should they measure sexual behavior? Or sexual attraction? For the transgender population, should they include only those who have explicitly transitioned from one gender to another, or should they consider a broader group of people who express their gender in ways that do not easily conform to traditional notions of male and female?

Sorry, I'm not buying it.

The most absurd statement has to be this from Dr. Gates:

As a demographer, I look at it a little differently. I’m amazed at how close we are to equality, given how small the community is.

Uh, thanks for nothing, Pollyanna.  Like John wrote:

And it's all well and good to say "gosh, our civil rights shouldn't be based on how many people we are," but sorry Charlie, numbers matter, especially in politics.

NOTE FROM JOHN: It's terribly difficult to get good data on our community, so a part of me is sympathetic to federal agencies that say "how can we measure your community?" Having said that, you can get basic numbers, that are a bare bones bottom line, like the numbers Gates is talking about - they don't reflect how many people we are, but they are a bottom line population figure, meaning at least we know we're MORE than that number. The problem, of course, is that those bare bones numbers will be taken by the media, and our enemies, as "real" numbers that accurately reflect our true population - and they're not.

I'm not sure what the scientists and the agencies should do, but they need to be darn careful proceeding in this area. And quotes like the one Tim cites just above are decidedly not helpful.

Via JMG: Uruguay Poised To Approve Gay Marriage

Uruguay's Parliament appears ready to legalize same-sex marriage.

The bill is being driven by the country’s ruling coalition, the Frente Amplio which has a majority in both houses – giving it an excellent chance of succeeding. The bill’s author, Frente Amplio MP, Sebastián Sabini, told the newspaper, “We do not focus so much on the issue of gay marriage but of equal marriage regardless of sex, gender or religion.” The bill, would amend the country’s Civil Code to refer to spouses instead of husband and wife, meaning transgender and intersex people would also be covered, and would allow non-biological parents in a marriage to be given parental rights and obligations to their partners’ biological children.

LGBT rights in Uruguay are already among the most advanced in South America. Gays can serve openly in the military and in 2008 civil unions were made available to couples that have been together for five years.

Labels: LGBT rights, marriage equality, Uruguay

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Via JMG: George Takei has A Ringtone

Listen here.

Labels: cell phones, George Takei, silliness

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Via JMG: Quote Of The Day - Alan Simpson

"We have homophobes on our party. That’s disgusting to me. We’re all human beings. We’re all God’s children. Now if they’re going to get off on that stuff—Santorum has said some cruel things—cruel, cruel things—about homosexuals. Ask him about it; see if he attributes the cruelness of his remarks years ago. Foul. Now if that’s the kind of guys that are going to be on my ticket, you know, it makes you sort out hard what Reagan said, you know, 'Stick with your folks.' But I’m not sticking with people who are homophobic, anti-women, moral values—while you’re diddling your secretary while you’re giving a speech on moral values? Come on, get off of it." - Former GOP Sen. Alan Simpson, speaking on MSNBC's Hardball. Hit the link for video.

Labels: 2012 elections, FTW, GOP, homophobia, Quote Of The Day, Rick Santorum

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Via AmericaBlogGay: Hero of the Month: Dame Elizabeth Taylor

In 1987, a man with AIDS went for a swim in a public pool in West Virginia. Although the state health department advised that he posed no threat, the mayor of the town closed the pool and alerted the media so that “everybody in the community [would know] there was an AIDS patient in the pool.”

In 1985, Ryan White, a thirteen year old hemophiliac with AIDS was kicked out of school even though authorities had advised that he, too, posed no risk to his fellow students. When the boy was readmitted a year later, his family received death threats and people on the street would taunt him by yelling "we know you're queer."

In 1986 and again in 1988, hundreds of thousands of Californians signed petitions to place initiatives on the ballot that would have mandated the quarantine of AIDS patients.

Such was the homophobic hysteria surrounding AIDS when Elizabeth Taylor began planning her first AIDS fundraiser. Taylor remembered the reactions:

People … slammed doors in my face and hung up on me . . . [P]eople would say, 'No, I'm not getting mixed up in that!' And, 'You have to get out of this, Elizabeth. It's going to ruin your career.'

These reactions only seemed to strengthen Taylor’s resolve. Indeed, the vitriolic homophobia surrounding AIDS motivated her to become involved in the first place. She was quoted as saying

Worse than the virus there was the terrible discrimination and prejudice it left in its wake. Suddenly it made gay people stop being human beings and start becoming the enemy. I knew somebody had to do something. For God's sake, our president didn't even utter the word for years into the epidemic.

And

If it weren't for homosexuals there would be no culture. We can trace that back thousands of years. So many of the great musicians, the great painters were homosexual. Without their input it would be an entirely different, flat world. To see their heritage, what they had given the world, be desecrated with people saying, 'Oh, AIDS is probably what they deserve' or 'it's probably God's way of weeding the dreadful people out,' made me so irate.

I’ve always associated Taylor with AIDS activism. However, I did not realize the magnitude of her impact until I began to research this piece. Taylor made AIDS her life’s cause. At a time when the disease was called "the gay plague" and others were afraid to even touch people with HIV, Taylor employed her star power to help humanize those living with the disease. She made headlines throughout the world when she was photographed shaking hands with HIV/AIDS patients in a Thai hospital. She helped found the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amFAR) in 1985, and later, in 1991, the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF).

Taylor was a prodigious fundraiser and made large personal contributions to the cause. ETAF operated at zero overhead cost because Taylor personally underwrote the organization’s expenses for raising and administering funds. Over the course of her lifetime, she is said to have raised $270 million for HIV/AIDS. Last month, it was reported that she had donated the bulk of her estate to her AIDS charities.

An impassioned lobbyist, Taylor was not afraid of taking a swipe at leaders for their inaction. At an international AIDS conference, she criticized the first president Bush, remarking, “I don't think [he] is doing anything at all about AIDS. In fact I'm not even sure if he knows how to spell AIDS.” She testified before Congress in 1986 in support of the Ryan White Act, and then again in 1990, when it finally passed. She also spoke at the United Nations, imploring its members to join in the fight against the disease.

Taylor carried on her work despite her own declining health. Toward the end of her life she said, "There's still so much more to do. I can't sit back and be complacent, and none of us should be. I get around now in a wheelchair, but I get around."

Now that I have learned more about Taylor's contributions, my respect for her has turned into awe. Rest in peace, Dame Elizabeth.

Via JMG: Christianist Hate Group Issues Call To Pull Kids Out Of School On Day Of Silence

The Illinois Family Institute, an SPLC-certified Christian hate group, says that parents should yank their kids out of class on the Day of Silence rather than have them exposed to the message that it's wrong to beat up gay children.

GLSEN’s end game is the eradication of conservative moral beliefs and the creation of a social and political climate in which it is impossible to express them. Their cultural vehicle of choice for this radical social experiment is public education. What a strategic coup for homosexualists: use our money to capture the hearts and minds of our children. And we do virtually nothing. Our complacence makes us complicit in the damage done to our children and our culture. Moreover, we teach our children by example to be cowardly conformists. It’s time to resist, and there’s no easier way to resist than to call your children out of school on the Day of Silence. Parents and Guardians: Call your children’s middle and high schools and ask if students and/or teachers will be permitted to refuse to speak during class on Friday, April 15. If your administration allows students and/or teachers to refuse to speak during class, call your child out of school. Every student absence costs school districts money. When administrators refuse to listen to reason and when they allow the classroom to be exploited for political purposes, parents must take action. If they don’t, the politicization of the classroom and curricula will increase.

The "student walkout" has been endorsed by pretty much every hate group listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, including the American Family Association, Concernstipated Women for America, MassResistance, and pedophile-enabler Scott Lively.

Labels: bullying, Day Of Silence, GLSEN, hate groups, Illinois Family Institute, religion

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Freedom to Marry's Roadmap to Victory

Values Oregon

Via JMG: Tweet Of The Day - Louis Marinelli

Labels: marriage equality, NOM, tweet of the day

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Via JMG: HomoQuotable - Kerry Eleveld

"President Barack Obama has just announced his 2012 bid for re-election and the inevitable push for LGBT support - donor, voter, and activist - has begun. To be sure, many LGBT Americans would much rather see Barack Obama still gracing the Oval Office come January of 2013 than a Republican. And so, many of us are faced with a familiar dilemma: should we sublimate our intrinsic desire to continue advocating for full equality to the urgency of reelecting a man who has presided over some of the greatest advances in the history of the LGBT movement? My answer: No.

"This not an either-or proposition in my opinion, nor should we feel compelled to surrender our basic humanity to the whims of the election cycle. That type of thinking is a relic of days past when politicians held firmly to the notion that addressing LGBT concerns would undoubtedly be a drag on their electability. What we have witnessed over the past couple years is just the opposite. The repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell' scored huge points with President Obama's target voters -- independent, moderate, and progressive alike - and his declaration that the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional reestablished his ability to show bold leadership. Here's our new reality: The right thing to do is also the popular thing to do." - Former Advocate White House reporter Kerry Eleveld, writing for Equality Matters.

Read Eleveld's complete essay.

Labels: 2012 elections, Barack Obama, HomoQuotable, LGBT rights

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Via JMG: BREAKING: Major Defection At NOM, Top Organizer Now Supports Gay Marriage

Jeremy Hooper has a big scoop over at Good As You today, where he exclusively reports that a top organizer at NOM has announced that he now supports marriage equality. Louis Marinelli, known to some of us the virulently nasty moderator of NOM's Facebook page and the organizer of last year's laughably unattended national bus tour, tells Hooper all about his dramatic change of heart. An excerpt:

As a supporter of civil marriage equality, any statements I’ve made in the past about not recognizing homosexual relationships for one reason or another, of course it goes without saying that I no longer stand by these comments and I apologize for the insensitivity. Same-sex couples, whether they are married, in civil unions or domestic partnerships, ought to be recognized for what they are. I consider myself agnostic and while homosexual acts may very well be “immoral” in the eyes of Christian morality, I can no longer stand by any comments I’ve made in the past about the immorality of homosexuality.

There are a variety of different sets and sources of morals and no one has the right to impose their set on the rest of society. Once I wrote that homosexuals are deceitful people who care only about themselves or something to that effect. Honestly, aren’t we all? It was wrong for me to exclude everyone else from that description. We all lie and when it comes down to it, we will do what is best for ourselves. So throwing in a little levity, I stand by the comment but want to apologize for limiting its scope to the gay community.

Go and read the complete interview at Good As You, where Marinelli also denounces Paul Cameron and Peter LaBarbara. And now we wait to see if Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown will have anything to say about this.......

Labels: Good As You, hate groups, Jeremy Hooper, LGBT rights, marriage equality, NOM, religion

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Via AmericaBlog.gay: Five things Obama can do by executive order for the LGBT community

Yesterday, John posted Kerry Eleveld's piece, Doing the Right Thing for 2012, below. It's very good. She makes the case that we must continue the push for equality, even as Obama's reelection gets underway. And, she laid out what we should ask the President to do using his existing power. These asks are based on the initial requests made by the national LGBT organizations, notably HRC and NGLTF, to the Obama transition team. These were initially presentated by the groups at a December 2008 meeting attended by John Podesta and including now-campaign manager Jim Messina. (Funny how often Messina's name pops up when LGBT equality is involved.)

As President, Obama has the executive authority to do all of these items. He doesn't need a bill passed by Congress or a court ruling. They need to be done. From Kerry:

[W]e should concentrate our efforts on five broader initiatives that would incorporate many of the recommendations originally presented by NGLTF and HRC, but in a more comprehensive way. Of the suggestions made by NGLTF, for instance, over half of them took a piecemeal approach to providing nondiscrimination protections at the agency level as well as making those agencies more inclusive in areas such as data collection, definitions, and research.

Rather than assembling a patchwork of progress agency by agency, President Obama should issue executive orders or amend existing ones that set a government-wide precedent for equality in the following ways:

1) Directing the federal government to include LGBT Americans in all federal level data collection efforts.

2) Mandating that all federal contractors must have policies providing nondiscrimination protections for their employees on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

3) Prohibiting federal funds from being used to discriminate against LGBT Americans.

4) Prohibiting discrimination against military service members on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

5) Adding gender identity protections to President Clinton's executive order 13087, which protected civilian federal workers from bias based on their sexual orientation.

Reasonable enough. Now, we need the administration to do it.

Via JMG: Savage Vs. Gallagher, Round 2

"I do not intend to 'educate your college students,' Maggie. Your college students—the offspring of NOM supporters—are being 'educated' at Brigham Young, Liberty University, Bob Jones, Seattle Pacific University, and other Christianist madrassas. My college tours typically take me to secular institutions of higher learning where the kids were hooking up and having sex long before my visit to campus.

"I know what women are like. I may not know what women taste like—I've never gone down on one—but I do know what women are like. My mother was a woman, my sister is a woman, my aunts are women, my favorite bartender is a woman, lots of my friends, neighbors, and coworkers are women. And as someone who sleeps with men and is a long-term relationship with a man, I know what (straight) women have to put up with. I'm not the first gay man that women have turned to for advice about love and sex, Maggie, and I won't be the last. And aren't you a practicing Catholic? Not knowing what women are like (or taste like) has never stopped the Pope from offering his unsolicited advice to women—no birth control, no abortions, no oral, no anal, no handjobs—and it's hypocritical of you to suggest that I'm not qualified to advise women, since I won't fuck 'em, without first telling that old fag in Rome to STFU already." - Dan Savage, responding to yesterday's attack from NOM chaircow Maggie Gallagher.

Read Savage's complete essay.

Labels: Dan Savage, FTW, Maggie Gallagher, MTV, NOM, sex education

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Via JMG: New Study: Nine Million LGBT Americans?

According to a study released today by the Williams Institute (PDF), there are almost nine million LGBT persons in the United States. That works out to 3.5% of the adult population. Via press release:

The Williams Institute, a leading think tank dedicated to the field of sexual orientation and gender identity-related law and public policy, released new research that estimates the size of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in the United States. Drawing on information from four recent national and two state-level population-based surveys, the analyses suggest that there are more than 8 million adults in the US who are lesbian, gay, or bisexual, comprising 3.5% of the adult population. There are also nearly 700,000 transgender individuals in the US. In total, the study suggests that approximately 9 million Americans - roughly the population of New Jersey - identify as LGBT.

The study notes: "Estimates of those who report any lifetime same-sex sexual behavior and any same-sex sexual attraction are substantially higher than estimates of those who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. An estimated 19 million Americans (8.2%) report that they have engaged in same-sex sexual behavior and nearly 25.6 million Americans (11%) acknowledge at least some same-sex sexual attraction."

Labels: LGBT rights, science, United States

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