So-Called Compromise Advances in Rhode Island

News for the Week Ended May 25, 2011
BY ANN ROSTOW


So-Called Compromise Advances in Rhode Island

I’ll begin this week with a correction from last week’s discussion of legislative machinations in Rhode Island. A well-informed reader noted that the senate president, M. Theresa Paiva Weed, is in fact a Democrat, not a Republican. Silly me.

Paiva Weed’s opposition to the marriage equality bill on the senate side led openly gay house speaker Gordon Fox to drop the bill rather than bringing it to a vote. Ergo, I assumed she was a Republican.

Meanwhile, a compromise civil union bill passed the house last Friday night and is en route to the senate shortly. From what I gather, the bill is riddled with so many exceptions and caveats, that it just may make things worse for Rhode Island’s same-sex couples.

According to Kathy Loewy, senior staff attorney at Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, the religious exemption is “unprecedented.”

The exemption, she said in a statement “means a civil union spouse could be denied the ability to make medical decisions for her spouse in a hospital; it means that a math teacher at a religiously-based school could not get the same health insurance for his legally recognized partner that all other teachers receive. This exemption actually diminishes nondiscrimination protections in public accommodations and employment that Rhode Island employers and institutions have successfully lived with since 1995. It just inflicts gratuitous harm on Rhode Island’s gay and lesbian families.”

Hmmm. Doesn’t sound good, does it?

In other state news, Nevada has enacted trans workplace protections, signed into law by Governor Brian Sandoval this week. As of today, Sandoval is also looking at trans rights laws covering housing and public accommodations sitting on his desk for consideration. Sign ‘em, Sandy!

As for Tennessee, Governor Bill Haslam signed a bitch of a bill that bans cities and counties from adopting GLBT discrimination protections. The bill effectively rolls back Nashville’s equal access ordinance, a measure that restricted city contracts to companies with GLBT protections. Bay Times legal analysts say the bill sounds suspiciously unconstitutional under Romer v Evans. Then again, none of the Bay Times legal analysts ever graduated from law school so what do they know?

It was nice to see a bunch of major companies lining up against the law, along with the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which switched sides to oppose it. I’m looking forward to the day when some huge mega-corporation moves its headquarters out of one of these gratuitously antigay states.
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Tornado!

Tiresome subjects, n’est-ce pas?

Did you watch those tornadoes rolling through the Midwest? Mel (my wife) grew up in western Kansas and remembers a day when the sirens were going off and she went outside with friends to watch (Hello?) and they got up on a haystack to look around and they couldn’t any tornadoes in sight.

Until they looked right above their heads where a huge twister was descending.

She got goose bumps just remembering the incident. They ran to the shelter in time by the way.

Mel and I drive from Austin to Kansas a couple of times a year and have become very familiar with these recent tornado targets; Joplin, Norman, Guthrie (where they don’t serve alcohol). I never gave tornadoes a thought before, but next month, I will be conducting extensive weather research prior to our trip.

After watching those F-4s, I don’t think I could drive through Oklahoma or Kansas in a violent storm without panicking. It’s like swimming in the ocean after you’ve seen Jaws. Something you took for granted and even enjoyed has become suffused with terror.

Yesterday, one of the monsters was heading right towards the Prairie Dunes Casino, where we have dropped quite a bit of cash on our frequent excursions. I could picture the announcements over the loud speakers, the gamblers huddling together in the VIP slot room. Then, the sound of the freight train and the cavernous gaming rooms filling with flying debris. It’s pitch black. We are screaming and suddenly there’s a noise like an explosion and we are tossed into the air like rag dolls, hurled into the last violent seconds of our lives.

Ahhhhhhh!
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Conservative Politician Loses Finger in Sexcapade

So, I read a federal court ruling yesterday in a challenge to a voter-approved measure out of El Paso that basically repealed the city’s domestic partner benefit program.

Wait wait! Don’t skip this item! I even gamed the headline to draw you in (and it worked). It’s not the usual boring legal discussion from that humorless scribe that takes control of my mind every now and then and fulminates over a dry judicial opinion. (I hate her!)

No, this is different. It’s quirky! And quirky means fun!

At any rate, you need some background. In 2009, El Paso city leaders instituted a domestic partner program, and various traditional values types immediately put forward a repeal measure for the 2010 ballot. The repeal language limited health benefits to city staff, their legal spouses and dependent children. It passed, 55 to 45.

It turned out, however, that El Paso had been offering health benefits not just to city employees, but also to retirees, elected officials, and certain city contractors. All these people were suddenly dropped from the insurance rolls thanks to the repeal language. Ooops.

So everyone got together, gays, retirees, elected officials, and they all sued to have the repeal measure declared unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause. (They had another cause of action which The Scribe wants to talk about, but don’t worry. I have her under control and it’s just not relevant.)

The litigation was transferred to federal court, and on Friday, the judge ruled that the repeal measure will stand and that it did not violate equal protection guarantees under the Constitution. Why? Because it didn’t single out gays!

Even though the repeal authors admitted that they had no intention of messing with the other groups, the retirees and so forth, the fact is that their measure did just that. It didn’t specifically target gay men and women. It wiped out four distinct categories of insured beneficiaries! The judge said that his hands were tied. And he strongly implied that if gays had been the only affected workers, his equal protection analysis would have been quite different.

I suppose the outcome isn’t exactly “fun” for those involved. But I assume the case is not over and will continue to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The Fifth Circuit hasn’t been our friend in recent weeks. (Remember that en banc decision denying a birth certificate to the son of two gay men?) We’ll keep an eye out for future developments nonetheless.
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The Beaten Earth

I’m watching the French Open, by the way. I have spent even more time at Roland Garros than I have at the Prairie Dunes Casino, seven years in attendance! Long time readers may recall my insufferable nostalgic tangents every year around this time. Drinking Kronenbourgs behind Court 11. Watching those pre-tiebreaker matches when every set could theoretically run to twenty games or more. Parking on the secret dirt road known only to a handful. Stalking Martina Navratilova.

(Cue: Those were the days, my friend! I thought they’d never end!)

Enough. I like these days just as much as those, although I don’t think I’ll be reminiscing in print about sitting out on the screen porch reading The Pale King, drinking pinot blanc, and watching the pugs parade along the fence line. In truth, I’ve only been able to read about ten pages of The Pale King, but I thought I’d try to impress you.

I’m, waiting until my word count hits 1300 before I start on the next actual news story which is why you’ve been forced to read filler for the last two paragraphs. But now, you’re patience is about to be rewarded. We’re going back to the news!
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Back To The Future?

I’ve been reading about Equality California’s dog and pony show, a series of community meetings to assess our willingness to put a Prop 8 repeal measure on the 2012 ballot. There was a time of course, when everyone thought the Prop 8 lawsuit would be successfully concluded well before November of next year. But since the federal litigation has taken what looks to be a year-long detour through the California Supreme Court, it’s possible that Prop 8 will be with us for several years to come.

Does that mean we should try to vote it away next year? After all, another campaign requires a great deal of community time, money and energy; resources that to some extent will be lost to other goals.

It’s also possible that the California court, and the Ninth Circuit panel will both decide that our lawsuit opponents lack standing to appeal Judge Walker’s 2009 decision and that Prop 8 will be dead by late next year, rendering the repeal effort moot.

Do you think we could win in 2012? Polls say yes. But we need a five to ten point polling advantage to win at the ballot box. When you ask people their views on marriage equality, about five percent flat out lie, telling pollsters they approve, but voting against us in the privacy of their booth. Bastards!

Oh! I have an idea.

Let’s get the signatures and put a repeal on the ballot.

Then, we’ll do next to nothing but make a big stink in the press and force all the Mormons to spend tens of millions of dollars bashing us.

With luck, we’ll win just on demographic changes. If we lose, it just reinforces our lack of political power to the courts. (Oh my. A tennis woman is being hauled off on a stretcher in hysterical tears! Gender stereotypes vindicated once again.) Anyway, we can just repeat the process every year until we win. As long as we don’t spend money or exhaust ourselves campaigning we have nothing to lose, and we can drain the opposition.

Meanwhile, here’s an interesting marriage development I read on Lisa Keen’s news service.

Turns out you have to have Congressional approval to spend taxpayer funds on things like, um, outside legal counsel. As you know, the House Republicans have signed famed appellate lawyer Paul Clement to a $500,000 contract to champion the Defense of Marriage Act on their behalf.

Speaker Boehner arranged this by nominating a “bi-partisan” five-member committee, which promptly took a 3-2 “bi-partisan” vote in favor of hiring outside counsel. No other member of Congress was obliged to weigh in on the sticky question of whether to spend money on this antigay crusade, and apparently that means the funds are not authorized and cannot legally be used for this nefarious purpose.

I would love to see the House Republicans forced into a divisive vote on whether or not to pay Clement’s salary. Plus, consider that the $500,000 is a limit, which can be increased under the contract. Given that there are up to a dozen DOMA cases of one sort or another, Clement and company are sure to hit the DOMA ceiling in no time at all. Would Congress have to take another vote on the extra funds?

Interesting that the DOMA defense, at least in its initial stage, costs the same as Newt Gingrich’s Tiffany bills.
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Let’s Not Be Schmucks

Finally, did any of you read the New York Times op-ed by a gay writer who pompously announced that he would no longer attend his straight friends’ weddings and urged us all to follow suit?

Rich Benjamin implied (with no evidence whatsoever) that straight couples are oblivious to our love and see our fight for marriage as a play for political and financial advancement. Then, bizarrely, he compared attending a straight wedding to a “vegan going to a summer pig roast” or an evangelical “crashing a couple-swapping party.”

Say what? Since when are our goals antithetical to those of our straight friends? Since when are our allies our enemies? I don’t mind pledging not to go to the weddings of straight people who hate gays and oppose marriage equality. But that’s not what Benjamin suggests. He’s dissing his college roommate!

Indeed, anyone who would turn their back on a friend and skip a wedding in a fit of political pique deserves to have their motivations questioned. And the notion that any the rest of us would follow his mean-spirited and petulant example is misplaced.

States of Play

News for the Week Ended May 18, 2011
BY ANN ROSTOW


States of Play

I have come to the reluctant conclusion that state legislative news cannot be avoided this week. First, there’s not a great deal of exciting alternative topics. Second, it looks like things are happening around the states that might actually be somewhat important.

In Minnesota this week, we will probably see an anti-marriage constitutional amendment placed on the 2012 ballot. A house committee sent it to a floor vote with a 13-12 margin of approval, and since the session ends Monday, the chamber will probably take a vote in the next few days. I gather from some article that I don’t feel like looking up that we would need three more votes to defeat the measure. If not, the die is cast, since the senate already advanced the pernicious amendment earlier this month.

The good news is there are not a whole lot of states that are likely to hold anti-gay amendment elections of the sort that rolled over the country over the last decade. Most have already voted, about 30 or so. Then we have about a dozen friendly states, Massachusetts and Vermont, etc.. And that leaves only a handful unaccounted for. Indiana is one of these outliers, but there, lawmakers have to pass an amendment in two consecutive sessions, so the Hoosiers are looking to 2014 at the earliest. And over in North Carolina, lawmakers need to win a 60 percent majority in order to advance constitutional measures, so it’s possible they could hit that bar but I’m not sure that they will.

In 2010, North Carolina, Indiana and Minnesota lost the Democratic majorities that had previously blocked amendments. And as soon as Republicans gained control, the urge to preclude same-sex marriage rose through their loins like a Viagra overdose. So here we are.

Did you know that one out of every 200 men in the world are related to Genghis Kahn?

I’m not sure that’s true, but I have decided to splice my column with interesting tidbits from cable TV news.
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New York State of Mind

Returning to our main subject, the gay Speaker of the Rhode Island house, Gordon Fox, is under fire for dropping the attempt to pass marriage equality and embracing a civil union bill instead. No one is happy with the pragmatic political compromise. Gay activists call it a half measure, and of course the anti-gay crowd don’t like anything that recognizes same-sex couples, and would probably vote against a bill that gave us the right to get a joint account at Home Depot.

Yet arguably, Fox was left with little choice when it became clear a couple weeks back that the votes weren’t there for marriage equality. The GOP head of the senate, who opposed marriage, has said that she would support civil unions, so it looks like the civil union bill will pass. I think it gets a house vote on Thursday and then goes to the senate.

I really hate to write about New York, one of the states that burned me the last time they were on the verge of passing marriage equality (for weeks and weeks) before finally tossing the measure in history’s dustbin of rejected legislation.

I must have written fifty updates on the ins and outs of Albany politics at the time. You may remember that a Democratic senator switched parties at one point, throwing the leadership to the Republicans. Then all the other Democrats refused to come to work. A bunch of lawmakers were locked out. The party switcher switched back. Someone else was indicted for attacking his girlfriend with a broken glass. Another guy was drowning in corruption charges. I forget all the details.

Suffice to say that I vowed never again to fall in love with the New York legislature, no matter how many roses or bottles of Champagne they sent my way. And when the Republicans took back control last November, I figured marriage was out of reach for the next two years, regardless of any optimistic statements to the contrary.

So I’ve been ignoring the money pouring in to the fight for marriage. I blew off the interesting Times article about support for marriage equality from deep-pocketed GOP donors. I deleted the endless emails about famous celebrities coming out for equality in HRC’s statewide media campaign. I rolled my eyes at Governor Cuomo’s commitment and Mayor Bloomberg’s upstate lobbying trip.

And yet. Over the last month or so, a little spark of hope has started to blossom in my heart. It’s not a flame quite yet, but I can’t help thinking that we might win over more New York Republican senators than I would have thought possible a year or so ago. After all, the majority of New Yorkers support marriage, and the state effectively recognizes marriages from its New England neighbors. Would it really be that hard for the state senate to find the half-dozen votes it needs to make our dreams come true?

The 2011 session ends on June 20, and I have to assume a just-introduced marriage equality bill will pass the assembly this year, simply because the assembly has passed a marriage bill three times in the past. So the question is, what will the senate do if and when an equality bill is introduced in the upper chamber? Governor Cuomo has suggested to the press that he does not want to see the senate take a vote unless victory is assured, so we’ll see, won’t we?

Sing with me. Whenever you call me, I’ll be there. Whenever you want me, I’ll be there.
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Victory For Same-Sex Bankruptcy

In related New York news, a federal judge in New York’s southern district has decided to finesse the Defense of Marriage Act and allow two women to file joint bankruptcy. The women were married in Vermont, and although federal law would technically require them to untangle their assets and file separately, the fact is that virtually all their finances and debts are co-owned.

I read about the case on New York Law School professor Art Leonard’s blog, the source of many under-reported gay legal cases, and talk about under the radar, I could only find two other references to the ruling, which was announced May 13.

The story is significant because federal courts are not in the habit of ignoring the clear meaning of federal law. And DOMA is pretty clear, as you well know. Section three defines marriage for all federal purposes as a union of one man and one woman, so there’s not a lot of leeway in the text.

So what we have here is yet another example of the impact of President Obama’s February decision to treat sexual orientation as a constitutionally protected status. That decision led the administration to abandon its defense of DOMA in court, although Attorney General Eric Holder insisted that everyone would follow the law until a court ruled it unconstitutional down the road.

Um, well. That tightrope now seems more difficult to navigate than one would think. We have seen government officials back down in several deportation cases involving bi-national couples, taking a wait and see approach rather than expel the foreign spouse of a gay American under these circumstances.

Now, we have a federal judge, who writes that were it not for DOMA, the women would qualify for a joint bankruptcy. “In this case,” she continues, “the United States Trustee… appears to defend the law and yet has offered nothing more than a restatement of the language of DOMA.  The mere existence of DOMA is not sufficient to remove the duty imposed on this Court by sec. 707(a) to find 'cause' prior to dismissing the case.”

Citing the “extenuating circumstances” of the Obama administration’s new stance on DOMA, as well as the cumbersome costs and time involved in separating the women’s claims, the judge rejected the government’s motion to apply DOMA to the case.

The judge did not delve into DOMA’s constitutional status, but her ruling adds to the growing sense that the law will not survive the myriad challenges it now faces in federal courts around the country.

It also illustrates the complexity of the litigation faced by Republicans in the House of Representatives in their efforts to defend the law. Bankruptcy law over here. Immigration law over there. Federal benefits in one case. Estate tax issues in another. The list goes on, and as you know, the legal burden now rests on the shoulders of famed appellate lawyer Paul Clement and a small team of conservative partners hired by the House to champion their anti-gay cause.

Here, for example, Clement and company will probably be obliged to appeal the ruling in order to bolster DOMA’s status. Meanwhile, they are facing deadlines in two cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, one in trial court in New York, another in Connecticut, two in California, plus all the deportation cases. Plus all the cases I can’t name off the top of my head and all the cases that will surely be filed in coming months.

Interesting, don’t you think?
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Catholic Tastes

Someone has submitted a “prayer request” to a Catholic church in Florida for Osama Bin Laden. Hmmm. I suppose it would be churlish to put the terrorist maniac on a “no pray” list. But then again, I wouldn’t be praying very hard, would you? Call us churlish!

Oh, and speaking of Catholics, a 300-page, five-year $1.8 million dollar investigation into the root causes of sex abuse by Catholic priests blames the phenomenon on the changing sexual mores of the 1960s and 70s. Really? How come other subgroups went through the period without resorting to groping and rape? I don’t remember the denizens of Haight Ashbury seducing children, do you?

Let me look up the details.

Turns out the report was commissioned by the Church itself, and researched at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. I guess it makes sense now that I read more details.

The researchers found that abuse spiked in the freewheeling sixties and seventies as ill-equipped priests found themselves unable to handle the sexual revolution. Gay priests were no more likely to abuse kids than heterosexual priests, said the researchers. And many cases of male on male abuse were based on the proximity of young boys rather than the sexual orientation of the abuser.

Most of the abuse was focused on people over the age of ten, which frankly doesn’t say much. Why on Earth would anyone pick “ten” as a cutoff age for this kind of analysis?

I’m not sure why celibacy was ruled out as a contributing factor. I’ve only read reports about the report. And the researchers blamed the decades-long cover up on the tendency for large institutions to avoid scandal and controversy. The Catholic Church, said researchers, had their own version of the “thin blue line” that protects police officers from accusations of brutality.

Well, whatever. I’m sure this story will have legs for awhile as everyone starts to scour the details.
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J’Accuse!

And now, I don’t know whether to end with Newt Gingrich or Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The chubby egotist, or the louche, and possibly violent, financier? Maybe we’ll have room for both.

There’s something particularly offensive about true narcissists in the public square. Everyone is talking about Newt’s bungled performance on Meet The Press when he seemed to criticize his “very close friend” Paul Ryan and support an individual health care mandate. Oops! And in gay news, Newt was also the victim of a glitter attack by a gay activist who sprinkled him and Callista during a book signing.

But what really gets me about Newt is this half-million dollar line of credit at Tiffany’s, which was revealed in one of Callista’s financial statements. It’s not clear whether this is an unpaid obligation or a revolving loan. But what is clear is that it never occurred to Newt that his ongoing business relationship with Tiffany & Co. might become public and that an electorate in the middle of an economic recovery and a Republican party obsessed with fiscal restraint might find his bling habit alarming.

Half a million dollars in jewelry purchases? And this is the man who actually thinks he could win the presidential nomination of a party that is prepared to put an end to medical subsidies for seniors in order to balance the budget?

As for DSK, I suppose I was truly shocked by the outraged pronouncements of people like Bernard-Henri Levy and Ben Stein, pompously wondering aloud why a man of Strauss-Kahn’s stature should be arrested in public, arraigned with common criminals and jailed on Riker’s Island as if, as if, I guess as if he’d been charged with rape. As for Strauss-Kahn himself, if found guilty I’d like to seem him tossed into the general population of some horrible American federal prison. Wouldn’t you?

Two egos, each the size of the Hindenburg and perhaps heading for the same fate.
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arostow@aol.com

Don’t Ask Repeal Gets Sticky

News for the Week Ended May 11, 2011
BY ANN ROSTOW


Don’t Ask Repeal Gets Sticky

Something happened this week involving same-sex marriages in the military, but it seems strange in several respects.

First, the head of the Navy Chaplains wrote a memo that said same-sex marriages could be conducted by military chaplains in states where same-sex marriage is legal.

That seems logical.

True, the ban on open gay military service is not yet officially dead. We are still going through some vague training period, although it’s not clear why people have to be trained to refrain from discharging a gay soldier. After this training, we have to wait for President Obama and Secretary Gates to certify that national security will not be compromised by the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. And finally, we have to wait two months after the certification, again for no particular reason. More training?

At any rate, the point is that once the gay ban is officially ended, gay servicemembers based in Massachusetts or Connecticut or DC should be able to marry on base, right?

Wrong. Conservatives flipped out over the chaplain’s memo, and several dozen House Republicans wrote an outraged letter to the Secretary of the Navy, or “SecNav” as they call him on NCIS. The policy was promptly suspended “pending additional legal and policy review.”

Republicans claimed that the Defense of Marriage Act prohibits military marriages regardless of the status of gay soldiers. But no one was attacking the Defense of Marriage Act in this context. Gay soldiers living in one of the marriage equality states surely have the right to marry. And whether or not they marry at the local church or at the base chapel has nothing to do with federal law.

Meanwhile, House Republicans continue to hold pointless hearings on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in an effort to further stall repeal. Since nothing they do will pass muster in the Senate, we don’t have anything to worry about. But then again, we thought this battle was won by the lame ducks last Christmas. When are we going to tie up the loose ends?

According to the administration, the process should be complete before the end of this year. At that rate, however, it’s possible that the federal courts will have yet another say in the matter. The challenge to Don’t Ask that made headlines last fall is continuing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where Obama has asked the panel to suspend the litigation during the repeal transition. But the court has thus far declined to toss the case, which is called Log Cabin Republicans v U.S..

This whole mess obscures a key issue in the debate over gays in the military. When we repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, we simply removed the rule that banned openly gay soldiers. What we did not do was to insist that gay and lesbians soldiers be treated equally. That’s right. There is no specific language that bans sexual orientation discrimination in the military, so in theory, you could have all kinds of double standards, ranging from unequal marriage laws to, I don’t know, extra KP duty for lesbians.

That said, I think most Americans who favored an end to Don’t Ask assumed that discrimination would be banished along with the antigay law. So, like many of our communal problems, the solution is a matter of time.
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Meow!

I don’t mean to be catty, but Newt Gingrich’s latest wife looks like something out of a horror movie. Tight stretched skin. Razor sharp makeup. Weird crazy look in her eyes. I don’t know.

I’ve been reluctant to ridicule the GOP presidential lineup, simply because I am assuming that a bunch of mainstream-ish conservative politicians are about to toss their hats into the ring. After all, it’s only, um, May. But this is getting serious. Of all the announced candidates, the pudgy hypocrite appears to have the best credentials of the bunch even though he hasn’t done anything of note for over a decade.

Oh, I suppose I forgot about Tim Pawlenty. But that’s the problem with Tim Pawlenty, isn’t it?

Anyway, the man is nicknamed after a small, legless, salamander, so I’m thinking his uphill climb to the White House might be a bit of a stretch.

I’m also wondering whether some of the possible GOP candidates will rethink their timing given that Obama looks far less beatable this week than he did ten days ago.

Will Christie and Daniels let someone else sacrifice themselves on the altar of 2012 while they sit back and wait for 2016? It definitely looks as if the two Mormons are going to enter the race, but I have no idea what Huckabee plans to do. As for Palin, I think she’s too thin-skinned to put herself through the crucible of another national campaign.

All in all, I’m still betting on some fresh face popping out of the woodwork at the end of the summer.
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Porn! The New White Meat

I have MSNBC on in the background as is my wont these days. I’m not paying much attention, but I’m paying enough to inform you that the station has delivered the same six pieces of news over and over again for the last five hours.

Oh. Here’s a new one coming up after the next break: “Porn, kids and the Internet. Just a typo away.” 

While we wait for typo instructions, you should know that the Presbyterian USA church has finally approved ordination for gay men and lesbians in committed relationships. Yay! I’ve been covering gay ordination for the last fifteen years, so it’s a pleasure to be able to report this breakthrough. That said, I basically got bored with the subject a couple years back so I have ignored the topic completely.

As for porn, MSNBC just showed an anti-porn commercial featuring a couple of eight year old boys who try to look up “pork” and hit the “n” instead of the “k.” At once the doorbell rings, and the kids find several beautiful women at their doorstep. I suppose it’s meant to be a warning to parents, because it certainly wouldn’t discourage your average eight-year-old boy. Quite the contrary.
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‘Til The Board of Immigration Us Do Part

So here’s a big story. Last Thursday, the Justice Department formally stepped in to block a deportation hearing for a civil union partner from Ireland, who lives in New Jersey with his quasi-spouse. Attorney General Eric Holder said the case should be referred back to the Board of Immigration to see whether or not a civil union partner might be treated as a spouse or qualifying relative under immigration law.

On the following day, an immigration judge in Newark seemed to take the hint, postponing deportation for a Venezuelan man who married his American husband in Connecticut. The judge indicated that the men should be given time, at least until December, to see how the immigration status of married gays is addressed by the courts and the Justice Department.

These cases came a month or so after a government lawyer agreed to shelve proceedings against a New York-based bi-national couple, again to give the women time to pursue a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act.

Under the circumstances, it seems likely that other binational couples will have a reprieve as well, as the government tries to balance its stated opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act with the fact that DOMA remains federal law for the moment.

As you know, Attorney General Holder announced in February that sexual orientation should be considered a constitutionally protected class. As such, the Justice Department decided it could no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act in federal court. Nonetheless, Holder made clear that the Obama administration would uphold the law until a court could weigh in on its constitutional status.

This appears to be easier said than done in the case of binational couples. And although the Justice Department can’t come right out and tell immigration judges to ignore DOMA when it comes to foreign gay spouses, they seem to be finding a middle ground—a six to twelve month stalling tactic that could keep couples together while the courts sort out the future of the federal ban on same-sex marriage.

Good. This seems to be working, although I’m sure that one of these days we’ll come face to face with a mean immigration judge who will tell the Justice Department to jump in a lake. Until then, it’s good news for the international couples in our midst.
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Don’t Kill Me Bro

And speaking of international couples, the European Court of Justice has ruled in favor of a retired German couple who got hitched under Germany’s version of a civil union. After they tied the knot, one of the men applied for an increase in his pension from the city of Hamburg. But even though such an increase is routine for a single person who subsequently gets married, his request was denied. The man petitioned the local labor court, which referred the matter to the ECJ. In its ruling, the European Court of Justice said that registered partners are entitled to equal pay under principles of European law, and that pensions are considered part of one’s pay.

Before you start lamenting about the backward state of gay rights law in the United States, you can compare us to Uganda, where lawmakers are still intent on passing the so-called “kill the gays” bill that carries a life sentence for active homosexuals, and a death sentence for having gay sex with a minor.

The bill, proposed a couple of years ago, was back on schedule for a vote this week, but was pulled off the table at the last minute. I don’t pretend to understand Ugandan politics. But it seems as if someone with a modicum of power wants to avoid the international backlash that would accompany passage of this barbaric legislation.

Much like the ordination of gay priests, the “kill the gays” bill is another news story that I have stopped following in recent months. I assumed the bill had sort of died, so I was most astonished when a raft of “Ugandans want to kill us!” headlines hit my email this week, followed by another onslaught of “Maybe not yet.” 

 Regardless, I’m not going to Uganda anytime soon.
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F is For Apple

Back in the USA, the Minnesota senate has voted to put an antigay marriage amendment on the 2012 ballot. I’d give you more details but something is happening to my aging Mac laptop and simple operations, like searching for “Minnesota gay,” are taking whole minutes.

While it “waits” to respond to these basic requests, the computer makes an annoying little buzzing sound, like background radiation from the Big Bang.
The whole frustrating process makes me want to take the machine outside onto the porch and smash its little machine guts all over the slate floor. Nor am I in the least bit mollified by the fact that the little “I’m thinking!” revolving ball has a gay rainbow theme.

There’s nothing inherently gay about a lackadaisical piece of junk that would rather sit around complacently buzzing and flashing rainbow colors for seconds on end while my racing mind screams in silent anguish. Gay, to me, means fun and competent! A gay computer is fast and eager to work with you. Quick off the mark. Back to you in less time than it takes to click a mouse!

No, this is something quite different. Homophobic even. Oh, I’m sure it would deny it if you asked it. It has plenty of gay friends, it would insist. For heaven’s sake, its owner is a lesbian! Well, considering its recent performance I believe that makes my case.

And for the record, we still have to wait for the Minnesota House to pass the marriage amendment, but there’s no reason to suppose it won’t do just that. As for the Badger or Gopher State electorate, it will be interesting. I think they’re gophers, and I think Wisconsin people are badgers. But who knows for sure? I’m not going to waste five minutes or so trying to research mascot animals in the Midwest.
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arostow@aol.com

Let’s Celebrate

News for the Week Ended May 3, 2011
BY ANN ROSTOW


Let’s Celebrate

What do you think of the mass rejoicing over Bin Laden’s death?  Is there anything unseemly about it?

I don’t think so personally. The rejoicing was about so much more than the death of one man. It was about achieving a kind of justice for the victims of September 11 that we didn’t even realize we were missing until it arrived.

It was an overdue answer to the unspoken question of whether America, for all its strength, is an overblown military behemoth, rendered impotent by the complications of geopolitics and bureaucracy. The answer is no.

It’s a defeat for the carnival barkers, as Obama put it, and the game players and the sound biters. Presidential leadership is a serious business, and the job may require you to manage a natural disaster one day, put on your tails and deliver a comic address to the Washington press corps the next, and conduct a special operations raid in a foreign country the next. Sarah Palin? Donald Trump? Tim Pawlenty? Mike Huckabee? Mitt Romney?

Really?

A large part of my rejoicing was out of loyalty to Obama, who has returned permanently to the top of my favorite people list ever since February, when he decided sexual orientation should be a protected class under the Constitution. I ranted for two years about the fact that Obama declined to do the little things that would advance gay rights without costing him any political capital. In February, he did the single biggest thing within his power to advance our cause. Case closed. He has my vote.

But back to Bin Laden. His death vastly improves our position in what has seemed like a Whack-a-Mole fight to disrupt and fracture Al Qaeda. It’s hard to specify exactly how victory in such a fight can be determined, but certainly, killing Bin Laden was a necessary element. There will always be subgroups calling themselves Al Qaeda. And the threat of “terror” will always be with us, just as tornados will always storm the plains, hurricanes will always smash our coasts and rogue psychopaths will continue to pull out their AK47s for impromptu shooting sprees. But this is a turning point.

Finally, I celebrate the incredible strategic courage of the President and those who supported this raid rather than the idea of dropping a big bomb. Those special forces troops put their lives on the line to give us, not just the satisfaction of killing Bin Laden, but to recover the intelligence on site that may allow us to reset our relationship with Pakistan and further undermine
Al Qaeda.

Our relationship with Pakistan must be solidified. And it can’t work unless the Pakistani government weeds out the Al Qaeda sympathizers in the military and perhaps in its own ranks. Perhaps there are only a few bad apples, perhaps there’s a small network. But that government must be cleansed and strengthened. This is a nuclear power. It must remain our ally and we must be able to trust their leaders.

Dropping a big bomb, killing everyone in the area, and possibly not knowing who was in the complex, would have been a mess. And yet, the alternative was so dangerous, so risky, and so uncertain. By picking that alternative, Obama risked his political life without hesitation in the national interest just as those Navy Seals risked their physical lives without hesitation for our country.

We celebrate for all of these reasons. Not for the death of one man, who arguably was little more than a symbolic figurehead, but for a moment of tangible victory in the seemingly endless struggle towards the amorphous (and ultimately unreachable) objective of securing the nation.
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Free For A Day

I’m writing my column a day early, which means that some huge breaking GLBT news story will hit the wires on Wednesday. Look for it. I’m serious. It never fails.

Meanwhile, the GLBT news this week is tepid at best. We all spent two days oohing and ahhing over the Royal Wedding. (I heard Kate’s brother was gay, did you?) We had hundreds of people killed by giant tornadoes with winds of 200 mph. Then came Bin Laden.

I mean, was this week real? Or did we all just get abducted by aliens and have our memories replaced by a series of B-movies? “The Girl Who Would Be Queen,” followed by “Winds From Hell,” capped off by “Fire Over Abbottabad.”

Time out. I just learned that today is “World Press Freedom Day,” which means that I have the “freedom” to write about whatever comes to mind, right?  Well, as I just mentioned, I don’t have any major GLBT news to report, so today’s lack of restrictions are particularly welcome.

Have you seen the McDonald’s commercial with the African American couple sitting at the table over a hamburger? The woman says that some other guy told her friend that “Sundays are just for football.” Then she asks her boyfriend to comment, suggesting by her tone that the sentiment was not one she shared.

During a lengthy pause, the narrator reminds the boyfriend that he’s smart. He can handle the situation! He ordered a value meal, so he knows what he’s doing. Bolstered by the voice over, the guy tells his girlfriend that the football fan is “a jerk,” and his girlfriend smiles in satisfaction.

I profoundly hate this ad. It’s another one on the lengthy list that depicts African American women as tyrannical or semi-tyrannical control freaks.
But worse, since we know by the context that the boyfriend actually likes football, it recommends that smart boyfriends simply lie to their girlfriends and tell them whatever they want to hear.

How long do you think this relationship going to last? Can you see the boyfriend getting a call from his buddy next fall?

“Hey Derrick. Want to come by and watch the game tomorrow? Sheila’s welcome to come too. Candice is making ribs!”

“Um. Let me get back to you. We’re supposed to go to some church thing and then Sheila said something about the art show….”

“What? We’ve got two screens going. Redskins inside and the Saints on the porch TV. C’mon man!”

“Let me call you back.”

Later, after he tells Sheila that he has to drive to Albuquerque because his aunt is sick, Derrick calls back:

“Hey Calvin! I’m on for tomorrow! Sheila can’t make it.”

And this is the smart approach? For God’s sake, tell Sheila right off the bat that most Sundays in the fall should revolve around football and if she doesn’t like it, she should find someone more compatible. How hard is that?

It’s not just Black women, many wives and girlfriends on commercials are cast as the enemy who has to be placated, lied to, manipulated or outwitted by hapless husbands and boyfriends. I know I’ve written about this before, but you never see an abusive husband laying down the law while the sneaky wife goes behind his back, now do you? Yet some of these women are horrible! And the spineless men just take it and everyone laughs. Who writes this stuff?

Now I’m reading on the TV scroll that the fat removed by liposuction reappears in other places on the body. In a separate news line that ran under the MSNBC screen a few minutes earlier, I read that people with belly fat are more likely to have heart problems than people with other fat. Why not have liposuction on your belly? Then you can be healthy, even though you might develop thunder thighs.
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Gay Stuff (Sigh)

OK. Gay news. I’m really not in the mood for this, but here we go.

In Minnesota, the house has passed an antigay marriage amendment that now goes to the senate.

In Rhode Island, plans for a marriage equality bill have been dropped in the face of opposition, but some lawmakers may push for a civil union bill even though our side has vehemently said that civil unions are not enough in this New England state.

New Yorkers are advocating for a marriage equality bill, even though the legislature is back under GOP control. You know, I have to admit that New York is getting a lot of optimistic gay marriage press these days, and there’s even talk of passing a bill this summer. But personally, I’ve written thousands of words, in breathless prose, about marriage bills being on the verge of passing in New York, in New Jersey, recently in Maryland, only to sum things up in the oft-quoted words of Rosanne Rosannadanna. “Never mind!” This time, I’m watching and waiting.

And in Washington D.C., we seem to have the votes to pass the Respect for Marriage Act through the Senate Judiciary Committee. This bill-- I’m calling it REFMA—is the attempt to repeal DOMA, and so far it has not been scheduled for any hearings whatsoever. But we’re ready!

Donald Trump has been trying to explain his opposition to same-sex marriage, which he says just “doesn’t feel right” to him. He likened this sensation to how he feels when he sees golfers using long putters or belly putters. They just look awkward and it rubs him the wrong way.

By the way, which looks better to you? A golfer holing a 30-foot putt with a belly putter? Or a golfer missing a two-footer with a three-foot Ping? Just sayin’.
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Fait Triste Bouche

Now, I’m officially giving up on gay news and just spent half an hour watching a slideshow of “unexpected table manners around the world.” I learned that Koreans spit the bones of their fish out of their mouths and onto the plate or floor. And Zambians sometimes begin their meal with a small dried mouse, that must be eaten head first. The tail, which is not eaten, can be used as a toothpick.

Still on the same website, I moved on to “The Ten Most Pointless Salad Ingredients,” but my computer froze while I was trying to bring up the story. I don’t like weird unidentified little pellets of something in my salad. I also don’t like giant cubes of toast, or random things that get tossed in for no real reason like crunchy pea things. So you can see why my attention was drawn to this provocative headline.

Eventually, I googled “ten most pointless salad ingredients” and found the list: cucumbers, croutons, iceberg lettuce, onions, cheese, green beans, alfalfa sprouts, chow mein noodles, corn and bacon bits.

Pointless? What’s “pointless” about bacon bits, onions or cucumbers? The list reflects only the author’s taste, and I felt tricked into reading it.

Hey! My word-count is standing at a patriotic 1776, even though it went to 1797 after I wrote this sentence. There was something metaphysical about seeing 1776, and realizing that I couldn’t capture the moment in print without destroying it. Much like the impossible act of determining the location of an electron by hitting it with a photon, that shifts its position in the process.

Because, is it not true that whenever you put an idea into words you alter the essential thought that put the idea in your head to begin with?
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arostow@aol.com

DOMA Defenders Change Their Minds

News for the Week Ended April 27, 2011
BY ANN ROSTOW


DOMA Defenders Change Their Minds

Well, I’ve been procrastinating this morning, and in the course of aimless web surfing, I discovered that Judgment Day is going to be May 21 and after six months of judgments the world will end on October 21. So says a California-based Biblical scholar who has figured out the schedule from his reading of Scripture.

In view of this pending apocalypse, I feel a certain complacency about our concerted communal struggle for equality. DOMA? Do we really care under the circumstances whether we’ll be ripped off by estate taxes if our spouse somehow manages to die before the October deadline? Does it matter if gay couples can adopt in Virginia given that we’ll all be shedding the mortal coil before the end of baseball season, babies and parents alike?

On the off chance that the man’s dates are off, I will pretend that the Earth survives for a few more decades and that the news of this week carries some significance.

And here’s the big news, which you’ve probably read about already. On Monday, the law firm of King & Spalding reversed course and decided not to defend DOMA on behalf of House Republicans. Lead counsel Paul Clement resigned from the firm, and took the DOMA contract over to a new firm, Bancroft, a small and conservative DC-based outfit that appears to have only a handful of attorneys available for the task.

King & Spalding’s chairman, Robert Hays, took responsibility for the about face, explaining vaguely that “the process used for vetting this engagement was inadequate.” His firm was soon buried in scathing critiques from the legal community, which generally felt that King & Spalding should not have agreed to the contract in the first place if they weren’t going to see it through.

King & Spalding were also accused of caving to political pressure, levied by the Human Rights Campaign and other gay groups. Indeed, HRC had started a campaign against the firm, calling other K&S clients, riling up law students and planning a protest. The firm, which has a good reputation for diversity and promoting respect, may have been caught off guard by the backlash. Rumor had it as well that Coca Cola, a major K&S client, had expressed dismay at the idea of its law firm riding to the defense of the antigay statute.

No one knows exactly what transpired at King & Spalding during the ten days between when the contract was signed and when the firm filed a motion to withdraw from the defense of DOMA in the New York case of Windsor v United States.

But it seems pretty obvious that the decision to work on the antigay side was made by a few people at a high level, and that the announcement caused a stir within the firm. Under the terms of contract, no employee of King & Spalding would have been allowed to speak on behalf of same-sex couples rights for the duration of the litigation, up to two years.

Further, although principles of the legal profession embrace the tenets that cold-blooded murderers deserve a defense and that good lawyers may well fight for unpopular causes, the decision to defend DOMA transcends those ideals. Who wants to be employed by the firm that defends the Board of Education against Brown? Who wants to be Bryan rather than Darrow? The Defense of Marriage Act is probably the most clearly discriminatory law on the books of the United States, and the fight against it is at the core of the gay civil rights movement. This is not just another client.

The Human Rights Campaign would like to take full credit for King & Spalding’s reversal, and I’m sure their nascent campaign had an impact on the decision to bag the case. But basically, it was all of the above. It was everything, and I take Hays at his word that the original decision to take the case was not “properly vetted.” In the end, they got out so fast, basically in a matter of one week, that little damage was done.

Plus, the House still has super-lawyer Paul Clement, and Clement now has another firm’s resources at his disposal. No harm, no foul in my book.

So, will HRC go pester the people at Bancroft? Not likely. While King & Spalding had over 800 lawyers, Bancroft only has a few. Plus, they’re all conservative and presumably knew exactly what they were getting into by taking on DOMA.

Finally, someone has to defend DOMA, just as someone defended the Board of Education and just as William Jennings Bryan stood up for Adam and Eve and the State of Tennessee. We can’t defeat the law in court without an adversary. I’m guessing as well that a conservative legal group will not hesitate to present the antigay case for DOMA, so we may be in for some stark contrasts between the briefs.
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This Bud’s For Us

In other legal news, I should write a long section on the latest development in the Prop 8 case, where the bad guys have asked the Ninth Circuit to toss out the entire case on the basis of Judge Vaughn Walker’s sexual orientation. Judge Walker, who remained in the glass closet during the Prop 8 trial, has since retired and made public statements confirming that he is gay and has a partner of ten years. According to the Prop 8 people, this means he had a personal stake in the trial, and that the outcome was biased.

But this absurd motion is going nowhere, so it’s not worth the ink. If you follow that rationale, women can’t rule on abortion cases and Blacks can’t rule on affirmative action, etc. etc.. Indeed, even heterosexual judges could be accused of bias by our side, since they have a personal stake in maintaining their preferential marital rights.

By the way, I just saw a Budweiser commercial online that may or may not be directed at the gay community, according to reports.

May or may not? There is nothing ambiguous about this ad, which is pretty damn gay and even ends with the tag “Proudly serving those who serve” or something like that. Well, it uses the word “proudly” anyway.

The ad shows a soldier talking to his male friend (split screen) and telling him “I’m coming home.”

We then see scenes of the soldier on a plane and in a bus, mixed in with scenes of the friend cleaning out the barn, buying a lot of bud, and setting up a big welcome home party. Mom and Dad are involved, which could indicate that the other man is a brother. But not really. The ad ends with the two men in an extended embrace. And as I said, there’s the giveaway tagline. Plus, it’s almost pride season!
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Was Obama’s Left Foot Amputated? Have You Ever Seen It?

I’m watching MSNBC with the sound off this afternoon, and I can report that up to 80 percent of today’s coverage has concerned Obama’s long form birth certificate, which he presented to the media this morning with an air of disgust. Obama made clear that he dug out the paper in order to move the media onto another topic. So far, the plan has failed, since the gesture has only served to make the birth certificate Topic Number One all day long. That said, maybe it will slowly go away.

But really. Did we actually need to see this document in order to be convinced that Obama was born in Hawaii, the state where his parents met and lived and studied and got married? And more to the point, why should this certificate have the slightest meaning to people who seem to think that the Obamas traveled to Africa in order for Mrs. Obama to give birth, and then went back to Hawaii to continue their studies?

I’m assuming that’s how they think he managed to be born in Kenya. But for all I know these people may think the whole family lived in Kenya to begin with. Because his father was Kenyan! At any rate, when you have no contact with reality and no need for facts, why should the actual birth certificate make a dent in your delusions?

Now I’m hearing that Trump doesn’t necessarily believe the President got into Columbia or Harvard, because he “heard” that Obama had bad grades. So are we to assume Harvard is in on the scam and the whole bit about being head of the Law Review and graduating magna cum laude is another fabrication? And someone ghost wrote all those books?

What’s next, I wonder? Do we really know that Barack and Michelle are married? Have we seen a license? Wedding pictures? Are the girls really his kids? Why won’t he take a simple DNA test so we can know for sure and put the issue to rest? Oh, and where was Michelle born anyway? Maybe in Africa as well! She looks African.
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Tennessee House Passes Useless Antigay Bill

There’s a really nasty bill making progress in the Tennessee legislature, two of them actually. The one I really loathe would ban local entities from passing laws that protect against GLBT bias, and indeed would revoke any such laws that are currently in effect. Nashville just expanded its laws to mandate that city contracts be reserved for those with GLBT protections in place, so that would be gone.

If this sounds suspiciously unconstitutional it’s because it was this kind of charter amendment that was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Romer v Evans back in 1996. I am assuming that the Tennessee lawmakers have found a way to preempt gay rights laws without running afoul of Romer, but maybe not. Maybe they’re just thumbing their noses at the whole crazy theory that gays and transpeople should have a role in the political process.

The other Volunteer State bill would ban the discussion of gay sexual orientation in elementary or middle school, where to my knowledge, we don’t have sexual discussions in the classroom to begin with. The law, however, puts a taboo sign on any reference to gay people whatsoever, even for middle school kids up to 12 or 13 years old.

Although the bill’s author says the measure is “neutral,” it’s not much different from a bill that mandates teaching that being gay is bad and being straight is good. Because that’s exactly what it does.

Oh, we’ve also got a new anti-marriage amendment up for debate in Minnesota. And the Rhode Island legislature will not be passing marriage equality, because too many GOP lawmakers stand in the way.
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Grotesque Attack Kills Gay Man’s Horses

I just have a general sense of bad news around the country this week. I can hardly bear to tell you about the arsonist who set a barn on fire in rural Ohio, killing eight beloved horses including a pregnant mare and a one-week old colt. The barn’s ruins were defaced by anti-gay slurs directed at the man who owed the farm, who was devastated. The man had rushed out and tried to save his horses, but the fire—which melted a tractor—was too hot. He could hear them trying to escape, but could do nothing.

Isn’t that excruciatingly sad?

I’m sorry to spring it on you like that. It makes you wonder why the far right continues, not just to oppose gay rights, but to encourage bigotry. Those bills in Tennessee, for example. Who cares if Nashville holds its contractors to high standards of fair play? Tennessee already has strict rules about what can be said in a classroom, so why go further and erect a wall of silent disapproval around the word “gay” and the human beings that word represents?

And why, in a country where thriving gay families can be found in every state and in every town, why go out of your way to make sure those families are seen as inferior? 

This arsonist was a madman. But his hatred isn’t so rare. I read quite a few conservative blog entries this week about the King & Spalding story, and I read several hundred comments that followed and after a while the venom leaches off the screen and makes me feel a little sick. Then I read about this horse murderer and as is the case with any good hate crime, I feel a bit as if those were my horses, or maybe my dogs, because I’m just as gay as that guy in Ohio and there are people out there, sane or not, who hate me just as much.

Wonder how that guy will be judged on May 21.
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arostow@aol.com