Arcane Tax Ruling Typical of Boring News Week

GLBT Week in Review March 7, 2012
BY ANN ROSTOW



Arcane Tax Ruling Typical of Boring News Week

I’ve been procrastinating for the last hour and a half. So far, I have made myself a steak sandwich, played with the dogs, read two newspapers and finished a crossword puzzle. I made more coffee and drank two cups. Then I watched part of an old episode of “Kitchen Nightmares” on the television machine.

Now, having exhausted the most obvious delaying tactics, I have no choice but to start this column. And yet I greet you with a certain lack of enthusiasm. There’s not a ton of news. My computer is acting up. I’m also wearing a fuzzy bathrobe that makes me feel uncomfortably hot. Finally, I’m using eyeglasses that oblige me to lean into the screen or else read through a slight blur. Under the circumstances, I’d say my continued effort is nothing short of heroic.

Just to give you some sense of what I’m up against, content wise, the lead article on my favorite GLBT legal blog (Leonard Link) is headlined: “Tax Court Affirms IRS Ruling Limiting Mortgage Interest Deductions for Unmarried Couples.” Really, Art?

If you insist, the case is about two rich guys who jointly own two houses and are trying to maximize their tax breaks based on the fact that they’re not married. Sing it with me! We’re here! We’re Queer! And we both want to take the maximum mortgage deduction even though the IRS caps deductions on the first $1 million of debt per property, not per individual!

To be fair, New York law professor Art Leonard has also posted an interesting new federal challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act filed by a bi-national couple in Illinois. And the District of Columbia City Council has voted to let married gay couples get a DC divorce even if they don’t live in the city.

Normally, I’d launch into the DOMA case, pointing out perhaps that our several federal cases bring a variety of situations to the attention of our nation’s courts. Estate tax, immigration status, spousal benefits, military wives and husbands, the list goes on and it perfectly illustrates the wide range of DOMA’s discriminatory effects. However, I’m a little burned out on marriage, and DOMA in particular, so I’ll spare you.

My email box is also full of news about another person I’ve never heard of who said mean things about our community on Piers Morgan’s show. Then I’ve got a couple stories on bullying, as well as some news about the head of New York’s Empire State Pride Agenda who got tossed out on his bum for reasons unclear.

Oh, and Barack Obama’s nanny was a transwoman who now lives in a slum and turns tricks in Indonesia.

So, shall we begin?
--


Tuesdays With Mittens

But first, how about those Republican candidates? Mitt Romney looks like an 85-year-old trapped in a 60-year-old body. His stiff, halting walk. The feeling you get that if he ever had to throw out the first pitch at a major league park he’d toss it underhand. His relaxed-fit jeans and the way he sort of giggles instead of laughs.

Santorum has managed to reverse his momentum with Rick Perry-like alacrity, transforming himself from handsome conservative former Senator to creepy moralizing snipe in a matter of days. There was that nasty edge to his voice when he called Obama a “snob” for encouraging kids to go to college. And what exactly was his point? No one says college is for everyone, but Santorum almost suggested that a university education was a bad temptation to be resisted.

And as for Newt, well what can I say? Did the man not notice that he came in a distant third in virtually every primary save his home state on Super Tuesday? Is he so egotistical that he believes he can lumber down the slow road to Tampa like a “tortoise” while the “bunnies” hop all the way to Tallahassee and pause for a carrot break? What’s he talking about? Tortoises and bunnies indeed.
--


New York Activist Unplugged

My trenchant campaign analysis was interrupted by a computer black out, engineered by a pug who tripped over an essential wire and turned off the machine. Not only did I lose my train of thought, but I was forced to spend many long minutes participating in the irritating start up process. After six or seven years, this device has collected more junk than a hoarder and when you turn it on, it takes forever to sort itself into a productive state. For some reason, I have to wait for “Skype” to assemble, even though I don’t use Skype because I have no webcam on this computer.

The important thing, of course, is that I’m back. While I was waiting for the useless Skype program, I learned that a symposium on Ancestral Health is scheduled for later this month in Austin. Among the topics are “running barefoot,” and a diet that does not include grains, dairy, legumes or “refined oils.” You may know that our city motto is “Keep Austin Weird,” and I believe the organizers of the Ancestral Health conference are living up to our eccentric standards. Bring on the raw bison, by all means.

So as I told you earlier, the board of the Empire State Pride Agenda has fired Executive Director Ross Levi after nearly two years, and placed his deputy in the top job for the time being. I gather that Levi was given the opportunity to resign quietly, presumably with one of those suspicious press releases about “new directions” or “personal reasons.” But Levi refused to accept a confidentiality agreement, so the news of his departure made clear that the decision was not his.

No one has coughed up the dirt as yet, but it seems as if the board thought Levi allowed New York’s leading gay rights group to take a back seat to the Human Rights Campaign and other agencies in the state’s successful fight for marriage equality. Further, Levi was reportedly a weak fundraiser and short on the vision thing, as George H. W. Bush calls it. Before taking over the ED post in May of 2010, Levi spent a decade working for ESPA in other capacities.

With nothing else to go on, I harken back to the Peter Principle, the idea that people climb the ladder of success until they reach their level of incompetence, where they either stick around ineffectively or get fired. The theory is simple. When people are competent and good at their jobs, they will win promotions. Eventually, they will rise to a position that they can’t handle, at which point the promotions will stop.

Maybe Levi was a great legislative director, but couldn’t rise to the demands of the corner office. After all, there’s a big difference between arguing policy and drafting legislation on one hand, and sweet-talking big donors and planning black tie dinners on the other.
--


Bully By The Horns

Grinding along, it’s time to talk about bullies. Actually, this is a major story, a settlement between the Anoka-Hennepin district just north of Minneapolis, and several student plaintiffs.

I confess I’ve given these lawsuits a short shrift in the past, in part based on my inability to remember the name “Anoka-Hennepin.” Unlike many of my other recurring stories, I am unable to write about the Anoka-Hennepin school district off the top of my head, and must pause to look up the correct spelling, a time-consuming extra step that is easily avoided by writing about something else.

Oh, I’m just kidding. You may remember this district from a period about a year or so ago when everyone in the country suddenly noticed that gay kids commit suicide, particularly when bullied. Although stories of suicides came from around the country, this particular district saw six kids kill themselves in the space of just two years, most of them gay or seemingly so.

Last summer, with the help of the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center, six students challenged the district’s laissez faire attitude, exemplified by a counterproductive Don’t Say Gay policy that required teachers and administrators to “remain neutral” on sexual orientation by never mentioning the subject. Obviously such a policy is anything but neutral, and instead nurtures fertile ground for antigay hostility.

The previous November, the Justice Department’s civil rights unit launched an investigation into the district’s response to antigay bullying and sexual harassment, concluding this week that the district had allowed a hostile environment to emerge in its schools that contributed to the bullying of 10 students, two of whom committed suicide.

On Tuesday, the district settled the two student lawsuits and adopted far reaching standards in a consent decree to satisfy the Justice Department. In addition to a money settlement of $270,000 to the student plaintiffs, the district will also put into place a proactive program to target hot spots, create an anti-bullying committee of parents, students and teachers, institute training and improve supervision. The Don’t Say Gay policy was reversed earlier this year.

This was not the first school district to face a federal lawsuit for its indifference to peer sexual harassment or gay bashing on its campuses. But the participation of the Justice Department was a novelty we haven’t seen in past administrations. Announcing the consent decree that codified the district’s anti-bullying program, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez gave a conference call audience a rundown of the Department’s several interventions in pursuit of safe schools, and called the Anoka-Hennepin program a cost effective model for other districts around the country.

The other bullying story on my list was one you’ve probably encountered by now, the trial of the slug in New Jersey who drove his gay roommate to suicide by videotaping his intimate moments. I don’t see why we care about the details of his date with justice. Just put a camera in his cell, take away all his clothes and throw away the key.
--


The Moving Keyboard Writes And Having Writ, Moves On

Our weekly journey is almost at an end, but my mind is attempting to depart prematurely, wandering off on its own like a bored toddler in a grocery store. As soon as I compose the basic structure of a short final section on, I don’t know, a gay bashing in Chile or the latest big name to sign on to the marriage plank in the Democratic party platform, I look around and there’s my mind, pulling a box of Captain Crunch off the bottom shelf, and stuffing a fistful of empty calories into its mouth.

Did you hear about the Florida husband and wife in who beat up the man’s mother for using “his” taco sauce at dinner? The woman escaped from the house, walked to her husband’s workplace and called police. Her son was arrested for domestic battery.

Have you seen the “ATM machine” that dispenses cupcakes? I don’t get it. I’ve seen this thing presented on various cable news shows as if it’s somehow bizarre or surrealistic, but basically, it’s a vending machine of sorts that sells cupcakes, right? Why does this contraption merit repeated national television coverage?

And here’s a headline to take us to the finish line: “Columbia Decries Barnard’s Dumb, Man-Stealing, Lesbian Sluts.” What could possibly have provoked such a tempestuous response?

Here’s the deal. President Obama has decided to give the commencement address at Barnard, and now, Columbia students are all bent out of shape and complaining on the university’s message board. I always thought that Barnard was the women’s side of Columbia, but since women can apply directly to Columbia, I just learned through this article that the Columbia students have developed a superiority complex vis a vis the scholars at their sister school, and the adjectives in the headline are typical expressions of their ill will.

I suppose the Columbia students will grow out of this childish competition for elite status in due time. Those who can't achieve that level of maturity should remember that Yale is, and will always remain, the top college in the Ivy League.
--


Ann’s column is available every week at sfbaytimes.com. You can reach her at arostow@aol.com.