Thursday, July 23, 2009

On July 9, Derek Jones and Matt Aune were detained by LDS security guards after they embraced and kissed on Main Street Plaza in Salt Lake City, which for many, is believed to be public property. After refusing to budge, the cops arrived and informed the couple that it was in fact private property with full access to the public but owned by the LDS church. The couple were cited for trespassing, but not before the guards had handcuffed both men, after forcing Jones to the ground. Aune said he suffered a bruised and swollen wrist.

Rex Wockner reports, “Salt Lake City sold the plaza to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 10 years ago, in a move that still irks some Salt Lakers. The precise location of the kiss was a former public easement that the city gave to the church in a controversial land-swap deal in 2003.”

Many believe the only reason why the LDS security guards approached the men on the busy thoroughfare in the first place was because they were gay and engaging in PDA. This has spurred kiss-in protests in front of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, and last night, another one took place in San Diego. About 30 LGBT and friends showed up.

Good As You reports that uber anti-gay Peter LaBarbera is calling these protests a “militant,” “homo-fascist,” act of defiance. I actually laughed when I read that.

Empowering Spirits Foundation

Image by Rex Wockner.

By The Associated Press
07.23.2009

(Ventura, Calif.) A Southern California junior high school student has been ordered to stand trial in the fatal shooting of a gay classmate.

Ventura County Superior Court Judge Ken Riley said Wednesday that there was enough evidence to try 15-year-old Brandon McInerney for the February 2008 shooting death of Larry King, also 15. McInerney will be tried as an adult.

Riley says he agrees with prosecutors that the shooting was premeditated and has added the special circumstance allegation that McInerney was lying in wait.

Authorities say McInerney shot Larry twice in the head during a computer lab at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard.

McInerney has pleaded not guilty to murder and a hate crime. He faces 53 years to life in prison if convicted.

by Michael A. Jones
Published July 22, 2009

What’s a company to do when a radical anti-LGBT person not only verbally attacks them for their support of LGBT rights, but does physical damage to their property?

In the case of American Apparel, the answer is fight the hell back.

That’s what’s happening with a Washington, D.C.-area American Apparel store, after a group of vandals broke the windows of a store that had a bunch of “Legalize Gay” t-shirts on display. The shirts, which are a sign of American Apparel’s support for marriage equality, have been a popular item, especially in the wake of Proposition 8 and the decisions of four states in 2009 to recognize same-sex marriage.

As a response to the violence, some stores would consider removing the shirts or hiding them, or placing them on the racks that are just past the fitting rooms, down a long hall, and next to the bathrooms. Not American Apparel. Here’s their company statement responding to the attackers, essentially saying that nobody is going to intimidate the company into silencing their support for equal rights:

Yesterday an American Apparel store in Silver Spring, Maryland had a window broken by someone upset over the company’s support for gay marriage. Our Georgetown location and others in the areas have received similar threats. We just wanted to use this forum here to announce that not only are they not going to prevent us from speaking out on an issue that is important to this company and our employees but we’ll continue to run Legalize Gay advertisements in papers across DC-Metro area. We’ll also send Legalize Gay t-shirts to any group in Washington DC that is fighting for gay rights and will help support any protest or rally for the cause.

Vandalizing a store for selling Legalize Gay shirts is a low blow, even by the standards set by most anti-LGBT activists. But it’s great to see a company not only refuse to back down, but step up their support for marriage equality in the wake of such violent actions.

sketch of man who allegedly murdered Teresa Butz

Lesbian Sister of Tony Award-Winning Actor Murdered in Seattle

Teresa Butz, the sister of Tony Award-winning actor Norbert Leo Butz, was stabbed to death by a male intruder at her apartment in the South Park area of Seattle. The intruder gained access to the apartment through an open window. Butz’s partner, a 36-year-old woman who is not identified by name, was stabbed during the attack but survived.

The Seattle Times reports:

“The Seattle couple, who had been together about two years, were preparing for a commitment ceremony in September and planned to travel to Barcelona, Spain, to celebrate Teresa’s 40th birthday in October, he said…Tim Butz (the victim’s brother, pictured) said Teresa’s partner told family members that Teresa had sacrificed herself to save the partner’s life during the attack. A detective related the same information, he said, but Butz said he couldn’t elaborate because of the investigation. A next-door neighbor in South Park, Albert Barrientes, said Tuesday that the two women were able to get outside after the attack. The partner was hysterical, Barrientes said. Teresa Butz, before she died, said of the attacker, ‘He told us if we did what he asked us to do he wouldn’t hurt us. He lied, he lied,’ Barrientes said.”

Butz’s killer remains at large, however, police released a sketch:

“Seattle police through most of Monday continued to call the attack random, but officials Monday night said it’s too early to rule out a hate crime and that the sexual-minority task force has taken an interest in the case. Interim Police Chief John Diaz said the 3 a.m. attack at the house in the 700 block of South Rose Street was the most brutal crime he and his officers have seen in some time and vowed to put every available resource into catching the man. Detectives will be able to catch him through ‘science, good police work and community,’ Diaz said, and urged anyone with information to call the Seattle Police tip line at 206-233-5000, or Crime Stoppers of Puget Sound at 1-800-222-TIPS. Tips can also be texted to TIPS486, with a message to “crimes” (274637).”

About 400 people attended a neighborhood meeting in South Park on Monday night.

Teresa Butz was the ninth of 11 children.

Effort To Ban Gay Unions Falling Short In Wash. State
By Carlos Santoscoy
Published: July 21, 2009

The effort to place a gay-inclusive domestic partnership law up for a vote in Washington State appears to be falling short.

With a looming deadline of Saturday at 2PM, opponents of the law dubbed by the media as the “everything but marriage law” have only 4 full days left to gather thousands of valid signatures.

Opponents – a coalition of mostly religious groups – announced their attempt to repeal the bill in November, even before it became law in May. Gary Randall, president of the Faith and Freedom Network, says his group filed Referendum 71 because the law is too close to marriage and violates the law.

“The bill … elevates homosexual relationships to that of traditional marriage, thus eliminating any legal difference between domestic partnerships and marriage,” Randall wrote in a blog entry posted on the group’s website before the bill became law.

“I do not believe a majority [of] Washingtonians believe in homosexual marriage, nor do they want to become a national attraction for homosexuals from other states and countries,” he added.

Organizers, however, admit that they have fallen desperately behind in collecting the 120,577 valid signatures needed to qualify the measure. Randall told the conservative group Concerned Women for America that only 75,000 signatures had been collected as of Friday. Leaving the group at least 45,577 signatures short. But in order to ensure there are sufficient valid signatures, the group estimates it needs to collect 75,000 signatures. In other words, opponents need to collect as many signatures in one week as they did in the previous seven to eight weeks.

The Democratic-controlled House passed the bill in April along a mostly party-line vote of 62 to 35. Senators approved the bill in March with a 30 to 18 vote, and Governor Chris Gregoire signed the bill into law on May 18.

The law, sponsored by openly gay Seattle Democrats Senator Ed Murray and Rep. Jamie Pedersen, expands existing domestic partnership legislation to grant gay and lesbian couples all the rights and benefits that the state offers married heterosexual couples. The federal government, however, does not recognize gay unions or marriages.

Washington State banned gay marriage in 1998 and the Washington State Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law in 2006.

Several opponents of gay marriage argued in May that the fight against domestic partnerships was unwinable and urged social conservatives to organize for the imminent gay marriage battle ahead.

“Why fight a battle you can’t win? It will cause you to lose a war you can win,” Joseph Fuiten, a Bothell pastor who is the leader of Positive Christian Agenda, told Seattle’s The News Tribune. “It will undermine our position when it comes to fighting the marriage battle.”

If the measure qualifies for the ballot, the law would be delayed until after the results of the November election are known. The law is set to take effect on Sunday.

Meanwhile, gay rights groups say the referendum threat has accelerated the growth of pro-gay marriage groups in Washington State. And the group WhoSigned.org announced it would publish the names of signers to the petition on the Internet should it qualify. (Similar postings have proven controversial in other states, including California, Arkansas and Massachusetts). They can be found at http://www.whosigned.org/

By Rajani C.
www.care2.com

Imagine it. One day a year when people focus on giving. One day when people across the United States can join together to make a difference. One day, where every person, regardless of age or income level, can collectively have a huge impact. Whether people give money, time, resources, or random acts of kindness, it all helps.

This is GiveForward’s goal for National Give Day. GiveForward.org is a website that provides free personal fundraising pages so they can collect donations from friends and family all across the country towards their own great cause. For the next 10 months, we will be collecting signatures online and in person to try to get the Mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley, to announce May 4th, 2010 as National Give Day. Please sign our petition.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/national-give-day
If “Awkward Moments Day” and “Laugh-And-Get-Rich Day” can make it on the country’s list of National Holidays, why not National Give Day? We hope that National Give Day will inspire people to give back to their communities and engage with schools, companies and non-profits. National Give Day’s purpose is to think of those less fortunate and to make a concerted effort to better our communities.

In the words of Winston Churchill, “We make a living by what we do, but we make a life by what we give.” So there’s no better time than now to start giving. With this petition, National Give Day could become the official recognized day of goodwill.

Same-sex rights may see vote
Referendum 71: Groups seeking to repeal new legislation plan to turn in signatures Saturday.
-Bard Shannon, The Olympian

A political fight over the rights of same-sex couples is drawing nearer in Washington.

Backers of Referendum 71, who want to overturn a new state same-sex partnership law, have made an appointment to file signatures with state elections officials Saturday afternoon, elections officials said Monday.

Saturday is the deadline to collect 120,577 valid voter signatures and qualify for the Nov. 3 state ballot.

Larry Stickney, leader of Protect Marriage Washington, which is sponsoring R-71, did not respond to telephone calls or an e-mail on Monday. But Gary Randall of the allied Faith and Freedom Network said by e-mail: “We are gathering and counting signatures. I think we are making good progress.”

Protect Marriage has raised just more than $20,000 for a campaign that so far has been waged mostly through churches, according to Stickney. Randall said the group is not anti-gay but pro-marriage. The group wants voters to reject Senate Bill 5866, the “everything but marriage” legislation that passed this year and adds about 250 rights of marriage for registered same-sex partners in Washington.

Defenders of the new state law, who call themselves Washington Families Standing Together, say they are ready to defend the third round of rights lawmakers added since creating the partners registry in 2007.

“It wouldn’t undo the first two years” of rights approved by state lawmakers, Washington Families spokesman Josh Friedes said. “But it would be devastating to families protected under the domestic partnership law. It would deny registered domestic partners essential protections that other families take for granted. What we are talking about are things like pension rights and family medical leave, a whole host of benefits for public sector employees, particularly important to first-responders, firefighters and paramedics.”

The first two domestic partner laws added a total of about 200 rights, including rights to visit partners in the hospital and rights dealing with end-of-life and property-transfer issues. But none of the laws addresses the more than 1,100 federal rights under tax codes, federal pensions, private-sector pensions and other laws that state legislation cannot affect, Friedes said.

The domestic partners law giving rights to same-sex couples also gives them to opposite-sex couples with one person age 62 or older.

The R-71 challenge in Washington appears to run against the preferences of a majority of voters – if the Washington Poll results of last October are an indication. That poll of 600 voters by a department of the University of Washington’s social-research school showed 37 percent of voters approve of giving “gay and lesbian couples” the same legal right to marry as heterosexual or “straight” couples; another 29 percent think same-sex couples should have the same legal rights as heterosexuals but that they not be called marriage.

Yet another 11 percent favored at least domestic partnerships, meaning that a supermajority of 77 percent favored at least domestic partnerships to provide some rights of marriage. Just 21 percent said there should be no legal recognition of same-sex couples. The poll had an error margin of plus or minus 4 percent.

David Ammons, spokesman for the Office of the Secretary of State, said Protect Marriage Washington made an appointment to turn in signatures at 2 p.m. Saturday. The agency will open its Capitol office specifically for that purpose, holding the petitions in its vault until it is able to send out the petitions for copying and electronic imaging next week, which is the first step toward counting signatures and checking their validity.

Once the imaging work is done, the agency could release the names of the R-71 signers to whosigned.org, a group that plans to publish the names.

Leaders at the state elections office have said previously they do not want to see voters threatened or harassed for signing petitions, but Ammons said the names of signers would be released if a lawful public-records request is submitted.

Washington Families has raised almost $34,630 for its campaign, according to campaign-finance data on file with the state Public Disclosure Commission.

Washington Families also released a list of 114 groups supporting its side, including the Washington State Council of Fire Fighters, the Children’s Alliance, Senior Services, and the Washington Education Association.

The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that a half-dozen states, including Massachusetts and Iowa, can issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, three jurisdictions recognize such marriages from other states, four states allow civil unions, and three states including Washington provide nearly all state-level rights to same-sex partners.

bsha...@theolympian.com

On the net
• For details on the Washington Families Standing Together campaign to protect the state’s domestic partnership rights, go to washingtonfamiliesstandingtogether.com.

• For a look at what other states are doing, go to the National Conference of State Legislature’s site at www.ncsl.org/IssuesResearch/HumanServices/SameSexMarriage/tabid/16430/Default.aspx.

Miss California lost crown, but gains a book deal
By The Associated Press

The former Miss California who was stripped of her title last month has a book deal.

Carrie Prejean will publish a memoir called “Still Standing.” Conservative book house Regnery Publishing said Monday that it will release the book.

Prejean believes her crown was taken because she said she opposed gay marriage. California pageant executive director Keith Lewis has said that Prejean was skipping Miss California USA events while speaking out against gay marriage at unsanctioned appearances.

Prejean was replaced by the Miss California pageant’s first runner-up, Tami Farrell. Farrell has also said she believes marriage should be between a man and a woman.

California bill would recognize same-sex marriages from other states.

By Susan Ferriss

Published: Tuesday, Jul. 21, 2009 –

A proposed law to recognize a growing number of same-sex marriages performed in other states and countries is winding its way through California’s Legislature.

Opponents of gay marriage say Senate Bill 54 violates Proposition 8, a voter initiative approved last November that amended the state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

The bill’s sponsor contends that his proposed changes to state family law are consistent with the California Supreme Court’s nuanced decision in May to uphold Proposition 8.

The court’s decision upheld the right of voters to bar gay couples from the label “marriage,” acknowledged SB 54′s author, Sen. Mark Leno, an openly gay Democrat from San Francisco.

But the court, Leno noted, also upheld an estimated 18,000 same-sex marriages performed in California before the gay-marriage ban was approved. Those marriages took place after the justices ruled in May 2008, in a separate decision, that California’s constitution at that time did not prevent same-sex marriage.

The high court did not address how to treat out-of-state marriages, explaining in a footnote that none of the parties involved in lawsuits represented such interests.

In that vacuum, Leno is arguing the Legislature’s role should be to clarify the rights of same-sex couples who live in California but wed elsewhere, or couples who might move or travel here in the future.

“Proposition 8 passes,” Leno said. “But there are two men who live in San Francisco who pay their taxes, work and got married legally in Massachusetts. What are they? Legal strangers? Clearly, there is a legislative need to clarify this.”

Frank Schubert, who was the campaign manager for Proposition 8, disagrees. He predicts a court battle over the law should it pass and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sign it.

“Our argument is that the people amended the constitution and do not approve of same-sex marriage,” he said.

There’s nothing in the court’s Proposition 8 decision, Schubert said, that should lead gay couples to think they can transfer marriage rights to California because they wed in another country or any of the six states that now allow gay marriage.

Leno’s bill would declare that any same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions before Proposition 8 be recognized on par with marriages that took place in California.

Same-sex couples married in other jurisdictions after Proposition 8 was approved would be afforded the same legal rights that marriage gives them here, but they could not use the word “marriage” to refer to their legal relationship.

The proposal now has sponsors in the Assembly, where on July 9 it gained approval in that house’s Judiciary Committee in a vote split along party lines – seven Democrats for and three Republicans against.

The bill will go to the Assembly floor before the Senate hears it.

Brad Dacus, president of the conservative Pacific Legal Institute, called Leno’s bill “another cheap attempt to undermine the electoral process” and said he’d join in a lawsuit against it.

Alex Ingersoll, a resident of San Francisco, said he’d be willing to go to court as well to defend recognition of his marriage to Martin Tannenbaum.

The pair married in Massachusetts during the window of time when gays were also allowed to marry in California.

“We just assumed that our marriage would be recognized here,” said Ingersoll, 62, who manages a law firm.

They chose to marry in Massachusetts, near the Pilgrim Monument, because they wanted to be with family members on the East Coast.

Ingersoll’s roots in Massachusetts go back to 1629, he said, and Tannenbaum lived in Boston for 30 years.

“I recognize that change often comes incrementally,” Ingersoll said. If he has to go to court to defend his marriage, he said, “I’m honored to be part of it.”

A same-sex couple in Sacramento with a stake in Leno’s bill got married in Canada in 2007 before gay marriage was legal in California.

John Hancock, president of the California Channel, which airs government hearings, is married to Juan Ramos, who restores historical documents for the California secretary of state’s office.

Ramos, 56, and Hancock, 55, wed in Vancouver, British Columbia, during a trip to celebrate Hancock’s recovery after a drunken driver nearly killed him.

“I had skin grafts, scars. I was broken. And to have someone want to marry you and show you that devotion, I can’t tell you what that does for you,” Hancock said. “I want to demonstrate to people that I value my commitment.”

Skagit County PFLAG
hosts their meetings at The RainBow Center in Skagit County at 1013 Polte Rd. Central United Methodist Church
in Safe Room Sedro Woolley Wa. They are also working to establish an LGBTQ library with books and
articles and DVD-LGBTQ/movies for rent to our community and allies.

We need some volunteers, men women or children!
Email contact: zool...@aol.com
facebook.com/Ronnie Lidstrom
RainBow Center phone # for now is 360-826-5187 if interested in volunteering at The Rainbow Center.