Washington Court Upholds Gay Marriage Ban 5-4
Olympia - The Washington Supreme Court upheld the state’s ban on gay marriage July 26, dealing the gay rights movement its second major defeat in less than a month in another liberal-leaning state that had been regarded as a promising battleground.
  In a 5-4 decision, the court said lawmakers have the power to restrict marriage to a man and a woman, and it left intact the state’s 1998 Defense of Marriage Act. Earlier this month, New York’s high court dealt gay couples a similar blow when it upheld a state law against gay marriage.
  The July 26 ruling surprised and delighted gay-marriage opponents, given Washington state’s liberal politics, particularly in Seattle. “This is more than we could have imagined. We are shocked, and pleasantly shocked. We were prepared for the other direction,” said Jon Russell, field director for the Faith and Freedom Network.
  Disappointment was perhaps greatest in Seattle, home of the state’s most visible gay community. “There aren’t words to describe how hurt people in the gay and lesbian community are. There’s a lot of tears and a lot of anger right now. Emotion is raw,” state Rep. Ed Murray said. Murray is a Seattle Democrat and one of four openly gay state lawmakers.
  The state Supreme Court overruled two lower courts that had found the ban violated the Washington Constitution’s “privileges and immunities” section. The gay-marriage ban “is constitutional because the Legislature was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to survival,” Justice Barbara Madsen wrote in the controlling opinion.
  However, Madsen and other members of the majority invited the Legislature to take another look at the “clear hardship” that the ban causes for same-sex couples.
  In a dissent, Justice Mary Fairhurst said the majority improperly bowed to public opinion. “Unfortunately, the (majority) are willing to turn a blind eye to DOMA’s discrimination because a popular majority still favors that discrimination,” she wrote.
  The 19 gay and lesbian couples who sued to overturn the law were dismayed by the ruling. “I believe that our constitution should treat all of its citizens the same, and in this case the court was willing to treat my family differently than other families,” said Brenda Bauer of Seattle, who sued along with her partner, Celia Castle. “Today’s a pretty sad day for our family.”
  Leaders in the Legislature did not commit themselves to any course of action. “Just as the public is divided over the issue, so is the Legislature,” Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown said.
  After years of declining to state her personal views on the matter, Governor Chris Gregoire accepted the decision but then said that the state should provide gay and lesbian couples with the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexuals, but without actual marriage.
  “The Supreme Court has ruled, and we must accept their decision whether we agree with it or not,”Gregoire began, then added, “As to my personal beliefs, Mike and I received the sacrament of marriage in the Catholic faith. State government provided us with certain rights and responsibilities, but the state did not marry us.”
  “I believe the state should provide these same rights and responsibilities to all citizens,” the governor said. “I also believe the sacrament of marriage is between two people and their faith; it is not the business of the state.”
  In Seattle, King County Executive Ron Sims, who backed the push to legalize marriage for same-sex couples, said his next step would be to press for civil unions. They give gay couples many of the rights that come with marriage and are allowed in Vermont and Connecticut. “There’s still hope in the long run,” Sims said. “I still dream for a just society.”
  Forty-five states have laws banning marriage between same-sex couples or limiting marriage to between a man and a woman. Massachusetts is still the only state that allows same-sex couples to wed.
  In other recent rulings on the issue, courts reinstated voter-approved bans on gay marriage in Nebraska and Georgia, and Tennessee’s Supreme Court ruled that voters there should have a say on allowing marriage for same-sex couples.

Wisconsin Ban Opponents Expand Outreach, Launch New TV Ads
Madison - New offices, new TV ads and outreach activities are marking the final 100 days of the campaign to defeat the proposed state constitutional ban on marriage and civil unions.  New Fair Wisconsin offices have been opened in Eau Claire and LaCrosse in the last ten days, and a storefront location will open on Madison’s State Street shortly. The new sites join the Green Bay, Madison and Milwaukee operations.
  “We’re growing exponentially every day as more people understand what’s at stake,” Fair Wisconsin Campaign Manager Mike Tate said July 26. “In recent weeks, we walked in the Marshfield Dairy parade, talked with voters at the Fond du Lac County Fair and this week alone, we’ll canvass in nearly 20 communities – everywhere from Menomonie to Sheboygan.”
  Fair Wisconsin continues to build on its 28 community Action Networks, coordinators in every county of the state, nearly 7000 volunteers and unprecedented faith organizing.
  “Through these new offices and online organizing, thousands of us are out talking about the ban every day--from church meetings in Green Bay to the Rock County 4-H Fair. These are people from different communities, different backgrounds and different faiths who are all working together to defeat this amendment,” Tate said, “and it’s efforts like these that will ensure Wisconsin votes no in November.”
  On the media front, it was another week, another new ad. The thus far one-sided mass media dialogue on the proposed amendment banning legal recognition of all unmarried couples continued July 24, when Fair Wisconsin began airing its second ad in three media markets covering nearly all of greater Wisconsin outside of the Madison/Milwaukee metro area.
  The thirty second ad reinforces the arguments made earlier in July to viewers in Eau Claire, the Fox Cities, Green Bay, LaCrosse, Stevens Point, Wausau and surrounding areas about the  the November 7 ballot measure.   The ad explains that although voters will hear a lot about gay marriage, the ban is about much more than just gay marriage.
  The ad repeats the explanation that the second sentence of the ban will outlaw civil unions and domestic partnerships for all unmarried couples - gay or straight - and the critical legal protections that would be available. “That so-called ban on gay marriage - looks can be very deceiving,” the narrator in the ad warns.
  The second ad eschews directing viewers with Internet access to the website devoted to opposing the ban: www.GetTheFactsWi.com, also affiliated with Fair Wisconsin.  The new ads continue to supplement the work of a reported 7,000-plus volunteers canvassing door to door, phoning and speaking out to educate likely voters statewide about the far-reaching consequences of the amendment and to encourage them to vote “No.” Last weekend, volunteers knocked on thousands of likely voters’ doors or spoke with people at fairs and farmer’s markets in almost two dozen cities and towns throughout the state.
    The “don’t be deceived” message in the new ad appears to indirectly respond to a recent press release issued by the “Vote Yes On Marriage” campaign. On July 14, Julaine Appling issued a press release claiming the July 10 ad contained “outrageous lies,” and took offense with even the “GetTheFactsWI” website name. However, the press release avoided directly challenging any of the substantive points of the Fair Wisconsin ad, referring instead to amendment language in a state where no court challenge has yet surfaced. Courts in Ohio, Michigan and Utah are currently considering a variety of issues triggered by the broad, vague language of the second sentences in those states’ ratified amendments.
  On July 27 Fair Wisconsin also previewed a third ad on the organization’s website, featuring “person the street” interviews with a variety of people trying to read and interpret the amendment language. The preview was part of a statewide email and media release “to raise at least $10,000 in online contributions to put this on the air in western, central, and northeastern Wisconsin.”
 “We decided to take cameras into streets around the state to find out how people react when they read the text of the ban,” the press release said. “When people actually take the time to read both sentences of the amendment, they immediately wonder what it all means. They begin to suspect there’s a whole lot more going on.”
  Ban supporters appear to be focusing on behind the scenes efforts with a claimed 5,000 faith communities “representing well over two million” congregants, according to the July 24 “Wisconsin Family Connection” broadcast by Family Research Institute of Wisconsin director Julaine Appling.
  Appling also addressed apparent concerns about dissent over the amendment issue within those congregations. “These pastors have been undaunted in the face of congregants who disagree with them and threaten to leave, taking their money and influence with them,” Appling said.
  Appling also addressed apparent concern among some church members about jeopardizing their tax-exempt status.  Appling saluted pastors who “aren’t shirking their God-given responsibility as their community’s moral gatekeeper just because someone says, ‘What if we lose our tax-exempt status? Or what if gifts to our church aren’t tax deductible any more?’”
  FRI’s political arm for the ban battle - Vote Yes On Marriage - has yet to do more than issue an occasional press release. The pro-amendment committee reported to the Wisconsin Election Board that it had raised only $2,454 in donations and other contributions in the last fiscal quarter.
  That contrasts with Fair Wisconsin’s $1.3 million raised, that included a $275,000 in cumulative contributions by Madison philanthropist Dale Leibowitz. Other major donations to the group included $80,000 from the Human Rights Campaign, $25,000 from the state teachers’ union and $25,000 from Esmond Harmsworth, a Boston literary agent.

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Activist Group Admonishes Gay Leaders For “Tunnel Vision” On Marriage
New York - Hoping to move beyond the narrow confines of marriage politics in the United States today, a coalition of leading lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists have issued a major statement titled, Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families and Relationships.
  Endorsed by over 250 notable signatories, the July 27 statement offered a new vision for securing governmental and private institutional recognition of diverse partnerships, households, kinship relationships and families. Signatories of the statement included Tales Of The City author Armistead Maupin, Columbia law professor Kendall Thomas, American University Law Professor Nancy Polikoff, Terry Boggis the director of the family program at the New York LGBT Community Center, and Joseph DeFilippis of Queers for Economic Justice.
  While the document supports efforts to secure marriage equality for LGBT couples, it also states that “marriage is not the only worthy form of family or relationship, and it should not be legally and economically privileged above all others”. The signers say that “the struggle for marriage rights should be part of a larger effort to strengthen the stability and security of diverse households and families”.
  Authored by a group of nearly twenty LGBT and queer organizers, scholars, lawyers, funders and writers, Beyond Same-Sex Marriage advocates for a flexible set of economic benefits and options, regardless of sexual orientation, race, gender/gender identity, class, or citizenship status. The document calls for the legal recognition for a wide range of relationships, households and families - regardless of kinship or conjugal status.
  The statement also endorses access for all, regardless of marital or citizenship status, to vital government support programs including but not limited to health care, housing, Social Security and pension plans, disaster recovery assistance, unemployment insurance and welfare assistance.
  The document also calls for separation of church and state in all matters, including regulation and recognition of relationships, households and families, and “freedom from state regulation of our sexual lives and gender choices, identities and expression.”
  Authors of the statement observed that the LGBT movement’s focus on marriage equality as a stand-alone issue has “left us isolated and vulnerable to a virulent backlash.” They back same-sex marriage equality as a way to secure rights and benefits for some LGBT families, but say that the LGBT movement must “respond to the full scope of the conservative marriage agenda by building alliances across issues and constituencies”.
  Joseph N. DeFilippis, Executive Director of Queers for Economic Justice, noted that the document was signed on to by non-gay celebrities, as well as academics, LGBT activists and organizers, lawyers, and world-renowned artists. “(It) speaks to the great hunger for a strategy that is different, and more expansive,” DeFilippis said. “It is obvious that people feel that our current strategies have failed to recognize the ways in which we actually lead our real lives, and the protections that all people deserve, regardless of whether they are coupled.”
  The Beyond Same-Sex Marriage statement noted that “U.S. Census findings reveal that a majority of people do not live in traditional nuclear families.” The statement cited single parent households, senior citizens,  blended and extended families, adult children caring for their parents, close friends or siblings living together and care-givers for those living with extended illness as constituencies who “will be helped by separating basic forms of legal and economic recognition from the requirement of marital and conjugal relationship.”
  “For the African-American community, marriage has never been the only way we make or define our families,” Kenyon Farrow, a black gay activist and signatory said. “Beyond Same-Sex Marriage can shape policies to give dignity and protection to all of our families.”
  The full text of Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Relationships and Families - along with a current list of signatories - is available at www.beyondmarriage.org. 

Disgraced Closet Case Spokane Mayor Dead Of Colon Cancer
Seattle - The former mayor of Spokane, Washington, who was booted out of office last year after a sex scandal, died on July 22 of cancer. James West, 55, died at the University of Washington Medical Center here with his family and pastor by his side, his family said, according to a medical center spokesman.
  According to The Spokesman-Review, the Spokane newspaper that ran articles that led to West’s ouster, West died after a three-year battle with colon cancer. In December, 2005 Spokane residents voted to recall the conservative politician following reports that he had offered city jobs to young men in hopes of having sex with them.
  The former Boy Scout leader had been a prominent Republican political figure and leading state legislator until 2003, when he resigned to run for mayor of Washington’s second-largest city. While a legislator, West had co-sponsored a bill that would have made it a crime for unmarried teenagers to have sex, and often opposed gay rights proposals.
  The Spokesman-Review said West trawled gay chat rooms and websites, quoting three young men who said they had communicated over the Internet with West and had been offered city jobs or positions by him.
  Confronted with the reports, West acknowledged he had led a double life but denied offering anything in exchange for sex. He also denied misusing his city-owned computer during the Internet exchanges or for downloading pornography.

Report Claims U.S. Gay Rights Violations
New York -A new report has alleged the United States isn’t doing enough to protect its gay citizens from discrimination and abuse and asks the United Nations to intercede. The report, released July 17 by the human rights organization Global Rights, came the same day that U.S. officials were to be questioned by the U.N. Human Rights Committee in Geneva.
  The report, titled “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Intersex Human Rights in the United States” could spur U.N. officials to grill the U.S. delegation about gay rights and protections.
  The committee questioning, scheduled to occur July 17 and 18, is the first inquiry of its kind regarding human rights in the U.S. since 1995, according to Mark Bromley, a Global Rights spokesperson. Questions were expected to focus on war-related issues, like the handling of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, but gay rights advocates hoped U.N. officials would give some attention to their issues.
  “What we’re hoping is this [report] will convince [the U.N. Human Rights Committee] to ask probing questions of the official U.S. delegation about human rights as it applies to LGBT Americans,” Bromley said. “In particular, we’re trying to push the committee to ask the U.S. government how it plans to deal with gaps in the legal framework for LGBT Americans.”
  The report alleges several “major gaps” in protections for gay Americans. It says that “standardized non-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression” are needed at the federal level. The report also notes that 21 states, and federal codes, still lack hate crime statutes that cover real or perceived sexual orientation. “The failure of many states and the federal government to add sexual orientation to the categories of bias motivated hate crimes,” the report said, “creates the impression that those crimes are less serious than other bias motivated crimes.”
  The Global Rights report asked the Human Rights Committee to hold the U.S. responsible for “human rights violations” including the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy barring open gays from military service.
  The committee was also asked to support Global Rights’ assertion that gay rights and protections “must become an urgent priority in the fight against intolerance in the United States.”
  Bromley claimed U.N. officials appeared ready to criticize U.S. claims that ample rights and protections already are in place. “There’s a sense that the committee will issue a fairly strong rebuke,” he said, “but whether the U.S. will take it to heart is another question.”

First Openly-Gay Legislators Elected in Alabama & Oklahoma
Montogomery, Oklahoma City - A long time AIDS activist and a funeral director will make history in their respective states of Alabama and Oklahoma as the first elected openly gay member of their state legislatures. Patricia Todd and Al McCaffery won recent primary races and are unopposed in the November general elections.
  Patricia Todd made history on July 18 when voters in Alabama’s 54th legislative district voted to send the Democrat to the State House. Todd led community activist Gaynell Hendricks by a scant 59 votes in the runoff race. With 100% of boxes reporting, the unofficial count showed Todd had 1,173 votes, or 51%, to Hendricks 1,114 or 49%.   
  Hendricks had held a large lead earlier in the evening and appeared to be heading to victory, but Todd moved narrowly into the lead as late votes were counted.With no Republican opponent on the November ballot, Todd will become the first openly gay or lesbian legislator in Alabama.
  Todd will replace retiring veteran legislator George Perdue. Todd, 50, currently serves as the associate director of AIDS Alabama. She said being gay was not a part of her campaign, nor was the fact that she is white and was seeking election in a majority black district.
  “I concentrated on talking about the district,” Todd said, referring to the racially and economically diverse district which stretches from a suburban community through Birmingham and includes some of the city’s richest and poorest areas. “Other people have focused on the gay issue or my being white, but that has not been a part of my platform. The issue to me is poverty in Alabama.”
  Howard Bayless, board chair for the LGBT advocacy group Equality Alabama said Todd’s campaign was not about her being gay. “She’s an incredible candidate and she has had an incredible message and it’s been an incredible journey for all of us,” Bayless said. “This is totally about who’s the best candidate.”
  Todd led the June 6 primary, but did not receive the more than 50% vote total needed to avoid the runoff with Hendricks. Two of the other three candidates in the primary endorsed Todd, raising expectations for her in the runoff. Todd also received the endorsement of the national Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund.
  In Oklahoma City Democrat Al McAffrey won a three-candidate primary race July 25 with 51%of the vote, avoiding a runoff in the House District 88 seat in the heart of Oklahoma City. No Republicans filed for the seat.
  McAffrey, a longtime Oklahoma City funeral director and a Navy veteran, said he didn’t hide his sexual orientation, but didn’t make it the focus of his campaign. The District 88 seat was held by longtime state Representative Debbie Blackburn, who is being forced out of office because of term limits.

Colorado Gay Domestic Partnership Campaign Going To The Dogs
Colorado Springs -  Opposing groups working to sway voter opinion on same-sex unions have turned their campaigns into a true dogfight. The battle between Norman versus Sherman also pits two Colorado-based institutions against each other: the gay-friendly Gill Foundation and James Dobson’s Focus On The Family.
  In late June, pictures of a little Brittany spaniel named Norman began appearing on Colorado Springs light posts, billboards and television ads, uttering a one-syllable “Moo” instead of a “Woof.”
  It was the Gill Foundation’s $900,00 campaign to boost its message that gays and lesbians are “born different” and don’t really choose their sexual preference. That message was expanded on www.borndifferent.org.
  Filmed locally, the “Born Different” campaign has told the story of Norman, who differs from his littermates in one way: He moos. Five 30-second television spots traced the floppy-eared protagonist’s journey from pariah pup through reparative therapy (a bulldog vainly tries to teach Norman to bark) to adored adoptee of a woman who rescues him from the pound.
  The borndifferent wesite’s narrative makes the campaign’s premise explicit: “You can’t change the way you were born. If you disagree, ask yourself this one simple question: When did you choose to be straight?” The campaign targets neither religious fundamentalists nor gay-rights activists, but a “fat middle zone” of heterosexuals who have never seriously considered the nature of sexual orientation.
  “Obviously, Norman is a metaphor,” campaign spokesman Bobby Rauzon said. “Too often, these types of discussions [about homosexuality] are overcome by political agendas, or it becomes an issue of marriage or religion ... We’re interested in having people think of this in personal terms.”
  No sooner had Norman mooed than the machinery of Focus on the Family whirred to life to counter the Gill message. James Dobson’s Colorado Springs-based ministry stands firmly against same-sex marriage, gay rights initiatives and, now, mooing puppies.
  On July 17, Focus unveiled its new “straight” puppy website, www.no-moo-lies.com, featuring a basset hound named Sherman, who barks as biology intended. During a news conference, a Focus employee dressed in a dog suit, who serves as a mascot at the group’s visitors center, made a brief appearance. “Dogs aren’t born mooing, and people aren’t born gay,” a Focus news release stated.
  The dueling doggies were dropped into the city that gays and lesbians have nicknamed “Ground Zero” for being the birthplace of Amendment 2, the 1992 measure that banned anti-discrimination laws for homosexuals. The amendment was approved by state voters but declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996.

UK Report: Gay Men Earn 6% Less Than Their Straight Co-Workers
London - Gay men face considerably lower wages than their heterosexual colleagues and are less likely to be in work, despite the introduction of a law to prevent discrimination against sexual orientation in the workplace more than two and a half years ago, a report said July 28.
  Men in same-sex relationships were paid 6% less than their heterosexual counterparts and were 3% less likely to be employed, according to an article in the Centre for Economic Performance’s CentrePiece magazine. However, lesbian women in couples were paid about 11% more than heterosexual equivalents and were 12% more likely to be in work, partly due to child care commitments heterosexual women might have, the report said.
  Workplace inequality worsened for gay men and lesbians if they were below 40 or employed in the private sector. The pay gap for gay male couples widened to 7% if they worked in the private sector and to 8% if they are aged 40 or younger. Lesbians in couples still earned more than heterosexuals, but the premium was pared back to 9% if they were below 40 and even further to 6% if they worked in the private sector.
  Raw data also found that gay couples were typically more educated and more likely to live in London, reasons for suggesting their pay might be higher, but once differences in age, education, race and regional settlement were taken into account, gaps in hourly wage and employment were discovered.

George Michael Caught In The Bushes Again, Will Sue Photographer
London - George Michael is planning legal action against a photographer who snapped him cruising for sex on Hampstead Heath, he revealed July 28. The singer believes he is a victim of harassment and that he should not have to worry about who is watching him in the early hours.
  He has no plans, however, to take action against the News of the World, which  printed pictures of the star returning to his Mercedes coupe on the heath after reportedly picking up a 58-year-old jobless van driver from Brighton on July 23.
  Michael told BBC News 24 that he was sick of coverage of his private life. “I have done nothing this year against the law, I’ve done nothing to encourage talk about my sex life,” he said. The question is not whether I bring it to the public, but it is why do I have to defend it in public, because I don’t want to talk about it at all.”
  Michael claims that he unashamed about cruising. “I don’t know anybody who actually goes to Hampstead Heath at two o’clock in the morning for anything other than playing about with another member of the human race. If they are there, then they are a little bit strange or they just don’t know the local area. A very large part of the male population, gay or straight, totally understands the idea of anonymous and no-strings sex,” the singer said.
  Michael, who begins a 25th anniversary tour in September, has been upset by newspaper reports that followed the tabloid story. After one suggested his boyfriend, Kenny Goss, had called off their planned civil partnership, he felt compelled on July 25 to ring up a popular British television talk show. He denied the suggestion and revealed he had spent more than a million pounds on a tenth anniversary present for Goss.
  In the BBC interview Michael says he is suing the photographer “because they’re [photographers] harassing me and I should not have to worry about who’s watching me at 2.30 in the morning.”
  It has been a bumpy year for Michael. He was in the news in April after he allegedly struck three cars with his Range Rover before driving off, and a month before that he was cautioned by police for possessing marijuana after they found him asleep at the wheel of his car.
  Nor is it his first cruising scandal. He came out to the world in 1998 after he was caught by police in a Los Angeles park toilet. He was fined and ordered to carry out community service for lewd behavior.

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