Modest Turnout, Mixed Messages For Madison Equality March

Madison - Sunny skies and brisk 20 degree temperatures greeted a crowd estimated between 100 to 200 marching for LGBT equality and more here December 5. Inspired by the National Equality March last October, Unified For Equality (UFE), a coalition of Madison and southern Wisconsin LGBT groups, organized the march and rally on the Capitol steps as a local follow-up to the Washington DC event. And, as often happens in coalition building, messages at the rally became mixed.

Quest correspondent Steve Vargas pegged the total at a little over one hundred, while rally organizers offered a more optimistic estimate of about 200. The march also briefly interrupted a Fair Wisconsin board of directors meeting when it passed the statewide organization’s State Street offices shortly after Noon. One board member told Quest the marchers “numbered about 120.”

In addition to calling attention to the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court hearing of McConkey lawsuit challenging that validity of the 2006 “Marriage Protection” Amendment referendum, the rally’s focus expanded to include speakers advocating universal health care and protesting the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - especially President Obama’s December 1 decision to add 30,000 troops to the latter battle theater. One chant called on the President to act directly: “Hey Obama, let mama marry mama!” marchers shouted.

The Unified for Equality coalition included the Madison Area Transgender Association; MATC Pride Alliance; the Madison branches of the International Socialist Organization; LGBTI Equality NOW at UW-Madison; OutReach/OutThere of Madison; P.E.A.C.E. at UW-Whitewater and others. Organizers made heavy use of email text and the social networking site Facebook to promote the event. UFE spokesperson Jessie Otradovec reported that she was happy with the turnout, though it was only a third of the total that had committed to attend on Facebook.

Among Unified for Equality’s stated demands are equal protection in all matters governed by civil law in all fifty states, the overturning of the state same-sex marriage ban in Wisconsin, the granting of national anti-discrimination rights via 14th Amendment and an executive order to overturn the “Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell” policy for military personnel.
According to the UFE press release that announced the march, the LGBT community “lacks everyday rights in addition to the marriage right and refuses to accept the status quo any longer. Unified for Equality works without pause to attain the rights guaranteed to us by the 14th Amendment, but not extended to us as a group. We now demand, not request, equal rights for every citizen under the law & the Constitution of the Unites States of America.”
Los Angeles - The Episcopal Diocese of Los Anges.

Episcopal Church Elects Second Gay Bishop

Los Angeles - The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles has elected the second openly gay bishop in the national church and the world Anglican fellowship. The Rev. Mary Glasspool of Baltimore won election as assistant bishop in Los Angeles in voting December 5. The first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, was consecrated in 2003.

Glasspool told delegates after her election that she was excited about the future of the national church. “I’m very excited about the future of the whole Episcopal Church and I see the Diocese of Los Angeles leading the way into that future. But for just for this moment, let me say again, thank you, and thanks be to our loving and supporting God, a surprising God,” Glasspool told delegates to the diocese’s annual convention just after they elected her on the seventh balloting for one of two open suffragan, or assistant, bishop positions.

Referring to the current church season of Advent, a time of anticipation of the birth of Christ, Glasspool said, “This is my 56th Advent and I think I finally know the meaning of the word ‘wait.’ “ The delegates laughed.

Ordained in 1981, Glasspool served in parishes in Philadelphia and Boston and Annapolis before becoming canon to the bishops in 2001. She has served on the diocese’s Standing Committee, the board of Episcopal Community Services of Maryland, and has been elected four times to head the deputation to General Convention.

Glasspool, 55, said she met her partner, Becki Sander, while working in Massachusetts, and the two have been together since 1988.

Reverend Glasspool needs the approval of a majority of national church leaders before she can be consecrated, but her election may spark yet another row. The election of Robinson already has deeply fractured the global Anglican Communion. The Episcopal Church is the Anglican body in the United States. Theologically conservative Episcopalians formed a rival church earlier this year, called the Anglican Church in North America.

World & National News:

Imminent Tragedy in Uganda: Death for Homosexuality

American Evangelicals and GOP Senators May Have Hand in "Kill The Gays"Law

Kampala - Life for Uganda’s estimated half-million gay and lesbian men and women on a good day is considered horrible by any human rights standards. They currently can be jailed for years under some of the harshest anti-sodomy laws on the African continent.

However when the “Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009” currently before the Ugandan Parliament passes - likely in the next few days according to the latest reports - they will face a life in prison or even death just for being identified as being gay. Moreover, anyone who knows of gay Ugandan and fails to report it to the police within 24 hours also can be imprisoned for three years. Moreover, under the bill’s wide-reaching provisions, gay Ugandans who flee the country can be extradited from anywhere in the world to face prosecution, imprisonment and death just for being gay.

The current bill calls for a lifetime imprisonment on conviction of homosexuality, and creates a new category called “aggravated homosexuality” with provisions for the death penalty upon conviction. Among the factors which can determine “aggravated homosexuality” is if one partner is HIV-positive. The bill also mandates HIV testing to confirm the suspicion of “aggravated homosexuality.”

The specific language of Section 3 (2) states: “A person who commits the offence of aggravated homosexuality shall be liable on conviction to suffer death.”

The bill also includes a complete ban on all activities and organizations that could be construed as “promoting homosexuality,” effectively eliminating the fundamental human rights for gay and lesbian Ugandans. Leaders of any organization that advocates on behalf of gay citizens face fines and imprisonment for up to seven years.

While it is clear that much of the the motivation for the Ugandan proposal comes from long standing cultural taboos and a widely-held belief that homosexuality is a “Western disease,” it has become clear in recent weeks that American evangelical Christians have both encouraged and facilitated the drafting of the draconian legislation.

A key episode in the trail of evidence occurred in March 2009 in Kampala - the Ugandan - that brought three well-known anti-gay Christian activists from the United States. And if the proposed bill sounds a lot like the 1930’s anti-Jewish laws that preceded the Final Solution in Nazi Germany, Uganda’s LGBT community can point to one American anti-gay agitator who considers himself an expert in the Third Reich and the homosexuals who allegedly led it.

Scott Lively, author of “The Pink Swastika” and currently operating the Abiding Truth Ministries, Don Schmierer of Exodus International and the International Healing Foundation, and Lee Brundidge, who works with Extreme Prophetic, were invited to the conference of the Family Life Network of Uganda to help organize what Lively called “an effective social and political force” to combat “anti-family Western agitators.” Those agitators, he said, are led by gay activists in Europe and the United States who “plan to spread sexual anarchy throughout the world under the guise of ‘human rights’ and ‘family planning.’ “

Veteran Wisconsin gay activists will recall that self-ordained “pastor” Ralph Ovadal of the now-defunct Wisconsin Christians United brought Lively to the state in the mid-1990’s to promote his book, which claims that the Holocaust was a gay plot. Key sources for Lively’s widely-discredited “research” were German language books created by the predecessor agency of the U.S. CIA as part of a wartime disinformation campaign that sought to discredit the Hitler regime by “proving” the Fuehrer and his top henchmen were homosexuals.

In their talks to the conference of parents, politicians and educators, the trio provided a host of other anti-gay talking points as well. They said homosexuals are “out to destroy the country,” according to reports from the scene, and they said that legalizing homosexuality is akin to legalizing “the molestation of children or having sex with animals.” Lively was also invited to address the Ugandan Parliament. By his own account, his hosts “were very pleased.”

Following the conference, the Family Life Network and its political allies drafted and introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which aims to “protect the traditional family by prohibiting any form of sexual relations between persons of the same sex.”

When his connection to the bill introduced last October became established Lively attempted to distance himself from the legislation. “I do not now and have never supported incarceration for homosexuals and was in Uganda to advocate for treatment of homosexuals as an alternative to incarceration, similar to what benefited me when arrested for drunk driving years ago in my pre-Christian days,” he said.

However, in writing last June about his Uganda trip, Lively boasted that he encouraged Ugandans to maintain a “sufficient legal deterrent to prevent the international ‘gay’ juggernaut from homosexualizing the society.” Also, in a November 27 interview with the right-wing religious LifeSiteNews website, Lively again blamed gay men in the West for prompting the new law. He repeated that he thought the current bill too “harsh” but he defended the criminalization of homosexuality.

Lively’s “deterrant” rhetoric has been consistent for decades. During an appearance at one of Ovadal’s mid-90’s “Truth Tour” stops in Plover, WI Lively called for the re-shaping of Wisconsin and American statutes to reflect Biblical law to prevent the further “homosexualization” of American society. Anti-gay fundamentalist extremists have consistently called for imprisonment and death for homosexual acts.

As tempting as it would be to mark a particularly notorious anti-gay activist such as Lively as the key source behind the Ugandan “kill the gays” law, more than a handful of Christian activists from America have had a part in the genesis of the bill. Many leading U.S. Christians - including Obama favorite Rick Warren - have long standing ties to churches in Uganda, and appear to have had a hand in promoting the policies that culminated in the new anti-homosexuality bill.

Warren has had a long association with Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa, who has endorsed the proposed legislation. Ssempa has made multiple appearances at Warren’s Saddleback Church in California and has been embraced publicly by both Warren and his wife. Warren has - during appearances in Uganda - called the country a “purpose driven nation,” echoing the rhetoric of the preacher’s top-selling American book “A Purpose Driven Life.”

Warren attempted to distance himself from the Ugandan pastor in a recent Newsweek interview, but did not disavow the legislation itself. “It is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations.,” he said.

Many top U.S. politicians also are invested in Uganda. The Bush administration liked to present the country as a model of pro-abstinence, anti-condom AIDS prevention policies. Author Jeff Sharlet recently revealed close ties between The Family -- the secretive network of conservative American Christians that includes leading Senators James Inhofe, Sam Brownback, Tom Coburn and Mike Enzi -- and the Ugandan legislator, David Bahati, who introduced the tough new anti-gay bill.

As horrendous as the Ugandan may be, it is only part of a larger effort by right-wing fundamentalists to ramp up anti-gay hatred on the African subcontinent. A 42-page report, “Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia,” released November 18 by Political Research Associates (PRA), has documented just how extensive - and influential - the Religious Right campaign has been to date.

“Just as the United States and other northern societies routinely dump our outlawed or expired chemicals, pharmaceuticals, machinery, and cultural detritus on African and other Third World countries, we now export a political discourse and public policies our own society has discarded as outdated and dangerous,” Tarso Luís Ramos, head of the PRA, wrote in the foreword to the report. “Africa’s anti-gay campaigns are to a substantial degree made in the U.S.A.”

Worldwide opposition, particularly from the United Kingdom and Sweden - which has threatened to cut off millions in humanitarian aid - has thus far not deterred Ugandans supporting the legislation.

“Homosexuality will not be promoted, encouraged or supported in Uganda,” Ethics And Integrity Minister Buturo said in response to a publication of Sweden’s threat in th Kampala newspaper Daily Monitor.

“We should remind them (the donors) that there is integrity to be defended and threats are not the way to go,”Buturo told journalists at the Uganda Media Centre. “If one chooses to withdraw their aid, they are free because Ugandans do not want to engage in anal sex. We do not care.”

 

Baldwin & Polis: Three Pro-Gay Bills Close to Passage

San Francisco - Two of Congress’s three openly-gay members told a conference of gay politicians here December 5 that the U.S. House is poised to pass bills to provide health coverage for the same-sex partners of gay federal workers and to protect all gay and transgender employees from job discrimination.
Representatives Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) and Jared Polis (D-Colorado) said they expect a domestic partner benefits bill to come up for a vote by the end of the year and the employment bill to reach the floor early in 2010.

The lawmakers are also confident that the House will include in the annual military spending bill next year a provision to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that bans gay men and women from serving in the U.S. military. According to Baldwin and Polis, all three measures willface a harder time in the Senate following the death of longtime ally Senator Edward Kennedy.

“I’m hopeful we will see those three pieces of legislation make it all the way, or damn close,” Baldwin said.who She is the sponsor of the federal worker domestic partner bill.
Office of Personnel Management director John Berry, the highest ranking gay appointee in the Obama administration, told the conference that the President strongly supports all of gay rights measures before the Congress.

Including transgender workers as part of the legislation to ban job discrimination and lifting the military ban on gay service members may especially meet opposition in Congress, Berry said. But he said that with a Democrat in the White House and Democratic majorities controlling the House and the Senate, victories were “within our grasp.”

“The tide of public opinion is in our favor. The forces of intolerance are on the run. We have a president who has been clear in his support for our community and in his commitment to our equality,” Berry said. “This is the best opportunity we will ever have as a community, and shame on us if we don’t succeed.”

Although gay activists have criticized President Obama in the past year for not moving more quickly on their concerns, both Polis and Baldwin said the pressure should be directed at Congress because the president can not act alone.

“LGBT leaders need to be focusing in on the people we need to win over instead of just trying to talk to our friends and being angry they haven’t delivered,” Polis said.

 

Meredith Baxter: “Yes, I’m A Lesbian”

New York - “Family Ties” actress Meredith Baxter made the media rounds December 2 confirming the rumors that she is a lesbian. “It was a later in life recognition,” the actress explained to Matt Lauer on the “Today” show.

The National Enquirer recently ran a story about Baxter being spotted on a lesbian cruise through the Caribbean with a “female friend,” which was then picked up by celebrity blogs. As a result, the 62-year-old decided to tell her fans herself.

“I didn’t want some tabloid to take the story and make it up,” she told Lauer. “I wanted it to be in my own words. I’ve always “lived a very private life. To come out and disclose stuff is very ‘antithetical’ to who I am.”

Baxter was also interviewed on Sirius XM Radio’s “The Frank DeCaro Show.” She told DeCaro that she knew she could be outed when she went on the cruise with her partner, Nancy Locke, but she went anyway.

“We live a very open life at home,” Baxter said. “Anyone who’s a friend of mine, anyone who knows and cares about me knows. It’s no secret that I’m gay, but it has been to the greater world. “The reason I’m here [on the show] is because I’m saying, yes, I’m a lesbian.”

Baxter also told People magazine that she has been in a four-year relationship with Locke, who works as a building contractor. Baxter has been dating women for the past seven years, and “the thought of being gay never crossed my mind,” she said.

The actress was married three times before, during which she “was never comfortable with herself,” she told People. Now, she feels like she’s “being honest for the first time.”
Baxter has also come clean to her five kids, according to People. Her 25-year-old son Peter told the magazine that he “just couldn’t stop smiling, because she finally figured it out.”

State News:

Shameless Hussies Take On “River Wife”

Madison - The Shameless Hussies Book Club will meet to discuss “The River Wife” by Jonis Agee on Monday, December 14, beginning at 6:30 PM at A Room of One’s Own, 307 E. Johnson St. here.

“The River Wife” is the acclaimed 2007 best seller that offers a sweeping, panoramic story that ranges from 1811 to the 1930s. In 1811, when a great earthquake rocks the peaceful cove of New Madrid, Missouri, Annie Lark finds herself pinned under the massive roof beam of her home. With little hope of freeing their trapped daughter, and the river rapidly rising, the family says a final, tearful goodbye and leaves the young woman to her fate.

Within days, French fur trapper Jacques Ducharme, out scavenging nearby abandoned houses, rescues the girl from the brink of death and nurses her back to health. Soon, Annie learns to love this strong, brooding man and resolves to live out her life as his River Wife. Together they build a new community called “Jacques’ Landing.”
More than a century later, in 1930, Hedie Rails comes to Jacques’ Landing to marry Clement Ducharme, a direct descendent of the fur trapper and river pirate. The young couple begins their life together in the very house Jacques built for Annie so long ago. When, night after late night, mysterious phone calls take Clement from their home, a pregnant Hedie finds comfort in Annie’s old leather bound journals.

But when the pages tell of sinister dealings and horrendous misunderstandings that spelled out tragedy for the rescued bride, Hedie fears that her own life is paralleling Annie’s, and that history is repeating itself with Jacques’ kin. But the journal entries do not end with Annie.

Emerging from the pages are three other women who helped to shape Jacques Ducharme’s life - Omah, the freed slave who joins his side as a river raider; his second wife, Laura; and their daughter, Maddie. Each relay the haunting tale of this enigmatic, industrious, and ultimately dangerous man, their stories weaving together with Hedie’s, as the journals serve not only as a guide to the newest River Wife at Jacques’ Landing, but also, perhaps, a warning.

The the long-running women’s book club continues to welcome new members, and all interested are invited to drop in. A Room of One’s Own also offers a 10% discount off the cover price of each book club selection.

 

Women4Women Dishing For The Holidays

Madison - Women4Women will offer an afternoon of “Holiday Dishing,” Saturday, December 12 at OutReach, 600 Williamson St. from 3-5 PM.
“Holiday Dishing” is a gathering with a family of friends to share favorite holiday recipes including appetizers, salads, main dishes, side dishes, holiday cookies and pies. What makes it “dishing” is it’s a potluck of food and lively conversation about any topic at all, a virtual free-for-all.

Attendees are asked to bring their favorite dish and copies of the recipe to share with others. Those challenged in the kitchen may bring a favorite carry-out or deli food item along with copies of the menu or phone number. Dishes need to be ready to serve. They should also bring a plate, napkins, utensils and serving spoons. Snarky topics and juicy gossip will also be welcomed!

“Holiday Dishing” will be Women4Women’s last event in 2009. The next meeting will be January 9 at Outreach from 3-5 PM and will feature guest speakers from Krueger & Hernandez SC, Attorneys at Law who will talk about civil unions, domestic partnerships, and estate planning for the LGBT community.

Women4Women is an inclusive social/discussion group open to all women who love women, regardless of whether they are lesbian, bi, curious, or anti-label, whether born female or trans. The only criteria is being a woman who loves women. Inclusiveness and diversity are a key part of the group, with women of all cultural backgrounds, races, ages, physical abilities, political beliefs are more than welcome, as we learn both from our diversity and from what we have in common: loving women.

For more information about OutReach’s Women4Women group, call Outreach at 608-255-8582 and leave a message or email Donna at: dw65@sbcglobal.net.