The California Legislative Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender (LGBT) Caucus sent the following letter to the Honorable John Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, to express their appreciation for the court’s decision to deny the request to stay the District of Columbia’s marriage equality law, paving the way for same-sex couples to receive marriage licenses in the nation’s capital:

The Honorable John Roberts

Chief Justice

Supreme Court of the United States

Washington, DC  20543

Dear Chief Justice Roberts:

As members of the California Legislative Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Caucus, we are writing to express our appreciation for the court’s decision in the case entitled Jackson v. District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics.

The decision reflected the fair application of the law and elevated the judgment beyond the emotional argument.  A different ruling could have resulted in much uncertainty and confusion.  Your action to deny the petitioner’s request for a stay of the District of Columbia’s marriage equality law reaffirms the integrity of our legislative and judicial processes.

Sincerely,

TOM AMMIANO, Chair

Assemblymember, 13^th District

JOHN A. PÉREZ

Speaker of the Assembly

CHRISTINE KEHOE

Senator, 39^th District

MARK LENO

Senator, 3^rd District

Email / Share]]> http://www.lgbtpov.com/2010/03/california-lgbt-caucus-thanks-justice-john-roberts-for-dc-marriage-decision/feed/ 0 http://www.lgbtpov.com/2010/03/constance-mcmillen-appears-on-ellen/ http://www.lgbtpov.com/2010/03/constance-mcmillen-appears-on-ellen/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:32:36 +0000 Karen Ocamb http://www.lgbtpov.com/?p=7644 ]]> Mississippi high school senior Constance McMillen appeared on Ellen DeGeneres’ show to talk about her fight to bring her girlfriend to the prom – and her desire to attend the prom in a tux. In response, the school canceled the prom for everyone. Constance is suing the school with the help of the ACLU of Mississippi. Constance’s father was also interviewed.

Fran Hutchins. Photo credit: Nick Martinez, NickMartinezStudios.com

[Editor's Note: Fran Hutchins is a former Los Angeles activist now living in Massachusetts.  You can read her first post on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) here.  Yesterday began with a polite rally and more congressional testimony over DADT and an online “blogswarm” to pressure House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to move the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) to a vote.  It ended up with three arrests at the White House about DADT, sit-ins at Pelosi’s Washington DC and San Francisco offices about ENDA, rallies in support of the new direct action group, GetEqual and arguments over political strategy.  During this time of heightened public discourse about DADT, Fran's piece examines the history of LGBT people serving in the military and their work to end the ban.  --Syd Peterson]

When Lieutenant Dan Choi came out on Rachel Maddow’s show last summer, the National Guard began discharge proceedings.  He received a letter that stated, “You admitted publicly that you are a homosexual, which constitutes homosexual conduct … Your actions negatively affected the good order and discipline of the New York Army National Guard.”

Since the passage of the policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 1993, more than 13,000 troops have received similar letters, have been subject to investigation, and have been discharged.  In addition, more service members have resigned or decided to not reenlist because of fear of discovery or in protest of the policy.  It seems, on the surface that these departures might also “negatively affect the good order” of the military, and yet this policy has stood the test of time.  It has not, however, gone unchallenged.  Challenges have come from servicemembers inside the military who make voluntary statements, and from outside the military—LGBT vets, politicians, and LGBT rights groups.

In 1999, Hillary Clinton came out against her husband’s policy, saying it was a failure.  That same year the Pentagon was forced to revise standards for investigations to make up for the fact that untrained lower ranking officers had abused the policy.  At this time they also began requiring anti-harassment training that included sexuality as a topic.  Clinton is not the only politician to speak out against the policy.  Vice President Al Gore and Senator Joe Leiberman, and even former President Clinton have also admitted that the policy was a not a success.  Currently, many members of Congress—possibly on both sides of the aisle—are in favor of the repeal.  Congressional support for repeal is key, as this is the venue in which the law will have to be changed.  But without the work of LGBT veterans, we wouldn’t see nearly as much support as we do.

In 2004, ten years after the policy was implemented, discharges continued, but had fallen for the first time in 10 years.  Why?  Well, it all hinges on what the late Randy Shilts called “the exigencies of war.”  During times of military conflict, discharges for homosexuality drop.  Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that tolerance for homosexuality rises.  Such was the case when Perry Watkins was drafted into the army in 1968.

Because this was well before the DADT era, Watkins was asked if he was homosexual and was honest.  Despite coming out in his interest exam, Watkins was accepted into the Army and served during the war as a clerical worker and rose to the rank of Sergeant.  An African American from Missouri, Sgt. Watkins later stated that white draftees admitting homosexuality were not made to serve.  Remarkably, Sgt. Watkins openly performed in drag to entertain his fellow soldiers and was open about his sexuality.  It wasn’t until he had served for 15 years and there was no longer a major war on that the Army needed fewer troops that his homosexuality became an issue and he was discharged.  Sgt. Watkins sued and surprisingly the courts took his side.  The army was ordered to reinstate him.  After a legal battle that stretched nearly a decade, he finally received back pay and benefits in 1990.

Although Sgt. Watkins was the first openly gay servicemember to win reinstatement in court, he was not courted by some of the gay rights groups that were working in the early 1990s to lift the ban.  He wasn’t even asked to testify during the hearings in 1993 that eventually led to the DADT policy.  John Loughery claims that Sgt. Watkins was not good poster child material for the gay rights groups, which seemed to prefer gender conforming white servicemembers over a self-proclaimed “little black nelly queen.”

Indeed, since the first publicized discharges in the 1970s—such as that of Ensign Vernon Berg, whose case was seen as a good test case, that of Air Force Sergeant Leonard Maltovitch, who made the cover of TIME magazine in 1975, and in that of Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer, whose story was made famous by a movie with Glen Close—the public face of gays in the military largely has been decorated (bronze stars, purple hearts), white, and gender conforming.  This trend continued until recently, when more servicemembers who have served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have come forward and made their stories public.

Staff Sgt. Eric Alva, the first American Marine seriously wounded in Iraq, became involved in the movement for repeal of DADT in 2007.  He now works with HRC and Servicemembers United, an organization founded by fellow out vets Jarrod Chlapowski & Alex Nicholson.  Another vet of color who has been a spokesperson for the movement is Julianne Sohn, a former public affairs officer in the Marines.  After her participation in the Servicemembers United  2006 Call to Duty Tour, she was forced to resign her commission.  Finally Lt. Dan Choi, the son of a Korean Baptist minister, is the current champion of the movement.

Thanks in part to these vets of color, current activism around DADT repeal feels timely and relevant.  Many high profile discharges, such as that of Lt. Choi, involve experienced translators and linguists who speak Arabic, Farsi, and other languages that are important in the current geopolitical climate.  Many recent discharges have kept soldiers from serving in Iraq and Afganistan, even during former President Bush’s “surge.”

Large LGBT rights groups have had DADT on their radar for a long time.  The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) and Lambda Legal have represented dozens of discharged vets in lawsuits against the military.  Some progress has been made in this area, but no lawsuit has managed to establish the unconstitutionality of DADT.  Much of the recent activism has been spearheaded by grassroots groups such as Servicemembers United and Knights Out, which was cofounded by Lt. Choi.

Both the Pentagon and SLDN estimate that around 80% of DADT discharges originate from self-declaration, although not all are as highly publicized as Lt. Choi’s, nor were they always as deliberately public as Sgt. Watkins’.  These so-called “statement” cases often begin when servicemembers make statements to friends, peers, or even therapists.  In some cases people are quietly discharged.  But recent activists have made a point to be vocal, coming out on television and participating in marches, rallies, and speaking tours.  It is in this environment of hyper-truth-telling that the repeal of a statue that prohibits just this will finally happen.

SHEEHAN: “That [Srebrenica] was the largest massacre in Europe since World War II.” 
LEVIN: “And did the Dutch leaders tell you it was because there were gay soldiers there?” 
SHEEHAN: “It was a combination …” 
LEVIN: “Did they tell you [that gay soldiers were to blame], that is my question.” 
SHEEHAN: “Yes.” 
LEVIN: “They did?” 
SHEEHAN: “They included that as part of the problem.”

-

Levin rebuked Sheehan:

The Dutch Ambassador told CNN that they are “proud” of their gay soldiers and VoaNews reported:

Asked for comment, Dutch military officials expressed astonishment.  The spokesman for the Netherlands Ministry of Defense, Roger van de Wetering, told VOA Sheehan’s assertions are “total nonsense” and that he “cannot believe that a man of that rank is stating such a thing.”  He added that he had never heard Sheehan’s allegation before from any source in the Netherlands or anywhere else.

H/t Daily Kos.

Attendees will demand the immediate release of Lt. Dan Choi, Captain Jim Pietrangelo, and Robin McGehee, who were arrested today while protesting “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in front of the White House in Washington.

“Dan, Jim and Robin’s actions today were a huge demonstration of bravery on behalf of the LGBT community,” said McKeon.  “We need to come together tonight to demand their release and to demand full equality now!  McKeon requested that attendees bring signs, friends and news media.

Similar rallies will take place in San Francisco, Sacramento and San Diego:

Sacramento Capital Building at 6pm

San Francisco – City Hall 6pm

San Diego City – Hall of Justice 6pm

Further reading:

Fran Hutchins: DADT is a National Security Issue

Raw AP video of Pietrangelo and Choi’s arrest.

Author, gay man with HIV/AIDS and Olympian Greg Louganis just spoke.

Dr. David Hardy, M.D., is director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

John J. Duran was recognized as representative of patients in the clinical trials. An attorney and well-known and widely respected advocate for HIV/AIDS patients, Duran is an attorney and a current councilmember and former mayor of West Hollywood, California.

Here’s the press release:

Three scientists who led the 11-year quest to develop a groundbreaking HIV drug today received the 2010 Discoverers Award – the highest honor given to scientists by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). The honorees are Tony Wood, Ph.D., Elna van der Ryst, M.D., Ph.D. and Manos Perros, Ph.D.

The medicine, SELZENTRY® (maraviroc), is a new class of drug and unlike most HIV therapies, rather than attacking the virus, blocks its entry into human cells. SELZENTRY was proven effective in clinical trials even among patients who had run out of options because they were resistant to or intolerant of all other available therapies.

HIV infects a cell by binding to a specific molecule, or co-receptor, on the cell. Data from clinical trials suggest that in more than 80 percent of newly infected patients, the co-receptor CCR5 is the virus’ door to the cell – meaning the patient has CCR5-tropic HIV. Additional clinical trials suggest that approximately 50 percent of patients who have had the disease for an extended period are still CCR5-tropic. The revolutionary treatment discovered by scientists at New York-based Pfizer Inc. blocks the virus’ entry through the CCR5 molecule.

SELZENTRY was the first new oral medication for HIV in 10 years when it was approved in 2007 for CCR5-tropic patients already taking antiretroviral treatment. In November 2009, the Food and Drug Administration also approved it for newly infected patients who are CCR5-tropic. More than half of the more than one million Americans infected with HIV are CCR5-tropic and thus potential candidates to benefit from SELZENTRY.

Drs. Wood, van der Ryst and Perros accepted the award at a luncheon at PhRMA’s annual meeting today in Arlington, Va. Awards were presented by PhRMA President and CEO Billy Tauzin and by two-time Olympic gold medalist Greg Louganis.

Louganis said that when he was first diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 1988, the disease was considered by many a death sentence. He was prepared to go home, lock the door and wait to die. Instead, his life was saved through new medicines. Most recently, he began taking SELZENTRY and today was looking forward to thanking the scientists for their work.

“I feel incredibly privileged to be part of the team that was in the right place at the right time to convert science into something of value to mankind,” Dr. Wood said in an interview prior to the award. “We not only found a medicine, but firsts in many ways in terms of science.”

Dr. van der Ryst, who began researching HIV after the deaths of both friends and patients in her native South Africa, said her years working on SELZENTRY were the most exciting of her life. Dr. Perros added, “It doesn’t take tens of thousands or millions of patients to make the work feel worthwhile. To sit with one person who survived and is healthy because of medicine you worked on is a tremendous feeling of satisfaction.”

PhRMA’s Discoverers Award recognizes scientists whose work has greatly benefited mankind.

“These extraordinary honorees not only have saved untold numbers of lives, but have also improved the quality of lives for many HIV patients,” said Tauzin. “All three devoted a significant portion of their lives to developing this medicine. We are proud to pay tribute to their skills and to their perseverance as they overcame huge obstacles.”

Dr. Wood is currently Vice-President and Head of Worldwide Medicinal Chemistry for Pfizer; Dr. van der Ryst is a Pfizer Senior Director in Clinical Research. Dr. Perros was recently named Director of the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases, a not-for-profit mission to combat neglected diseases among poor populations.

“The discovery of SELZENTRY is a great example of what researchers at Pfizer and in other labs around the world are striving to do every day – use science and technology to help find new treatments and cures for some of the most feared diseases of our time,” said Pfizer Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Kindler. “The honorees’ vision, dedication and leadership played a critical role in helping our company develop a medicine that can help reduce the number of people who have to suffer and improve the health of HIV patients around the world.”

“To successfully bring a new medicine to patients is the most rewarding part of our business,” said Martin Mackay, President of Pfizer PharmaTherapeutics R&D.  “We are proud of these scientists and their terrific team of drug discoverers and developers.  We extend our appreciation to the patients who took part in clinical trials and those whose experience with SELZENTRY continues to advance medical knowledge of HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention.”

Three men who helped bring SELZENTRY from the lab to patients and a patient who participated in clinical trials also were recognized today as recipients of PhRMA’s Clinical Trial Exceptional Service Award.

Dr. James Goodrich, Ph.D., M.D., was senior director of clinical development at Pfizer’s Global Research and Development facilities in New London, Ct. Recently he became a vice president with ViiV Healthcare, a joint venture of Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline. ViiV currently holds the NDA for SELZENTRY.

Dr. Jayvant Heera continues with Pfizer and works out of the New London center as the global clinical leader for SELZENTRY. He is a medical doctor and member of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine, Royal College of Physicians in London.

Dr. David Hardy, M.D., is director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

John J. Duran was recognized as representative of patients in the clinical trials. An attorney and well-known and widely respected advocate for HIV/AIDS patients, Duran is an attorney and a current councilmember and former mayor of West Hollywood, California.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) represents the country’s leading pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies, which are devoted to inventing medicines that allow patients to live longer, healthier, and more productive lives. PhRMA companies are leading the way in the search for new cures. PhRMA members alone invested an estimated $45.8 billion in 2009 in discovering and developing new medicines. Industry-wide research and investment reached a record $65.3 billion in 2009.

###

PhRMA Internet Address: http://www.phrma.org

For information on stories of hope and survival, visit: http://sharingmiracles.com/

For information on how innovative medicines save lives, visit: http://www.innovation.org

For information on the Partnership for Prescription Assistance, visit: http://www.pparx.org

For information on the danger of imported drugs, visit: http://www.buysafedrugs.info

For more information on public health emergencies, visit http://www.rxresponse.org

Fran Hutchins. Photo credit: Nick Martinez, NickMartinezStudios.com

Editor’s Note: Former Los Angeles activist Fran Hutchins now lives in Massachusetts.  This article is part one of a two-part overview of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy– which is receiving much attention today from Kathy Griffin’s rally in DC before the Senate Armed Services Committee.  –Karen Ocamb

Like many “gay Americans,” as I watched President Obama’s State of the Union speech last January, I was listening closely to what the President would have to say about LGBT rights.  In a paragraph that dealt with hate crime legislation, pay equity, and immigration, the President promised: “This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are.”

The irony of the placement in the speech did not escape me.  President Obama, in the same breath, was proposing to allow openly LGBT people to serve their country and to make sure women get fair pay for a day’s work.  Why is either of these things even an issue?  And why are we still talking about them in major policy speeches?

The simple answer is simple: no matter what promises are made, no matter how far our society advances to accept the concept of women in the workplace and LGBT folks in the military, in practice, structure, and – in the case of LGBT service members – the law, inequality still remains.

That night, Twitter lit up with talk of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT),” and in the following days articles appeared on the Huffington Post, in the New York Times, and other major news outlets revealing that – despite the Obama Administration’s good intentions—the repeal could logistically take years to enact.  The following week, at the first congressional hearing on DADT in 17 years, Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained that – although he supports the repeal – it is going to take a year to study and seek to mitigate the effects of such a repeal.  Finally, the AP reported that although leaders on the left and the right are coming out in favor of the repeal, it is now expected to take year.  Plural.

As Karen mentioned in her post several weeks ago, history is repeating itself in an unsettling way.  As a candidate, President Clinton promised to use his position of Commander-in-Chief to allow LGBT people to serve openly.  When Clinton took office in 1993, he was pressured by Congress and the military to postpone the lift the ban on gays in the military. Does any of this sounding familiar?  Instead of lifting the ban, President Clinton gave us DADT.  It seems to me that—to borrow a couple of military terms from President Clinton’s DADT snafu to President Obama’s extended repeal timeline, this situation really is FUBAR.

This sense of déjà vu prompted me to do a little research into the origins of not only DADT but also the history of LGBT people and military service.  Since the press is relegated to very slowly reporting on the very slow repeal, I decided to look backward instead of looking forward.  What I found most fascinating is the way that, over the course of several centuries, the U.S. military has regarded homosexuality first as a criminal behavior, then as a psychological deviance, and now, finally, as an identity.

The definitive guide to LGBT service in the United States is Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military by the late Randy Shilts. It’s 800 pages long, so if you get snowed in for a week, I highly recommend it.  Shilts locates the first discharge for homosexual behavior in the military all the way back in 1778, when a lieutenant in George Washington’s army was expelled for an unspecified act of sodomy with another man. Even though this happened nearly two and a half centuries ago, it says a lot about the way the military regarded homosexuality for a long time.  Namely, until the 1920s, it was the actual act of sodomy that the military regarded as out of bounds.

John Loughrey’s The Other Side of Silence is a history of gay male identity, broadly speaking, in the 20^th century. But he begins his book with a titillating account of the 1919 scandal at Newport Naval Station in Rhode Island.  The Navy forged an entrapment campaign to suss out sailors who took part in homosexual behavior.

The focus was again on the act of sodomy, which in many cases included performing oral sex on undercover “operatives” – and in a few cases, receiving anal sex.  The Navy was ultimately embarrassed by the scandal, not only because the young sailors who played the bait in the sting operation seemed to enjoy their assignment a little too much, but also because society as a whole was moving away from thinking of homosexuality as only a criminal/conduct offense and toward the belief that it was instead a deviant psychological problem.  This is evident in the evident distinction that the Navy itself and the operatives it hired made between the men who were arrested and those who had seduced them into performing the acts.  Loughrey points out that there were certain lines, such as kissing, that the operatives would not cross, because to do so would put into question their sexuality.

In the 1920s, homosexuality was beginning to be regarded as a distinct category of perversion, a status—if not yet identity—that could disqualify an individual from service.  No longer was homosexuality a single act that was suspect, but instead a way of being.  By the 1940s, psychological screening, including questions about homosexual tendencies, became standard for admission into the armed services.  During the first half of the 20^th century, how to deal with incidents of homosexual behavior lay in the hands of commanding officers in each separate branch of the military, but in the late 40s, the Department of Defense (DOD) wanted to standardize the regulations regarding homosexuality and many other forbidden behaviors.  The result is the Uniform Code of Military Justice (1950).

The new UCMJ regulations came around the same time that President Eisenhower, under pressure from Communist-hunting US Sen. Joseph McCarthy, signed an executive order requiring that homosexuals be fired from any government position.  This pairing came with a double dose of irony—when President Eisenhower served as commander of the World War II forces that defeated Hitler, his secretary was a lesbian and she said he knew it.

What’s more, McCarthy’s chief deputy was closeted right-winger Roy Cohen whose own ruin came from giving favors to his military lover.  Thanks to McCarthy, homosexuals, like communists, were subject to a witch-hunt in both the military and civil service.  This moment marks a shift toward the categorization of homosexuality as an identity that is more than just the sum of acts of sodomy.  It also seems to be the advent of the idea that homosexuality presented a security risk to the country, with the logic being that homosexuals could be blackmailed and forced to reveal state secrets.

This position was further reiterated in 1982, when a DOD directive called homosexuality “incompatible with military service” because it disrupts “good order and morale” and “unit cohesion.” And, like in the McCarthy era, homosexuality was seen as a cause of “breaches of security.”  (This is the same language, incidentally, used by Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in the DADT hearing after President Obama’s State of the Union address.)  This directive has been seen as a response to several high profile constitutional challenges to the UCMJ regulations.  In the 1980s, over 16,000 troops were discharged for homosexuality.

Then in 1992, Bill Clinton was elected, which brings us back to DADT.

So – after all of that – why should this matter to me or to any LGBT person who doesn’t plan to serve in the military?

The crux of DADT as a policy is that it is completely about LGBT identity.  No longer does the spirit of the law concern itself solely with the commission of individual sexual acts.  The only act that matters—especially as the regulation is currently being enforced—is the speech act of declaring one’s self to be or identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.  What is being prohibited is not being gay, but coming out and speaking the truth about being gay.  In fact, the policy defines coming out itself as a homosexual act.

From Goldwater to Cheney, since President Obama’s announcement, several influential people on the right have come out in favor of lifting the ban.  Notably, Republican appointee Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that he supports the repeal of DADT.

Lt. Dan Choi. Photo credit: Marta Evry

In his statement, Mullen pointed out that “we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens or me personally, it comes down to integrity, theirs as individuals and ours as an institution.”  It is exactly this conflict implicit in DADT that LGBT service members such as Lieutenant Dan Choi have been protesting in recent years.

The issue of LGBT service members as a threat to national security is undermined by the very logic behind DADT.  Those who violate the policy by speaking out are, by definition, not afraid to have their sexuality known.  They are no longer good candidates for blackmail, and therefore no longer a security threat.  The bigger threat to national security, as Lt. Choi’s situation highlights, is that DADT drains the military of resources – such as Arabic-speaking translators – that are crucial in our current political climate.

With the repeal of DADT in the not-so-close horizon, it seems almost certain that soon the military will be able to stop punishing people for telling the truth.  This is in the best interest of all LGBT folks, whether they are in the military or not.

Finally, the government seems ready to admit that the closet is a greater risk to national security than the truth.

Further Reading

The Palm Center houses many resources online, including a comprehensive whitepaper on the history of LGBT service members by Rhonda Evans, where I found most chronological information about formal policy.

For information about the link between military policy and the field of psychology, I looked to a 1993 article in American Psychologist “Sexual Orientation and Military Service: A Social Science Perspective” by Gregory M. Herek.

David K. Johnson’s work, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians by the Federal Government is a fascinating look into McCarthyism and its effect on the LGBT community.

To contextualize the issue within LGBT history as a whole, I picked up John Loughrey’s The Other Side of Silence. The first chapter deals with the 1919 Naval scandal.

Much of Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military by Randy Shilts is available online at Google Books.

Daily Kos,
Open Left,
Towleroad,
Pam’s House Blend,
Joe My God,
Michelangelo Signorile,
David Mixner,
Daily Gotham,
Culture Kitchen,
Taylor Marsh,
PageOneQ,
Dan
Savage, and others.

Bloggers are asking readers to contact Speaker Nancy Pelosi and ask that she move the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (HR 3017) to a floor vote. Contact info at the end of the article.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, first introduced in 1994, would prohibit job discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. But LGBT people have never been able to achieve the enactment of the bill, known by the acronym of “ENDA”.

Last year, the Administration’s highest ranking gay official, Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry, indicated that ENDA was highest priority on the LGBT civil rights agenda.

“If we can get ENDA enacted and signed into law, it is only a matter of time before all the rest happens,” he said. “It is the keystone that holds up the whole bunch, and so we need to focus our energies and attention there.”

Hearings were held in the House and in the Senate to demonstrate the need for the bill, and testimony was heard on the severe unemployment, underemployment and harassment experienced by LGBT workers. Witnesses testified to the scientific studies demonstrating this.

The reason that workers need this protection is that the LGBT community is a relatively small minority, probably around 5% of the U.S. population, and there are many people with prejudices against them. This is also one reason that the bill has had difficulties in Congress: the minority in need of protection from discrimination are drowned out by the many bigots.

Civil rights, by definition, are needed most by those against whom there is most prejudice.

Various sponsors promised that the bill would move to a vote in August, September, October, and November of 2009. But in order to go to a vote, the bill had to pass through the House Committee on Education and Labor via a “markup” procedure. Markup was finally scheduled for November 18, 2009. But at the last minute, the markup was postponed, and has still not been rescheduled.

Initially, the Committee said that some technical language required tweaking, ostensibly to insure that plaintiffs could not recover too much money or attorney fees, and to prevent lawsuits based on inadvertent discrimination. But it has become increasingly clear that something else is at work.

A clue to the inaction: Speaker Nancy Pelosi publicly told Democrats that she would not move controversial bills. Meanwhile, the House Committee has stated its readiness to move, but is waiting for a signal from Speaker Pelosi.

That signal has not come. Meanwhile, LGBT Americans continue to suffer discrimination and harassment with no recourse.

President Obama famously said in a campaign speech that “Power concedes nothing without a fight.”

We demand that LGBT people receive the same job rights as other people: to be able to get and keep a job based only on relevant factors, like job performance, and not on irrelevant criteria, like sexual orientation or gender identity.

There is a majority in both Houses of Congress in favor of ENDA. Now is the time to move it.

In 30 states across America, there is no law against firing someone based on his or her sexual orientation, and the same is true in 38 states for gender identity.

Will you join with us in asking that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people be protected from job discrimination?

Click here to contact Speaker Pelosi.

Please call Speaker Nancy Pelosi at 202-225-4965. Ask that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, HR 3017, move to a vote. Please be polite, but firm.

After you call, please tell us how the call went by clicking here. If you get a busy signal or hang up, let us know that too.

If you want more information on Speaker Pelosi’s position, you can find it here

Let’s work together to let Speaker Pelosi know that we want action now!

At the end of the day, we will post a round-up of how the day went. Stay tuned.

On March 3, Perry hosted a VIP preview party at the famed Chateau Marmont, where Perry performed and guests included LA Ink’s Kat Von D, Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue and The L Word’s Clementine Ford all attended the party.

According to the Center:

Perry — writer and producer for artists such as Christina Aguilera, Pink, Gwen Stefani and Alicia Keys as well as CEO of record label Custard Records (James Blunt, Reni Lane, Little Fish, Crash Kings, Bigelf) —first became involved with the Center in 2006, when she performed at Women’s Night (the previous incarnation of ‘An Evening with Women’) and brought special guests Courtney Love and Billy Corgan to perform with her. In 2008, Perry was recognized with the ‘Creative Integrity Award’ at the event.

“The Center is such an important part of our community and I am drawn to their amazing work,” Perry says. “We are all incredibly dedicated to making this event the best yet, and I’m excited about the support from the entertainment industry whose contributions will help raise necessary funds to directly benefit the Center and their programs.”‘

An Evening with Women’ benefits the Center’s services for women — including legal assistance, domestic violence services and cultural arts programs — but the night is also an opportunity to recognize lesbians and bisexual women who make a difference in the community through the Center’s community awards.

For more information or to purchase tickets, go to www.AnEveningWithWomen.org. Tickets are $300 per seat or $3,000 for a table.

Here are some fun photos:

Kat Von D (LA Ink) – photo by Laurie Thomson

Clementine Ford (The Young and the Restless, The L Word) and Linda Perry – photo by Lydia Marcus

Annie Goto (Center board member and event co-chair,) Shannon Del (event co-chair), Clementine Ford and Linda Perry – photo by Lydia Marcus