Tuesday, March 9th marks the first day that same-sex couples in the District of Columbia were able to marry. The Human Rights Campaign hosted three ceremonies at our DC headquarters building. Here’s the video of those ceremonies. Please click inside for more info on the couples and photos from Cathy Renna.
Thursday, a new law in Mexico City goes into effect that grants civil marriage and adoption rights to same-sex couples.
HONOR PAC, an LGBT Latina/o political organization, will celebrate Marriage Equality in Mexico City with special guest speakers, an oversized “congratulations on your wedding” card “for our family in Mexico,” and a delicious Mexican wedding cake.
Please RSVP to rsvp@honorpac.org. Space is limited. See details on Facebook which also has a link to a map. http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=340847246032&ref=ts
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Time: 5:00 – 7:00pm
Location: El Paseo Inn,
11 East Olvera Street,
LA, 90012
After a failed last minute attempt to stop Washington DC from issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples, the day has finally arrived and couples are lining up to get that piece of paper that will allow them to get hitched.
Angelisa Young and Sinjoyla Townsend, together for 13 years, were the first couple in line. According to the Human Rights Campaign, which provided this photo of the couple, “neither of them could sleep and they stayed up all night thrilled about this historic opportunity. Sinjoyla told us: ”I’m just excited because we’re able to get married. The institution of marriage is an institution that’s respected in every culture. Anywhere we go, people know what marriage is and we’re so excited to be a part of it.”
At 8:30am, Eastern time, Young and Townsend received their license.
Please check HRCbackstory.org and dcagenda.com throughout the day as the story unfolds. BTW – with the passage of the Sen. Mark Leno authored/ Equality California-sponsored marriage recognition bill last year – California couples can get married in DC (or the other states that permit marriage) and come home to have their marriage recognized by the state – everything but the word. Please click inside for more.
UPDATE: Lots of folks are on the scene helping out. Peter Montgomery, senior fellow for People for the American Way, is volunteering with DC Clergy United for Marriage Equality as they work with the media. Peter emailed this account:
“Quick report from the DC courthouse: great spirit this morning, with happy same-sex couples applying for marriage licenses and then sharing their joy with a huge phalanx of media and cameras. One fantastic moment: when the Phelps clan of professional haters showed up and started singing and chanting, pro-equality clergy gathered nearby and overwhelmed them by singing “this little light of mine.” Some great solidarity also from other allies, including a straight couple who had held off getting married for six years until marriage was also open to same-sex couples.”
Scottish poet Sir Walter Scott once wrote: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” Please – I beseech you – try to follow the logic of this Family Research Council minister who tries to make it OK to hate gays, as long as it’s done with Christian love. Pray on it, in fact. FRC sends out regular missives to their Christian “Prayer Warriors” specifying what “targets” to pray at each week. These guys are making it really, really hard to believe that old Sunday School song, “Jesus loves me, this I know – for the Bible tells me so.” You decide.
Dear Praying Friends,
Opposing the radical homosexual rights agenda is distasteful to Bible-believing Christians and leaders. Eager to follow the law of love, they sometimes sympathize with those who accuse opponents of homosexual rights as guilty of “hate.” These believers prefer to hold their tongues regarding this and other cultural sins that Scripture condemns, preferring to preach “grace.” But without God’s law there is no grace. And God’s warnings to society must not be ignored. We genuinely love those caught in this and other aberrant sinful addictions, but we cannot cease to warn society of the consequences of approving such behaviors. We must neither keep silent, nor compromise, nor succumb to those who seek to “normalize” homosexuality. The consequences are simply too great. Bible-believing Christians are motivated by love, not hate. But in a culture in which speaking the truth in love on such matters is viewed as “hate,” we must risk the accusation and speak the truth in love, accompanied by much prayer (see Mt 10:12-42; Eph 6:1-20; 2 Tim 2:24-4:5).
Please click inside for more on the prayer.
Read More →
Next Thursday – Feb. 25 – I am going to be on a Los Angeles Press Club panel with Andrew Harmon, senior editor for The Advocate, advocate.com and my legally married friend, Ted Johnson, managing editor of Variety and blogger at wilshireandwashington.com. The discussion topic is: “Covering the Prop. 8 Trial: Can the Gay Press Maintain Objectivity (and Should It)?”
Having served on the board of the LA Press Club with Ted, I suspect this topic was selected long before the San Francisco Chronicle published a political column noting the “open secret” that Prop 8 trial Judge Vaughn Walker is gay – which I wrote about citing some facts to counter the spin from the National Organization for Marriage. But the timing is terrific because it may well draw many more straight people who quietly have questions and harbor a lingering doubt about Walker – and our coverage, which is sometimes cited by the mainstream media.
The panel will be moderated by openly gay radio news star and college professor Jon Beaupre who moderated another Prop 8 panel I was on last year. That lead to a political awakening for at least one of his students. Watch:
Despite being among those considered by President Barack Obama to fill a vacancy for the U.S. Supreme Court, Los Angeles native Moreno stuck to his principles and was the lone dissenting voice when the California high court voted to uphold Prop 8. Obama picked federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor instead.
Saturday night, Equality California honored Justice Moreno at a gala at City Hall in San Francisco.
Please click inside to read Justice Moreno’s remarks.
Visible and Vulnerable: My marriage and the psychological impact of Prop 8
It’s a strange anxiety that permeates my psychotherapy practice these weeks of waiting, after the end of testimony in the Prop 8 trial, and before the final ruling.
It seems like most of my clients are talking about marriages, their own or others’, among their families and friends. Conversations start and stop—halting, hesitant. Some of my politically active heterosexual clients hesitate to talk about their marriages or engagements while their lesbian, gay and transgender friends are in awkward, political limbo.
Queer clients talk cautiously about the struggles in their partnerships as though fearing any exposure of problems in queer marriages works against the cause. It’s a vulnerable time. My clients walk through the world with heightened awareness of visibility and vulnerability. And so do I…..Please click inside to read Keiko’s essay.
San Francisco Bloggers: Come Canvass for Equality!
Guest post By Matt Baume, freelance journalist, and Michael Kaiser-Nyman, Bay Area Regional Field Manager, Equality California
(Photo from canvassing in East Los Angeles)
Bloggers: are you a little too tied to your keyboard? Want another way to help restore the freedom to marry in California?
Where: Visitacion Valley Playground at Leland and Cora
When: Saturday, Feb 13 at 10am
Duration: 3-4 hours (or however long it is)
RSVP: Facebook
Bay Area bloggers are hitting the streets this weekend to build support for marriage equality. If you can make it out, please join us at 10:00 am this Saturday in San Francisco. The canvass is a great excuse to meet and mingle with a crowd of awesome online writers, and learn about some of the work being done to restore marriage for same-sex couples in California. Non-bloggers will also be there and are highly welcome. Please click inside to read more about the canvassing.
I’ve known prodigious producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron since 1995 when I covered their important gays-in-the-military film, “Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story.”
Now I know the team is devoted to the musical (“Chicago,” “Annie”) so I’m sure their latest venture “Promises, Promises” with Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth set to preview on Broadway on March 27 – is straight-up fun. Think “Mad Men” set to Burt Bacharach tunes.
But the plot of “Promises, Promises” – based on the award-winning Billy Wilder film “The Apartment” starring Jack Lemon and Shirley MacLaine – has at its core the societal acceptability of extra-marital affairs. Now coming off of covering the historic federal challenge to the constitutionality of Prop 8 where the ProtectMarriage side went on and on about the sanctity of marriage and how historically the purpose of marriage is the procreation of children – this show promises to be an laugh-out loud ode to heterosexual hypocrisy. Please click inside to see how.
There is a flurry of activity Monday morning with motions by the defense to seal or exclude documents and videotapes the Olson/Boies team plans to introduce – including testimony by Yes on 8 campaign manager Frank Schubert.
If Olson/Boies succeeds in getting this evidence introduced, they may rest their case. If not, or if something else comes up – well, that’s Monday’s mystery. Otherwise, the defense will launch their case with Dr. Kenneth Miller most likely to be the first to take the stand. Click inside for more on the defense’s two “expert” witnesses. Also follow Rick Jacobs’ live blogging on Prop8TrialTracker and Teddy Partridge over at Firedoglake.
UPDATE: According to live blogging reports from Rick Jacobs at Prop8TrialTracker.com – the Olson/Boies team is trying to introducing a lot of documentation – including emails – showing direct links between religious groups and the Yes on 8 campaign with spurious accusations about gays. This is at the heart of the plaintiffs’ case. It appears I was about admitting Olson/Boies wanting to admit a evidence from Frank Schubert. Apparently it’s the defendants who want to bring Schubert to the stand. No decision has been made as of yet.
PLEASE click inside to read comments about the new evidence, which Rick Jacobs says is “an arsenal of incendiary devices” more powerful than “a smoking gun.”
Chad Griffin, Board President of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which is leading the federal court challenge to Prop. 8, issued this statement:
“We saw again today how the Prop. 8 campaign sought to link marriage equality to incest, polygamy, bestiality and pedophilia to justify the restriction of people’s civil rights. This clearly points to the discriminatory motivations and unconstitutionality of the initiative.”
Meanwhile, Robtish, who blogs at Waking Up Now, just posted this excellent video on YouTube to refute the allegations made in court by defendant William Tam that there is a direct link between homosexuality and child molestation. PLEASE WATCH IT!
As the first week of Perry v. Schwarzenegger came to a close yesterday evening, counsel from both sides spoke at a press conference at the federal courthouse.
This is a version of a speech Jenny Pizer, Senior Counsel and Director of Lambda Legal’s National Marriage Project, delivered before the federal Prop 8 trial started Monday. During the trial, Prop 8 proponents claimed that “traditional” marriage was universal, historically and culturally. Professor Nancy Cott disputed that on the stand. Jenny notes that marriage equality is now spreading across the globe. Please click inside to read Jenny’s speech.
Friday, January 1, 2010 at midnight, 150 people gathered in the 21 degree cold at the New Hampshire state capitol in Concord to witness the legal same sex marriages of about a dozen lesbian and gay couples.
New Hampshire is now the fifth U.S. state to allow marriage equality for same sex couples. Mo Baxley, executive director of the New Hampshire Freedom to Marry Coalition, told Reuters:
“People focus on the setbacks, but last year there was one state and now there are five states.”
Please visit WMUR – the famous New Hampshire TV station that always hosts the “First-in-the-Nation-Presidential-Primary” debates – to see how they reported the pending nuptials of Kate Russell and Lynn Taylor, a couple for 23 years with a son and dog. The reporter says that while the couple understands how their marriage is newsworthy, “they will be really glad when it isn’t.”
The legal intricacies of the three hour pre-trial hearing on the federal challenge to Prop 8 before U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco Wednesday bored blogger Michael Petrelis, who posted these post-hearing photos. Petrelis was annoyed, however, that Prop 8 proponent’s big time attorney Charles Cooper refused to speak with the press.
But some news was made: the trial is set to start 9:ooam on January 11; the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal may decide to review their earlier 3-judge panel decision to deny certain Prop 8 campaign documents to the plaintiffs; a Southern Californian county is trying to intervene- which has angered Marriage Equality USA; and Judge Walker says he will consider allowing TV cameras in the court after a judicial body considering such a pilot project issues their finding – which they did today. Click inside for all the details.
As we continue to struggle for marriage equality for same sex couples – a primary example of how LGBT people are officially second class citizens in America – we find some comfort in the belief that the youth of this country are becoming more and more accepting. It’s as if we’re hoping that Youth Culture will shatter the barriers of inequality just as rock and roll, blue jeans and the TV show “Dynasty” helped bring down the Berlin Wall. But while some young people are naturally progressing along this arc of justice, others are actually thinking about the trend and spurring it on. Click inside and meet law student Christine Terry who is thankfully in the latter category.
Coming on the heels of the gut-wrenching loss of marriage rights in Maine, the vote in the New York state Senate to oppose a marriage bill brought by openly gay Senator Thomas k. Duane was agony. (Read Paul Schindler’s excellent coverage in Gay City News here.) For some of us in California, the losses are constant reminders of our own unhealed grief and anger over Prop 8. But in fact, California didn’t have an easy time winning marriage equality in the state Legislature, either. So I asked Geoff Kors, Executive Director of Equality California, to write a piece about what that experience was like – to perhaps add a tiny bit of balm to the open wound our New York friends might be feeling. Please click inside to read Geoff’s story.
Watch out. Former Watergate felon and now Religious Right point person Chuck Colson is at it again. This time with a “Manhattan Declaration” of so-called Christian principles delivered at the National Press Club today with all the splash of a Hollywood PR campaign.
You can read the entire “declaration” at the Family Research Council (whose president, Tony Perkins is pictured here with Church Colson). Click inside to read some excerpts and reactions.
Here’s Chuck Colson’s tease:
Oh, this is just too good. Gary Glenn of the American Family Association of Michigan is freaking out over a Religious Right “shocker” – news that the LDS (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” or the Mormon Church) is supporting a gay rights ordinance in Salt Lake City. Glenn post a piece on Americans for Truth, Peter LaBarbera’s homosexuality- obsessed website. LaBarbera asks if there is a new split in the Religious Right coalition. Click inside to read their POVs.
The National Organization for Marriage just announced plans “to build a $500,000 war chest to fund a primary challenge to any Republican senator who votes for gay marriage – regardless of the outcome of Tuesday’s vote in the State Senate.” Click inside for the press release. Meanwhile – here’s Towleroad’s Corey Johnson’s interview with New York Gov. David Paterson on his support for marriage equality:
Editor’s note: Rick Jacobs, founder of the Courage Campaign, gave a stirring – and very personal – speech at the end of a protest march in Los Angeles commemorating the one year anniversary of the passage of Prop 8. The march also happened to be the night after the loss of marriage equality in Maine. Click inside to read Rick’s inspirational remarks.
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