Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic blog broke the story: “Ken Mehlman, President Bush’s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.”
Ken who, you might ask if you’re new to LGBT politics? Well, as Ambinder explains, “Mehlman is the most powerful Republican in history to identify as gay.” He was head of the Republican National Committee in 2007 and George W. Bush’s campaign manager in 2004. He is considered incredibly smart on messaging and has a donor and politico address book that is the envy of political consultants everywhere. He was also intensely despised as a closeted gay man who was using those brains on behalf of antigay politicians.
UPDATE: The Advocate just posted an interview with Mehlman in which he explained why he didn’t fight against the GOP’s antigay policies: ”I wasn’t in the place I am today where I’m comfortable with this part of my life, it was really hard and it was particularly hard because there was really nobody who knew this about me and so there was no one I could even talk to about it.”
Please click inside for more, including comments from American Foundation for Equal Rights’ Chad Griffin, Log Cabin Republican Executive Director R. Clarke Cooper and (UPDATE) Equality California Executive Director Geoff Kors.
Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace notes on his blog that that his Fox News Sunday guest Ted Olson said
“that while he is not “taking anything for granted,” he is “reasonably” confident that the Supreme Court will agree that any ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional.
Olson, known for his aversion to judicial activism, disagrees with claims that what Judge Vaughn Walker did in ruling Prop 8 unconstitutional was just that, an activist judge overruling the will of 7 million Californians.
“We do not put the Bill of Rights to a vote,” Olson said, “This is what judges are expected to do. It is not judicial activism. It is judicial responsibility in its classic sense.”
For all the tears and applause and cheers for the plaintiffs and the AFER team – this crowd in West Hollywood wanted to hear from Ted Olson and David Boies after Judge Walker ruled that Prop 8 is unconstitutional. And they wanted to talk to the crowd. One would not think it possible in an open park in West Hollywood – but at times you could almost hear a pin drop. Videos courtesy of Phillip Minton.
Ted Olson:
Please click inside for a “you-are-there” version of August 4, the day Prop 8 was ruled unconstitutional – and read reaction plus see videos of Chad Griffin and David Boies.
After speaking at a press conference in San Francisco on Wednesday to discuss U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker’s historic decision declaring Prop. 8 unconstitutional, the plaintiffs and their legal team — headed by Ted Olson and David Boies — flew back to L.A. to appear as the sun was setting at a rally in West Hollywood Park. The American Foundation for Equal Rights, which initiated the lawsuit, also put on the rally that featured speakers including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; West Hollywood Mayor John Heilman; Perry v. Schwarzenegger plaintiffs Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, and Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo; and attorneys Ted Olson and David Boies.
‘ I just got back from an amazing event in West Hollywood Park where an enthusiastic crowd delighted in having a victory and meeting the heroes of that victory: Chad Griffin, who founded the American Foundation for Equal Rights that hired the incredible legal team, conservative Republican attorney Ted Olson, progressive Democratic attorney David Boies, and the plaintiffs – Kris Perry and Sandy Stiers and Jeff Zarrillo and Paul Katami who shared their ordinary gay lives and love with the world. There to celebrate the joy of equality were West Hollywood Mayor John Heilman, who acted as something of an emcee and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who Heilman introduced as being from WeHo’s “sister city.” Villaraigosa thrilled the crowd by commenting off the cuff, “Tonight, my friend, you and I are sisters.”
Before the event started, Olson and Boies did a round of live television interviews, including one with Rachel Maddow. In the crowd behind them were legal married couple Robin Tyler and Diane Olson, as well as a slew of young new activists. I’ll have more from the WeHo front – and I hope to have more from East LA later. In the meantime, here’s the Olson/Boise interview with Rachel:
A federal court in Washington state is currently weighing whether signers of a 2009 ballot petition face a grave enough threat of reprisal for their support of “traditional marriage,” to warrant blocking the release of their names as required under a state law. The petition they signed aimed to strip domestic partner protections from gay and lesbian couples, but voters approved Ref. 71 and kept the protections intact.
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled strongly in favor of disclosure, rejecting in their 8-1 decision in Doe v. Reed the notion that publicly disclosing the names of petition signers generally violates their First Amendment rights. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that disclosure helps root out fraud in signature gathering, and “promotes transparency and accountability in the electoral process to an extent that other measures cannot.”
What the Court mostly eschewed, and left for the Washington state court to address, is whether the particular case of Washington’s Ref. 71 presents special circumstances warranting an exception to disclosure, due to a “reasonable probability” that disclosure of these petitions will subject petition signers to “threats, harassment, or reprisals.”
Justice Samuel Alito tries to make the case in his Doe v. Reedconcurring opinion that “the widespread harassment and intimidation suffered by supporters of California’s Proposition 8 provides strong support for an as-applied exemption [from disclosure] in the present case.”
Evidence of this purported harassment and intimidation suffered by backers of Prop. 8 — the ballot measure that stripped the rights of gays and lesbians to wed in California in 2008 — has been trumpeted far and wide by anti-gay groups wishing to perpetuate a meme that they are in fact victims in their campaigns to codify gay Americans as second-class citizens.
At the end of the federal Prop 8 trial June 16, Variety’s Ted Johnson and I asked plaintiffs’ attorney David Boies if they were going to release the videotapes of the trial or post the clips of testimony that co-counsel Ted Olson had used in his closing argument. Boies said they couldn’t because “those are under protective order from the court. Those are under a protective order from the court. And the court will have to make any determination on that. Even though we used them in the trial – it’s still up to the court what further distribution they get.” Boies said the Media Coalition would have to take up the cause to get the videotape or the clips released. No word yet on whether then Media Coalition intends to press the case.
Both Boies and Olson lamented that the Court had ruled for secrecy and the world had not had the opportunity to see the plaintiffs’ moving testimony and the ProtectMarriage witnesses change their minds on the witness stand. Others of us lamented that the world didn’t have the opportunity to see how two world-class attorneys argued their cases before an insightful and often humorous judge.
Well, it appears the Prop 8 proponents are still worried about that. Their attorney Charles Cooper (pictured) filed a letter to Judge Walker last Tuesday, June 29, asking Walker to recall all the tapes, lest they “accidentally” see the light of day.
Walker could publish his decision any day. A website has been set up – Prop 8 Decision - to let people know who’s doing what in their area. Though details are still being finalized, there will be a rally in West Hollywood Park (between Santa Monica Boulevard and Melrose) the night of the decision.
Click inside for excerpts of the letter, the full copy of which is posted here:
No doubt about it – watching federal Prop 8 challengers Ted Olson and David Boies together, you can see how much they have grown to love each other. Oh, sure – the respect has been there for at least 10 years since they went mano-a-mano in the Bush v Gore case in which the U.S. Supreme Court came down on Olson’s side.
But as this photo (take by Mark Hefflinger at the news conference Wednesday following closing arguments) illustrates, this Republican-Democrat “odd couple” is modeling a new kind of straight friendship among men of the Vietnam War-era where – unlike the original “Odd Couple” Oscar and Felix – personal disagreements are not publically picked at as evidence that their friendship isn’t something more, something gay. These guys are not only arguing in court that being gay is “OK,” but their own public displays of affection are challenging the very heterosexual male notion that “love” has to automatically be sexualized.
Please click inside to read what David Boies said the emotional trial, the videotape of the trial, and other issues.
Some terrific journalists covered the federal Prop 8 trial and have provided a nice mosaic of reporting on Wednesday’s historic closing arguments in Judge Vaughn Walker’s San Francisco courtroom. The American Foundation for Equal Rights posted the entire trial transcript on their website during which you can read how Ted Olson, arguing for plaintiffs Jeff Zarrillo and Paul Katami and Sandy Stier and Kris Perry, passionately summed up why same sex couples deserve marriage equality.
With hard news reporters summing up the remarkable closing arguments – I found that there were other unnoticed or underreported stories that also contribute to the record of this remarkable time, including how the elections this November could dramatically impact the outcome of the trial. The National Organization for Marriage’s Maggie Gallagher told me, for instance, that she thinks Walker may rule that Prop 8 discriminates based on gender as well as sexual orientation. I was also amused to see that NOM posted video of Ted Olson’s moving answer to a question I asked at the news conference on their NOM blog.
Click inside to read Ted Olson’s answer to why he was so passionate during the closing arguments, plus reaction from NOM’s Maggie Gallagher, MEUSA’s Molly McKay, Lance Black and Cleve Jones, plus how the federal Prop 8 trial could be impacted by politics.
Anticipation is building. The atmosphere itself seems to reverberate with history. On Wednesday morning, District Court Judge Vaughn Walker will hear closing arguments in the federal trial challenging the constitutionality of Prop 8.
The timing is synchronous with the two-year anniversary of the first legal marriages in California on June 16, 2008. And not coincidentally, the lawsuit at the center of the challenge, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, waslaunched by the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) in Los Angeles on May 27, 2009 – the day after the California Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Prop 8. This was the same court that ruled a year earlier, on May 15, 2008, that same sex couples had been denied the fundamental constitutional right to marry. To underscore just how this profound fight for the freedom to marry transcends partisan politics, AFER brought together two of the best legal minds in America – Ted Olson and David Boies – who had been on opposing sides in the historic Bush v. Gore case in 2000.
To lay people like me, the federal Prop 8 case seems to boil down to the constitutional rights of gays as a group of historically disadvantaged people versus the political will of “the people” based on their religious beliefs. After the majority of the case concluded last Januray, philosopher/columnist Linda Hirshman wrote in the Daily Beast that the “gay-marriage case now unfolding in a San Francisco courtroom may be the most important battle between tradition and modernity since the Scopes trial.”
Indeed, one of the questions plaintiff’s counsel has been instructed by Walker to answer in closing arguments is whether sexual orientation is a “choice” or not – a key to whether gays can be legally considered a minority deserving of equal protection under the US Constitution.
Please click inside to read more about the closing arguments, as well as links to bring you up to speed, links to sites and reporters who will be covering the trial on Wednesday, and the timeline for the arguments. ADDITIONALLY – AFER JUST RELEASED OLSON/BOIES’ ANSWERS TO JUDGE WALKER’S QUESTIONS, PLUS LINK TO PROP 8 PROPONENTS ARE ALSO INSIDE.
Next week, on Wednesday, June 16, attorneys arguing in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Prop 8, will deliver their closing arguments before District Court Judge Vaugn Walker in San Francisco. Please check the American Foundation for Equal Rights for updates. The court just released the schedule for those arguments:
10:00 AM – 11:30 AM Plaintiffs (argued by Ted Olson and David Boies)
11:30 AM – 11:45 AM City and County of San Francisco
11:45 AM – 12:00 PM Governor, Attorney General and county defendants
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM Lunch
1:00 PM – 3:15 PM Proponents (argued by Charles Cooper)
3:15 PM – 3:45 PM Plaintiffs’ rebuttal
The closing arguments will be followed by news conferences, presumably from at least the Plaintiff and Proponents side.
I’m a big fan of stream of consciousness – love Woolfe, Proust, Faulkner. But I really don’t think I have the ability to make the connective leaps Brian Brown’s made in his latest missive about the National Organization for Marriage’s “movement.”
Though it might appear that the federal challenge to the constitutionality of Prop 8 is on hiatus because of the dearth of news stories – the American Foundation for Equal Rights, sponsors of the challenge, have nonetheless been busy.
Ted Olson and David Boies, attorneys for the plaintiffs, appeared on Bill Moyers Journal and AFER communications director Yusef Robb (not pictured) and senior project director Adam Umhoefer (pictured here second from the left) attended a LA Press Club panel discussion last Thursday on the trial with The Advocate’s Andrew Harmon (left), Variety managing editor and blogger at wilshireandwashington.com (second from right) and journalism professor and KPCC radio contributor Jon Beaupre (right) and me.
There’s been some news – Judge Vaugh Walker’s court issued a press release saying closing arguments will not be televised. But most of the work has been behind the scenes with a flurry of motions about new discovery requests and other legal filings – all due Saturday. That included a 294-page summary filed by Olson and Boies spelling out how the evidence they presented in the three-week case proves that Prop 8 is unconstitutional.
What’s that adage about spin – say it long enough, hard enough, loud enough and eventually it will take on the cloak of truth? Well, the latest missive from National Organization Executive Director Brian Brown reads more like a fairy tale – showing that this Emperor has no clothes.
Brown’s email to supporters was in response a San Francisco Chronicle column published Sunday ostensibly “outing” Judge Vaughn Walker – who was not in the closet. But Brown’s email is full of so many oft-repeated lies, I decided to respond to his allegations about Judge Walker, point by point – using the transcript from the federal Prop 8 trial over which Walker is presiding. Please click inside to read my smack-down.
I wrote this analysis of the federal Prop 8 trial for DC Agenda, which they just posted on their website. Here’s the opening – please click inside for the full story.
Everyone packed into U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker’s courtroom in San Francisco on Jan. 11 knew they were watching history.
On one side of the court sat lawyers Ted Olson and David Boies, partisan foes in Bush v. Gore. Now the straight pair pledged to prove that same-sex couples deserved the fundamental right to marry. For them, the meaning of the U.S. Constitution is at stake.
On the other side sat Republican attorney Charles Cooper and a handful of supporting lawyers. It was what some might consider a strange sight. After the passage of Proposition 8 in California, the loss of same-sex marriage in Maine, New York and New Jersey and the gloating by ProtectMarriage affiliates such as the National Organization for Marriage, the anti-gay forces looked weak. In fact, throughout the trial, they portrayed themselves as David fighting Goliath……
LGBT POV is among the many LGBT and MSM blogs that have been covering the federal challenge to Prop 8 (see here and here, for example). And with the decision by the US Supreme Court not to allow broadcasts of the trial outside the San Francisco federal courthouse, bloggers such as Courage Campaign’s Rick Jacobs have been live-blogging the events.
But many of us also begged the American Foundation for Equal Rights – the group sponsoring the plaintiff’s legal team lead by Ted Olson and David Boies, to please secure the expensive trial transcripts and post them on their website so everyone can see what’s happening. LA-based political strategist Chad Griffin, chair of AFER’s board, said they’d do everything legally possible to ensure public access to the trial.
They have been doing all of this without any public request for financial help, other than a button to a page on their website. Late Thursday, however, Chad sent out a fundraising letter asking the community for help in keeping this trial going. With local activism at a standstill and political attention shifted to the upcoming elections and winning federal benefits, many are counting on the Prop 8 trial team to win full marriage equality. This is them asking for your help to do that. Please click inside to read Chad’s appeal.
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!
The federal challenge to Prop 8 happening now in the US District Court in San Francisco is not just a legal expose of the ongoing discrimination against same sex couples – it is also revealing just how deep is the divide in American thinking and perception.
In his latest fundraising letter issued Friday afternoon, National Organization for Marriage Executive Director Brian Brown summed up the legal strategy of the Olson/Boies team as putting Christianity on trial.
Please click inside to read his spin and my back-spin.
Respected New York Times Supreme Court writer Linda Greenhouse posted an excellent blog Thursday night entitled: “Into the Closet.” The opening line reads:
The post is about the unsigned US Supreme Court ruling denying permission – authorized by US District Court Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who is presiding over the federal challenge to the constitutionality of Prop 8 – to have a live video feed to federal courthouses in four other cities and a delayed posting of the video on his District website. By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court bought the allegations by the Prop 8 defenders that their witnesses feared harassment if their testimony was broadcast. Please click inside to read why I think this SCOTUS ruling continues the history of discrimination against LGBT people.
Who’s testifying in the Olson-Boies trial and why? By Jenny Pizer, Marriage Project Director for Lambda Legal
Why hear from those who started and ran the “Yes on Prop 8” campaign?
Plaintiffs also will call as hostile witnesses some individuals who were part of the Prop 8 campaign to recount how they encouraged voters to support the initiative. This testimony will explore the reasons offered to voters, and likely will help Judge Walker assess what “Yes on 8” voters intended to accomplish, which will be a factor in his assessment of whether adequate justifications exist for the amendment’s re-imposition of unequal treatment of gay people under California law.
The U.S. Constitution forbids intentional discrimination, meaning intentionally unequal treatment of a particular group that is “similarly situated” to a preferred group with respect to a public benefit, without an adequate reason. Assessing voters’ intent can be tricky because not all voters who approved Prop 8 shared the same understanding, goals or hopes. As one measuring point, however, the Supreme Court repeatedly has said that a “bare desire to harm” a targeted group can never be a valid government purpose.
Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic blog broke the story: “Ken Mehlman, President Bush’s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.”
I just got back from an amazing event in West Hollywood Park where an enthusiastic crowd delighted in having a victory and meeting the heroes of that victory: Chad Griffin, who founded the American Foundation for Equal Rights that hired the incredible legal team, conservative Republican attorney Ted Olson, progressive Democratic attorney David Boies, and the plaintiffs – Kris Perry and Sandy Stiers and Jeff Zarrillo and Paul Katami who shared their ordinary gay lives and love with the world. There to celebrate the joy of equality were West Hollywood Mayor John Heilman, who acted as something of an emcee and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who Heilman introduced as being from WeHo’s “sister city.” Villaraigosa thrilled the crowd by commenting off the cuff, “Tonight, my friend, you and I are sisters.”
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court 
At the end of the federal Prop 8 trial June 16, Variety’s Ted Johnson and I 
No doubt about it – watching federal Prop 8 challengers Ted Olson and David Boies together, you can see how much they have grown to love each other. Oh, sure – the respect has been there for at least 10 years since they went mano-a-mano in the Bush v Gore case in which the U.S. Supreme Court came down on Olson’s side.
Some terrific journalists covered the federal Prop 8 trial and have provided a nice mosaic of reporting on Wednesday’s historic closing arguments in Judge Vaughn Walker’s San Francisco courtroom. The American Foundation for Equal Rights posted the 
Anticipation is building. The atmosphere itself seems to reverberate with history. On Wednesday morning, District Court Judge Vaughn Walker will hear closing arguments in the federal trial challenging the constitutionality of Prop 8.
Next week, on Wednesday, June 16, attorneys arguing in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Prop 8, will deliver their closing arguments before District Court Judge Vaugn Walker in San Francisco. Please check the 
I’m a big fan of stream of consciousness – love Woolfe, Proust, Faulkner. But I really don’t think I have the ability to make the connective leaps Brian Brown’s made in his latest missive about the National Organization for Marriage’s “movement.”
Though it might appear that the federal challenge to the constitutionality of Prop 8 is on hiatus because of the dearth of news stories – the 
What’s that adage about spin – say it long enough, hard enough, loud enough and eventually it will take on the cloak of truth? Well, the latest missive from National Organization Executive Director Brian Brown reads more like a fairy tale – showing that this Emperor has no clothes.
I wrote this analysis of the federal Prop 8 trial for DC Agenda, which they just posted on their website. Here’s the opening – please click inside for the full story. 
LGBT POV is among the many LGBT and MSM blogs that have been covering the federal challenge to Prop 8 (see 
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.
The federal challenge to Prop 8 happening now in the US District Court in San Francisco is not just a legal expose of the ongoing discrimination against same sex couples – it is also revealing just how deep is the divide in American thinking and perception.
Respected New York Times Supreme Court writer Linda Greenhouse posted an excellent blog Thursday night entitled: 
Who’s testifying in the Olson-Boies trial and why?
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