Historic Day: Congress Passes DADT Repeal

There's a great diary over at DailyKos explaining the significance and historical context of today's final passage of a bill to repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. This picture is of Leonard Matlovich, who came out as gay during the 1970s after being a decorated veteran in the Vietnam war.

Illinois Poised To Enact Civil Unions

The Illinois House of Representatives passed a civil unions bill by a vote of 61-52 on Tuesday afternoon, with swift passage expected in the more liberal Illinois State Senate by the end of the day and SB 1617 ending up on Governor Pat Quinn's desk shortly thereafter.

Chicago Pride covered the story thusly:

Openly gay Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago), who co-sponsored SB 1716, started his opening statement at 5:17 p.m on Tuesday. "Once in every generation," he said, "legislatures across the country have a chance to advance the cause of liberty and justice for all."

The Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act (SB 1716) which passed to cheers in the chamber with a 61-52 majority vote, received support from the Democratic leadership in Springfield, including Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago) and Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, who was present.

[...]

Conservative groups, including the Catholic Conference of Illinois and Washington D.C.-based National Organization for Marriage (NOM), lobbied hard against the bill.

The bill does not recognize same-sex marriages, but will provide the same spousal rights to same-sex partners when it comes to surrogate decision-making for medical treatment, survivorship, adoptions, and accident and health insurance.

California, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington have passed laws allowing same sex civil unions. Same-sex couples can marry in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Washington D.C. and Iowa.

Congratulations to Illinois! I think it is quite amusing that heterosexual supremacists are now left making the counterfactual claim that "civil unions are identical to marriage" and are thus opposing measures that many in the LGBT community reject as "separate but unequal."

Prop. 8 Federal Appellate Oral Arguments On TV Dec. 6!

On Monday December 6th at 10am, A 3-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, also known as the federal Proposition 8 lawsuit. On August 4th, openly gay federal District Court judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Proposition 8 violated the United States Constitution.

These facts have been known for awhile. The new information is that apparently the oral arguments in the Perry appeal will now be televised by C-SPAN and local channel KGO. This is a big deal, because the lower court was intended to be broadcast as well but the heterosexual supremacists defending Proposition 8 objected and appealed all the way to the United States Supreme Court who overruled Judge Walker and banned the broadcasting of the oral arguments just days before the trial was scheduled to begin this past January.

Here are the details of the hearing on Monday, which will be in two 2-hour segments. The first session will be on whether the Proposition 8 propnents have "standing" to actually continue defending the statue, since the official parties to the lawsuit (the Governor and Attorney General) have refused to defend the voter-passed initiative in court. The second hour will be about the constitutionality of Proposition 8 itself.

Filed clerk order (Deputy Clerk:KKW): The Court orders that oral argument in these appeals be conducted in the following manner: The argument shall be divided into two hour-long sessions, with a brief recess in between. In the first hour, the parties shall address each appellant’s standing and any other procedural matters that may properly be raised. In the second hour, the parties shall address the constitutionality of Proposition 8.

During the first hour, the Hollingsworth defendants-intervenors-appellants (“Proponents”) shall first have 15 minutes, and the Imperial County movants-appellants shall next have 15 minutes in which to present their opening arguments regarding standing and other procedural issues. The Perry plaintiffs-appellees shall then have 30 minutes in which to respond. Any time reserved by either appellant may be used for rebuttal, but only one rebuttal argument may be made and that by either appellant.

During the second hour, the Proponents shall first have 30 minutes to present their opening argument on the merits of the constitutional question. The Perry plaintiffs-appellees shall then have 15 minutes, and the plaintiff-intervenor-appellee City and County of San Francisco shall have the next 15 minutes, in which to respond. Any time reserved by the Proponents may be used for rebuttal.

No later than November 24, 2010, the parties shall advise the Court of any objection they have to the allocation of time within each hour or of any reallocation of time within each hour that they wish to propose, by electronically filing letters with the Clerk of the Court. If any party wishes to give its full allotted time within either hour to an amicus curiae, it may request that the Court reallocate that time accordingly. Otherwise, no motions for leave to participate in oral argument by amici curiae will be entertained.. [7545517]

The names of the judges who will hear the appeal have not been released yet. Whoever loses at this level will appeal to the United States Supreme Court, who may or may not accept the case.

Halloween's Popularity Rooted In Gay Culture?

David Frum, a conservative columnist and former George W. Bush speechwriter has written a column for CNN.com about the international popularity of Halloween and its roots in the 1970s gay subculture of San Francisco.

Some perspective here: On Tuesday, some 37 percent of Americans are expected to turn out to vote. On Sunday, some 66 percent of Americans celebrated Halloween.


[...]

Halloween is overwhelmingly an adult holiday. This year, for example, Americans spent an estimated $800 million on costumes for children, $1 billion on costumes for adults. Where did that adult dress-up party begin?

As best we can tell: in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood. In the 1970s, that neighborhood emerged as the heart of a new home-owning, bourgeois, coupled gay community. A local variety store had long sponsored a Halloween street festival for kids. In the 1970s, the street festival transitioned into an adult party of lavish costumed theatricality. The "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" -- a troupe of transvestite nuns -- got their start here.

The Castro Halloween party spread to other gay neighborhoods in the 1980s: Greenwich Village, West Hollywood, Key West, Florida. In 1994, University of Florida anthropologist Jerry Kugelmass published a book on the new trend, "Masked Culture," describing Halloween as an emerging gay "high holiday." 

And after a while -- the straights imitated.

From the spread of disco in the 1970s -- to the habit of paying money for sparkling waters such as Perrier -- culminating in Halloween, gays have incubated and developed major cultural trends. Straights adopt, and then ungratefully forget whom they are adopting from -- just as American Christians forget how much of the modern Christmas music they enjoy was written by Jews, starting with the most popular of them all, Irving Berlin's "White Christmas." The majority culture forgets what the minority culture has produced.[emphasis added]

What's interesting about the piece is that although Frum is very conservative on gay rights generally (we may read his article from the mid-1990s where he called for the re-imposition of sodomy laws to forestall the legalization of gay marriage later in the semester), here he doesn't seem to be complaining about the cultural transference from a "subculture" to the mainstream.

Thoughts?

Omaha, Nebraska Rejects LGBT Rights Ordinance

Is it 2010 or 1975?

As we finish the LGBT Rights in the Era of Obama section of the class comes word about this story which reads like it is right out of Neil Miller's Out of the Past LGBT history book: a city council refusing to pass a non-discrimination ordinance protecting gay and transgender citizens.

Here's the deets:

The Omaha City Council on Tuesday voted down a proposed ordinance to give new protections to gays and lesbians.

The measure failed on a 3-3 vote. Councilman Franklin Thompson, who has called for a public vote on the issue, abstained.

Councilmen Ben Gray, Pete Festersen and Chris Jerram voted in favor of the ordinance; Jean Stothert, Garry Gernandt and Thomas Mulligan were opposed.

Gray, author of the ordinance, proposed that gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people be a protected class under city code — protection they don't currently have under state or federal law.

He amended the proposal to exclude religious organizations, but members of the Omaha business community also opposed the ordinance.

The council held a public hearing Tuesday on Thompson's proposal to put the issue to a public vote, in the form of an amendment to the City Charter. The vote on Thompson's measure is expected next week.

“I find it offensive that we would equate this with civil rights,” Pastor Cedric Perkins, pastor of Pilgrim Baptist Church said. “Those rights were based upon a person's color of their skin, which they could not change.”

[...]

The existing city ordinance already includes language prohibiting bias based on race, color, creed, religion, sex, marital status, national origin, age and disability.

Gray's ordinance would allow homosexual and transgender residents who believe they have been fired or suffered other workplace discrimination, or have been refused service at a restaurant, hotel or other place that serves the public, to file a complaint with Omaha's Human Rights and Relations Department, Assistant City Attorney Bernard in den Bosch has said.

In case you were wondering, here's a picture of "Pastor Cedric Perkins." Leapfrog Paranoia, Willful Blindness and Defiant Ignorance, anyone?




(Note, that the city councilman who proposed the ordinance, Ben Gray, is also African-American). Thus we have an example of Diversity Within intersectionality.

Obama Breaks Clinton's Record of 140 Openly Gay Presidential Appointees

Amanda Simpson, first openly transgender
Presidential appointee in history

Less than two years into his first Presidential term, Barack Obama has broken Bill Clinton's record of the number of appointees to the federal government with over 150 openly LGBT people in his administration so far.

Back in the 1990s when Clinton was president he made history by appointing the first openly gay person to a position requiring United States Senate approval, Roberta Achtenberg, to be assistant to the secretary for Housing and Urban Development. Noted homphobic Senator, Jesse Helms (R-NC), opposed the nomination and called Achtenberg a "damned lesbian" and "militant extremist" while he tried to stall and kill the appointment.

Now Obama has reached a historic level of 150 openly LGBT appointees in less than 2 years when it took Clinton 8 years to reach 140 openly gay and lesbian appointees.

From the Los Angeles Times report:

Gay activists, among Obama's strongest supporters, had hoped he would be the first to appoint an openly gay Cabinet secretary. While that hasn't happened — yet — Obama did appoint the highest-ranking gay official ever when he named John Berry as director of the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the nation's 1.9 million federal workers.

Other prominent names include Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and Fred Hochberg, chairman of the Export-Import Bank. Obama also named Amanda Simpson, the first openly transgender appointee, as a senior technical adviser in the Commerce Department. And David Huebner, ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, is the third openly gay ambassador in U.S. history.

White House spokesman Shin Inouye confirmed the record number, saying Obama has hired more gay officials than the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations combined. He said Obama "is proud that his appointments reflect the diversity of the American public."

"He is committed to appointing highly qualified individuals for each post," Inouye said. "We have made a record number of openly LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender) appointments and we are confident that this number will only continue to grow."

Progress takes time, and occurs in different areas (administrative instead of legislative) at different rates.

Cross-posted from The Mad Professah Lectures.