Box Turtle Bulletin

Tennessee Hotel Employee Fired For Being Gay

They say this sort of thing never happens, but here it is. David Hill says he was fired from the Artee Hotel (a former Holiday Inn) in Brentwood, Tennessee, simply for being gay. Not only that, but the owner who fired him dared him to sue:

“They literally said to me because of my orientation and my alternative lifestyle, that I was not a fit for the hotel,” said Hill.

Hill said he used to be the human resources director and is shocked at the owner’s decision to dismiss him because of his sexual preference. “The owner (Tarun Surti) said, ‘I don’t give a damn. They can sue me. I will not have any of the gays in leadership roles in my hotel.’ And that’s a quote,” said Hill.

Assistant general manager, Leonard Stoddard, confirmed Hill’s allegation. He should know, because he said he was the one who had to fire Hill. He spoke with Nashville’s Channel 4 News:

“The owner, Mr. Surti, comes from a culture that is not very tolerant to the gay lifestyle, and therefore he felt it necessary to have him removed from the workforce at the property,” said Stoddard.

“(He was fired) strictly because of his sexual orientation?” asked reporter Katina Rankin.

“I do believe that’s a very fair assumption,” asked [sic] Stoddard.

“Did you agree with his decision?” asked Rankin.

“I did not,” said Stoddard. “It is in our employee handbook that no one should be discriminated against, harassed verbally, physically or any other means for their sexuality, their sexual orientation, gender, race or anything of that sort.”

Meanwhile, it appears the firings didn’t start with Hill, and may not end with him:

Stoddard said Hill’s termination came after Surti received a letter which listed the names of several gay staff members including Hill and Stoddard. That letter was written by a former employee who had been fired for, among other reasons, being gay, Stoddard said.

…Stoddard said Surti fired Hill and told Stoddard he would soon need to find a new employer, as well. Stoddard has worked at the hotel for 10 months. He has not been officially terminated yet, but expects to be soon.

Which may explain why Stoddard spoke so freely with Channel 4.

Surti wouldn’t comment to Channel 4, but according to Out & About, Surti blamed the firings on staff cutbacks.

Hill plans to file a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Labor, bt it’s not clear how far that will go. While U.S. law does protect against employment discrimination on the basis of religion, race, and ethnicity, and disability, it doesn’t cover sexual orientation.

Anti-Gay Donors Spooked

The organizers behind Proposition 8 are suing to keep anti-gay donations secret (LA Times):

Proponents of a ballot measure that banned same sex marriage filed a lawsuit in federal court this week seeking to overturn state campaign finance laws that require that names and personal information of donors to state political campaigns be made public.

Their lawsuit (seen here) includes the following arguments

30. Plaintiffs and other supporters of Proposition 8 have been subjected to threats, harassment, and reprisals as a result of the support for Proposition 8…

31. The threats and harassment have included threatening phone calls, emails, and postcards…

32. Supporters of Proposition 8 have also had their personal property vandalized or destroyed…

Most of the anecdotes listed as evidence are trivial to the point of being laughable. For example, “Decl. of John Doe #4 (received email that read “I AM BOYCOTTING YOUR ORGANIZATION AS A RESULT OF YOUR SUPPORT OF PROP 8″)”

The basic gist of their argument is that political donations should be secret because otherwise that political support can have consequences such a loss of business or personal criticism.

They are asking that the court to

a. Declare all registration, reporting, and disclaimer requirements unconstitutional as applied to Committee Plaintiffs, Major Donors, and all other individuals and organizations holding similar views.

b. Enjoin [the Secretary of State] from enforcing all registration, reporting, and disclaimer requirements against Committee Plaintiffs, etc.

c. Expunge all records of Reports filed by Committee Plaintiffs, etc. on California’s campaign and reporting disclosure system.

It’s amusing to note that they are specifically asking that only those who supported Proposition 8 (those holding “similar views”) be excused from obeying reporting requirements. One might almost forget that it was this campaign that sent extortion letters to opponents of the Proposition.

This may seem odd at first. After all, these records have been downloaded and stored by scores of gay individuals and groups. It would take little effort for them to become public knowledge again immediately.

And challenges to this 1974 law have consistently lost over the years. It’s not likely that they will succeed this time.

The law was intended to prevent money laundering and to provide disclosure of who is making contributions to political campaigns. It has withstood several previous legal challenges. Experts on the 1st Amendment experts said they did not believe the suit stood much of a chance of success.

But Justin McLachlan noted

They’ve also asked the court to prevent the state from requiring them to file upcoming reports, due on Jan. 31, that they say will reveal the names of previously undisclosed campaign donors and they want protection from filing reports that reveal the names of their treasurer and campaign officers, like registration documents.

That’s an awful lot of expense and effort to go through on the off chance that the courts rule in their favor. Something makes me think that there is perhaps a bombshell hidden in the new reports, something that the campaign does not want to go public.

Let’s hope that Fred Karger and Californians Against Hate are ready to give it close scrutiny.

Nine Men Jailed in Senegal for Homosexuality

Diadji Diouf, who heads an organization which provides HIV prevention services to gay men in Senegal, was been convicted along with eight other men of homosexuality and sentenced to eight years in prison. This depite the fact that Senegalese law only provides for five years in prison for homosexuality. The judge added three more years, claiming the men were also members of a “criminal group,” presumably the HIV services organization.

Diouf’s organization, AIDES Senegal, provided condoms and HIV treatment out of his apartment. Police raided his apartment on December 19 and arrested the men. The raid came just weeks after Senegal hosted an international AIDS conference which included LGBT participants.

The head of a Senegalese gay rights group, speaking anonymously to AFP news, said that conditions in the country were getting steadily worse for LGBT people. “Many gays are already fleeing to neighboring countries because of our living conditions,” he said.

AFA Boycotts Pepsi

Remember when we asked whether the American Family Association was gearing up for a Pepsi boycott? Well, game on.

Barney Frank on Rick Warren, Obama, and the “Gay Agenda”

Jeffrey Toobin has a great profile of Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) in the latest New Yorker. First thing that pops out is that Frank intends to be much more aggressive than Obama:

Frank’s mordant view of human nature presents a contrast to the sunnier approach of President-elect Obama, a difference reflected in their dispute over Obama’s choice to have Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor, give the invocation at the Inauguration. “Obama tends to overstate his ability to get people to change their opinions and underestimates the importance of confronting ideological differences,” Frank told me. “It’s one thing to talk to somebody. I talk to more conservatives than anyone, because I’m trying to get legislation passed. But it’s another to make Rick Warren the most honored clergyman in the world.” In California, Warren supported Proposition 8, the successful anti-gay-marriage referendum. “Now, when we fight Warren in California, we are going to hear, ‘Oh, yeah, but Obama picked him for the inaugural.’ He doesn’t deserve that honor. And I don’t want to hear that the other clergyman at the inaugural, Reverend [Joseph] Lowery, supports gay rights. I didn’t vote for a tie in the election.”

Frank worries that Obama’s evenhandedness may prove to be a political liability.

I think we all can relate to that worry. Frank, on the other hand, won’t let that get in the way of what he thinks needs to be done for the economy (he’s chairman of the powerful Committee on Financial Services) and for LGBT rights:

Frank is uncharacteristically hopeful about the future, including gay rights. “We’re going to do three things in Congress,” he told me. “First, a hate-crimes bill—that shouldn’t be too hard. Next, employment discrimination. We almost got that through before, but now we can win even if we add transgender protections, which we are going to do. And finally, after the troops get home from Iraq, gays in the military. The time has come.” [Emphasis mine]

That last point is key. If we’re going to wait until after the troops get home from Iraq, then repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” probably won’t happen for a very long time. But his response to those who claim that this represents some sort of radical agenda was pretty good:

“I do not think that any self-respecting radical in history would have considered advocating people’s rights to get married, join the Army, and earn a living as a terribly inspiring revolutionary platform.”

Another Reason to Love Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt is one of the most beautiful men alive, coupled to one of the sexiest women on the planet, successful, rich, and famous. He’s also a competent actor, a decent guy, not a diva, committed to helping the less fortunate, a good family man, and – of all things – an activist for gay equality. There is no shortage of reasons to love Brad Pitt.

But here’s one more (W magazine):

“People who are against gay marriage do not understand the very freedoms that they themselves are enjoying,” he argues. “What if someone said, ‘Sorry, no Christianity here? No Judaism. Certainly no Mormons.’ No one would stand for that, and I wouldn’t allow anyone to say that either. I’d fight them in the same way.”

Smith to be NY Senate Leader

The New York Times is reporting that the three dissident Senators – including anti-gay Ruben Diaz – have given their support to Malcolm Smith.

Mr. Smith’s staff announced Tuesday night that he had struck a deal with three dissident Democrats who had refused to support him — Rubén Díaz Sr. and Pedro Espada Jr., both of the Bronx, and Carl Kruger of Brooklyn. The three men made a theatrical entrance into Mr. Smith’s office shortly before 7 p.m., joining a meeting of other Senate Democrats an hour after it began, signaling that they were ready to throw their support to Mr. Smith.

Although Diaz claims that he received assurances that there would be no gay marraige vote, Smith says no deal was made. In fact, no deal was necessary:

“There are still five or six votes against the bill in the Democratic conference,” said Senator Jeffrey D. Klein, who represents parts of Bronx and Westchester County. He insisted that same-sex marriage was not discussed at all among Democrats on Tuesday.

“And I certainly don’t know five or six Republicans who are going to vote for it,” Mr. Klein added. “Everybody understands that.”

Proposition 8 and Race Revisited

It disturbs me that forty years after the death of Dr. King we still as a nation seem incapable of having frank discussions about race. And this seems to me to be particularly true within the gay community.

When exit polls reported that African Americans had voted in favor of Proposition 8 by a ratio of 70 to 30 percent, gays tended to respond in one of two ways. A small number of persons seemed to see this as some vindication of their own personal racial animus. But nearly all other gay writers, bloggers, and opinion spouters immediately sought to dismiss, discount, or deny this figure and what it had to say.

There was a lot of creative talk about outreach and errors and even some race-based self-justification. But what seemed to be lacking was much honest discussion about those truths that all seem to want to overlook:

• The Black Church is for the most part hugely homophobic
• Even non-religious African-Americans are disproportionately politically anti-gay

This week the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has released a report that seems to exist for the sole purpose of discounting the second fact. Now, I’ve long since come to see the NGLTF as more of an agent of spin than an advocate for honesty so it didn’t surprise me much that their report seemed more appropriate on the stage of a prestidigitator than in a news report.

But I couldn’t ignore this slanting of the story. Mainstream news sites jumped right on this, making such bizarre (and completely false) statements as this from Oakland Tribune reporter Josh Richman:

Neither African-Americans nor any other ethnicity were disproportionately in support of Proposition 8, which changed California’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage, according to a study of election results and post-vote surveys released Tuesday.

While the NGLTF report said no such thing, it did make two astonishing claims about the black vote:

• Analysis of the full range of data available persuades us that the NEP exit poll overestimated African American support for Proposition 8 by ten percentage points or more.
• Furthermore, much of African Americans’ support for Proposition 8 can be explained by the fact that blacks tend to be more religious than Californians as a whole.

The justification for the first assertion consists mostly of “because I want it to be true”. The NGLTF compares polling before and after the election to the exit poll and declared it to be an outlier. What they fail to notice is that the polling before the election predicted the failure of Prop 8 and the exit polls got it right.

Then they provide a graphic to support their claim:

This chart represents an analysis of the voters in four counties in which most black Californians live. This would seem to me to be a pretty reasonable way to verify whether exit polls got it right. But in order to gain value from such an analysis, one needs to avoid making claims that appear wacky from even the simplest glance.

The line you see on this graphic is a running-mean smoother, a way of showing a pattern in data. I don’t have access to the raw data, but something strikes me as peculiar about this line.

An “arithmetic mean” is what most folks think of as an average of numbers. You add up the totals and divide by the number of items. Considering this, take a glance at the right end of the chart – that which shows the larger percentage of African-Americans in the voting precinct. Does it look to you as though the line represents a mean average of the data points?

Unfortunately, I don’t have the skill or experience to refute the methodology of their line, but I will say that it does not, on the surface, appear to present a visual representation of Yes votes in the precincts shown.

NGLTF does admit that “a slight but unmistakable relationship exists between the proportion of a precinct’s voters who are African American and support for Proposition 8”. And they estimate that between 57 and 59% supported Proposition 8.

But that just doesn’t make any mathematical sense. In their Table 1, they lay out their breakdown of ethnic voting:

Well sorry, but those numbers don’t get us to 52.3% support. One of those ethnic demographics is understated.

Frankly, were this from a source I consider more credible, I’d delight in the reduction. I would very much like to believe that a majority of black voters are like the straight black folk I know who were all horrified that Prop 8 won. But based on the available information, I just don’t see the justification for this reinterpretation of history.

But what troubles me most about the NGLTF report is what they next assert: “much of African Americans’ support for Proposition 8 can be explained by the fact that blacks tend to be more religious than Californians as a whole”.

I do not know the credibility of the survey on which they rely for the claim, but I am pretty much willing to accept that African American Californians attend church more regularly than do other ethic groups. However, the graphic provided by NGLTF to show that religion is the reason that blacks voted disproportionately in favor of Prop 8 actually suggests exactly the opposite:

If the above chart is accurate, religion played less of an impact on the black church-goer than on any other demographic. And non-religious blacks were 12% more likely to favor Proposition 8 than non-religious whites. To suggest that it was religion rather than ethnically-shared community values that most strongly determined the outcome of the black vote requires a trip down the rabbit hole.

NGLTF then goes on to discuss how, as a whole, religion, party affiliation, conservative identification, and age are more important to predicting the state’s support for anti-gay positions than is race. There is no doubt that these played a great role. No one is surprised that conservative evangelical Republicans overwhelmingly voted for Proposition 8.

But all of that is a smoke screen. Because it is also true that liberal non-religious Democrats overwhelmingly voted against Proposition 8 … unless they were black.

And if the only difference between the voting patterns of liberal Democrats can be traced to their ethnic identity, then it requires magical thinking to say that ethnic identity is not an important factor.

Some of you, no doubt, are already crafting a reply calling me a racist. And, sadly, some are giggling while feeling justified for anti-black biases. Both of those responses are pointless (and wrong) and get us nowhere.

The fact is – regardless of how much NGLTF would wish otherwise – that the gay community does not truly have a strategic alliance with black voters. We do not have African American support. We can fully expect that unless something drastically changes, future votes on gay equality will have large percentages of African Americans voting against our rights.

Now there are a number of things we could do.

We could make a concerted effort to strategize and find allies for a long-term plan to educate and influence the African American community to recognize that discrimination based on sexual orientation is no more admirable than discrimination based on race. We know that many leaders, from Coretta Scott King and Mildred Loving to John Lewis and Al Sharpton, have been open to learning this message.

But we also know that there is a strong and unapologetic voice of harshest homophobia that has no hesitation in using race as a justification for denying that gay and lesbian Americans deserve civil equality. If we seek change, it cannot be haphazard or hesitant. It will be no picnic and we have to be willing to offend some who believe that they own the concept of civil rights and not be afraid to be called racist by those who oppose us.

Or we could also just write off this subset of the population and hope that we can sway enough whites and Asians to outweigh the African American vote. But while it may be pragmatic for winning an election, this approach strikes me as particularly cold. It not only leaves another generation of young black gay men and women growing up in a community that has pockets of severe hostility, but it also dismisses a lot of otherwise decent people as not being worth our time or effort.

There are no easy answers. And I don’t even begin to know how to go about approaching this issue in a way that is productive or appropriate.

But the one response that I believe is the height of foolishness is to say, as did NGLTF, “differences seen among racial and ethnic groups in support for Proposition 8 … do not merit the amount of attention they have received”. Ignoring it won’t make this issue go away.

SF Supervisor Introduces Resolution Condemning Church Vandalism

Here’s something worth noting. San Francisco Supervisor Bevan Dufty introduced a resolution condeming the recent vandalism of the Most Holy Redeemer Church. You can read the text of the resolution here.  By the way, this is especially notable because Bevan Dufty is gay.

On Monday, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League issued a long and convoluted statement denouncing the vandalism, and blaming the gays for it despite a complete and total lack of evidence, adding this latest incident to a long laundry list of “attacks” — both exaggerated and imagined — against Catholicism. He also implied that the San Francisco City Board of Supervisors were partly responsible. Now that the Board is on record condemning the attack, I wonder if we’ll hear a mea maxima culpa from Donohue? Don’t bet on it.

[Hat tip: Joe My God, Towleroad]

Warren’s Counterproductive AIDS Efforts in Africa

Last month, I commented on how Rev. Rick Warren’s efforts to fight AIDS in Africa seemed to be more of a means by which to influence religious doctrine and public policy in several African nations than a charitable effort. My analysis seems confirmed by an article for the Daily Beast by Max Blumenthal, in which he investigates Warren’s AIDS efforts and finds them closely tied to anti-gay political activists and driven by dogmatic ideology.

In addition to the Anglican Bishops that are seeking to destroy the Church of England and remold it under their personal control, Warren has aligned himself with an evangelical pastor in Uganda, Martin Ssempa. This pastor quickly became interested in AIDS prevention after the US allocated 15 billion dollars (the PEPFAR program). While taking a salary from US taxpayers, he implemented efforts to remove condom use from Uganda’s successful ABC (abstinence, be faithful, condoms) anti-AIDS efforts.

By 2005, billboards promoting condom use disappeared from the streets of Kampala, replaced by billboards promoting virginity. “Until recently, all HIV-related billboards were about condoms. Those of us calling for abstinence and faithfulness need billboards too,” Ssempa told the BBC at the time. A 2005 report by Human Rights Watch documented that educational material in Uganda’s secondary schools falsely claiming condoms had microscopic pores that could be penetrated by the HIV virus and noted the sudden nationwide shortage of condoms due to new restrictions imposed by on condom imports.

Due in part to these efforts by Ssempa, HIV began to increase in the country.

AIDS activists arrived at the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto in 2006 with disturbing news from Uganda. Due at least in part to the chronic condom shortage, HIV infections were on the rise again. The disease rate had spiked to 6.5 percent among rural men, and 8.8 percent among women—a rise of nearly two points in the case of women. “The ‘C’ part [of ABC] is now mainly silent,” said Ugandan AIDS activist Beatrice Ware. As a result, she said, “the success story is unraveling.”

This should have given concern to those most familiar with AIDS in Africa. However, Rick Warren did not seek to return to the success of ABC. Rather, he took personal action to continue the program that had been shown to increase HIV infection – abstinence only.

In February 2008, Rep. Tom Lantos sought to reform PEPFAR to lift the abstinence-only earmarks.

His maneuver infuriated Warren, who immediately boarded a plane for Washington to join Christian right leaders including born-again former Watergate felon Chuck Colson for an emergency press conference on the Capitol lawn. In his speech, Warren claimed that Lantos’ bill would spawn an increase in the sex trafficking of young women. The bill died and PEPFAR was reauthorized in its flawed form.

But Ssempa was not content to put his anti-sex agenda ahead of the AIDS-prevention efforts of his nation. He also used his political connections and US backing to advance a harshly homophobic political atmosphere in their nation.

August 2007, Ssempa led hundreds of his followers through the streets of Kampala to demand that the government mete out harsh punishments against gays. “Arrest all homos,” read placards. And: “A man cannot marry a man.” Ssempa continued his crusade online, publishing the names of Ugandan gay rights activists on a website he created, along with photos and home addresses. “Homosexual promoters,” he called them, suggesting they intended to seduce Uganda’s children into their lifestyle. Soon afterwards, two of President Yoweri Museveni’s top officials demanded the arrest of the gay activists named by Ssempa. Terrified, the activists immediately into hiding.

The more I learn about Rick Warren’s AIDS efforts in Africa, the less I respect him. He has endorsed policies that he knows are not the most effective and he has befriended and supported some of the most homophobic religious leaders in Christendom in their anti-gay political actions.

It is commendable that Rick Warren feels compassion for those suffering from AIDS in Africa. It is not commendable that he has used this suffering as a way to get a political and religious foothold in the region or that he capitalized on – and encouraged – hatred against gay people in the process.

Pam’s House Blend, Other Blogs Hacked

SoapBlox, the online service which hosts Pam Spaulding’s blog as well as several other web sites, has been hacked and taken offline. The content of SoapBlox’s home page early this morning contained the graphic you see above (click to see the entire home page). The hacking was so severe that SoapBlox later put up a post which amounts to a going out of business announcement:

It was a good ride, but it’s over.
Thanks for all the fish.

All these hackers messing with our stuff, and we here at SoapBlox have no clue what to do. We don’t have enough knowledge, time, money, or care to fix it.

So I hope the Hackers are happy.

If you want the data from your blog, we will get it. But we are not going to try and restore anything.

Consider this the “We’re Out of Business” post.

Most of the servers have been taken off line because they were being used to hack and exploit other websites. The hackers install this crap on servers after they get in. SoapBlox’s ISP then takes the servers off line.

We do not know when they will come back online.

We do not know if they will come back online.

No word yet on when Pam Spaulding’s web site will be back online. Hope it’s soon. We miss her already.

Update: Pam is back — for now.

Eleven Seattle Gay Bars Receive Threatening Letters

Seattle’s The Stranger has the scoop on a very disturbing threat:

Eleven gay bars in Seattle received letters today addressed to the “Owner/Manager” from someone claiming to be in the possession of ricin, a deadly poison. “Your establishment has been targeted,” the letter begins. “I have in my possession approximately 67 grams of ricin with which I will indiscriminately target at least five of your clients.”

…According to the CDC’s website, someone who has ingested “a significant amount” will develop vomiting and diarrhea within the first 6-12 hours; other symptoms of ricin poisoning include hallucinations, seizures, and blood in the urine. There is no antidote for ricin but ricin exposure is not invariably fatal.

The Seattle Police Department is taking the the threat seriously. They are running forensic tests on all the letters. Seattle Police are also coordinating their investigation with the FBI and other federal agencies.

While the ricin threat is very disturbing, it appears that actually delivering on the threat without being detected would not be an easy task. Nevertheless, everyone is taking the letters very seriously. At least one bar, the Eagle, is posting signs advising patrons not to leave their drinks unattended.

In addition to the eleven bars, the Seattle Stranger also received a letter addressed to the attention of “Obituaries”:

The letter’s author said the paper should “be prepared to announce the deaths of approximately 55 individuals all of whom were patrons of the following establishments on a Saturday in January.” The listed bars are: the Elite, Neighbours, Wild Rose, the Cuff, Purr, the Eagle, R Place, Re-bar, CC’s, Madison Pub, and the Crescent. “I could take this moment to launch into a diatribe about my indignation towards the gay community,” the letter concludes, “however, I think the deaths will speak for themselves.”

No word on who might be behind the threats or their motivation.

Mesa May Consider Domestic Partnerships

This would be a welcome surprise:

Arizona’s most conservative big city may become only the third in the state to offer a domestic-partner registry to unmarried couples. Mesa Councilman Dennis Kavanaugh has been exploring the idea and has asked the city attorney to draft an ordinance that would allow people to register their relationships with the city. “It’s not creating gay marriage,” Kavanaugh said. “The sole purpose is to ensure visitation rights for people who are in unmarried-partner relationships.”

It’s no accident that this measure would be limited to one single benefit: hospital visitations. That’s the same limitation placed on Phoenix’s so-called domestic partnership registry. Tucson’s registry, created in 2003, is a tad more wide ranging, encompassing access to family rates at city park programs and other municipal benefits.

Even so, the mere possibility that Mesa might take up such a measure is a pleasant surprise. Mesa has a reputation for being the bastion of Mormonism in Arizona. It is the home to the oldest LDS Temple in Arizona, and more than one third of all donations made to the Yes on Proposition 102 campaign came from Mesa residents. But the fact that Salt Lake City has a similar registry might provide just enough political cover for this measure to make it’s way though Mesa’s city council. Stay tuned.

Couple Arrested In Gay Asylum Scam

We’ve posted numerous articles on this web site detailing the very real dangers many gay people face around the world. Some seek asylum in the United States, fearing for their lives should they be forced to return to their home countries. For many of these people, these fears are justified. But asylum is not automatically granted, and immigration authorities are on the constant lookout for cases of fraud. Now those who genuinely warrant asylum may find their road made all the more difficult by this case:

A federal grand jury indictment unsealed Tuesday said Steven Mahoney did “aid and abet” an asylum application for a person described only as “G.V.” which made the false claim that G.V. was gay, and “that G.V. was afraid of being assaulted and maimed if G.V. returned to his/her home country.” The indictment mentions two other immigrants by initials: one who claimed to be gay and another who feared being tortured if returned to his home country. If granted asylum, immigrants are not deported. Court documents did not say whether any of the three immigrants mentioned received asylum.

Also indicted was Mahoney’s estranged wife, Helen Mahoney. Both are naturalized citizens themselves from Russia. They each face a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine. Steven Mahoney also faces up to a 10-year sentence if found guilty on a fraud count. Both pleaded not guilty.

Republican State Lawmaker Files Pro-Gay Bill

Busting wide open two common stereotypes, a pro-gay bill was introduced by a Republican(!) legislator in Virginia’s(!!) lower house that would allow Virginia companies to provide life insurance to partners of gay employees.  Virginia law currently restricts supplemental life insurance coverage to legal spouses and dependent children under 19 or 25 if the child is a full-time student. The new bill, filed by Delegate Tom Rust (R-Fairfax), would open that up to allow coverage to anyone “mutually… agreed upon by the insurer and the group policyholder.”

A similar bill was filed last year by the state’s only openly gay legislator, Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria), but it died in committee.