Box Turtle Bulletin

Rev. Lee Threatened by Nat’l Civil Rights Group for Supporting Marriage Equality

Rev. Eric Lee, the president of the Los Angeles chapter of The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, has been a valuable ally for marriage equality. He is a principled man (religiously conservative) who opposes discrimination where he sees it.

But Lee’s opposition to bigotry and bias has now gotten him in trouble with a group that was founded on the principles of equality for all. (NY Times)

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the 50-year-old civil rights organization founded by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, is seeking to remove the president of its Los Angeles chapter in response to his support of same-sex marriage in California.

But those in the national organization may not be able to insist on endorsing discrimination in Southern California.

Because chapters of the leadership conference operate autonomously and presidents are picked by local boards, it is not clear that the national organization has the authority to remove Mr. Lee from his post, which he has held for two years.

“It\’s been our position that the local board hired him,” said Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer, chairman of the local board and secretary of the California Democratic Party. “And, in fact, we are also the ones that approved his stance on the position of marriage equality. We have asked the national board if we have violated any procedures, and we have not gotten an answer.”

Rev. Lee is sacrificing and taking the tough road and facing hardship and standing up to opposition in order to speak the difficult and unwanted message that “any time you deny one group of people the same right that other groups have that is a clear violation of civil rights”.

Dr. King would be proud.

Anti-Gays in Maine Claim 70,000 Signatures

According to Everyday Christian,

Earlier this week, about 70,000 signatures had been gathered, with more expected, according to Bob Emrich.

Earlier this week, other press was reporting 55,000. I guess we’ll wait and see.

King’s Killer Offered Plea Deal

On February 12, 2008, Brandon McInerney walked into his eighth grade classroom and put two bullets in the back of classmate Larry King’s head. His reason? Because Larry King dared to flirt with him.

Ever since that date, his defense has sought every opportunity to portray McInerney as the victim and King as the aggressor. Brandon was just a poor tormented kid who couldn’t take it any more. Newsweek contributed by running a hit-piece on Larry King. He has even been helped by King’s previous guardians who think that by portraying Larry as a threat to all that is heterosexual, they can get money from those who were actually caring for him.

But District Attorney Maeve Fox is refusing to allow Brandon McInerney’s attorneys to portray him as an innocent or to trash the name of Lawrence King and seek to blame him for his own murder.

After the Newsweek article ran portraying McInerney as basically a good kid who “was smart” but “had his share of troubles” (unlike King whom they portrayed as a “flamboyant” disturbance who “flaunted his sexuality and wielded it like a weapon”), Fox released information that revealed an entirely different Brandon McInerney than that portrayed by his attorneys and parroted by an inexperienced and gullible journalist who was more concerned about “the story” than the truth.

• Investigators seized white supremacist materials, including doodlings of Nazi swastikas, from the bedroom of Brandon McInerney.
• McInerney looked for others to join in a gang beating of King in the days before the shooting. Unable to find others interested he decided to kill King.
• McInerney was familiar with the gun with which he killed King, having used it for target practice.
• It wasn\’t until King had suffered months of being called “faggot” by McInerney and others that he began to retort by making sexual taunts to McInerney.
• Other students heard McInerney threaten to shoot King in the days before he did so.
• In addition to the skinhead and neo-Nazi materials, McInerney also had a training video called “Shooting in Realistic Environments”.

Fox has been harshly criticized for trying McInerney as an adult. With no one to speak for Lawrence King, McInerney’s supporters painted her as bloodthirsty and overly harsh. Even some gay groups and liberal organizations joined the chorus, saying that McInerney was being scapegoated and that he should not be tried as an adult. They felt that a possible 50 year sentence was just too much, considering his age (some of this concern has dissipated as more about McInerney’s character has been revealed).

Finally McInerney’s defense has gotten under Fox’s skin again. On Wednesday defense attorney Robyn Bramson accused prosecutors of being vindictive. They should have known better. Fox released information which put exposed their lack of forthrightness. She had offered McInerney a plea deal.

The district attorney will allow 15-year-old murder suspect Brandon McInerney to plead guilty to first-degree murder in exchange for a lighter sentence, officials announced publicly today.

“It would bring (the sentence) down, from a maximum of 53 years to life, to 25 years to life,” said Senior Deputy District Attorney Maeve Fox, who is prosecuting this case.

NY Senate Stalemate Over

The stalemate in the New York State Senate is over in the same way it began. (NY Times)

The bitter standoff that has paralyzed the New York Senate for nearly five weeks ended on Thursday, when a senator from the Bronx who had defected to the Republicans returned to the Democratic fold, giving the party the majority it needed to re-establish control.

And now that the Democrats and Malcolm Smith have regained control, marriage equality has been taken back off the table. One ironic twist in this convoluted story is that there was an assumption that under Republican structured leadership, the marriage bill would have been brought for a vote. And it is even possible that there are adequate Republican supporters to make up for the vocal opponents in the Democratic caucus.

But the reforms that would have allowed Senators to bring forward legislation without the support and express permission of the Senate President appear to have been abandoned and the current Senate President, Malcolm Smith, has shown a stubborn insistence on keeping the bill from a vote. So it appears to me that marriage equality is dead in New York for the forseeable future.

Three Pro-Gay Groups Respond To AFER’s Letter

Chris Geidner has gotten some reactions from the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lambda Legal, and the ACLU concerning the letter from the America Foundation for Equal Rights (the group behind the Olson and Boies lawsuit challenging Prop 8) sent to those groups demanding that they not seek to intervene in the suit:

Looking at [AFER board president Chad] Griffin\’s letter, it is clear that — far from being blindsided by the Perry lawsuit — the LGBT legal organizations were well aware of and chose not to participate in the filing of this lawsuit. It is also clear, though, that the groups have been working with the lawyers for the case since its filing to discuss strategy and a way to “integrate” the groups more fully in the case.

When contacted Thursday, James Esseks, the co-director of the ACLU\’s LGBT Rights Project, said of the distinction between the groups\’ initial response and their filing on Wednesday, “People can disagree about when and whether to jump into the pool, but once you do it makes sense to swim as hard as possible to get to the other side. . . . We\’re all in the pool; it\’s not just those plaintiffs.”

..Toward the beginning of Griffin\’s letter, he stated of the groups that “it is inconceivable that you would zealously and effectively litigate this case if you were successful in intervening.” Esseks, of the ACLU LGBT Rights Project took strong objection to that, saying, “Any suggestion that [the groups] would want to lose a marriage case is off-the-wall to me. It\’s unfathomable.” Likewise, Shannon Minter, the legal director at NCLR responded in a statement that “Our only focus right now is on doing everything we can to help win the case.”

I don’t think the letter from AFER suggests that any of the groups would actually want to lose the case. What it does suggest is that a group that doesn’t believe that a case should have been filed may not be as effective as those who do.

Chris argues that the groups are right to try to intervene in order to broaden the factual record for the inevitable appeals to the appelate court.

The Guardians Of Marriage

Sens. John Ensign, Tom Coburn, the secretive Christian cult known alternately as The Family or The Fellowship, and the House on C Street:

I used the term “cult” to describe The Fellowship. How else does one describe an outfit founded by a man who had a special visitation from Jesus who told him that Christianity got it wrong for the past two thousand years?

Jeff Sharlet’s book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power examines this strange organization in greater detail.

DADT’s Repeal Has A New Quarterback

Iraq War Veteran and former West Point Military Academy professor Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA) says that now is the time for Congress to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Anti-Prop 8 Legal Team to Pro-Gay Groups: Back Off

The American Foundation for Equal Rights has released a letter they wrote to the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lambda Legal, and the ACLU of Southern California, asking the three groups not to intervene in the Boies and Olson challenge to California’s Prop 8 in federal court.  They recounted the many ways in which the three groups had previously opposed the lawsuit and raise a very legitimate concern now that those groups want to enter the lawsuit on the side of the plaintiffs:

In public and private, you have made it unmistakably clear that you strongly disagree with our legal strategy to challenge Prop. 8 as a violation of the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the United States Constitution…. Having gone to such great lengths to dissuade us from filing suit and to tar this case in the press, it seems likely that your misgivings about our strategy will be reflected—either subtly or overtly—in your actions in court.

The letter provides an interesting detail surrounding the amicus briefs filed in the case calling for Prop 8 to be declared unconstitutional. According to the letter:

Even after you filed an amicus curiae brief urging the district court to grant our motion for a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of Prop. 8, you refused to characterize your position as one of “support.” Indeed, Jennifer Pizer of Lambda Legal went so far as to insist that we alter a press release that described your amicus curiae brief as “supporting” our suit. In response, we issued a second release addressing her concerns.

The letter also details several instances in which the Boies and Olsen team and AFER reached out to the three groups. After all that, AFER says that they “remain willing to work closely” with them, but not as co-council:

Your intervention would create a complex, multi-party proceeding that would inevitably be hampered by procedural inefficiencies that are directly at odds with our goal—and the goal of Chief Judge Walker—of securing an expeditious, efficient, and inexpensive resolution to the district court proceedings. As a result of your intervention, we could be mired in procedurally convoluted pre-trial maneuvering for years—while gay and lesbian individuals in California continue to suffer the daily indignity of being denied their federal constitutional right to marry the person of their choosing. … Delaying equal marriage rights in California serves none of our interests.

[Hat tip: Rex Wockner]

Click here to read the complete letter

Three Pro-Gay Groups Seek To Elbow Their Way Into Prop 8 Lawsuit

My first reaction on learning that Attorneys Theodore Olson and David Boies were filing a lawsuit in federal court to challenge the constitutionality of Prop 8, I was cool to the idea. But now with two other lawsuits from Massachusetts which are also challenging the Defense of Marriage Act, as well as the frustrations many of us are feeling over the distinctly unfierce advocacy taking place in Washington, I’ve changed my mind. I’m glad that Olson and Boies are going forward.

That said, I have to wonder what’s going on with three pro-gay groups who have petitioned the court to be admitted as parties to the case. The three groups — American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights — have asked the judge to allow them represent three gay community groups in the lawsuit seeking to overturn Proposition 8.

These same groups were among the eight who immediately opposed the lawsuit when it was first announced. Last week, they reversed their position and filed amicus briefs in support of the plaintiffs, which is, I think, a very positive move. They seem to have warmed to the idea, much as I have.

But now all of the sudden they want to become parties of the lawsuit itself, even though they wanted nothing to do with the move in the beginning. Olson and Boies oppose their petition, saying that involving more groups would delay and unnecessarily complicate the proceedings. I agree. It worries me that one of the more important LGBT cases making its way in the federal courts could wind up having four different captains trying to pilot the ship. That alone should worry us.

But there’s something else that’s troubling. Kristin Perry, Sandra Stier, Paul Katami, and Jeffrey Zarrillo are the four Californians named as plaintiffs in the suit. They have the grievance, they’ve selected their lawyers, and they are ready to go to court to have their rights upheld. That’s what plaintiffs do in lawsuits. And so it seems to me that those four plaintiffs should have a right to have their case argued on their behalf by lawyers of their own choosing. They shouldn’t have to contend with three other outside groups with differing agendas who think they know better on how to try the case — especially when their first stab at knowing better was to publicly denounce the lawsuit to begin with.

Rep. Chaffetz: A Shining Illustration of Anti-Gay Intellect

Representative Jason Chaffetz, a California Jewish Democrat turned Utah Mormon Republican, is now auditioning for the position of Congress’ Biggest Homophobe. As lead Congressional opponent to D.C.’s out-of-state marriage recognition bill he was strikingly inept, but he did manage to get some press by announcing:

“It’s not something I think we can just let go lightly into the night.”

Chaffetz got into BYU on a soccer scholarship so perhaps he can be forgiven for mangling Dylan Thomas’ poetry. But his other comments suggest that his approach to legislation is not particularly nuanced (abc4):

“Marriage should be defined as a union between a man and a woman. I don’t see much other wiggle room for it.”

This stance comes in a week where America’s fifth state legalized same sex marriages.

So, we asked the congressman whether he is going against a trend towards gay unions.

He said simply, “The trend is still 45 states don’t.”

Sorry, Jason, but a trend would be… oh, well… nevermind.

But now Jason has now found his cause. He has discovered that he can get the media’s attention by saying some rather, ummm, interesting things about gay folk. So he was quick to state his mind when he found that Rep. Tammy Baldwin wants to pass legislation that would give benefits to the domestic partners of federal employees. Baldwin thinks its a matter of equal compensation for equal work.

But Chaffetz called the legislation “directly discriminatory” against heterosexual couples that choose not to marry.

That argument didn’t get much traction with the other panel members who noted that gay couples don’t have the choice to marry in most states (including Utah). Rep. Gerry Connolly found his argument “a screaming contradiction”.

Ah, Jason. You haven’t yet figured out that everyone is laughing at you, have you?

Will NY Senate Stalemate End?

In an effort to break the petulant partisan bickering that has ceased all movement on any legislation in the state Senate for the past month, Gov. Paterson has appointed a Leutenant Governor. The state has been without a Lt. Gov. since then Governor Spitzer resigned and Paterson left that spot to become the state’s governor.

The problem?

The move comes even though the state’s top lawyer, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, warned earlier this week that such an appointment would be illegal.

Meanwhile the state’s vote on marriage sits in limbo.

More Bigotry From Texas Police

What is it about law enforcement in Texas?

Last Sunday night, Carlos Diaz de Leon and some friends stopped to have a bit to eat at Chico’s Tacos. Two of the guys kissed each other, which seemed to annoy the rent-a-cops.

“We went, sat down to eat our food and security guards came and said that if they kept doing that, they were going to throw us all out of the restaurant.”

Carlos said he then asked them why? Their response, according to Carlos: “They said ‘we didn’t allow that gay stuff to go on here.’ “

Carlos mistakenly thought that he and his friends have the right in Texas to be treated the same as straight people. So he called the police. But he didn’t get the response he expected. Rather than come to the support of Carlos and his friends, they were threatened with citation.

“Told us it was against the law for two males and two females to kiss in public, that they could cite us for homosexual activity.”

While there is a homosexual conduct ordinance in the state’s penal code, “We don’t enforce that law, there’s been court decisions about Texas’ law on that. We don’t enforce it and what happened there wouldn’t have even have met the elements of the offense, even if it had been enforceable,” said El Paso Police Department spokesman Chris Mears.

The police department admits the situation was not handled properly by a rookie police officer, but deny it was discrimination.

“Did he make a comment that he shouldn’t have made? Yeah, he did…but that comment I don’t think was discriminatory in nature, I think it was poor understanding of the law,” Mears said.

No, Mr. Mears, it isn’t just “poor understanding of the law.” If was official police harassment of a citizen of El Paso based on that citizen’s sexual orientation. It was discrimination. It was intimidation. It was bigotry.

In 2003 the Supreme Court of the United States told a state that its sodomy laws contrary to the US Constitution. And what state was that? It was Texas. It is simply not credible that there is a police force in the State of Texas that was not fully aware of Lawrence v. Texas and what it means.

Prior to the Court’s decision, it wasn’t as though the state was much in the habit of enforcing the law. They didn’t put folks in jail. That wasn’t its purpose.

The intent of the sodomy laws in Texas were to create a culture of intimidation, to leave gay persons under threat of being criminalized, to allow harassment without recourse, and to make it very clear that the State of Texas “didn’t allow that gay stuff to go on here.”

It seems to me like things haven’t changed much.

In light of the recent police brutality in a gay bar in Ft. Worth, it’s time to ask some questions.

• Why don’t the police in Texas know that they don’t have enforceable sodomy laws?
• Why does Texas still have sodomy laws on the books after they have been told by the Supreme Court that such laws are discriminatory and unconstitutional?
• Why doesn’t El Paso’s Police Department consider the blatantly bigoted response of the officer to be discrimination?
• Why would officers with the Texas Alcohol Beverage Control and with the Ft. Worth Police Department think it was “restrained” to bust heads, break ribs and thumbs, and harass 20 people selected arbitrarily and not associated with any obvious intoxication just because they were patrons of a gay bar?
• And why is it still perfectly legal for Chico’s Tacos in El Paso, Texas, to refuse service to Carlos and his friends based solely on their sexual orientation?

I believe the answers to these questions are all the same.

A “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Compromise

The Onion has the details.

Maine’s Anti-Gay Signature Collecting Update

Stand For Marriage Maine, the coalition of anti-gay activists who are seeking to overturn Maine’s marriage laws, has announced that they have enough signatures to put their petition on the ballot.

Looking to overturn a bill signed by Governor John Baldacci in May approving same sex marriage, Stand For Marriage Maine announced today that they have collected more than the 55,087 signatures needed to place a People’s Veto on the November ballot and are collecting additional signatures as insurance to meet the deadline to qualify the measure for the 2009 statewide election.

While that makes for a good press release, it doesn’t tell the full story.

As any politico will tell you, a large percentage of the signatures in any collection effort will prove to be invalid for a number of reasons. Some folks are not actually registered to vote, are registered at a different address, are registered under a different name, or provide an illegible signature. Some will agree to sign but will put down a fake name. So petitioners always collect enough extra names to have a substantial cushion.

In mid June, Bob Emrich, the head of the effort, set a goal of collecting 80,000 signatures by the middle of July. At that time they had about 12,000 already collected.

It now appears that they are not on schedule to meet their goal. By now they should have collected a total of 63,000 signatures. And to reach 80,000 by next week, they will have to collect 25,000 signatures, or nearly half of what they collected in the past month. And at this point each additional signature will be harder to get than the one before.

However, it is still very likely that the campaign can meet its goals. The projected cushion of 25,000 is aggressive; and a campaign can usually assume that a 20-25% cushion is adequate and that may well be within their means. And as the campaign doesn’t actually have to turn in the signatures until the end of the month, they can use the extra weeks for signature collection rather than for verification.

But it is encouraging to see that their efforts are not proving to be a smooth or easy as they anticipated. As I said in June, we need to hope for their failure and plan for their success.

Massachusetts AG Challenges DOMA In Court

The Massachusetts Attorney General has announced that the state is suing the U.S. government in U.S. Federal District Court over the Defense of Marriage Act which limits the definition of marriage to opposite sex couples. Massachusetts was the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, and state Attorney General Martha Coakley calls the federal law an “overreaching and discriminatory” infringement on rights and powers normally reserved for the states:

Before the law was passed, Coakley said, the federal government recognized that defining marital status was the “exclusive prerogative of the states.” Now, because of the U.S. law’s definition of marriage, same-sex couples are denied access to benefits given to heterosexual married couples, including federal income tax credits, employment benefits, retirement benefits, health insurance coverage and Social Security payments.

“In enacting DOMA, Congress overstepped its authority, undermined states’ efforts to recognize marriages between same-sex couples, and codified an animus towards gay and lesbian people,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit defends Massachusetts’ decision to allow same-sex marriages, saying it provides security and stability to families:

The lawsuit said that more than 16,000 same-sex couples have married in Massachusetts since the state Supreme Judicial Court ruled that gay marriage was legal in 2004 “and the security and stability of families has been strengthened in important ways throughout the state.”

“Despite these developments, same-sex couples in Massachusetts are still denied essential rights and protections because the federal Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA] interferes with the Commonwealth’s authority to define and regulate marriage,” the lawsuit said.

Opponents often point to the stabilizing influence of marriage as one reason opposite-sex marriage needs to be somehow “protected” from gays marrying. But in doing so, they ignore the fact that gays and lesbians are forming families — and raising children — without that same stabilizing influence. It’s good to see an Attorney General recognize that children of same-sex couples, if not the couples themselves, are no less deserving of that security and stability that heterosexual couples enjoy.

This is the second lawsuit filed in Massachusetts challenging DOMA. The Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) is also challinging DOMA for denying married same-sex couples access to federal benefits that other married couples automatically receive.