Box Turtle Bulletin

A One Man Boycott

One of our readers, Ben in Oakland, was solicited to do business with a company located in Utah. Still smarting from the interference of Utah Mormons in a California proposition in which members of the church contributed at least $20 million and 80-90% of all volunteers, Ben declined to do work with them, explaining as follows:

In the wake of Prop. 8, funded by the Mormon Church to enforce its theological beliefs upon my civil marriage, I have determined not to do business with any firm in Utah, if at all possible, and not to step inside of the state of Utah, which is entirely possible. You may not be a Mormon, or agree with what this church has to say about gay people. If so, I thank you for standing on the side of progress and religious freedom. And I apologize if this offends you.

As a gay man, my life has been severely impacted by the Mormon Church’s assertion that its set of religious beliefs trumps my civil rights as an American citizen, and that it has a valid reason for interfering in California’s civil law. I have urged my friends and correspondents not to do business with or in Utah if they can avoid it. Unfortunately, since the Church does not understand the concepts of religious freedom, tolerance, civil law, and minding your own business, perhaps it will understand economic pressure and social disapproval.

This may have an effect, it may not. I truly hope it does, but frankly, even if it doesn’t, it at least is serving to create consciousness that discrimination of the basis of religious belief has no place in America. Nor does prejudice, whether disguised as sincere religious belief, or admitted for what it is. People are understanding more and more that this is not about marriage, morality, faith, freedom of religion, the family, children, God’s word, or any other lying rationalization du jour. It is simply about what it has always been about: how much the very existence of gay people offends, entices, obsesses, and frightens some straight people, as well as those-who-wanna-be-straight-but-ain’t. This is why only a small shift in the vote– 2%– and Proposition 8 would have been history.

We’re here. We’re queer. Please get over yourself, LDS. It isn’t about you.

When this church stays the hell out of my civil marriage and my equality before the law, when it learns to stop telling lies about gay people and our families to advance its religious, political, and social agendas– in short, when it finally understands that to be respected, one must act respectably, that it cannot be purchased with the easy coin of other people’s lives–

At that point, if I still need your services, I’ll do business with you. Until then, I cannot.

This was their response:

I first want you to know and understand that I do not have a problem with the lifestyle you have chosen. It’s your life and right to live how you want, barring walking on another’s same given rights. Having made it clear to you that I have no problems with the way you have chosen to live your life, I would point out the hypocrisy in your decision not to do business with my company simply based off of our physical location. You feel that the Mormon church judges you, does not feel that you have a right to live how you have chosen, and has set you aside for things that are not necessarily changeable. You are now turning the same judgment to us. You will not do business with us because we live in the same state as the headquarters for the Mormon church. Forget that there are Mormons across the globe, forget that we are not connected to them as a business, forget that prop 8 is not completely funded by the Mormons, forget all of the logical points that could be used to refute your statement (which I have no intention of doing), and what are you left with? A gay man that actively stands up for his rights, that is willing to be heard, but cannot practice what he petitions for. How can you feel comfortable in the stand of anti-prejudice views and free rights when you hold for us (and every business like us in Utah) the same prejudice and judgment you feel are so wrongfully bestowed upon you?

Ben, if you want others to take you seriously in your beliefs and in what you stand for, start with showing others that you believe in the basic principals for which you fight, and not how they only apply to you as a gay man.

Ben has invited readers to share their thoughts on how he should react.

Personally, I’d advise dropping it.

You’ve made your point, Ben. They’ve lost a customer. This business, at least, has learned that there is a price to be paid for thrusting your religious views on others and actively harming their life.

And I’d not worry too much about their “but I don’t have a problem with the lifestyle you’ve chosen” statement. Theirs was the blustering of one who has been called on their bigotry and only has self-righteous posturing as a defense.

What do our readers think?

CA Gay Groups Advise Waiting, Waiting

Those gay organizations that led the disastrously ineffective campaign against Proposition 8 are sharing their wisdom again. According to the LA Times,

“Going back to the ballot . . . in 2010 would be rushed and risky,” read a joint statement issued Monday by three gay-rights groups and signed by more than two dozen other groups and individuals. “We should proceed with a costly, demanding, and high-stakes electoral campaign of this sort only when we are confident we can win.”

Personally, I suspect some organizations have ulterior motives behind their opposition to moving forward.

Take, for example, the LA Gay and Lesbian Center. This organization is primarily a health organization – with a few other worthwhile programs. I have long pointed out that this organization is far removed from gay men and women in the community and no longer provides any services to gay men and women other than those narrowly defined by their state-funded programs (they dropped the word “Community” from their name years ago).

Yet Lorri Jean, the LA Gay and Lesbian Center\’s Executive Director, was one of the small number of individuals calling the shots during the campaign. Lorri was so concerned about Prop 8 and took her job so seriously that she decided to take a month long vacation in Alaska. In July 2008. Three months before election day.

But the Center has an opinion is back with an opinion about the next election date, and it takes little to see their motivation for delay.

Jim Key, spokesman for the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center, also worried that a 2010 political campaign might tap the same donors that service organizations rely on to fund HIV care, services for homeless youths and other programs at a time when, because of the economy, those programs are needed the most.

In other words, your fight for equality cuts into donations for our programs. And so you should wait.

Another group counseling waiting is Equality California, another prime player in the 2008 losing game.

“We initially said we believe 2010 was the right time to go back to the ballot,” said Marc Solomon, marriage director for Equality California, one of the state’s biggest gay-rights groups. But he added: “We’ve also made it very clear we will only move forward if we have a clear road map to victory. . . . The last thing we want to do is go back to the ballot and lose.”

He said his group has sought advice from political consultants and polling experts and would present it publicly later this month.

This is the same group that kept quiet about their “inside polls” that showed the campaign behind and instead let gay folks – who might have walked precincts and held house parties and talked to their church – believe that we were ahead and their efforts weren’t needed.

We don’t have to wait for next month to know what they will say. EQCA will give us a slicing and dicing of the demographics of voters who vote in gubernatorial elections and tell us that there is a tiny advantage to avoiding the older voters now in order to chance it with higher black turnout in 2012. And in 2012 we’ll hear that 2014 is really, really even better.

I think that all of these organizations miss the big picture. Because they are all motivated by fear.

They fear a decrease in donations. They fear a repeat of the loss of position they felt after Prop 8. They fear losing by a bigger margin. They fear that they may upset the establishment or the connections or the money guys or the Party or any of a number of others who can give them goodies, enhance their image and influence, and prop up their resumes.

I fear too, but my fears are different.

I fear that we are fighting a battle of retreats. I fear that we capitulate, give up territory, and let our enemies define the frontier.

We are accepting the declarations of our enemies that the battle is over. We are conceding defeat.

In every instance in which a state has passed a discriminatory amendment to deny gay couples equality under the law we have stood back, said, “oh well”, and waited for the next battle. What we should have done is collected the signature to reverse that vote, put it back on the ballot, and fought in every state in the nation.

I\’m not saying that we should have committed huge sums or that we should have exhausted our resources, but we should have made the citizens of those states face this question for the rest of their long-lasting lives until they tired of their own bigotry and – faced with scorn from their children – reversed their position and removed discrimination from their constitution.

Had we been battling in other states, I believe that the tide would have already turned. And Proposition 8 would never have happened. They would never have dared attack us in California. And faced with the prospect of voting until equality wins, Californians would have voted for an end to the war.

We should go back to the ballot in 2010. And should we fail, go in 2012. And if that doesn\’t work, we\’re back in 2014.

We need not put $40 million on the line. We need only push Gay, Inc. out of the way and run a grass roots campaign that ignores the “political consultants and polling experts” and speaks to our neighbors and our churches and our communities. We build coalitions that include churches and civil rights fighters and ethic interest groups and Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian activists and Susan who picked up a flyer at her yoga session and Gilbert who saw a table in front of a bar on Saturday night.

Screw the pointless tepid advertising. Away with the carefully crafted (and stupid and offensive) scripts for volunteers to follow when calling specifically filtered phone lists. Be gone with centralized “messaging” and selected media access. Done with the elimination of anything that will remind the voter that we are actually talking about real living breathing gay people. And enough with the pussy-footing around about who is funding the anti-gay efforts and their motivations.

Our cause is right. Our cause is just. Our cause is moral.

And the battle is in our own states, cities, and communities. We aren\’t going away. Our need for equality isn\’t diminishing. So why have we let our “leaders” convince us that the battle is over in Oregon or Arizona or Colorado or Wisconsin? The question is not whether we should be putting this back on the ballot in California in 2010, but why we aren\’t putting it back on the ballot in every state in which discrimination has been enacted.

Focus on the Family Exists to Fight Marriage Equality

If you’re old enough, you might remember the good ol’ days, the days when Dr. Dobson provided advice to parents on how to raise their kids. When spiritual advice was provided to help newlyweds deal with stress and build a happy marriage. When Focus on the Family focused on, well, the families of their listeners.

Those days are over.

Now FotF has a different purpose – focus on your family and how to harm it.

Sonja Swiatkiewicz, Focus\’ director of issues response, spoke with Everyday Christian:

She said gay marriage issue is now one of the largest for Focus.

“I would not consider gay marriage as something we are just keeping an eye on,” Swiatkiewicz said. “Protecting the institution of marriage as between a man and a woman is one of our primary goals. We receive about 250,000 communications a month from folks who have very deep hurts on this issue and request resources. We know the impact it has on the breakdown of the relationship between men, women and children.

“We work to protect or restore marriages as closely as we do on the sanctity of life beginning at conception and protecting religious liberties.”

Yes, Focus on the Family has become an issues advocacy organization, and not for issues that directly impact any of their listeners or contributors. Their mission is no longer to advise Christians; instead they demand that non-Christians or others who disagree with them do what Focus commands. They’ve de-emphasized providing care to Christian families and now are dedicated to imposing their polical will on others.

You might say they’ve lost their focus.

New York Marriage Vote in September?

NY1 is reporting

Governor David Paterson will push the State Senate to vote on same-sex marriage during a special session in early September.

But, as we’ve seen, we shouldn’t make any assumptions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Marriages Recognized in D.C.

As of last midnight, residents and visitors to Washington D.C. are just a bit more equal. Those same-sex couples who married in any of the states (and, presumably, countries) in which it is legal now have their marriages recognized by the District.

Our heartfelt Congratulations!!

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this action by the City Council is that it received almost no attention by Congress.

In contrast to the city’s Domestic Partnership law, which was denied implementation from 1992 to 2002, opposition to the marriage recognition bill was assigned to Jason Chaffetz, a freshman congressman from Utah. Chaffetz spoke to the press a few times and promptly went back to whatever else he was doing. A bill by drafted by US Reps. Jim Jordan, (R – OH) and Dan Boren (D – OK) to define marriage in the District as between one man and one women gathered the support of 33 Congressmen, about 8% of the members.

This is particularly fascinating in that the out-of-state recognition bill was enacted as a trial balloon to test the will of Congress. Councilman Catania is expected to present a bill to legalize marriage in the Capital in the fall.

Maryland Gov. May Support Out-of-State Marriage

In May, Maryland State Senator Richard Madaleno asked the Attorney General to determine whether Maryland can recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. Now it appears that Gov. Martin O’Malley may be receptive of the idea.

O’Malley has long opposed marriage equality, but on Sunday he expressed support both for out-of-state marriages and for civil unions. (wtop.com)

“I think that it’s very difficult to deny equal rights to people when it comes to rights that are disbursed by a government rather than a faith or a church,” O’Malley said Monday on WTOP’s Ask the Governor Program. “If the person has these rights under another state, I think we’re sort of pressed to deny those rights. So, yes, we probably should respect those rights.”

“I believe that if we were to have civil unions, there would be no question about whether or not we would recognize unions in other states. And that’s the way to move forward.”

Should the fear of out-of-state marriages lead to in-state civil unions, that would indeed be a step in the right direction for this astonishingly reluctant state.

See also:
Maryland Gov. May Support Out-of-State Marriage
Maryland to Recognize Same-Sex Marriages?
Blade Asks What Happened In Maryland
Maryland Passes Limited Rights for Gay Couples
Maryland Balances Budget by Taxing Gay Widows
Maryland Senator Muse Champions Bigotry
Maryland AG Endorses Marriage Equality
Maryland Legislator Calls Anti-Gay Bluff
Maryland Introduces Bill to Legalize Same-Sex Marriage – Are Democrats Committed to Equality?
Maryland Marriage Poll

Ex-Gay Question to be Central to Federal Lawsuit

In Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the federal lawsuit by Ted Olson and David Boies to overturn Proposition 8, the judge has decided against placing a hold on Prop 8 and instead is opting for a swift consideration. This is the position that was requested by Gov. Schwarzenegger and Atty. Gen. Brown; they felt that placing a hold would lend to confusion for all parties.

An article in the San Francisco Chronicle reveals that Olson and Boies will be relying on the precident set by Romer v. Evans in which the US Supreme Court determined that states cannot deny rights to gay people as a class based solely on animus.

The attorneys behind the challenge to California’s Proposition 8 plan to argue during a pretrial hearing Thursday that by stripping gays of the right to wed, the voter-approved ban runs afoul of America’s founding framework in the same way — and for the same reason.

“Romer is a strikingly similar situation to what we have here. You had a ballot initiative, a majority vote of the people, taking away a right,” said Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a member of the legal team led by former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and veteran trial lawyer David Boies. “And there was no justification or rationale other than disapproval by that majority of that group.”

This case also will ask a question that is at the core of all civil rights legal issues: are gay people really a distinct group of people. Or, in other words, is sexuality immutable.

U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker on Tuesday issued a tentative order to fast-track the case in his San Francisco court.

Among the questions he said he wants covered at trial are whether sexual orientation is unchangeable, if permitting same-sex marriage “destabilizes” traditional unions and whether Proposition 8’s ballot history demonstrates the measure had “discriminatory intent.”

There is little doubt that ex-gays and ex-gay groups will testify before court. And there is little doubt that they will claim “change”.

However, will they be truthful? Will they admit that “change” is only in perspective, in behavior, in identity, but not in attractions?

Sadly, the history of ex-gay activists suggests that they will seek to confuse the court and to leave the impression that orientation can be “overcome through the power of Jesus Christ”. I hope I’m wrong.

Update: Marriage Recognition in the Nation’s Capital

Back in May, the Washington D.C. City Counsel passed legislation to recognize same-sex marriages conducted in those states in which it is legal. On May 6, Mayor Adrian Fenty signed the bill.

Rev. Harry Jackson, a pastor of a large church in Beltsville, Maryland, decided that he wanted to take advantage of a provision in D.C. law that allows for a referendom on bills. He registered as a D.C. voter (using what appears to have been a fraudulent address) and took out a petition.

However, the D.C. Board of Elections & Ethics ruled that such a referndom was in violation of the city’s election code. Election law in D.C. prohibits votes on matters covered under the city’s 1977 Human Rights Act, which outlaws discrimination against gay men, lesbians and other minority groups.

Yesterday a Superior Court judge refused to put a stay on its enactment. (Washington Post)

A Superior Court judge decided yesterday not to delay enactment of a law stipulating that the D.C. government will recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions.

Barring some action by Congress, the bill will become law on Monday when the congressional review period expires.

Enemies of marriage equality are not likely to accept defeat

Brian Raum, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, the Christian conservative law firm that represented Jackson and his group, said they will file an appeal seeking to have the law overturned. The group announced after the ruling that it will seek a ballot initiative on a law defining marriage as being between one man and one woman.

The City Council is expected to move forward on their goal of legalizing marriage in the capital.

Update: Brian, a reader at our site, provided a link to the ruling.

As he reminded me, an important part of this case was that the judge did not find that the “proposed referendum is consistent with the DCHRA.” In other words, the referendum was contrary to the District’s Human Rights Act.

Civil Partnerships Come to Ireland

Ireland has finally passed published its Civil Partnership Bill which provides many (but not all) of the rights, priveleges, and responsibilities to same-sex couples. (Reuters) The bill has strong support and is expected to become law.

“This bill provides legal protection for cohabiting couples and is an important step, particularly for same-sex couples, whose relationships have not previously been given legal recognition by the state,” Justice Minister Dermot Ahern said in a statement.

The legislation provides a range of previously denied rights including maintenance obligations, protection of a shared home and succession. “Balance is achieved by maintaining material distinctions between civil partnership and marriage, in particular between the rights attaching to both, while at the same time reflecting the equality rights protected by the constitution,” Ahern said.

The Irish Constitution requires that marriage be given preferential treatment (Irish Times).

The heads of the Bill (giving an outline of the proposed legislation) were first published in late 2007 but progress was slowed by a number of complex issues. One of the issues is believed to have been the potential conflict between the strong rights conferred to marriage in the Constitution and the equality rights protected by Article 40.1.

With Ireland providing recognition, Europe now looks like this:

Green = marriage; Red = civil unions or other recognition

Texans Support Couple Recognition

Good news from Texas. A new poll by Texas Lyceum shows 57% of Texans support either civil unions or marriage.

Most Texans don’t oppose same-sex unions, but they’re split in their support for marriage or civil unions. While more than a third (36%) oppose either arrangement, 32% said they would support civil unions and another 25% think same-sex marriages should be permitted. The poll found a distinct partisan difference, with civil unions as the preference of 29% of Democrats, 31% of Independents and 37% of Republicans; same-sex marriage the preferred alternative of 36% of Democrats, 25% of Independents, and 14% of Republicans. Allowing neither of those alternatives was the preference of 29% of Democrats, 35% of Independents, and 43% of Republicans.

In 2005, only 24% of Texans voted against a constitutional amendment that banned both marriage and civil unions. This poll reveals significant change in public attitudes in less than four years.

It is also worth noting that even a majority of Republicans support couple recognition. And Texas Republicans do not have a history of support for gay causes. In 2000 at the Republican National Convention the delegation from Texas made a point of showing contempt for gay Rep. Jim Kolbe during his speech on Trade by bowing their heads and praying while he was speaking.

Let’s hope that support continues to grow until Texans of all political stripe join together in reversing the discrimination they enshrined in their constitution and in providing marriage equality to all of their citizens.