Box Turtle Bulletin

Anti-Discrimination or Anti-Information?

Living expenses in Southern California can be very expensive. Finding a two bedroom apartment in the West Hollywood area will run you at least $2,000 per month. So often young single men and women have roommates.

One common way to find a roommate is to register with a service that allows you screen for an ideal roommate. This way those needing someone to share the rent could find someone needing a place to stay.

In the past, members could choose various attributes of the person they wanted to room with: smoker or non-smoker, male or female, gay or straight, and within age ranges as well as where they wanted to live and how much they wanted to pay.

However that may all change. One such service, Roommate.com, had been operating happily along when in 2003 they were sued by the Fair Housing Councils of the San Fernando Valley and San Diego. They claimed that allowing member to search and filter by such things as sex or orientation was facilitated them in discrimination.

Today the 9th Circuit decided 8-3 that Federal protections do not shield roommate services from being liable to anti-discrimination laws.

The judges said a site called Roommates.com may be brought to trial for possibly violating anti-discrimination laws because it requires users to provide information about gender, sexual orientation and whether they have children, and then uses the information to screen people for matches.

“A real estate broker may not inquire as to the race of a prospective buyer, and an employer may not inquire as to the religion of a prospective employee,” Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for the majority. “If such questions are unlawful when posed face-to-face by telephone, they don’t magically become lawful when asked electronically online.”

Some will find this to be a fair application of law reasonably determined to shield minorities for discrimination. Others, namely gay persons looking for a roommate that isn’t going to hassle them or straight women who don’t want to live alone with a straight man, may find it to be counterproductive. And others are concerned as to how this decision might impact other online services that allow members to search by attributes.

Roommates.com may appeal to the US Supreme Court.

Ohio to Consider Non-Discrimination

According to the Dayton Daily News:

A bipartisan trio of legislators have unveiled legislation to make it illegal in Ohio to discriminate against a person in housing, employment or public accommodations because of his or her sexual orientation or gender identity.

Although the bill does have bi-partisan support, Republicans outnumber Democrats in the House by 53 to 45 and in the Senate by 21 to 12. While these are not necessarily insurmountable odds, we should not start celebrating just yet. Or as sponsor Rep. Jon Peterson, R-Delaware, said at a news conference,

I have my work cut out for me

Yes you do, Rep. Peterson, and I wish you much success with it.

Justice Department to Treat Gay Employee Group Equally

The heads of the various Departments of the federal government have tremendous power over decisions impacting the lives of their employees. This can be especially true for gay employees.

Under Attorney General Janet Reno, during the Clinton administration, the gay employee group was given the same freedom and support as other employee groups. That changed when John Ashcroft took power. Ashcroft, and his successor Alberto Gonzalez, denied DOJ Pride any support for their annual pride celebration and refused them the same access to email, bulletin boards, or postings that they allowed others.

However, the Washington Post is reporting that under the new Attorney General appointed in November, Michael Mukasey, DOJ Pride is again able to participate and make others aware of their existence.

Mukusey’s nomination was contentious, primarily over issues of the legality of waterboarding, but he was considered a concensus candidate and not a Bush insider. I believe that this action illustrates a willingness on the part of Mukasey to do things differently and think outside of the Administration’s narrow idealisms.

Let’s hope that this is but the first step Mukasey will take in refurbishing the tarnished image of the Department of Justice.

Californina Referendum Effort Fails

Opponents of California’s new law which protects students from discrimination, harassment and bullying based on the basis of gender or sexual orientation in the public schools, announced yesterday they failed to collect enough signatures to put a referendum on the ballot to repeal the law:

In an e-mail announcement issued around 2 p.m. yesterday, which coincided with a Sacramento press conference, Karen England, director of the Save Our Kids Campaign, said backers of the referendum had collected over 350,000 signatures – more than 80,000 short of the 434,000 valid signatures needed to force a statewide plebiscite on the law in the June elections.

Last October 12, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed SB 777 into law after an acrimonious campaign among social conservatives to persuade him to veto it. Opponents claimed that the law would “promote homosexuality” and “persecute” Christians.

Three days after Gov. Schwarzenegger signed the law, Capitol Resource Family Impact, a Sacramento group, filed a referendum with the state attorney general’s office. They then formed the Save Our Kids Campaign to collect signatures before the January 10 deadline to put the referendum on the ballot.

Never one to concede defeat, England tried to turn lemon into lemonade:

“For a completely volunteer-driven campaign to obtain this number of signatures is unheard of,” said England in her e-mailed announcement. “We had to overcome incredible difficulties during our signature gathering, including the holidays, and the results are astonishing. While we didn’t reach the threshold of required signatures, we have surprised political observers with the amazing amount of signatures we gathered in just 70 days. It is unheard of for a volunteer-only effort to find this kind of support, especially in a state as large as California.”

England also announced that with the referendum effort dead, they have filed an initiative with the Attorney General’s office and will begin collecting signatures again. Meanwhile, a legal challenge to the law is still before the courts.

The Watchmen: Protections for LGBT Youth Worse Than Holocaust Furnaces

Earlier this week, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed several pieces of legislation which improves the rights of LGBT residents of that state. Much of that legislation is designed to protect students from harassment and bullying in public schools by making sure teachers and school administrators fully understand their responsibilities to protect youth.

These protections for LGBT youth have generated howls of protest among leading anti-gay activists. Not the least of them are the Watchmen On the Walls, an emerging international anti-gay extremist group we’ve been monitoring recently. The Watchmen will be meeting in Lynnewood, Washington this weekend. We’ve already offered a preview of some of the virulent, hate-inducing rhetoric emanating from that group from a Watchmen conference held last August in Novosibirsk.

Another glimpse into what we might find at the upcoming confab can be found in last weekend’s Watchmen gathering in Sacramento to protest the governor’s latest moves. For example, Randy Thomasson of the Campaign for Children and Families spoke at that Watchmen meeting and said that the new laws in California will leave children “morally raped” in the classroom. And then there’s this, from a translation of the Watchmen’s Russian-language web site:

Vlad Kusakin, human rights activist and owner of “The Speaker” media holding company, told the audience: “Now it’s time to rescue our children from the public schools as from a hellish furnace. Just like one who would prescribe the burning of kids in the Nazi’s concentration camps furnaces, now 65 years later Arnold Schwarzenegger opened furnaces which are even worse for our children by his signature. Pray and fast for the kids and families of California and take your kids out of public schools”.

We earlier reported on Scott Lively’s influence in the Slavic-American evangelical community. That influence comes mainly from his book, The Pink Swastika, where he blames gay people as being behind the formation of the Nazi Party and carrying out the Holocaust. This theory has been readily accepted among a population who suffered mightily at the hands of the Nazis during World War II. You can see this reflected in Kusakin’s remarks.

Lively, who with Seattle-area pastor Kenneth Hutcherson, and Riga, Latvia megachurch pastor Alexey Ledyaev, founded the Watchmen. Lively also spoke in Sacramento. Again, according to the Russian language web site:

Scott Lively, human rights activist, historian and lawyer, stated that “in American legislatures there are ways to pass, as well as to repeal, any law. Therefore, the only thing we’re lacking in the struggle for Judeo-Christian morality is the unity of the churches and the courage of clergy. Let’s put away our denominational ambitions and unite our prayers and efforts for the sake of rescuing the civilization.”

George Neverov cited statistics on deaths and diseases among homosexuals, and he also demonstrated that 3% of population is dictating the moral principles of life for the rest of overwhelming majority: “For how long shall we cowardly bend before a morality that is alien to us? For how long shall we swallow all that loathsome stuff that is imposed on us by immoral law-makers and minorities? When, O Church, will you raise in prayer and spiritual battle over the land that is entrusted to you?”

Ken Hutchison dismissed objections to the Watchmen’s violent rhetoric, telling The Seattle Times: “You’re going to have extremists on any aspect on any teaching.” But these extremists aren’t just some fringe part of the Watchmen movement. Lively and Kusakin, along with Hutcherson, are among the most prominent U.S.-based leaders. In the Watchmen world, these guys don’t represent the extremes; they’re at the very the core of the movement.

The SPLC’s Casey Sanchez reported that the Watchmen “routinely deliver hateful screeds on the airwaves and from the pulpit in their native tongue that, were they delivered in English, would be a source of nationwide controversy.” Maybe it’s time we learned a little Russian.

Thanks to Ruslan Porshnev for his help with the translations.

All Or Nothing ENDA – Consider For A Moment

The debate among gay activists on ENDA has on occasion come somewhat unhinged with things said like “no ENDA is better than an ENDA that excludes trans protections” while one blog went so far as to accuse dissenters of “abandoning” our trans allies.

One could argue, were transgenders “abandoned” in California, Hawaii, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Washington DC which all passed sexual orientation protections before gender identity?

Information and adapted graphic from the Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

See also:

Trans HRC Board Member Resigns

Pro-Discrimination Group Seeking Last Minute Signatures

Oregon has a provision whereby a vote of the legislature can be put to a vote of the people if adequate signatures can be obtained. Oregon has 2.1 million registered voters and requires 55,179 voters to sign a petition in order for the issue to reach the ballot.

Anti-gay activists in Oregon are collecting signatures to put SB2 – an anti-discrimination law – and HB2007 – a civil unions bill – up to the vote of the people.

Today at 3:00 pm is the deadline for turning in these signatures and placing the legislative action on the 2008 ballot. Otherwise they become law.

According to the Statesman Journal, as of Tuesday the group seeking to keep discrimination legal and civil unions absent had about 55,000 signatures. However, they are still seeking a buffer of about 8,000 signatures as there are always signatures that are not valid on every petition. If they do not get their buffer, they will not file.

UPDATE

Per Oregon Live,

Marylin Shannon, a former state senator and spokeswoman for Defense of Marriage Again, said the groups had delivered nearly 63,000 signatures to overturn each of the two laws.

Now the verification process begins (probably by sampling). If the Secretary of State determines that there are adequate signatures, the two bills go to the voters for confirmation in November 2008.