STATEMENT: The First Pro-Equality Bill in Over a Decade

Congress Considers the Matthew Shepard Act

By Winnie Stachelberg | July 16, 2009

I witnessed in 1998 two shocking images that shocked the country into dealing with the horror of hate crime violence. First, James Byrd Jr. was brutally lynched, dragged for three miles behind a car purely out of hatred for African Americans. A few months later, Matthew Shepard was beaten and left tied to a fence to die, simply because he was gay. This week, we have the best opportunity in 11 years to send a clear message to those who would perpetrate tragedies like these, as the Senate votes on adding the Matthew Shepard Act to the Department of Defense Authorization bill.

I have pushed over years since these atrocities for hate crimes legislation that would protect Americans from hate crimes wherever they are committed, and on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. Meanwhile, over 12,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and untold numbers of transgender Americans have experienced hate crimes since 1998, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations, including vandalism, assault, rape, and murder.

LGBT Americans have been forced for years to hear members of Congress, the White House, and even the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights claim that the violence that they live with is not real or not important. Legislators denied state and local law enforcement agencies the tools they desperately need to fight these crimes. Our community reached an unprecedented milestone on this bill in the last Congress, with versions passing both the House and the Senate, but the legislation could not withstand the threat of a White House veto.

We finally have clear momentum for this legislation. The House, Senate, and White House for the first time all stand in support of this bill and are eager to send it to the president’s desk for signature before the August recess. Our conservative opponents are left to try to defeat the bill with decade-old misrepresentations about religious freedom and procedural maneuvers. Senate leadership has determined that the best way to defeat these tactics is by passing the Matthew Shepard Act as part of the Defense Authorization bill.

There have been legitimate strategic disagreements within our community on how to pass this essential legislation. But now, with the opportunity to see the first pro-equality legislation become law in over a decade, it is time to put the full force of community behind the bill and see it to the president’s desk.

Winnie Stachelberg is the Senior Vice President for External Affairs at American Progress.

Former President Bill Clinton Supports the Freedom to Marry

Former President Bill Clinton now favors the freedom to marry. Following a speech on July 8th, the former President was asked if he supported marriage equality and he responded for the first time in the affirmative. He joins a list of other high profile political leaders including the U.S. Conference of Mayors, U.S. Senators Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) and Christopher Dodd (D-CT), former NY Senate leader Joe Bruno, Republican operatives Roger Stone and Steve Schmidt, and former Vice President Dick Cheney who have all within the past few weeks endorsed the freedom to marry.

“President Clinton’s support for the freedom to marry has evolved over time, and shows the power we each have when we talk about why marriage matters to the people we know and help them rise to fairness,” said Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry and author of Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality and Gay People's Right to Marry. “President Clinton has grappled with this question for a long time, and clearly he, like the country, has come a long way since fear and politics brought about such discriminatory measures as the so-called ‘Defense of Marriage Act’ that he signed and now has moved past.”

Read Online: http://freedomtomarry.org/press_center/president_clinton_supports_freedom_to_marry.php

WILLIAMS INSTITUTE PRESENTS RESEARCH TO CONGRESSIONAL SUBCOMMITTEE ON DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIP BENEFITS LEGISLATION

July 9, 2009 – Williams Institute Research Director Lee Badgett testified before the Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia, on HR 2517: Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligation Act of 2009. A recent study by the Williams Institute found that offering health and other benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees would add a relatively small and quite manageable amount, $41 million, to the federal budget in the first year of coverage. Over ten years the study predicts the budgetary cost to be $675 million, a small percentage of the federal budget.

“The federal government now competes with many large and prominent employers who already offer domestic partner benefits to the same-sex partners of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) employees,” stated Badgett, “research by myself and other scholars support my conclusion that the federal government can adopt and implement this new policy easily and affordably.”

A video recording of the hearing will be available on the subcommittee website. Click here to visit.

Obama talks the talk, but will he walk the walk?

By Mark Segal
PGN Publisher

I’m the only writer in the LGBT media who can write this analysis. Let’s get
right down to the facts, for fairness. Before last April, this writer was
considered the most outspoken journalist opposing Sen. Barack Obama in the
Democratic primary; some said I was in the Clinton camp. At the time, I
pointed out that Obama, unlike Clinton, gave few interviews to gay press,
but made many statements with no follow-ups and always held out the
possibility of an interview to local LGBT media until their state primary
was over. The reason personal interviews are so important is that you get to
follow up and not allow a candidate to just recite his/her standard stump
speech; it gets the facts out there. To be sure, answering a questionnaire
is not an interview: It most likely is answered by a low-level campaign
staffer.

Looking back at my history of activism, going back to Stonewall and the
action group and the community’s fight against the TV networks, it’s ironic
that I was viewed as being in Clinton’s camp — the “establishment”
Democratic candidate.

Needless to say, I received thousands of hateful e-mails and phone calls.
Then, when Obama pulled the same tricks in Pennsylvania — well, sorry, he
wasn’t going to get away with it in my backyard. Next to Clinton’s
front-page interview, we at PGN ran a blank space with a box noting where
you would have read Obama’s interview.

It didn’t end there: We continued to campaign every day. Finally, on his
whistle stop across the state, he gave six exclusive interviews. Five of
them, including two networks and mainstream newspapers, asked him about his
problem with the gay community. Since Pennsylvania was considering
antigay-marriage legislation, he was also forced to take a stand on gay
marriage — the same one he took later with California.

So, that is what might be considered my anti-Obama time. One of my favorite
gay Web sites is Queerty; take a look at how they handled all this. They did
it with fairness, expressing the national LGBT community’s anger with me.
And they were correct.

Next fact. A week before the Pennsylvania primary, I was at a very small VIP
party with Obama, and attempted to stay far away from him. But that didn’t
happen. I took a photo of him at the request of the City Council president,
and he learned I was in the room. He pulled me close and wanted to chat with
me personally about his LGBT positions.

Obama lost Pennsylvania and you’d think that would be it. But, his camp
reached out to me and apologized. Then asked for advice in dealing with gay
media.

Many more gay publications and electronic media got interviews leading up to
his nomination in Denver, after which I made it clear that I expected him to
do at least one interview during the campaign with LGBT media. I had a
similar role with John Kerry’s campaign and others, as far back as Jimmy
Carter.

There were many media outlets vying for that LGBT interview. I advocated on
behalf of The Gay History project, which won out. I have never done so much
research for an interview in my 33 years in journalism. I checked my
questions and research with two members of Congress, a couple of judges and
a constitutional lawyer. These were questions Obama hadn’t been asked before
and that would surprise him. (Listen to the interview at www.epgn.com.)

In that interview, PGN asked about an amicus brief on the Defense of
Marriage Act for the first time. He was even asked about a signing statement
or executive order to end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” (Servicemembers Legal
Defense Network helped me with that one.)

If you re-read that interview, which was published in scores of local LGBT
newspapers — Obama’s only LGBT interview as the nominee — you’ll note that
he’s now doing exactly what he said he’d do. In other words, he’s keeping
his promises.

Here’s where the schism comes in. We expect him to live up to everything he
stated during the entire campaign, especially early in the campaign when it
was easy to promise anything to everyone, right now. The mother’s milk of a
campaign is to secure your base early and then go to the middle in the final
days. Obama is an inspirational man, but he is also a politician who wanted
to win. Of course he went to the middle and, if we believe in him, we wanted
to give him room to do so. We also wanted him to win.

Problem two: He wins. He now comes up against the realities of the
presidency. His top staffers are veterans from the Clinton administration,
which made the mistake of taking on gays in the military as one of their
first initiatives. Their efforts backfired and it hampered Clinton for the
remainder of his first term. Put that together with Obama’s need to
completely change our military strategy (let’s not even talk about the
economy, Iran, North Korea, etc.), he needed time on “Don’t Ask, Don’t
Tell.” His administration was at fault in how it was handled. Our community
was lectured, not brought in to assist. While we appreciate that the
president is trying to build a coalition around this issue — and we hope he
continues to do so — the servicemembers who are being discharged right now
need a remedy. We suggest creating a commission or issuing an executive
statement — as we suggested in our interview.

As for the Department of Justice DOMA brief, the attorney general dropped
the ball and should publicly apologize. And whoever wrote those offensive
lines should be dealt with.

As for those blogs — and you should make it a point to visit Pamsblendhouse,
Queerty, Towleroad and PageoneQ — it is their job to question the
administration and create dialogue. For hard news, background and a local
connection, look to your local LGBT weekly publication.

The bottom line: If you thought Obama was a savior, he’s not. He’s dealing
with centuries of hatred and disinformation about our community. Change does
not come in six months. Those who best understand this are those of us who
have talked the talk and walked the walk on gay rights for 20, 30, 50 or
more years. We know it takes time and, in the end, it comes down to this: Do
we trust him to please us by the end of his first term, as he said at the
LGBT White House reception?

Well, this writer does. In fact, I have no doubt. So keep the pressure up
and, in three years and six months, we’ll know that answer.

Mark Segal is PGN publisher. He can be reached at mark@epgn.com.

Letter in current issue of Gay & Lesbian Review on "need" of approval of gay marriage/homosexuality

By Billy Glover

I want to make my comments on the letter from (Rev) Mark Shirilau in the current issue of The Gay & Lesbian Review, in which he says that homosexuals need to have the approval of the heterosexuals (specifically in the case of gay marriage) in order to be happy-that just having legal rights is not enough.

I hope other readers will give their reaction and thoughts. I am not sure this is what Harry Hay and those who followed his thinking on the "outsider" view of homosexuals in society were saying, but I can be sure that it is not the view that the ONE people, who came out of early (the Harry Hay/Dale Jennings, et al part) Mattachine had. They and later we were followers of the Kinsey/Hooker thinking and sought only to be left alone, to have no laws controlling our lives and we wanted privacy, the government OUT of our bedrooms. We did not care whether or not the rest of society "approved" of us.

I wonder if there is a parallel in the black civil rights movement. It seemed to me, and perhaps over time the tactics and thoughts changed, but in the beginning of the main part of the effort to gain equal civil rights for people of color all that was sought was desegregation. That is different from seeking integration.

The problem blacks and homosexuals faced was laws controlling our lives. There was not just societal control saying that black Americans and white Americans could not go to the same schools, or eat at the same cafes or ride on the bus or train in the same areas, there were laws forcing the rule, taking away our rights to choose. Once the laws were removed then it was up to the individuals to decide if they wanted to eat next to someone of a different race. Then slowly as all races got to know each other, there came integration.

As I was thinking of this, I, like others, heard the awful words of President Nixon on the tapes, talking about abortion not being good, except in some circumstances, for instance to prevent the birth of a child whose parents were black and white. I don't think many people are aware of just how "terrible" the public thought interracial sex was, much less marriage, and the fear they had of children having a black and a white parent. That is why President Obam, like Tiger Woods, et al are so important, and show how much we have changed, for the better. And that is the path I think we are taking on homosexuality.

But it seems to me that there is a difference that most of us make on marriage that is civil and marriage that is religious. All Americans have legal rights, as individuals and citizens, but in a particular religion those who choose to follow that belief are controlled by the rules of that institution. We have a right to demand equal marriage rights from our government, but we do not have the right to demand acceptance or approval of our marriage by religious institutions. And most of us don't seek or want religious approval.

Frank, Baldwin and Polis on ENDA

“I am encouraged that we are going to be able to do this year what we were not able to do a couple years ago and that is to pass a fully inclusive bill,” said Congressman Frank. “I urge people to keep up lobbying. You can now take for granted that there will be a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives almost certainly this calendar year on a fully inclusive ENDA. At this point it is essential that everybody who cares about this lobbies his or her Representative and Senators. When you’re through with that, go to other people and get them to lobby their Representative and Senators because we have a President ready to sign it, and I think things are well inclined for this to happen.”

“This is an historic moment because I share Congressman Frank’s optimism that we will be able to advance this legislation,” said Congresswoman Baldwin. “It will be the first piece of major LGBT civil rights legislation ever enacted by this Congress. The power of the Congress of the United States recognizing that discrimination in employment exists against people on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity, and saying that it is wrong, that it is illegal, is an incredibly important thing.”

“Our businesses need to be able to tap into the very best and brightest to compete in a global environment,” said Polis. “Discriminating against people on the basis of race, or gender, or physical disability, or sexual orientation and gender identity, is simply inefficient and puts American businesses at a disadvantage in a global economy. By passing ENDA, we can ensure that American businesses have access to and hire the very best and brightest to be able to compete and build those leaders through those organizations.”

Out & Equal applauds ENDA introduction!

Out & Equal Workplace Advocates applauds lawmakers' introduction today of an inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees from workplace discrimination.
Known as ENDA, the bill, which enjoys bi-partisan support in Congress, would add sexual orientation and gender identity to existing federal employment non-discrimination laws, making it illegal to treat LGBT people unfairly.

"This is very welcome news," says Out & Equal Executive Director Selisse Berry. "Out & Equal has worked tirelessly for more than a decade to assure that the nation's leading corporations provide policies and protections for its LGBT employees in the absence of federal protections. The federal government is now poised to do what major corporations have been doing for years -- protecting employees from discrimination."

As it stands, a staggering 98 percent of the United States' largest companies have added sexual orientation to their equal employment opportunity policies, with 60 percent of them including gender identity and expression. In addition, more than half of Fortune 500 companies offer domestic partnership benefits.

"We all know that not every workplace is an out and equal workplace, and not everyone feels comfortable coming out at work, and there's a reason for that -- a lack of legal protections," says Berry. "We are all hoping that a fully inclusive ENDA will soon be signed into law, providing the essential legal framework that will protect all of us."

Berry says, "We are close to realizing the workplace protections we have worked diligently to achieve. I strongly encourage that everyone writes to their Congressional delegates to show their support for ENDA. With everyone's help, we can play an integral role in the movement that countless people before us fought to achieve and we can now secure by encouraging our lawmakers to vote for workplace equality."