Tag Archives: Gay Rights

March 29, 2013 · 1:46 PM

Alan Simpson: ‘Men Legislators Shouldn’t Even Vote On’ Abortion

I don’t often agree with former GOP Senator Alan Simpson but in this instance, he is spot on…

The Huffington Post

Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) has never shied away from turning his trademark brand of colorful rhetoric on his own party, and on Thursday he did so again, in a scathing examination of the Republican approach on social issues.

In an interview published in the Los Angeles Times, Simpson, who has weighed in prominently on fiscal issues in recent years, blasted the trend of old, white Republican males feeling compelled to legislate on abortion.

“[It's] a hideous thing. It’s terrible,” Simpson said of the medical procedure. “But it’s a deeply intimate and personal thing. … Men legislators shouldn’t even vote on it.”

Simpson also called out what he saw as a “homophobic strain in our party,” and accused members of the GOP of following a social agenda that was inconsistent with their broader political ideology.

“You’re a Republican, you believe in get-out-of-your-life and the precious right to privacy, the right to be left alone,” Simpson said. “Well then, pal, I don’t care what you do. You can go worship the Great Eel at night, I don’t give a rat’s … . But don’t mess with me and don’t then go take a position I have and wrap religion around it.”

(Read the rest of Simpson’s interview with the Times here.)

Simpson has expressed similar disagreements with Republicans on social issues in the past. In 2011, he targeted intolerance in the party, suggesting that it often ended up being a hypocritical display of hate.

“But I’m not sticking with people who are homophobic, anti-women, you know, moral values while you’re diddling your secretary while you’re giving a speech on moral values,” he said. “Come on. Get off of it.”

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January 6, 2013 · 4:14 AM

Welcome to the new Civil War

Welcome to the new Civil War

In a recent discussion with a friend, I mentioned how news pundits constantly use the phrase: “Our country has not been so ideologically divided since the Civil War.”

My friend’s question was “why the Civil War analogy…?  The following piece tends to address this question.

Salon

Lincoln’s unfinished war rages on, as the neo-Confederacy tries to turn back the clock on women, gays, God and guns

On a repeat viewing of Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” over the New Year’s holiday, a scene I had barely noticed the first time jumped out at me. Confederate vice-president Alexander Stephens (played with reptilian gentility by Jackie Earle Haley), in a secret meeting aboard a steamboat with Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward, faces up to the reality that the era of slavery has come to an end. Ratification of the 13th Amendment, Stephens muses, will destroy the basis of the Southern economy and the South’s traditional way of life. “We won’t know ourselves anymore,” he says.

If only it had been so. What an affluent slave owner like Stephens feared most, no doubt, was the utopian vision of “radical Reconstruction” imagined by legendary abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones in the movie), in an earlier conversation with Lincoln in the White House kitchen. Stevens envisioned a future in which all the land and property of the Southern aristocracy would be dispossessed and divided among the emancipated slaves, building a new society of free soil and free labor amid the ruins of tyranny. To put it in contemporary social-studies terms, Stevens hoped that by uprooting and destroying the South’s slave economy, one could also replace its culture.

It didn’t quite work out that way. You can’t boil one of the most tumultuous periods of American history down to one paragraph, but here goes: Lincoln was assassinated by a domestic terrorist and replaced by Andrew Johnson, who was an incompetent hothead and an unapologetic racist. Within a few years the ambitious project of Reconstruction  fell victim to a sustained insurgency led by the Ku Klux Klan and similar white militia groups. By the late 1870s white supremacist “Redeemers” controlled most local and state governments in the South, and by the 1890s Southern blacks had been disenfranchised and thrust into subservience positions by Jim Crow laws that were only slightly preferable to slavery.

So even though it’s a truism of American public discourse that the Civil War never ended, it’s also literally true. We’re still reaping the whirlwind from that long-ago conflict, and now we face a new Civil War, one focused on divisive political issues of the 21st century – most notably the rights and liberties of women and LGBT people – but rooted in toxic rhetoric and ideas inherited from the 19th century.

Edit Note:  Emphasis are mine

Continue reading here…

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March 22, 2011 · 12:41 AM

Should Apple scrap a ‘gay cure’ app?

Exodus International

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In my opinion, yes!  The application is not appropriate on any level.

The Week

Critics lash the tech giant for approving an app that claims to convert gay users to heterosexuality.

Exodus International, an iPhone app created by a Christian group of the same name, claims that homosexuality is a choice — and promises that the app’s users will gain “freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus.” Apple approved the Exodus International app, rating it four out of five stars which indicates “no objectionable content,” although the app calls homosexuality “satanic.” That decision spurred a backlash from gay-rights groups, who want the app taken off the market. Should Apple comply?

Apple needs to dump this app now: The “hateful and bigoted” Exodus app certainly qualifies as “offensive material,” says nonprofit Truth Wins Out, which organized a petition drive against Apple. Every reliable medical organization has denounced so-called “reparative therapy” for homosexuality, and it’s “particularly galling” that Exodus is marketing its app to young people, given the wave of recent LGBT suicides. Apple bans racist content; why the “double standard”?
“Gay rights petition: Demand that Apple remove ‘ex-gay’ iPhone app”

Indeed, Apple is being terribly inconsistent: Famously “stringent,” Apple self-righteously blocks even slightly pornographic apps to “protect our minds from filth,” says Jennifer Scott at IT Pro. And yet, “homophobia seems to pass muster.” For a supposedly “forward-thinking company” to approve such a “horrific app… sickens me to the core.”
“Apple, homophobia is worse than porn ok?”

It may be distasteful, but Apple shouldn’t censor this app: “At the risk of putting myself at the center of a firestorm of disapproval,” says Victoria Pynchon at Forbes, I have to say this isn’t hate speech. It’s “simply the expression of religious beliefs with which I, and many other people, disagree.” While countless Americans — and many liberal churches — are rejecting such anti-gay ideas, it’s not the job of Apple or any other company to “serve as our national gatekeeper” and silence such religious stances, no matter how outrageous.
“The internet, freedom of speech, and the anti-gay app”

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December 20, 2010 · 8:24 PM

Gays in the Military: Still Illegal for Time Being

Official portrait of United States Secretary o...

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The process of implementing the repeal of DADT will not be a swift one…

Politics Daily

What happens now that Congress has voted to repeal the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ ban on gays in the military? Nothing.

For the next few months and possibly for as long as a year, gays and lesbians in uniform will still be subject to investigation and discharge if they acknowledge their sexual orientation, Pentagon officials said. Despite action in Congress to repeal it, the controversial policy banning gays from serving openly remains in effect until, in essence, until the Defense Department is good and ready to wipe if off the books.

The Pentagon issued a directive Saturday from its personnel chief, Clifford Stanley, alerting troops worldwide to the Senate vote to join the U.S. House in approving legislation to repeal DADT. The directive was expected to emphasize that the law itself has not been immediately repealed, and that the current regulations banning gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military remain in place.

“Once this legislation is signed into the law by the president, the Department of Defense will immediately proceed with the planning necessary to carry out this change carefully and methodically, but purposefully,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Saturday. Change is coming, Gates said, but the current policy stays in place during an implementation process.

The law itself will not be effectively pulled down until the Pentagon has had a chance to adjust regulations that relate to same-sex partners, including next-of-kin notification, family access to commissaries and military fitness centers, health insurance and other benefits.   More…

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December 18, 2010 · 3:52 PM

Senate votes to overturn military gay ban

 

This is long over due!

Yahoo News

In a landmark for gay rights, the Senate on Saturday voted to let gays serve openly in the military, giving President Barack Obama the chance to fulfill a campaign promise and repeal the 17-year policy known as “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Obama was expected to sign it next week, although the change wouldn’t take immediate effect. The legislation says the president and his top military advisers must certify that lifting the ban won’t hurt troops’ fighting ability. After that, there’s a 60-day waiting period for the military.

“It is time to close this chapter in our history,” Obama said in a statement after a test vote cleared the way for final action. “It is time to recognize that sacrifice, valor and integrity are no more defined by sexual orientation than they are by race or gender, religion or creed.”

The Senate vote was 65-31. The House had passed an identical version of the bill, 250-175, on Wednesday.

Repeal would mean that, for the first time in American history, gays would be openly accepted by the military and could acknowledge their sexual orientation without fear of being kicked out.

More than 13,500 service members have been dismissed under the 1993 law.

Rounding up a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate was a historic victory for Obama, who made repeal a campaign promise in 2008. It also was a political triumph for congressional Democrats who struggled in the final hours of the postelection session to overcome GOP objections on several legislative priorities before Republicans regain control of the House in January.   More…

______

Online:

Pentagon study: http://tinyurl.com/23lxc49

Servicemembers Legal Defense Network: http://www.sldn.org/

Information on the bill, H.R. 2965, can be found at http://thomas.loc.gov

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October 20, 2010 · 6:17 AM

Ugandan Newspaper Publishes Names of ‘Top 100’ Homosexuals, Calls for Their Hanging

The relevance of this outrageous story reaches back to  many Republican politicians, especially those affiliated with “C” Street and the “Christian Right” . 

New York Magazine

Several days ago an unregistered, English-language tabloid in Uganda published a front-page headline announcing “100 PICTURES OF UGANDA’S TOP HOMOS LEAK,” and stamped the cover with a yellow label declaring, “Hang Them.” Inside the paper, alongside the men’s photos were printed their names and addresses. Since the paper hit stands, at least four of the men on the list have been attacked. (Still more are in hiding.) This comes a year after a legislator introduced a bill that would have set the death penalty for homosexual acts, a bill that was set aside after international uproar. “Before the introduction of the bill in parliament most people did not mind about our activities. But since then, we are harassed by many people who hate homosexuality,” Patrick Ndede, 27, told the Washington Post. “The publicity the bill got made many people come to know about us and they started mistreating us.”

The article — in a publication called Rolling Stone, which is not related to the U.S. magazine of the same name — also claimed that a deadly new disease was spreading among homosexuals in Uganda, and that homosexuals were raiding schools to recruit “one million children.”

This is not the first time that a paper in Uganda has named “top homos.” Red Pepper, another tabloid, produced a similar self-titled “killer dossier” around this same time last year.

In 2009, the United States donated an estimated $285 million to the Ugandan government through PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief started by George Bush in 2003. Since its inception, Uganda has received over $1.2 billion in aid from the U.S. to combat HIV/AIDS, an epidemic that is flourishing there among the community of men who have sex with men. Rather than distribute condoms or educate gay men to help stop the spread of the disease, the Ugandan official response is to exclude them from services and wage a cultural and legal war against them. When this latest article came out, the government only offered to suspend the tabloid’s circulation because it had not yet officially registered. Once it files the proper paperwork, it may resume publication without facing punishment.

This essay by Jamie Kirchick from the Los Angeles Times last year does a good job of explaining the conflict between the United States’ AIDS funding to Uganda and that country’s policy toward some of its most at-risk citizens. Newsweek has also taken a good look at this issue. Far from improving as a result of the help of the United States, the situation for gays in Uganda seems to only be getting worse.

‘Hang them’: Uganda paper publishes photos of gays [WP]

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October 19, 2010 · 8:49 PM

Department Of Defense Accepting Openly Gay Applicants

Huffington Post

The Defense Department said Tuesday that it is accepting openly gay recruits, but is warning applicants they might not be allowed to stick around for long.

Following last week’s court ruling that struck down a 1993 law banning gays from serving openly, the military has suspended enforcement of the rule known as “don’t ask, don’t tell.” The Justice Department is appealing the decision and has asked the courts for a temporary stay on the ruling.

The Defense Department said it would comply with the law and had frozen any discharge cases. But at least one case was reported of a man being turned away from an Army recruiting office in Austin, Texas.

Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith on Tuesday confirmed that recruiters had been given top-level guidance to accept applicants who say they are gay.

Recruiters also have been told to inform potential recruits that the moratorium on enforcement of “don’t ask, don’t tell” could be reversed at any point, if the ruling is appealed or the court grants a stay, she said.

The uncertain status of the law has caused much confusion within an institution that has historically discriminated against gays. Before the 1993 law, the Defense Department banned gays entirely and declared them incompatible with military service.

Continue reading…

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October 17, 2010 · 6:26 PM

The Season of Gay Whiplash

The New Yorker Magazine has an excellent article on the recent rash of gay bashing, bullying and assaults…

Between Paladino, the Bronx tortures, and the suicides, are things really getting better?

A few weeks ago, I found myself wondering whether the Logo reality show The A-List—in which a handful of vapidly handsome men make fools of themselves in the playground of Manhattan—would be “bad for the gays.” That this would even occur to me as a concern shows just how blissfully easy it can be to be a gay man in New York.

How embarrassingly silly that worry seems this week, with the news of the torture of three young gay men in the Bronx. That came on the heels of a string of gay-teen suicides nationwide, including one young man at Rutgers who felt so humiliated by his roommate that he jumped off the George Washington Bridge. And in the midst of it all, this state’s Republican nominee for governor declares that homosexuality is not a “valid or successful” option. As we were trying to process all of this, the Washington Post allowed Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council, to write a thuggish op-ed inspired by those suicides, as though his bigoted gay-conspiracy theories are legitimate.   Continue reading…

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October 14, 2010 · 6:42 PM

U.S. Air Force Stops Enforcement Of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

This is astounding news!  Just when most progressives believed that the Obama administration’s stance on the procedural aspects of DADT.  Of course going that route would mean that DADT could take years to be repealed by legislative procedures.

The Huffington Post

A gay rights group says the Air Force has told its legal officers to stop enforcing “don’t ask, don’t tell” because of a judge’s ruling Tuesday. But the order to halt discharges could end soon.

The Obama administration will ask the judge to allow the ban on homosexual servicemen and women to continue in force pending an appeal to reverse the ruling, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

Lawyer Dan Woods said his client, Log Cabin Republicans, which won the “don’t ask, don’t tell” ruling on Tuesday, has been notified that the Justice Department “will appeal and seek a stay” in the case later Thursday. That word was confirmed by the person in the government knowledgeable about the administration’s discussions.

The government source said the delay in responding to the judge’s order resulted because the Obama White House weighed in on the Justice Department’s handling of the case.

This person, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s internal deliberations, said a couple of White House lawyers did not want to seek a court order that would temporarily suspend the judge’s ruling.

The source said the process was back on track and that court papers seeking the stay will be filed.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips in Riverside, Calif., ordered the military “immediately to suspend and discontinue any investigation” or other proceeding to dismiss gay service members. The 1993 “don’t ask, don’t tell” law says gays may serve in the military but only if they keep secret their sexual orientation.

Phillips wrote that the law “infringes the fundamental rights” of current and prospective service members.

The administration’s decision to appeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” ruling comes just one day after it filed an appeal against a separate judges ruling that part of the Defense Of Marriage Act is “unconstitutional” because it withholds health and retirement benefits for the spouses of federal employees in same-sex marriages.

Before news that Department of Justice would appeal Phillips’ ruling, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network circulated an e-mail on Thursday that it said was written by the Air Force’s Judge Advocate General Richard Harding. In that e-mail, Harding says the Defense Department “will abide” by a court order that says the military can no longer discharge service members who are openly gay.

Such guidance would represent the first time in decades that the military would not discriminate based on sexual orientation.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is “going to end” — it’s just a matter of how.

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters traveling with him in Europe that repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law should be considered only after the Pentagon completes a study of the impact of lifting the ban, including an assessment of service members’ attitudes toward the change. The study is due Dec. 1.

Allowing gays to serve openly “is an action that requires careful preparation and a lot of training,” Gates said. “It has enormous consequences for our troops.”

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· 4:25 AM

An Angry Rabbi Breaks With Paladino

This is not the sort of thing that wins a candidate votes.  In fact, political pundits are saying that one can “stick a fork in Paladino…he’s done”.

Huffington Post

The alliance between the Republican Carl P. Paladino and an Orthodox rabbi from Brooklyn has fallen apart, with the rabbi denouncing Mr. Paladino on Wednesday for his apology over remarks he had made about homosexuality on Sunday.

The rabbi, Yehuda Levin, who helped write those remarks, said Mr. Paladino ”folded like a cheap camera” because of the uproar they had set off. And the rabbi said he could no longer support Mr. Paladino’s candidacy for governor of New York.

Read the whole story: New York Times

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