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A thorough and excellent analysis of hate crimes has shown that gays remain the most targeted minority group suffering these atrocious attacks.
The thought-provoking report, compiled and written by Mark Potok, appears in the SPLC Intelligence Report. The results were startling to me, considering the apparent improved societal stance regarding the LGBT community, including the resent lifting of the military's overtly discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, and some legalization of same-sex marriages.
Potok suggests, quite logically, that the deep seated anger barely held in check within some hard-core anti-gays has bubbled over into sudden violence partly because of these general improvements in LBGT rights.
The column appears below in its entirety, or read it directly at the website.
Gays Remain the Minority Most Targeted by Hate Crimes
By Mark Potok, SPLC Intelligence Report
Posted on Dec. 31, 2010, Printed on Jan. 4, 2011
The religious anti-gay right has been knocked back on its heels by gay rights advances. But its hardest core angrily presses on.
Four teenagers commit suicide in a three-week span after being bullied, taunted or outed as homosexuals. Seven students — at least four of whom had endured anti-gay bullying — kill themselves over the course of a year in a single Minnesota school district. In New York, 10 suspects are arrested for torturing three gay victims. In Covington, Ky., a series of violent anti-gay attacks shock a trendy neighborhood. In Vonore, Tenn., a lesbian couple’s home, its garage spray-painted with “Queers,” is burned to the ground. A rash of attacks hits Washington, D.C. And in Michigan, a prosecutor harasses a local gay rights student leader for months.
All of this is only a sampling of the anti-gay attacks occurring around the nation, most of it drawn from just the last few months. Although the rash of student suicides drew major media attention for a few days, the reality, gay rights advocates say, is that the LGBT world has been plagued by hate violence for years.
But that’s not the way a hard core of the anti-gay religious right sees it.
Responding to the wave of teen suicides — including, most dramatically, that of 18-year-old Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers University student who leaped off the George Washington Bridge in New York City in September — anti-gay leaders instead blamed those who sought to protect students from bullying.
Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association said gay rights activists “pressure these students to declare a disordered sexual preference when they’re too young to know better, [so] they share some culpability.” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, a key critic of anti-bullying programs, said gay activists were “exploiting these tragedies to push their agenda.” He said that gay kids may know “intuitively” that their desires are “abnormal” and that the claim, pushed by gay activists, that they can’t change “may create a sense of despair that can lead to suicide.” Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel said those activists want “to use the tragedies to increase pressure on the real victims: Christians.”
In fact, the chief target of these anti-gay ideologues — the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) — has been working to get protection from school bullying for a wide range of racial, religious and sexual minorities, not only LGBT students. It’s extremely hard to see how their efforts are exploitative, or how the “real” victims of bullying are Christians. GLSEN’s mission statement says that it “strives to assure that each member of every school community is valued.”
What’s more, bullying is only the beginning of the violence experienced by gays in American society. The reality is that homosexuals or perceived homosexuals are by far the group most targeted in America for violent hate crimes, according to an Intelligence Report analysis of 14 years of federal hate crime data. The bottom line: Gay people are more than twice as likely to be attacked in a violent hate crime as Jews or blacks; more than four times as likely as Muslims; and 14 times as likely as Latinos.
A Changing Landscape
Remarkably, most Americans today seem to have a sense of the violence that the LGBT community is regularly subjected to, or in any event are increasingly rejecting extreme religious-right narratives about the alleged evils of homosexuality. An October poll by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute found that 65% of Americans believe “places of worship contribute to higher rates of suicide among gay and lesbian youth” (33% said “a lot” and 32% said “a little”). Seventy-two percent said places of worship “contribute to negative views of gay and lesbian people” (40% said “a lot” and 32% said “a little”). (At the same time, the survey found that 44% of Americans still view same-sex relations as a sin.)
This was not always so. In 2003, the legalization of same-sex marriage in most of Canada, plus the U.S. Supreme Court’s striking down of anti-gay sodomy laws in 13 states and a court decision in Massachusetts against gay marriage bans, produced a major backlash. By 2008, fueled by the anti-gay rhetoric and political organizing of religious-right groups, at least 40 states and the federal government had adopted constitutional bans or laws against same-sex marriages.
Since then, the record has been mixed. But it’s clear that public support for same-sex marriage — and opposition to its religious opponents — is on the rise.
Five states now allow same-sex marriage, and another three recognize such unions from other states. California allowed them for some months in 2008, but the Proposition 8 referendum ended that — until a federal judge this fall overturned the proposition, saying it discriminated unconstitutionally against homosexuals. A 2006 federal bill that would have prohibited states from recognizing same-sex marriage failed. By this August, according to a Roper poll, a majority of Americans supported same-sex marriage for the first time. The poll found that 52% said the federal government should recognize such marriages (up from 46% in 2009), and 58% said same-sex couples should be entitled to the same benefits as other couples.
An earlier Gallup poll, released in May 2010, had similar results. It found that Americans now see gay relationships as “morally acceptable” by a 52% to 43% margin — compared to a 55% to 38% unfavorable view just eight years earlier. Every demographic group within the data set grew more accepting — Catholics, for instance, polled as 62% favorable, compared to 46% four years ago.
This fall’s mid-term elections were the first since the 1990s with no measures to ban gay marriage on any state ballot, according to The Associated Press. And although same-sex marriage was an issue at press time in four gubernatorial races, the AP reported, Democratic candidates in Rhode Island and California were vying to become the fourth and fifth openly gay members of Congress.
“We’ve reached a tipping point this year,” said Wayne Besen, founder of TruthWinsOut.com, which monitors the anti-gay right. “The religious right is losing some of its steam. We’re going to win this issue quicker than people think.”
It may not be only gay rights advocates who think so. Last February, after founder James Dobson retired and pastor Jim Daly took over, Focus on the Family — for years, the powerhouse organization of the anti-gay religious right — markedly softened its anti-gay rhetoric. Daly began meeting with gay rights activists, ended the ministry’s controversial “reparative therapy” for gays and lesbians, and even suggested that legalized same-sex marriage might not be a disaster.
“I will continue to defend traditional marriage, but I’m not going to demean human beings for the process,” Daly told an interviewer. “I want to express respect for everyone, all human beings. It’s not about being highly confrontational.”
Digging In
It is in just such situations — when long-held societal notions about blacks, Latinos, Catholics, homosexuals or other minorities are shifting — that violent backlashes often set in. As groups like Focus on the Family have moderated their positions on homosexuality, a hard core of anti-gay groups, sensing they are being politically marginalized, seem to be growing angrier and more radical still.
The reaction of Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute, may be illustrative. Upon hearing of Daly’s moves, she said the Focus on the Family leader was showing “surprising naïveté,” adding that he instead “better figure out how to stop the pro-homosexual juggernaut.” As to his comments about refusing to “demean human beings,” Higgins said, “The language employed by Mr. Daly here is the kind of language commonly employed by … homosexualists.”
“True conservatives,” Higgins added tartly elsewhere, “need to rethink their cowardly refusal to address the inherent immorality of homosexual practice and their deeply flawed strategy of calling for a moratorium on ‘social issues.’”
A leading criminologist and sociologist of hate crimes, Jack Levin of Northeastern University, sees evidence of the growing radicalization of the fringe in other ways. He says perpetrators of anti-gay hate crimes appear to be getting older. No longer are they dominated by teens engaging in thrill-seeking with predatory gangs of their peers. More and more, he says, lone adults are committing what Levin calls “defensive hate crimes” — crimes carried out in reaction to sweeping social changes that they see as threats to their home, family, religion, culture or country.
The shrinking size of the most virulent parts of the anti-gay religious right was much in evidence at the August “Truth Academy” staged outside Chicago by Peter LaBarbera and his Americans for Truth About Homosexuality. The three-day gathering immediately followed what to many anti-gay activists was a kind of nuclear disaster — the overturning by a federal appeals court judge of Proposition 8, which had temporarily ended gay marriage in California.
And what better motivator than a “homosexual judge” canceling out some 7 million votes against same-sex marriage? But that turned out not to be the case. Subtracting speakers, family members, volunteers and at least four interlopers who attended only to monitor events, the tally of those who paid to hear LaBarbera and the others speak during the first day was almost certainly fewer than 15.
Nevertheless, for many hard-liners, fighting homosexuality is a biblical imperative. They regard being forced to accept uncloseted gays as tantamount to being persecuted as Christians. If same-sex marriage becomes universally legal, the Family Research Council’s Perkins told the “Call to Conscience” rally held in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 4, “In one generation, we will have gone from banning the Bible in public schools to banning religious beliefs in society.”
As a result, the hard core of the anti-gay religious right is digging in. They have gravitated toward three particular tactics: “love the sinner” rhetoric; secular validation; and depicting gays as a global threat.
The Hard-Liners’ New Lines
Not long ago, anti-gay propaganda was remarkable for its vulgar and wild-eyed tone — depicting homosexuals as immoral, feces-eating, disease-ridden pedophiles. And some of that tone, particularly the idea that gays seek to “recruit” children in school, remains in certain quarters. But that kind of approach doesn’t resonate much with younger audiences, who grew up with positive images of openly gay actors, musicians, artists, politicians and business leaders. As gays came out of the closet, others increasingly found they had gay friends and relatives.
Now, more and more groups on the religious right are framing their arguments with words that are meant to show respect for gays and lesbians. There is no better example of that than the Manhattan Declaration, drafted in 2009 by Watergate conspirator-turned-evangelist Charles Colson, Princeton University professor Robert P. George and Beeson Divinity School Dean Rev. Timothy George.
The declaration framed opposition to same-sex marriage as part of seeking an end to the “glamorizing” of promiscuity and infidelity generally. It emphasized that “our rejection of sin, though resolute, must never become the rejection of sinners.” It conceded that “there are sincere people who disagree with us … on questions of sexual morality and the nature of marriage.” “And so,” it concluded, “it is out of love (not ‘animus’) and prudent concern for the common good (not ‘prejudice’), that we pledge to labor ceaselessly to preserve the legal definition of marriage.”
That kinder, gentler language drew the support of many, but not as many as the religious right was used to getting. After setting a goal of obtaining 1 million signatures within 10 days of its Nov. 20, 2009, release, organizers said this Aug. 3 — almost nine months later — that they had amassed 463,000 signatures.
Another emphasis has been in seeking secular validation for anti-gay arguments — scientific evidence of the alleged pitfalls of homosexuality. Many on the religious anti-gay right now frame their arguments almost entirely around the idea that homosexuals present various dangers to children, that they will live short and unhappy lives, that they are more vulnerable to disease, and so on.
The clearest statement of this may have come in late 2008 from Paul Cameron of the Family Research Institute: “We can no longer rely — as almost all pro-family organizations do today — on gleaning scientific ‘bits’ from those in liberal academia… . [W]e must subvert the academy by doing original, honest research ourselves and use this to advance the historic Christian faith.”
There’s just one trouble with this approach. Almost all the “facts” trotted out by the religious right about gays turn out to be false or misleading. And no one does more to create these myths than Cameron, whose work has been repudiated by three scholarly associations. (Others who are commonly cited as “researchers” by the anti-gay right include Joe Dallas, John R. Diggs, Joseph Nicolosi and the late Charles Socarides.) In addition, many scholars who do serious work in the area of sexuality say their work is misused by anti-gay groups. In fact, at least 11 legitimate scientists have recorded video statements saying their work was being mischaracterized by the religious right.
Related to this effort has been the creation of “ex-gay” therapies — programs run by the religious right that claim, against the weight of scientific evidence, to be able to turn homosexuals into heterosexuals. The problem is that so few people seem to have made the change — and so many who supposedly did later repudiated it.
A final new emphasis being used by many of the hard-core anti-gay groups is the charge that homosexuals make up, in effect, an active conspiracy whose agenda includes the destruction of Christianity and, ultimately, Western civilization. Sometimes, their propaganda sounds noticeably like Nazi descriptions of Jewish plots.
In a Feb. 6 column headlined “The bitter fruit of decriminalizing homosexual behavior,” for example, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer paraphrased another writer, agreeing that decriminalizing homosexuality had left society facing “a powerful, vicious, and punitive homosexual cabal that is determined to overthrow completely what remains of Judeo-Christian standards of sexual morality in the West.” Fischer adds that, “as [the writer] points out,” gays have received “special protections … which come at the expense of religious liberty, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech and freedom of association and lead to the punishment, intimidation and harassment of any who oppose their agenda.”
For his part, reflecting on “the rise of gay power in the culture,” Americans for Truth About Homosexuality’s LaBarbera sounded a similar theme during a radio broadcast last summer, saying, “The homosexual activist movement has very strategically insinuated itself into every sphere of power in our society.”
And at the Chicago-area Truth Academy, Robert Knight of Coral Ridge Ministries cited a 2008 Time magazine article that he said “makes the case that the Democratic Party is a fully owned subsidiary of a group of homosexual billionaires.” (In fact, the article discussed a group of wealthy gay men and their effect on pro-gay politics.) Knight then went a few steps further, saying that homosexuals in the nation’s capital have “blackmail power.”
How is that? So many gays work in the hospitality industry, Knight claimed, that “they see congressmen dallying with their secretaries. They see them with their mistresses, and they let them know if they step out of line on the gay issue, it just might find its way into the wrong hands.” He offered no evidence.
“The gay Mafia in Washington,” he concluded. “It’s very real.”
Facing the Future
In the end, many legal observers have suggested, same-sex marriage — or “marriage equality,” in the words of its backers — may well be legalized across the United States, whether through the actions of the courts or the legislatures. But that doesn’t mean that the hard core of religious resistance is about to disappear.
Frederick Clarkson, an independent journalist who has written about the American religious right for a quarter of a century, notes that the social conflicts set off by Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education continued for decades after the Supreme Court ruled. Moderating public attitudes toward homosexuality, he says, are viewed by the religious right as “symptoms of a society that has fallen away from God’s laws, seriously enough that God is ready to smack the country down.”
After all, to the hard core of that anti-gay religious right, Clarkson says, “homosexuality is a profound capital offense against God’s order.”
The upshot, in all likelihood, is that violence, hatred and bullying of those perceived as homosexual will continue into the foreseeable future. Although leaders of the hard core of the religious right deny it, it seems clear that their demonizing propaganda plays a role in fomenting that violence — a proposition that has sparked a number of Christian leaders to speak out in the wake of the latest series of tragedies.
“The recent epidemic of bullying-related teen suicides is a wake-up call to us moderate Christians,” the Rev. Fritz Ritsch, pastor of St. Stephen Presbyterian Church, wrote in October in the Fort Worth, Texas, Star-Telegram. “To most unchurched Americans — meaning most Americans — the fruit of the church is bitter indeed. … [T]he bullying crisis has put a fine point on the need for moderates to challenge the theological bullies from our own bully pulpits. We cannot equivocate. Children are dying. We need to speak up. If not now, when?”
[Note: Mark Potok is the editor of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report.]
— The Curator
Legally, the federal government and 45 states do not recognize same-sex marriage — the union of two men or two women.
Which makes one aspect of the 2010 U.S. Census quite curious because it does — a decision that has incensed conservative groups nationwide.
Conservative groups say the bureau is ignoring federal and state laws by allowing same-sex couples to list themselves as married regardless of whether their relationships are legal.
"The law should count for something when the Census Bureau counts America's population, but apparently it doesn't on President Obama's watch," said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. "The President's Commerce Department is actively encouraging people to ignore U.S. marriage law and invent new definitions for their relationships."
Perkins noted that the federal Defense of Marriage Act forbids the government from recognizing same-sex marriages.
"When it comes to advancing the extreme homosexual agenda, this White House has no limits, not even the facts," he said.
Representatives of the U.S. Census Bureau are so serious about counting same-sex unions or partnerships that they traveled to cities throughout the country yesterday trying to assure lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LBBT) individuals that not only is it safe to check the “married” box in states where same-sex marriage is not recognized, it’s encouraged.
The day before, the Census Bureau released new videos encouraging same-sex couples and transgender people to participate in the 2010 census, saying that they can be "true" to who they are when filling out census forms.
Thus, same-sex couples will, for the first time, be counted as married even if their relationships are not recognized in their state.
Moreover, transgender people have been encouraged to complete the forms according to their "true gender," as Mara Keisling of the Center for Transgender Equality stated. They, however, will not directly be counted as transgender.
"Be yourself and be counted," Keisling, a transgender-identified woman, said in one of the Census Bureau’s promotional videos.
Gay rights groups hailed the bureau's moves as historic, as it signals recognition of gay and lesbian marriages for the first time federally.
"We pushed hard to make it possible for married same-sex couples to be counted in the 2010 census," reads a statement by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
The organization launched a "Queer the Census" campaign demanding even more recognition in the next U.S. census, complete with a question that asks if one is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
The organization has been calling on members of the LGBT community and supporters to place pink stickers, found at www.queerthecensus.org, on the outside of their individual census packets. The stickers ask that the senders be identified by their sexual orientation.
“We have to show we are here,” said Doug Gray, a Kansas City political consultant who is gay.
In numbers come power, recognition and the ability to influence policy, he said. Without them, it’s easier for policymakers to marginalize issues affecting the gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender community.
Despite being in a committed relationship for a decade, Gray said he purposely did not identify himself as married in the census to make a point.
“I don’t consider us married, because our federal government tells us … we are not worthy of the institution of marriage,” he said. “We need to change that.”
Jason Clinton of Prairie Village, chairman of a local chapter of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network, which helps make schools safe for gay, lesbian and transgender students, did the opposite.
“My partner and I sent our survey back a few weeks ago,” he said. “We put we are married, even though it is not technically true. The census can look and see we are both male and disregard that, or they can choose to see that as what it is — an attempt to be seen as legitimate.”
Another part of the Census Bureau message: If you’re transgender — born genetically male but having changed to female, or vice versa — feel free to check the gender box you prefer.
Yesterday, the Census Bureau, in cooperation with the Spirit of Hope Metropolitan Community Church in Kansas City, Mo., sponsored an event in Kansas City entitled “Talking Numbers: A Discussion of LGBT Communities and the 2010 Census.”
The event focused on how the census will impact LGBT communities, including how same-sex couples will be counted.
“The transgender community faces some unique concerns when it comes to self-identifying our sex on the census forms, but it’s still crucial to fill out and mail it back,” Edward J. SanFilippo, LGBT partnership specials for the U.S. Census Bureau, said in a news release announcing Tuesday’s meeting.
“We can’t lose sight that we’re part of much broader communities that rely on this information — towns, cities, counties, states, and even the whole country. In this respect we count just like everyone else,” he said.
Yesterday, Che Ruddell-Tabisola, the national LGBT partnership leader for the Census Bureau, agreed. “The census is a portrait of America. Our job is to get an accurate count. … One of the most important things is for same-sex couples to know that it is 100 percent safe to participate in the census.”
Safe for two reasons:
First, individuals’ census data are confidential. Second, nowhere on the 2010 census form does the government actually ask for anyone to identify his or her sexual orientation. Boxes exist for “male,” “female” and for spousal relationship. The existence of a same-same marriage or partnership is surmised from the data.
Despite the anonymity, the issue of being counted draws mixed reactions among gay and lesbian couples.
Many, such as state Sen. Jolie Justus of Kansas City — who married partner Shonda Garrison in a May ceremony in Iowa — see the Census Bureau’s move as a small, positive step.
“I guess that I’m impressed that there is a branch of the United States government that recognizes that families come in different forms, including same-sex couples,” Justus said.
At the same time, she and others wonder whether the count actually goes far enough.
The census may capture the small percentage of the gay and lesbian community who list themselves as married couples or as partners in a household. But it does not include single or divorced gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender individuals, so it will offer no realistic sense of how many of them live, work or pay taxes.
Some conservatives worry that the census action actually will produce inflated data for gay-marriage advocates. Even if it doesn’t, they see it lending its legitimacy, another step toward redefining marriage.
In a blog posting, Gary Randall, at the Faith and Freedom Network, said it was “leaving it to responders to characterize their own relationships, regardless of legal status.”
Randall, president believes homosexual numbers will be inflated by the "you decide what you are" policy.
"This policy shift is another attempt to confuse the discussion about marriage by creating a problem of sorts, then providing a solution that advances the homosexual agenda of redefining marriage," he stated.
State Sen. Cecile Bledsoe, R-Rogers, a candidate for Arkansas’ 3rd District congressional seat, said today she opposes the campaign “not only because it’s an improper message, but because it’s an incredible waste of taxpayer dollars.”
Gay-rights activists, with strong support from the Census Bureau, are urging participation by their community in the first U.S. census that will count same-sex couples who say they’re married even though they do not have a marriage license.
“It’s wrong, it’s incorrect,” says Jerry Cox, director of the conservative Family Council, which successfully pushed a 2004 constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in Arkansas. “They’re basically asking them to lie on the census form.” Cox says 30 states have passed referendums banning same-sex marriages.
Tim Olson, Census Bureau assistant division chief who is helping oversee the campaign, defended the program.
“What I tell folks in the bureau is that this is a powerful, important part of American society,” Olson said. “We have to reach out and engage this part of the population. Anything less than that is failure.”
Until 2003, no state granted marriage licenses to same-sex couples in the United States. Massachusetts became the first in November 2003, followed briefly by California in 2008. Connecticut allowed same-sex marriages in 2008, as did Iowa and Vermont the next year and New Hampshire in January.
It is unclear exactly how many gay and lesbian married couples reside in the United States. A 2008 American Community Survey estimates that of the 112 million U.S. households about 565,000, or about one-half of 1 percent, contain same-sex couples.
The survey also estimates that between 3 percent to 4 percent of the U.S. population, or about 10 million individuals, generally are thought to be gay or lesbian, although numbers vary greatly, depending on the questions and the surveys.
Sen. Justus said that getting an accurate count was important. She is working to get sexual orientation added to Missouri’s nondiscrimination act.
“You can be kicked out of your job because you’re gay,” she said. “There is no protection.”
The Rev. Kurt Krieger, pastor at Spirit of Hope in Kansas City, said yesterday that such vulnerability was why some in the LGBT community were slow to reveal their relationship status.
Ruddell-Tabisola reiterated the message: The U.S. Census is confidential.
“If a couple feels they are spouses, if they feel that the person they live with is, in every respect, their husband or their wife, that is how they ought to identify. The bottom line is, this is your census.”
The Census Bureau has begun mailing second forms to approximately 40 million housing units to increase America's participation. Households have until mid-April to mail back their forms. Census data are used to apportion congressional seats to states, to distribute more than $400 billion in federal funds to tribal, state and local governments each year and to make decisions about what community services to provide.
It is heartening – and frankly surprising – to learn that ANY aspect of the federal government understands people’s authentic lives. I applaud the Census Bureau in this regard and hope with all of my heart that such understanding extends to every organization, group and individual in our country, regardless of religious or political ideology. Gay unions/partnerships/marriage MUST be recognized and honored LEGALLY.
— The Curator
Portugal's parliament passed a bill yesterday allowing gay marriage in the mostly Roman Catholic country.
The Socialist government's bill won the support of all left-of-centre parties. Right-of-centre parties opposed the change and argued that it should be put to a national referendum.
The proposed law will go to the Portuguese president, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, who will decide whether to ratify or veto it, but a veto can be overturned by parliament. Its approval would make Portugal the sixth European country to allow same-sex marriages.
The prime minister, Jóse Sócrates, said the measure was part of his effort to modernise Portugal. Two years ago his government lifted a ban on abortion.
Meanwhile in the U.S. yesterday, a similar measure was voted down in New Jersey. The state Senate rejected a bill that would have legalized same-sex marriage, dealing a formidable if unsurprising setback to gay-rights advocates nationwide.
After an hour and 40 minutes of heartfelt speeches, just 14 senators voted in favor of the bill, with 20 opposed. Twenty-one votes were needed for passage.
The U.S. national debate over same-sex marriage will take center stage in a California courtroom next week at a closely watched federal trial that could ultimately become the landmark case that determines whether gay Americans have a right to marry.
The case will decide a challenge to California's gay marriage ban that was approved by voters in 2008, and the ruling will likely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. How the high court rules in the case could set the precedent for whether gay marriage becomes legal nationwide.
"This could be our Brown vs. Board of Education," said former Clinton White House adviser Richard Socarides, referring to the 1954 Supreme Court decision that outlawed racial segregation in schools and other public facilities. "Certainly the plaintiffs will tell you they are hoping for a broad ruling that says that any law that treats someone differently because of sexual orientation violates the U.S. Constitution."
The case marks the first federal trial to examine if the U.S. Constitution permits bans on gay marriages.
In Portugal yesterday, the Socialist government's bill won the support of all left-of-centre parties. Right-of-center parties opposed the change and sought a national referendum on the issue, but their proposal was rejected.
Voting figures were not immediately available but the President of Parliament Jaime Gama announced that the government's bill had passed, as was widely expected.
The proposed law goes to Portugal's conservative President Silva who can ratify or veto. The veto can be overturned by the parliament.
If there is no presidential veto, the first gay marriage ceremonies could take place in April - a month before Pope Benedict XVI is due on an official visit to Portugal.
Its approval would make Portugal the sixth European country to allow same-sex marriages. Gay marriage is currently permitted in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Norway.
"This law rights a wrong," Prime Minister Jose Socrates said in a speech to lawmakers, adding that it "simply ends pointless suffering."
The bill removes a reference in the current law to marriage being between two people of different sexes.
"It's a slight change to the law, it's true. But it is a very important and symbolic step towards fully ensuring respect for values that are essential in any democratic, open and tolerant society: the values of freedom, equality and non-discrimination," Socrates said.
He said a referendum was not necessary because the gay marriage proposal was included in the Socialist Party's manifesto in last September's general election, when it was returned to power.
Socrates said the measure is part of his effort to modernize Portugal. Two years ago his government lifted Portugal's ban on abortion.
Like neighboring Spain, which introduced same-sex marriages four years ago, Portugal is an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country and previous efforts to introduce gay marriage ran into strong resistance from religious groups and conservative lawmakers.
Homosexuality was a crime in Portugal until 1982. In 2001, a law allowed "civil unions" between same-sex couples which granted them certain legal, tax and property rights. However, it did not allow couples to take their partner's name, inherit their possessions nor their state pension, which is permitted in marriages.
A proposal from the Left Bloc and Green Party allowing gay couples to adopt children was voted down Friday. Gay campaigners said they would continue to fight for gay couples' parental rights.
— The Curator
A woman said her internet attempt to obtain tickets to the World Series was prompted by her Philadelphia Phillies fever – but police said it was ‘fever’ all right, and arrested her on prostitution charges.
Susan Finkelstein, a 43-year-old Southwest Philadelphia woman, who was allegedly willing to trade sex for Phillies tickets, is now getting her tickets without having to come across.
On Friday, Finkelstein, the assistant PR director of Penn's Wistar Institute, will receive two tickets for Saturday's Phillies-Yankees game, the first one to be played in Philadelphia and the third in the World Series.
Chio, of Chio in the Morning on WIRED 96.5-FM, and the Northeast Philly car dealer Gary Barbera will present the tickets to her at Barbera's car dealership on Roosevelt Boulevard.
Asked yesterday if she would accept the tickets, Finkelstein replied, “Yeah – as long as there’s no strings attached.”
Last night, Finkelstein, also a University of Pennsylvania master's-degree candidate in liberal arts, said that she never intended to offer sex for tickets in an internet advertisement she had placed on Craigslist that read:
"DESPERATE BLONDE NEEDS WS TIX (Philadelphia)”
"Diehard Phillies fan – gorgeous tall buxom blonde – in desperate need of two World Series Tickets. Price negotiable – I'm the creative type! Maybe we can help each other!"
"I was looking for a way to get reduced World Series tickets," she said. "If I can flirt with someone and maybe get cheap tickets, more power to me."
But police said that Finkelstein wasn't merely flirting with the undercover cop posing as a ticketholder at a Bensalem bar (tavern) on Monday night, even though a source familiar with the case described the cop as "a stud of studs."
Law enforcement officers routinely scour Craigslist for alleged prostitutes and suspected child molesters. Finkelstein’s suspicious ad caught the attention of the Bensalem Police and an undercover officer set up a meeting with her at a local bar (tavern.)
According to police, Finkelstein offered to perform sex acts in return for a ticket that the undercover officer told her he had to sell.
Finkelstein, a former PR director at University of Pennsylvania, then allegedly asked if the 'fan' had a second ticket.
The officer told her that he and his brother had tickets to sell, according to police.
Finkelstein offered to perform sex acts on both of them, allegedly saying, "Well, I'd rather have two tickets, and I could take care of both of you."
Finkelstein was arrested, handcuffed, and taken to jail on prostitution charges. “I didn't do anything wrong, so I'm not embarrassed about my actions. I'm embarrassed about how I was arrested,” Finkelstein told reporters.
“I was hoping to maybe meet someone, and talk, and bat my eyelashes and maybe get some tickets,” she said, adding that she is very worried that she will never be able to regain her reputation.
The news stories surrounding the case have exploded on the web, some suggesting that Finkelstein and her husband, Jack, are “swingers,” meaning that they swap spouses with other couples.
"I really don't know where they get that from," she said. "The only swinging he's interested in is Chase Utley swinging that bat," said Brennan, referring to the two home runs the second baseman hit last night, leading the Phillies to 6-1 victory over the Yankees in Game One of the World Series.
She said the whole experience is like a “really vivid dream.” It was unclear what she meant.
According to her lawyer, William Brennan, “She was overcome with Phillies fever. She and her husband were looking for a chance to go to the World Series and she wound up in handcuffs. She might have dropped double entendres in her Craigslist ad but never explicitly offered sex.”
“This is ridiculous, the police have been far too overzealous – if she’s a hooker then I am a lounge singer," Brennan said. “We are talking about a married professional 43-year-old woman here and there was no smoking-gun with her advertisement. She was not advertising in any women for men section. She simply wanted to get tickets for herself and her husband."
Since the scandal erupted, Brennan said his client has gotten "hundreds of calls of support" from across the country, and even internationally.
“The police have charged her with soliciting prostitution and now they have a case to prove and I will take my chances in court over a crime that could potentially end-up with a two year sentence," he added. “I have no problem with the police cracking down on protecting minors and on prostitution but this was not that kind of case."
Brennan also said, “Both she and her husband are doing well under the circumstances and we are confident what the final outcome will be.”
Finkelstein is a graduate student at the University Of Pennsylvania and works at the Wistar Institute that specializes in biomedical research. On her Facebook page, she says she dreams of being “a Phillies groupie.”
She also questioned the integrity of the Bensalem police who have a hard-line reputation when it comes to tackling prostitution. A friend of Finkelstein’s replied on the Facebook site: “I share that thought with you Susan. But on the bright side it’s good to know they have completely eliminated all of the violent crime in Philly and now have the time to focus on insignificant issues.”
Finkelstein faces a preliminary hearing on Dec. 3.
(FYI: For all my friends in the UK, the World Series is the baseball equivalent of the FA Cup final. It is a best of seven series, which is played half the time in one of the team’s city, then changes to the other team’s home stadium. The Philadelphia Phillies are playing the New York Yankees for the baseball title. Some folks are calling the current spectacle ‘the Turnpike Tussle’ because of the road connecting the two cities — The Curator)
The salacious sex scandal that has enveloped ESPN sportscaster Steve Phillips and rocked the network, has resulted in his dismissal.
Phillips, who had been a baseball analyst for ESPN, publicly acknowledged Oct. 21 of having a torrid sexual affair with an assistant half his age who also worked at the cable sports network.
It is not the first time that Phillips has been embroiled in a sex scandal. Prior to his job as a broadcaster beginning in 2005, Phillips had been the General Manager of the New York Mets. During that time, Phillips admitted having sex with a team employee, Rosa Rodriguez, who sued him and the Mets for sexual harassment. The case was settled out of court.
Sadly, Phillips did not learn from his past mis-behavior. Even sadder, the current scandal, involving ESPN production assistant Brooke Hundley, appears to be far worse, having become a nightmarish “Fatal Attraction” sex scandal that has even touched his family.
After a week of battering news accounts, Phillips was fired from the network Oct. 26, an ESPN statement saying, "It was time to part ways," because the analyst was no longer able to do his job because of the scandal. Hundley was also dismissed from her job, the sports network confirmed.
For his part, Phillips voluntarily entered a sexual rehab center the same day he was fired for treatment of "his issues," his representative announced.
According to the 46-year-old Phillips, he began an affair in July with Hundley, 22. After three sexual encounters, Phillips told police, he had tried to end the affair.
Phillips was forced to confess the affair after a "911" emergency police call placed on Aug. 5 by his wife, Marni, was released to the public.
A distraught Marni Phillips had called police to their Wilton, Conn., home in August seeking help because a "crazy" woman was there making threats.
Mrs. Phillips told police that she did not know who the woman was, but that she was threatening her family, and knew her husband.
After giving the information to the police dispatcher, she said she was going to call her husband, who was not home, to find out the woman's name so she could provide it to police when they arrived.
Phillips told police that Hundley had threatened him and his wife in numerous calls and text messages prior to her coming to their family home, at one time texting, "We both can't have him."
In August, Hundley left a letter at the home containing graphic descriptions of their sexual relationship, along with Phillips' purported birthmarks. In the letter, Hundley said she was not just some "random" woman who had sex in a car with Phillips.
After storming the home, Hundley smashed her car into a stone column while speeding away, according to police.
"I have extreme concerns about the health and safety of my kids and myself," Phillips said in a police statement, alleging that the woman had become "obsessive and delusional" after he ended the relationship.
Thus far, Phillips has declined to pursue criminal charges against Hundley. Sources have speculated that could be because Hundley could retaliate against ESPN and Phillips with a sexual harassment lawsuit of her own.
The police are investigating claims that Hundley used an ESPN computer to contact Phillips' 16-year-old son numerous times on Facebook, posing as a high-school classmate.
ESPN had initially suspended Phillips for only a week in August because of the scandal, and Phillips had simply taken a voluntary leave of absence. His firing was quite abrupt, and occurred after literally thousands of news outlets and bloggers took up the sensational story. Phillips had been hired as a baseball analyst in 2005.
In its original statement released by ESPN announcing the leave of absence, Phillips said he was, "deeply sorry that I have put my family and colleagues through this. It is a personal matter that I will not comment on further."
Phillips said in that statement that he had requested the leave to, "address this with my family and to avoid any unnecessary distractions through the balance of the baseball playoffs."
Phillips did not address the scandal again on Oct. 26, but merely had his representative announce that he had now voluntarily checked himself into an undisclosed sexual rehabilitation center to address, "his issues."
Few commentators believed Phillips' move was sincere, but conjectured rather that it was a public relations move to save his crashing career.
Phillips is being sued for divorce by his 40-year-old wife. The couple has four sons, and Phillips recently turned over the family's five-bedroom, multimillion-dollar Wilton home to her, according to the New York Post.
Hundley has yet to publicly comment, but she wrote on her Facebook page that she had seen the face of "evil," and that he wore chakki pants and blue polo shirts, which Phillips often wears.
"Fatal Attraction" is a 1987 fictional movie, in which a married New York lawyer has an weekend affair with a colleague, who will not let go of him, and stops at nothing to have him – including terrorizing him and his family.
ESPN has been in the news for all of the wrong reasons the past few months. The Phillips episode comes only weeks after a man was arrested for secretly videotaping ESPN reporter Erin Andrews in September.
The sportscaster, who was nude inside her hotel room, was videotaped through a peep hole in the door that had been altered to fit a small camera. The tape made its way to the Internet. Michael David Barrett,49, was arrested and charged in the case.
In a victory for same-sex marriage backers, a federal judge in California cleared the way for a January trial surrounding the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage that garnered international attention.
On Wednesday, the judge ordered a trial on whether the measure denies fundamental rights to gays and lesbians, and is therefore unconstitutional and should be struck down. Specifically, the suit alleges that the measure violates the federal Constitution's guarantees of equal protection and due process.
U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker refused to dismiss the constitutional challenge to Proposition 8 by gay rights advocates, ruling instead that a trial was required to resolve legal and factual disputes.
While the ruling was expected based on prior remarks by the judge, the breadth of his decision was a boost for gay rights advocates, who argue that Proposition 8 unconstitutionally discriminates against gays; is rooted in anti-homosexual bias; and violates the right to marry the partner of one's choice.
Walker left all those issues on the table, rejecting arguments by Proposition 8's sponsors that higher courts had already resolved them. Among the questions to be answered, he said from the bench, is "whether Proposition 8 was passed with discriminatory intent."
Lawyers for Protect Marriage, the religious conservative coalition that campaigned for the November constitutional amendment, say the measure had a clear purpose – to restore the traditional male-female definition of marriage. They say opponents' claims of a hidden anti-gay agenda are both unfounded and legally irrelevant.
"Voters who passed Prop. 8 are essentially on trial in this case, accused of being irrational and bigoted," Andrew Pugno, a lawyer for the sponsors, said after the hearing.
Protect Marriage is challenging Walker's order that the sponsors must disclose internal campaign strategy documents, which opponents hope will reveal plans to appeal to voter prejudice against gays.
A federal appeals court's decision to review that order would delay this trial, now scheduled to start Jan. 11. It will be the nation's first trial on the validity of a law against same-sex marriage.
Proposition 8, passed by 52.3% of voters, amended the California Constitution to define marriage as the union between a man and a woman, overturning a May 2008 state Supreme Court ruling that allowed gay and lesbian couples to marry. The state's high court upheld the measure in May while allowing 18,000 same-sex couples who married before the election to remain legally wed.
The court's ruling Wednesday was based on state law and did not address any U.S. constitutional issues. Plaintiffs in the federal case – two same-sex couples, a gay-rights group and the city of San Francisco – claim Proposition 8 discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation and gender and interferes with the right to marry one's chosen partner.
The initiative's sponsors argued that the U.S. Supreme Court validated bans on same-sex unions in 1972 by rejecting a challenge to a Minnesota law defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. The court did not spell out its reasoning but issued a brief order that said opponents had not raised any substantial federal questions.
But Walker said prevailing legal doctrine has changed since 1972. He cited Supreme Court rulings since then that condemned discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender and overturned state laws against homosexual conduct.
Another central issue is whether Proposition 8 should be judged like laws that discriminate against historically persecuted groups. Courts generally overturn such laws unless government can show a compelling need for them.
Walker ruled after nearly two hours of argument in San Francisco, rejecting arguments by Proposition 8 proponents that precedent and tradition clearly showed last November's ballot measure was permissible under the U.S. Constitution.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Charles Cooper, representing the Proposition 8 campaign, argued that marriage historically has been reserved for unions between a man and a woman because only opposite-sex couples can procreate "naturally."
Walker, however, noted that not all married couples can procreate.
"Just last month," Walker said, "I performed a wedding in which the groom was 95 and the bride was 83. I did not demand that they prove they would engage in procreation."
Cooper, lead attorney for Protect Marriage, noted that the Supreme Court has never categorized gays and lesbians as a persecuted group, entitled to the same legal protection as racial and religious minorities. That means Propostion 8 must be upheld if voters had any rational basis for approving it, he said.
In addition to the ability of men and women couples to “naturally” conceive, Cooper cited two other grounds for such a finding – the traditional definition of marriage, and the voters' decision to wait and see how same-sex marriages work out in other states before allowing them in California.
But Walker said federal courts haven't resolved the standard for judging laws that treat heterosexuals and homosexuals differently. The answer, he said, could be determined by testimony on such topics as how much political power gays and lesbians hold and to what degree they are discriminated against.
Even if it's rational for the state to promote marriage among opposite-sex couples, the judge asked Cooper, how would that goal be impeded by allowing same-sex couples to wed?
"The answer is, I don't know," the attorney replied. But he said it doesn't matter, because it's up to Proposition 8's opponents to show that the law is irrational.
Proposition 8 backers also argued that precedent required Walker to uphold the measure as constitutional. They cited a 1972 case involving a Minnesota law that limited marriage to unions between a man and a woman.
The Minnesota Supreme Court had rejected an equal protection challenge of that law, and the U.S. Supreme Court, without issuing a full-blown opinion, declined to hear an appeal.
"We can't put much stock in that case, can we?" Walker told the lawyers. He described the case as "old," "very limited" and "not a considered decision of the Supreme Court."
In his ruling, Walker also noted that Proposition 8 stripped gays and lesbians of the right to marry, which they had been given six months earlier in a historic 4-3 ruling by the California Supreme Court.
"Potentially, Proposition 8 may be invalid given the history in California, while similar actions in another state...may not be constitutionally infirm," Walker said.
The judge previously ordered the Proposition 8 campaign to disclose its internal strategy memorandums and communications, an order the campaign is appealing to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on 1st Amendment grounds.
Theodore Olson, representing same-sex couples in the case, told Walker that if the appeal delays the trial, he may ask for a preliminary injunction to suspend Proposition 8.
"If the case should hang up on a discovery (the information disclosures) issue," Walker acknowledged, "that does change the equation."
A ruling on a preliminary injunction could be appealed, and higher courts could resolve Proposition 8's constitutionality without a trial. Walker said he thought it would be "unfortunate to short-circuit the process" that way.
Walker also ordered written arguments on a request by the Proposition 8 campaign to remove Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown as a defendant and make him a plaintiff in the case. Brown, who was sued in his position as the state's chief law enforcement officer, has said in court papers that he agrees with plaintiffs that the ballot measure was unconstitutional.
Brown, a former California governor, and the plaintiffs oppose the potential realignment.
(I emphatically believe that Preposition 8 in California should be struck down on constitutional grounds. It is also the only ethical, moral choice to be made. Each human being has the inherent right to love and link their life with another person of their choice. To deny that, hurts each and every member of this society and has the effect, intended or unintended, of promoting homophobia nationwide. Proposition 8 passed because members of the right waged a terror and hate campaign against gays. In an age when a country with a very near-history of slavery can evolve enough to elect a president of color, then we can certainly embrace the rainbow and ensure people who are not heterosexual have basic human rights.)
