A LOT OF NEWS
NOM is “making marriage cool”
Celeste Lavin
By Celeste Lavin , 365gay.com

The National Organization for Marriage is at it again, and this time they’re after your children.

In their campaigns against same-sex marriage, the highly controversial NOM falls back on the “they’ll turn your children into sodomizers and perverts” argument. (Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration, but just barely. See NOM’s often parodied “the storm is gathering ” ad- “I’m a Massachusetts parent helplessly watching public schools teach my son that gay marriage is okay.”)


So NOM is fighting back to “protect” those children with their San Marcos, California based project, the Ruth Institute . The Institute’s mission: “Training the next generation to be marriage champions.”

The Ruth Institute is “making marriage cool” with their training conferences for college students, where they teach students why they should “understand the urgency for defending natural marriage.”

Gross.

The Atlantic’s Joshua Green is noticing a trend: the judges who have ruled in favor of gay marriage have been mostly Republican appointees .

The Mass. federal judge who found DOMA unconstitutional last week was appointed by Richard Nixon.

The Iowa judge who found the state’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional was appointed by Republican former governor (and current Republican gubernatorial frontrunner) Terry Branstad .

The justice who wrote the opinion in Connecticut after the Supreme Court overturned their gay marriage ban was appointed by Independent Gov. Lowell Weiker, who, before being the governor, was a three-term Republican senator.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court justice who wrote the decision for the case legalizing gay marriage was appointed by Republican governor William Weld.

Judge Vaughn Walker, the justice presiding over the Prop 8 case in California was appointed by George H.W. Bush.

Perhaps Elena Kagan isn’t the “activist” judge Republicans should be worried about…

The manager of German soccer captain Michael Ballack reportedly blamed gay players for the team’s loss in the World Cup. Germany nearly made it to the finals, but lost to Spain in the semi-finals.

Alexander Osnag of Der Spiegel said he sat down with the manager, Michael Becker. Osnag wrote that Becker made fun of players who were jealous of Ballack “because they were supposedly mediocre, ugly, untalented, bureaucratic, provincial, unmanly or gay.”

Becker had used homophobic language when talking about team Germany before, but Newser’s Mary Papenfus reported that now he is blaming gay players for their loss in South Africa.

The White House unveiled the first ever comprehensive National AIDS Strategy . Activist groups appear weary.

The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power of Philadelphia called the strategy “tentative and vague.” ACT UP ’s Max Ray said the strategy is “too little too late. It’s nice that they’re not going to be actively obstructionist, tying people’s hands on issues like syringe exchange or access to condoms, but what we really need is for them to put money where their mouth is.”

Charles King, the CEO of Housing Works , one of the largest community-based AIDS activist groups interrupted Obama’s speech about the strategy. Obama responded to the interruption: “Hold on—you can talk to me after. That’s why I invited you here, right? So you don’t have to yell, right?”

Representatives from Housing Works said that the plan’s goals to reduce new HIV infections are too low. King also criticized the 30 million dollars that is being newly allocated to HIV prevention, saying it was inadequate.

Withers: Social conservatives fight against UN recognition of gay rights group
James Withers
By James Withers , contributing editor, 365Gay Blog

Two Republicans from Congress, New Jersey’s Rep. Christopher H. Smith and Arizona’s Rep. Trent Franks , are standing arm in arm with a coalition of Islamic countries to deny United Nations’ non-governmental recognition to a gay and lesbian group.

On Monday the Obama Administration will petition the the 54-member UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to grant International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) “consultative status.” This recognition will give the organization the right to sit in on UN meetings. In June Egypt, Angola, Burundi, China, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia and Sudan requested the NGO Committee to block the US request. Egypt’s rep was worried if a preacher man denounced same sex couples he could be hunted down.

Smith and Franks, in a July 9 letter to the UN, used that same “logic,” noting they had “serious questions regarding the IGLHRC’s support for the internationally recognized rights to freedom of religion and freedom of expression remain outstanding in the NGO committee. Consequently, a forced, premature action in ECOSOC to approve IGLHRC would potentially undermine these important rights. As well as the long established due process for NGO review.”

The folk at IGLHRC accuse Franks and Smith of being full of it. Well they say it with more class. The spokesperson for Susan Rice, the United States ambassador to the UN, refused to respond directly to the fussing of Smith and Franks. Instead he argued that IGLHRC is involved in the very thing the UN is supposed to be about: human rights.

“The United States is determined to make U.N. committees live up to their founding principles and be true to the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. The purpose of the NGO committee is to give civil society a strong voice at the UN, and that includes the important contributions that gay and lesbian groups like IGLHRC can make on issues like human rights and combating HIV/AIDS.”

Man wins $1 million in gay discrimination suit
Shamecca Harris
By Shamecca Harris , 365gay.com

A Maine man has been awarded $1 million in a gay discrimination suit against former employer Express Jet Airlines, the Portland Press Herald reports.
In the suit Edward Russell claimed that his employer failed to promote him because he was gay.

According to the Herald, the company was confronted in 2003 with a series of complaints from female workers who alleged that the general manager, who was gay, would only hire other gay men to managerial positions.

From 2003 – 2004 all Express Jet managers at the airport were gay men. As a result, the company fired the general manager.

Within the next four years, Russell temporarily filled the position several times, but was repeatedly told not to “waste his time applying” to be hired permanently. He left Express Jet in 2007 “because of the discriminatory treatment.”

“Our theory was they decided they did not want another gay man out there,” said Guy Loranger, Russel’s attorney.

A Cumberland Country Superior Court has ruled that the airline company was in violation of the state’s Human Rights Act – a legislation that prohibits employer prejudice based on sexual orientation.

Jude's gavel

The court awarded Russell a total of $1.047 million for emotional distress, punitive damages and lost wages.

“This guy was completely qualified to do the job,” said Loranger. ‘The jury said it didn’t matter his color, his race, his national origin or his sexual preference – he was qualified to do the job and you should have allowed him to do it.”

The Maine Human Rights Commission has announced that Russell’s award is the largest sexual orientation discrimination award to date in the state.
Court strikes challenge to DC gay marriage law
By The Associated Press

(Washington) DC’s highest court has ruled against opponents of the city’s same-sex marriage law, saying they cannot ask voters to overturn it.

Opponents had wanted to challenge a law that took effect in Washington in March allowing same-sex couples to marry. They attempted to get approval to put an initiative on the ballot asking city voters to define marriage in the city as between one man and one woman. But city officials balked, saying a district human rights law barred initiatives that would authorize discrimination.

On Thursday, the DC Court of Appeals ruled 5-4 that officials had the authority to keep the measure off the ballot and acted appropriately.


AND LAST, BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST
One Iowa launches campaign to protect gay marriage
Celeste Lavin
By Celeste Lavin , 365gay.com

In an effort to highlight the positive impact of legal gay marriage in Iowa, One Iowa launched its “Letters to Mr. Branstad ” campaign this week.

The campaign targets Republican gubernatorial frontrunner Terry Branstad in an attempt to persuade him of the need to protect the 2009 Iowa Supreme Court ruling that found the state’s previous ban on gay marriage unconstitutional. Branstad served as the Iowa’s governor from 1983 to 1999.

Iowa became the third state in the nation to legalize gay marriage when the state Supreme Court ruled a 1998 ban unconstitutional last April. About 2,000 same-sex couples have married as of May 2010. Iowa however, is not free from the fear of repeal.

Gay rights activists fear the question of whether to repeal gay marriage could become a ballot initiative. The process to amend Iowa’s state constitution via ballot initiative is at least a four-year effort. The state House and Senate have to pass the initiative by majority vote for two consecutive sessions, each session lasting two years. Only then can the initiative reach the voters.

Justin Uebelhor, a spokesperson for One Iowa said, “The earliest it could get on the ballot at this point would be in 2014.”

Uebelhor said that the case in Iowa is a bit different than that of California, where a matter can become a ballot initiative through signature gathering. “It’s so easy to get stuff on the ballot [in California]; that’s not the case in Iowa, which to us is reassuring, because it gives us the time to build continued support.

California’s Supreme Court found its ban on gay marriage unconstitutional in May 2008, but a ballot measure, Proposition 8, was presented to voters. In November 2008, after 18,000 same-sex couples had married, voters reinstated the ban by amending the California constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

A case on the constitutionality of Proposition 8 is currently awaiting a decision from a federal judge in California.

The turn-around time for marriage equality in California was just months. In Iowa, gay marriage would have been legal for approximately five years before it went to voters.

The Des Moines Register conducted a poll in September 2009 that found that while 92 percent of Iowans say gay marriage has brought no real change to their lives, 41 percent say they would vote for a ban.

Some gay marriage advocates believe that once gay marriage has been legal in Iowa for the five years it will have taken to get an initiative on the ballot, Iowans would be reluctant to vote to amend the constitution.

Five years ago, no gay couples in the U.S. could marry. Now, however, five states plus the District of Columbia have legal same-sex marriage, and the federal ban on gay marriage, the Defense of Marriage Act, has been found unconstitutional in a federal court.

Who knows where the country will stand in 2014?

Branstad signed the 1998 legislation banning gay marriage in Iowa, and has said that he would push for a constitutional amendment banning it again if he wins the governor’s race.

In 1998, he appointed Justice Mark Cady, the judge who wrote the opinion for the 2009 Supreme Court ruling against the same-sex marriage ban.

Branstad served as the president of Des Moines University from 2003 until October 2009, and helped expand the university’s LGBT inclusion. According to the Iowa Independent , during Branstad’s tenure as president the university hosted a discussion on transgender health hosted by a well-known transgender physician, initiated domestic partner benefits, and advertised One Iowa’s lobby day for marriage equality.

Branstad’s running mate Kim Reynolds has said that she would consider the option of civil unions in Iowa if a ballot initiative to ban gay marriage passes.

“We continue to get mixed messages from the Branstad/Reynolds campaign,” said One Iowa Executive Director Carolyn Jenison.

One Iowa wrote in its announcement of the “Letters to Mr. Branstad” campaign: “If the Branstad/Reynolds ticket is truly open to supporting committed gay and lesbian couples, they need to hear from you about why marriage is the BEST way for committed couples to care for their families.”

While Branstad’s likely opponent, incumbent Democrat Chet Culver, says he personally disagrees with gay marriage, he has also said that he supports it as a matter of civil rights .

Culver said, “We stood firm for the civil rights of every Iowan by saying loudly and clearly that any and all efforts to add discriminatory amendments to our state constitution have no place in our state constitution.”

Voters will elect the next governor on Nov. 2. Read more about One Iowa’s campaign.