Black Gay Debate on CNN

Djokovic defeats Federer in Basel Final

This one's gotta hurt. World #4 Novak Djokovic defeated World #1 Roger Federer 6-4 4-6 6-2 in the final of Swiss Indoor championships in Federer's hometown of Basel. Djokovic won his tour-leading 71st match of the year and 4th title. Federer fell to 59-9 and lost in the deciding set in a final for the 3rd time this year (Australian Open final to Radael Nadal, U.S. Open final to Juan Martin del Potro and now to Djokovic). He was also attemptig to win his hometown tournament where he had served as a ball boy as youth for the fourth consecutive year.

NYT Op-Ed in Favor of NY and NJ Marriage Equality

The New York Times has published an op-ed calling for the Governors of New York and New Jersey to act on marriage equality bills in light of last week's elections:

Voters in Washington State approved a ballot measure endorsing a new law granting gay and lesbian couples the same state-provided benefits that heterosexual couples have.

In other good news, voters in Kalamazoo, Mich., declined to overturn a new law barring discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in housing, employment and public accommodations. Voters elected their first openly gay City Council members in St. Petersburg, Fla., and Detroit. Chapel Hill, N.C., elected its first openly gay mayor.

By sad contrast, voters in Maine — by a slim margin, and following an aggressive, narrow-minded campaign led by the forces of the religious right — repealed the state’s new law extending the freedom to marry to same-sex couples.

[...]

The big battlegrounds now are New York and New Jersey. New York’s governor, David Paterson, has called the Legislature back to Albany. The budget crisis heads the agenda, but gay rights must be there, too. The Assembly has already approved legislation giving same-sex couples the freedom to marry. Democratic leaders need to allow debate to proceed, and rally the Senate’s 62 members to follow suit.

In New Jersey, Gov. Jon Corzine’s loss to Christopher Christie means that the Legislature must move urgently to approve marriage equality. Mr. Corzine has said he would sign the bill. Mr. Christie has said he would veto it. Legislators must act before Jan. 19, when the government changes hands.

Health Care Reform Debate in U.S. House Today

Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) said today on the House floor: "All Americans have health care."

Unbelievable. Do all Americans have Ferraris and mansions, too?

Joint Statement from 32 LGBT Groups on Hate Crimes Act

A joint statement was released last week on the occasion of President Barack Obama signing hate crimes legislation into law:

History in the Making

It took much too long, more than a decade. And it came at too great a price: the brutal killings of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. are just two among the thousands of crimes motivated by hate and bigotry.

But this week, the president put pen to paper and fulfilled a campaign promise, the signing of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, extending the federal hate crimes statute to include sexual orientation and gender identity along with race, religion, gender, national origin and disability. Our deepest hope and strong belief is that this new law will save lives. Now, lawmakers and the president have made an imperative statement to the country and the world: Our nation will no longer tolerate hate-motivated violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

We have worked long and hard for this and its passage is historic.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, there are nearly 8,000 hate crime-related incidents annually, and more than 1,200 of those incidents involve violence based on sexual orientation or gender identity. And even more alarming, while the overall occurrence of hate crimes is declining nationally, hate crimes against LGBT people have been increasing. This year alone, we saw hate crimes trials in the brutal killings of two transgender women, Angie Zapata and Lateisha Green.

As a result of this legislation, if local jurisdictions are unable or unwilling to investigate or prosecute hate crimes based on sexual orientation or gender identity, the Justice Department can now step in. And that’s why the LGBT community never stopped working for this historic day.

This legislation not only has practical value, but is a symbol of our progress. It is the first time in the nation’s history that Congress has passed explicit protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. We could not have reached this moment without the powerful support of our allies who stood with us every step of the way. We are deeply grateful to civil rights, civic, faith and disability rights groups, as well as law enforcement and district attorney organizations that worked side by side with the LGBT advocates. We are equally thankful to Congress, President Obama and members of his administration for passing and signing this bill into law.

While today we celebrate this marker of progress, we must recognize it as only one of the building blocks to full equality and demand that it be just a first step toward equal treatment under federal law in all areas of our lives. And we must focus on the next step.

The passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act provides us with an opportunity. We must use this moment to educate and keep the momentum going so that we can continue to make progress on the local, state and federal levels. Yes, legislation takes a long time — often years of work. Yet, our community is on the cusp of passing much-needed protections.

This week, we call upon lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, families and allies to take this opportunity of increased media and public attention on hate crimes to educate co-workers, classmates, neighbors, family members and friends about our lives, and about why we need not only their friendship and love, but their vocal support for a more just and equal America for LGBT people. If your members of Congress voted in support of hate crimes legislation, call them and thank them. Then ask them to be there for us again when the vote turns to workplace nondiscrimination, military service and partnership rights.

With your help and our collective pressure, equality is within reach.

When talking about the need for hate crimes legislation, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said: “The time for debate is over.”

She was right.

Just as the time has finally come for stronger hate crime protections, it is also time to pass an inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act, repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, and ensure that health care, economic policy and immigration reform incorporate the needs of LGBT people.

The time for debate is over.

Signed by:

Jo Kenny, AFL-CIO Pride at Work
Terry Stone, Centerlink: The Community of LGBT Centers
Gabe Javier & Debbie Bazarsky, Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals
Marianne Duddy-Burke, DignityUSA
Toni Broaddus, Equality Federation
Jennifer Chrisler, Family Equality Council
Evan Wolfson, Freedom to Marry
Lee Swislow, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders
Jarrett Barrios, Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
Rebecca Allison, M.D., Gay & Lesbian Medical Association
Eliza Byard, Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network
Chuck Wolfe, Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund
Marjorie Hill, Gay Men’s Health Crisis
Joe Solmonese, Human Rights Campaign
Rachel Tiven, Immigration Equality
Earl Fowlkes, International Federation of Black Prides
Kevin M. Cathcart, Lambda Legal
Leslie Calman, Mautner Project: The National Lesbian Health Organization
Sharon Lettman, National Black Justice Coalition
Kate Kendell, National Center for Lesbian Rights
Mara Keisling, National Center for Transgender Equality
Sharon Stapel, National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs
Rebecca Fox, National Coalition for LGBT Health
Justin Nelson, National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce
Rea Carey, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
Paul Kawata, National Minority AIDS Council
Kyle Bailey, National Stonewall Democrats
Greg Varnum, National Youth Advocacy Coalition
Selisse Berry, Out & Equal Workplace Advocates
Jody Michael Huckaby, PFLAG National
Michael Adams, Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE)
Aubrey Sarvis, Servicemembers Legal Defense Network
Lisbeth Melendez Rivera, UNID@S

–30–

POLL: CA Voters Support Marriage Equality; Oppose 2010 Prop 8 Repeal

The Los Angeles Times is reporting on its website that a new poll shows that a slim majority of Californians supports marriage equality but also opposed voting on a repeal of Proposition 8 in 2010. The main result is that 51% of respondents supported marriage for same-sex couples while only 43% were opposed. I would note that this is quite a high number relative to recent polls, but NOT OUTSIDE THE MARGIN OF ERROR.

The California findings come from a new Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California College of Letters, Arts & Sciences poll. The survey, which interviewed 1,500 registered voters from Oct. 27 through Nov. 3, was conducted for the Times and USC by two nationally prominent polling firms, the Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, and the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies. The results have a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points. Full results of the poll, including the status of the campaigns for governor and the U.S. Senate, will be published Sunday in the Times and on latimes.com.

The survey showed that same-sex marriage continues to reverberate differently along race and generational lines. Just over half of whites backed it, while just under half of African Americans and Latinos did.

All three groups, however, opposed having to vote on it in 2010. (Asians were questioned by the poll and included in the overall sample, but their numbers were statistically too small to isolate.) Young voters continued to be far more supportive of gay marriage rights than their elders.

Among those ages 18-29, 71% said they supported same-sex marriage; among those 65 and older, only 37% favored it. Younger voters were also one of the few groups who backedputting it on the 2010 ballot, which will be dominated by the races for governor and U.S. Senate.

The full results will be published in Sunday's paper but they seem to bolster what MadProfessah and others have been arguing for: 2012 is the earliest year that we should attempt to place an affirmative marriage equality ballot measure before voters.

Maine Question 1 Money Total: Over $9m

Joe.My.God has the details of the more than 9 million dollars that was spent to support and oppose Maine's Question 1, which was passed by voters on Tuesday and repealed LD-1020, which would have legalized civil marriage for same-sex couples in that state.

Proponents

The committees that supported Question 1 got their funding almost entirely from churches and conservative Christian organizations and their employees, who gave $3 million, which is 89 percent of the proponents' total. Almost half of proponents' contributions came from the National Organization for Marriage, a conservative Christian group based in New Jersey, which gave $1.6 million. Focus on the Family gave $179,500. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, another large donor, gave $285,988—all to its own ballot committee. In total, dioceses and churches provided $578,904. Out-of-state churches sent in $269,650. Out-of state donors from 45 other states gave $2.1 million to support the measure. New Jersey topped the list at $1.6 million. In a distant second place, Colorado donors gave $143,070, and those from the District of Columbia gave $75,275.

Opponents

The committees that opposed Question 1 relied less on the support of a few major organizations. Opponents of the measure raised money from over 10,000 donors—12 times more than proponents reported. Gay-rights groups and their employees gave $1.8 million, or 31 percent of the total raised by opponents. The Human Rights Campaign topped the list, giving $367,067. The Gill Foundation contributed $275,000. Freedom to Marry gave $200,000 and another $30,000 came from the Vermont affiliate. The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force gave $159,056, and EqualityMaine gave $152,151. Out-of-state donors contributed $3.3 million to oppose to the measure. Donations came from all 50 states; the top locations were New York ($761,498), Massachusetts ($653,889), and the District of Columbia ($619,566).

I suppose it is progress that the donors for supporting the denial of fundamental rights to a minority group are not coming from large groups of people, but only a small cadre of religiously motivated heterosexual supremacists.

Celebrity Friday: Evan Wolfson

Evan Wolfson is the founder and executive director of Freedom to Marry, the national organization devoted to fighting for marriage equality, and he appeared on CNN's Anderson Cooper show to debate the odious Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council about the aftermath of Maine's vote to sustain a people's veto of their marriage equality bill LD 1020.

Hat/tip Joe.My.God

Referendum 71 Update: Victory Mathematically Certain

The latest tallies on Referendum 71 from the Washington State Secretary of State election results page show that the good guys are ahead 593,956 (51.65%) Approve to 556,090 (48.35%) Reject with 394,282 ballots still to be counted! However, mathematically there is almost no chance that Referendum 71 will be rejected when all the votes are tallied.

The current margin of victory is 37,876 votes. However, 129,000 of the outstanding ballots are from King county which is approving Referendum 71 at a 66%-34% rate that will be a net gain of another 42,000 votes. The rest of the state will not be able to overcome that margin unless they sustain a margin of 58% Reject for ALL of the non King County votes. In order to actually surpass the boost from the uncounted King County ballots combined with the current lead of 37,876 the outstanding non-King county 265,000 ballots would have to be rejecting Referendum 71 at a rate of 65%.

That simply is NOT going to happen. We won!!

Having a statewide vote to approve a comprehensive domestic partnership bill affirmatively is a huge leap forward for the LGBT equality movement. I would note that the last time LGBTs won a statewide vote it was in 2006 when Arizonan's defeated an anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment so homophobic it would also have outlawed domestic partnerships. That initiative was rejected in 2006 and then a marriage-only measure was approved by voters in 2008.

I think this makes it clear that states that have anti-marriage constitutional amendments or do not have marriage equality yet should move forward in enacting comprehensive domestic partnership statutes and not be afraid of facing the voters.

CA-10: Garamendi Elected To Congress

Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi has won the special election to replace U.S. Rep Ellen Tauscher in California's congressional district. You may recall this district because this was the race in which Black, openly gay Iraq vet Anthony Woods was a candidate, although with much greater name recognition and money, Garamendi placed first in the primary on September 1, 2009.

Despite all the chatter about Republican gains in Tuesday's elections, the Democrats in Congress have two more votes in Congress after the election than they did before the election.

And that's two more votes for health care reform.

World Chess Championship Set: Anand v. Topalov in April '10

In Sunday's Chess column in the Los Angeles Times International master Jack Peters revealed the dates and location of next year's World Chess Championship match between defending champ Viswanathan Anand and Veselin Topalov.

The World Chess Federation (FIDE) announced that the 12-game world championship match between champion Viswanathan Anand of India and challenger Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria would take place in Sofia, Bulgaria. Tentative dates are April 5 through 24.

The Bulgarian prime minister, Boiko Borisov, promised that the Bulgarian his government would pay the prize fund of 2 million Euros (about $2.96 million) and organizational costs. He assured that "neutrality would be guaranteed."

It is somewhat curious that the match would occur in the home country of one of the combatants, and even odder that India did not bid to host the event.

Next Step in Marriage Equality Fight: New Jersey

There is a very good chance that the District of Columbia, New Jersey and New York will pass marriage equality bills through their legislatures in the next few weeks (definitely before the end of the year).

First up is the Garden State, with now lame-duck Governor Jon Corzine widely expected to sign the bill into law if it passes the legislature before a Republican Governor is sworn in in January.

To support the New Jersey effort, watch the videos above, and go to Garden State Equality's website to support their effort to pass marriage equality in the next six weeks.

Thoughts On Maine: We Will Prevail (Eventually)

Yesterday's election results are in and it is becoming pretty clear that Maine voters have voted to prevent their state's marriage equality law passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor from going into effect.

With 96% of precints voting, Question 1 is passing:

Yes	296289	52.79%
No	264970	47.21%

As my fellow blogger Greta Christina says, I hope that people looking at these results will give up the fiction that Proposition 8 passed last year because of the No On 8's alleged incompetency (or Black voters' alleged homophobia). Everyone agrees that Maine's No On 1 ran an excellent campaign and most rational people understand that religiosity not race is the most significant factor in voters' position on marriage equality. And she also makes the point that people who are gunning to return to the ballot in 2010 might want to reconsider that notion:

It could well be that Prop 8 won in California because the No on 8 campaign made mistakes. But it could also be that Prop 8 won in California because same-sex marriage has never, ever won at the ballot box in the U.S. It could be that Prop 8 won because same-sex marriage is just a really hard sell right now. I do think time is on our side... but when it comes to the ballot box, it isn't on our side yet.

Two: I hope the people who want to put same-sex marriage back on the ballot in California in 2010 take a long, hard look at whether that's really a good idea, and whether the timing is right.

Same-sex marriage is just really hard to win at the ballot right now. I think we need to accept that. We stand a much better chance of winning in 2012 than we do in 2010. To be blunt about it: Support for same-sex marriage skews, more than with almost any other demographic, according to age. The younger people are, the more likely they are to support it. To be brutally blunt: As more old people die, and as more young people become old enough to vote, the odds skew more and more in our favor. Also, the economy in California truly and profoundly sucks right now, and people just won't be able to donate the kind of money to a political campaign that they did in 2008. And 2012 is a Presidential election year, when voter turnout is always higher -- and high voter turnout almost always means more young voters, and almost always favors liberal candidates and causes.

I bolded the key sentences in the excerpt above. Greta Christina is just saying what MadProfessah and others have been saying since July: 2012 is the earliest Californian's should consider returning to the ballot to restore marriage rights to same-sex couples.

There are now 32 states where voters have been faced with the question of whether to be pro-gay or anti-gay with regards to relationship recognition for same-sex couples. The anti-gay side has won 31 times and lost twice (Arizona voters defeated a ballot measure that would have banned marriage for same-sex couples AND domestic partnerships in 2006 but then approved an initiative that only banned same-sex marriage in 2008. In 2009 it looks like we are winning Referendum 71 in Washington State).

On the question of marriage equality itself without domestic partnership or civil unions in the picture LGBTs have lost 31 statewide elections.

Do we really want to make it 32 in 2010?

Protect Main Equality/ No On 1 Concedes Defeat

Jesse Connolly the campaign manager of Protect Maine Equality/No On 1 released the following statement:

Tonight, hundreds of thousands of Maine voters stood for equality, but in the end, it wasn't enough.

I am proud of the thousands of Mainers who knocked on doors, made phone calls and talked to their family, friends and neighbors about the basic premise of treating all Maine families equally.

And I'm proud of this campaign because the stories we told and the images we shared were of real Mainers -- parents who stood up for their children, and couples who simply wanted to marry the person they love.

We're in this for the long haul. For next week, and next month, and next year-- until all Maine families are treated equally. Because in the end, this has always been about love and family and that will always be something worth fighting for.