POLL: Strong Support for LGBT Equality in VA

Good news out of the Commonwealth of Virginia for supporters of LGBT equality! A new bipartisan poll conducted for Human Rights Campaign reveals that Virginians strongly support LGBT equality.

For example, support for marriage equality is at 55%, which jumps to 71% for voters under the age of 30. There is interesting geographic distribution too:

• 68 percent in Northern Virginia 

• 53 percent in Central Virginia

• 51 percent in Eastern Virginia 

It's great to know that the area in which I have been living (Ballston section of Arlington) has such strong support for marriage equality. But there is even more good news. Virginia also supports state recognition of same-sex couples (civil unions) as well as overwhelmingly support (by 74 percent) protections from employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

In fact, support for a state LGBT right law is strong among several demographics:

• 70 percent of Independents

• 62 percent of Republicans

• 71 percent of African Americans

The item "on the gay rights agenda" that is least supported by Virginians is adoption by same-sex couples, which is "only" supported by 60 percent.

Great news from Virginia! Maybe Virginia is for lovers, after all!

Slovenia Votes To Reject Same-Sex Adoption Rights

Slovenia held a national referendum on whether the new Family Code should go into effect and rejected the measure after a campaign that focused on whether same-sex couples should gain the right to adopt children jointly as a couple.

Raw Story reports:

With over 99 percent of ballots counted, the results showed that 54.77 percent of voters rejected a proposed new family code while 44.23 percent backed it, the electoral commission of the eurozone member state announced. 

“It remains to be seen what impact such a delay will have on children, families and the rest,” said Majda Potrata, deputy head of the opposition Social Democrats which led the previous government that drafted the bill.

Pre-referendum opinion polls had predicted an outcome of about 60 percent in favour of the proposed measure, with warnings that a low voter turnout would favour conservatives in the country of some two million people.

The commission said turnout was about 29.95 percent, lower than predicted by pollsters.

Under Slovenian law, if a bill is rejected in a referendum it cannot go back to parliament for another 12 months.

Conservative civil groupings backed by the Catholic Church had challenged the new Family Code passed by parliament in June 2011 and gathered the 40,000 signatures needed to force a referendum on its implementation.

Yet another example of heterosexual majority lying to pollsters and implementing their homophobia and protecting heterosexual privilege in the confines of the ballot box.

Godless Wednesday: IL Catholic Orgs End Lawsuit On Foster Care

Ha, ha! Over the summer MadProfessah.com and other LGBT blogs reported about the obnoxious lawsuit by a number of Catholic dioceses in Illinois who were suing the state for the right to obtain payment from the government to offer foster and adoption services which would illegally discriminate against same-sex couples in civil unions.

The lawsuit was laughable on its face and last week even the religious extremists and heterosexual supremacists at the Catholic Dioceses of Joliet, Springfield and Belleville recognized that fact and dropped their lawsuit and ended their foster care services in the state.

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Since March, state officials have been investigating whether religious agencies that receive public funds to license foster care parents are breaking anti-discrimination laws if they turn away openly gay parents.  

After the civil union bill went into effect in June, Catholic Charities told the state that accommodating prospective foster parents in civil unions would violate Catholic Church teaching that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.  

Catholic Charities said it would instead refer gay couples elsewhere and only license married couples and single parents living alone.  

The agency has pointed to a clause in the Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act that they believe protects religious institutions that don't recognize civil unions. 

But lawyers for the Illinois attorney general said that exemption only shields religious clergy who don't want to officiate at civil unions. The policy of Catholic Charities violates state anti-discrimination laws that demand couples in civil unions be treated the same as married couples, they said.

Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. Thankfully, there are plenty of secular foster care agencies who care more about helping children then promoting religious-based homophobic ideology.

Uruguay Now Most Pro-LGBT Country in South America

Uruguay is rapidly gaining a reputation as the most pro-gay country in South America despite neighboring Argentina and Brazil.

The small country enacted nationwide civil union legislation in 2007, ended it's ban on gays openly serving in the military earlier this year and last week opened up adoption to same-sex couples.

MadProfessah visited the country in 2006 (Montevideo) and quite enjoyed it!