This Sunday in Oakland, Bay Area queers and allies will gather near Lake Merritt for a candlelight vigil and open mic to mourn Jorge Steven López-Mercado and Jason Mattison Jr., queer and gender non-conforming teenagers who were brutally murdered last week. While mourning, the gatherers will also "brainstorm ways to keep their community safer from violence," say vigil organizers.

Lopez-Mercado, 19, was mutilated and murdered last weekend in Puerto Rico by Juan Martinez-Matos. Martinez-Matos has said he dismembered and set fire to Lopez-Mercado after discovering that Lopez-Mercado had male-assigned genitalia and was "wearing women's clothing"--a remark many fear is setting up a "trans panic" defense.

Jason Mattison Jr., 15, was raped and murdered by a family member during the same week in Baltimore, Maryland.

Details about the vigil and others across the country after the jump.

Continue reading "CA Bay Area: Vigil Sunday for Jorge Steven Lopez-Mercado and Jason Mattison Jr. " »

I applaud the filing of the Competitive Workforce bill in the Florida House of Representative. House bill 391, filed by Rep. Kelly Skidmore, would add sexual orientation and gender identity to Florida's civil rights statues.

Currently, it is legal to discriminate against someone in employment, housing and public accommodations because that person is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). The bill would add these categories into laws that already protect Floridians based on race, age, disability, sex and religion.

"I am proud to be the sponsor of this very important legislation," said Representative Skidmore, "I look forward to working with Equality Florida and all Floridians who believe that discrimination is wrong and ought to be illegal."

As the Competitive Workforce Bill was being filed, the Tampa City Council voted to add "gender identity and gender expression" to its existing human right ordinance, which already includes sexual orientation protections.

"Even as cities and companies across our state adopt policies banning anti-gay and gender identity-based discrimination, Florida law fails to provide statewide protection to LGBT Floridians against workplace discrimination," said Mallory Wells, Public Policy Director for Equality Florida, "Equality Florida is working with fair-minded legislators to introduce this legislation because no one should lose their job because of who they are."

Organizations and businesses can sign online to support the Competitive Workforce Bill.

Rev. Ken Hutcherson made an appearance at Microsoft's annual shareholder's meeting on Tuesday. As usual, Hutcherson was there representing the interests of Thomas Strohbar, founder of numerous anti-birth control, anti-choice, and anti-gay financial organizations.

Strohbar's road to financial security has nothing to do with typical investment strategies. Strohbar invests in stocks and mutual funds that he believes reflects God's portfolio.

From Strobhar Financial:

Thomas Strobhar also provides stock market screening information to a number of large professional organizations. This information helps Catholic dioceses and religious orders comply with the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops' Investment Guidelines. This information has been helpful in avoiding companies involved in immoral business pursuits especially pornography and abortion. Evangelical groups have been especially appreciative where this applies to gambling and corporations that support gay marriage.

Strohbar also invests in companies that he wants to influence with his shareholder vote, such as Microsoft. He and Ken Hutcherson have been after Microsoft for several years.

In 2007, Ken Hutcherson told Microsoft, "I am probably one of the worst nightmares this corporation can have." Despite years of complaints, Hutcherson's so-called nightmare is more like a forgettable dream.

Continue reading "Ken Hutcherson targets Microsoft for contribution to Approve 71 campaign " »

Brian Molko of alternative rock band Placebo announced a long time ago that he was bisexual, but now he regrets it. More on that after the jump.

But here's "Happy You're Gone," from their newest album.

Continue reading "Queer music Friday - Placebo" »

The title of Irene Vilar's new memoir, Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict, is a bit misleading. Although Vilar chronicles 15 abortions over 15 years, "addiction" as a diagnostic category is only hastily grafted onto her tale of existential angst. Cynical readers will wonder whether the packaging of this story as "abortion addiction" originated in the writer's workshop or the marketing department.

Whatever the intentions behind the title, it has provoked pro-life ire--one blogger refers to Vilar as a "serial killer"--and pro-life smugness--a spokesperson for Americans United for Life points to Impossible Motherhood as proof that "abortion is part of a very sad story for women."

There has been favorable coverage of the book as well--most notably a Washington Post story that portrays Vilar, now a mother of two daughters, as a woman who has finally "embraced the role of motherhood" and given reign to her "maternal instincts." The accompanying slide show features romantic photos of Vilar in the nursery, surrounded by her children and their toys. In coverage like this, we can witness the power of motherhood as redemptive fetish.

Continue reading "Irene Vilar's Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict" »

Maybe the folks working to end DADT ought to draw attention to the folks who abuse DADT. This is from a lesbian in the military:

Looking for a way out of the service isn't a new idea. Since 9/11, soldiers have been going to extraordinary measures to find the quickest way out of a deployment including intentional pregnancies and cutting off fingers. Hell, my unit's chaplain (who was gay, by the way) went AWOL! He ran away with his lover to Canada the night before we left for Iraq. That's a nice morale booster for the soldiers.

During my time in the Army, a large percentage of the DADT investigations were caused by straight soldiers playing the homosexual card to get out of going overseas. These guys would go to the extreme, staging photographs and videos of themselves with other men, or maybe even making out in front of their commander. They were using DADT as a potential free ticket out of a deployment.

Last year I was talking to a single, straight man in the military who was complaining that he got deployed three times more than other officers in his unit because he was single and didn't feel like coming up with an excuse to get out of something he signed up to do. There was still bitterness, though, towards women he said would start a family to get out of deployment, married men who would say that their wives had "mental health issues" that could never be diagnosed so they needed to stay home and care for them, an officer who herself developed a series of undiagnosable maladies, preferential treatment to folks with "families," and colonels sending assignments they were more qualified for down the chain of command.

All because, deep down inside, many people who join the military really don't want to go to war.

Continue reading "Protect the sanctity of Don't Ask, Don't Tell" »

TThis is part two of an interview with Rea Carey, the Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Part one focused on the No On 1 campaign in Maine, the push to repeal Prop 8 in 2010 in California, and the marriage equality movement in general. This part focuses on the state of LGBT rights at the federal level, the Obama administration, and Congress.

Among the highlights:

• Rea refusing to accept any half-measure on the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell
  
• Although criticizing the Obama administration in many respects, Rea declining to call on the Obama administration for an apology over numerous slights towards the LGBT community
  
• Rea commenting on the AMERICABlog donor boycott

The one comment I have is that I disagree on the refusal to call on the administration for an apology over what we all agreed were horrendous mistakes, with the rationale of "I don't know that the administration sees those as mistakes" (see the transcript for more). Glenn Beck called the President a racist, and he should apologize, regardless of whether he saw it as a mistake. LGBT advocates should call for the same from the Administration if serious mistakes were made.

Overall, though, NGLTF is taking a pretty strong stance in terms of language regarding the slow pace of LGBT issues in Congress, on Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and with the Democratic Party in general, which is great.

Full transcript below the fold.

Continue reading "Interview w/NGLTF Exec Dir Rea Carey (part two)" »

Sarah Palin madness is sweeping through the teabagger jet set and the latest victim appears to be Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo. As Palin's new "autobiography" (put in scare quotes because she didn't really write it herself and memoirs are usually non-fiction) tops the bestseller charts, Tancredo has decided to imitate the former Alaska Governor's successful leadership style.

He's threatening to run for Colorado Governor not because he wants the job, but because he has to push the conservative "agenda." Oh, those anointed ones; they're so self-sacrificing until they quit. Tancredo, of course, is already willing to throw in the towel on his pseudo-gubernatorial bid if someone will throw him a bone.

Unlike Palin though, Tancredo doesn't want money, he wants power. A lot of it too.

Continue reading "Sarah Palin-style: Tom Tancredo goes rogue" »

Today at noon national religious leaders will be releasing a 4,732-word statement signed by Orthodox, Catholic and Evangelical leaders, The statement dubbed Manhattan Declaration

issues a clarion call to Christians to adhere to their convictions and informs civil authorities that the signers will not - under any circumstance - abandon their Christian consciences.

Oh boy here we go.

UPDATE: Full text of "Manhattan Declaration" follows.

Continue reading "Historic Declaration of Christian Conscience?" »

You would think the Reject 71 campaign won in Washington from their first message to supporters after their resounding defeat by the Approve 71 campaign.

In the Reject 71 Campaign Manager Larry Stickney's typical truth bending style he wrote:

Not that we didn't expect it, but the R-71 campaign was handicapped by the bias of our incredibly liberal and increasingly shameless statewide media complex. Like a mantra, the ACCEPT R-71 campaign's talking points were reflexively repeated by nearly every Washington State newspaper, radio, and TV station. How many times did we hear or read that "SB 5688 and R-71 is not about marriage, but domestic partnerships...period"?

It is true, we ran a very effective campaign that earned the endorsement of every main stream newspaper in the state. However, to call those newspapers "incredibly liberal" is blatantly false.

Continue reading "Reject 71 campaign tries to spin history" »

North Dakota is a key state in the fight for ENDA.

North Dakota's Senator Kent Conrad may be a supporter of ENDA, but his vote is unconfirmed.

Please call him today to ask for his support of S.1584.

Facts and contact info after the jump.

Continue reading "ND's Senator Kent Conrad: Legislator of the Day" »

I've been writing a lot on what happened in Maine (most recently this piece yesterday in Frontiers in LA magazine), and where our movement should go from here. NGLTF had run much of the field program in Maine, as well as within the No On 8 campaign in California, so I sat down yesterday to do an interview with Rea Carey, the Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, to address some criticisms and her thoughts on the marriage equality movement. We were joined by Dan Hawes, Director of Organizing and Training, who heads up NGLTF's national field operations and ran the field program in Cumberland County, the most populous in the state.

This is part one related to the No On 1 campaign in Maine and the marriage equality movement in general. I'll be posting the second part, related to LGBT rights at the federal level and the performance of the Obama administration.

Among the highlights:

• Dan commenting that the campaign "could have had a more direct message", "more lengthy conversations at the door with voters", and done more persuasion rather than "just trying to GOTV our supporters"
  
• Rea commenting on marriage equality at the ballot box "we simply don't have enough people to win at the ballot box yet"
  
• Rea and Dan declining to say whether re-run campaigns in California and Maine could have won, or definitively whether marriage equality is winnable in the short-term
  
• Dan defending against criticisms made with respect to the field program in Maine, and praising various aspects of the campaign
  
• Rea and Dan arguing that provided there is a plan and the time is right, despite the movement's recent losses and overall record at the ballot box, donors will "step up" to contribute the tens of millions necessary to win a Prop 8 repeal effort in California

Full transcript below the fold.

Continue reading "Interview w/NGLTF Exec Dir Rea Carey and Dir of Organizing & Training Dan Hawes (part one)" »