General: May 2005 Archives

DENVER - Gov. Bill Owens vetoed a bill Friday that would have outlawed workplace discrimination against homosexuals, but he allowed another measure to become law adding gays and lesbians and the disabled to the list of people protected under the state's existing hate crimes statutes.

Owens said he vetoed the workplace discrimination bill because he considered it unnecessary and said it could force employers to spend large sums defending lawsuits. (source)

Owens said he vetoed the workplace discrimination bill because he considered it unnecessary and said it could force employers to spend large sums defending lawsuits.

Think about that for a second. If the legislation (had it not been vetoed) would have forced employers to spend a lot of money defending lawsuits, doesn’t that tell you that many people are being fired from their jobs for being gay?

Astonishing. The governor basically admitted that this is a problem, and decided to let it continue to happen.

(Washington) New hate crimes legislation introduced today in the House would amend existing hate crimes laws that cover crimes motivated by race, color, national origin and religion to include crimes based on actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, disability and gender identity.

If passed, the legislation would allow the Department of Justice to assist local authorities in investigating and prosecuting cases in which violence occurs because of the victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

For more than a decade bills have been filed almost annually to include gays in hate crime laws and each time they have died.

The first attempt to pass a hate crime bill failed in 1994 and further attempts have died almost annually since then. (source)

So who wants to make bets that it’s going to pass this time?

Today, I will be calling Exxon/Mobil to cancel my Mobil/Exxon card as well as my Mobil/Exxon Speed Pass. I like the speed pass because it is convenient. But, I’m not about to buy gasoline at a company who doesn’t give a damn about all of it’s workers.

If they will not put in place job protection against their workers to guarantee they are not fired or demoted for being gay, I will not do business with them.

I urge you all to do the same. If you do, contact them to let them know. The number to call to cancel your account is 800-344-4355.

SUPPORT OUR COMMUNITY!

(Dallas, Texas) For the seventh consecutive year shareholders in ExxonMobil have rejected an attempt to include sexual orientation in the company’s non-discrimination policy.

At the oil company’s annual meeting Wednesday in Dallas, shareholders voted 29.4 percent in favor of giving LGBT workers protection. It was the highest support the measure has yet received.

ExxonMobil is the only U.S. company that has ever rescinded a non-discrimination policy covering sexual orientation. (source)

(Spokane, Washington) Spokane Mayor Jim West returning from a leave of absence, following revelations he offered city jobs to men he met in a gay chat room, has apologized for what he calls “poor judgment in my private life.”

But, he dismissed a demand from local business leaders to resign amid allegations of abuse of power over the affair. [...]

West, a former sheriff’s deputy and Republican leader of the state Senate before he was elected mayor in 2003, built his political career on conservative issues including a condemnation of gay rights.

After Gov. Booth Gardner signed a surprise executive order banning discrimination in state jobs based on sexual orientation, West and 14 other Republicans introduced a bill in January 1986 to bar gays and lesbians from working in schools, day-care centers and some state agencies. The bill, which called for firing state workers whose sexual identities became known, failed.

In 1986, West voted to bar the state from distributing pamphlets telling people how to protect themselves from AIDS during sex.

West opposed gay rights bills introduced in 1985 and 1987.

In 1989, West opposed expanding a needle exchange program from Pierce County to the entire state.

In 1990, West proposed that teen sex be criminalized.

In 1998, West voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

In 2003, West, as Senate majority leader, bottled up a gay-rights bill in committee and it died.

As incoming mayor in November 2003, West opposed giving benefits to domestic partners of City Hall workers, citing cost. The Spokane City Council in April approved domestic partner benefits in a 5-2 vote, enough to withstand any mayoral veto. (source)

I like to think of myself as a very forgiving guy. I’m someone who would help anyone in trouble. I can understand how someone can be closeted and not wanting to let anyone know that he’s gay. I can understand how that person can be in office and perhaps not endorse a measure that his colleagues endorse that deals with gay rights. After all, you are living a secret and if you support a gay rights bill, what will people think?

What I don’t understand is how someone who is a closeted gay will go out of his way to make life for other gay citizens more difficult through his actions. This mayor has a lot of explaining to do to the gay community. I honestly don’t think there’s anything he can say that will make his actions excusable and forgivable.

I think it’s better for us that he resign in disgrace, and I think our community has every right to cheer that on. If any friend of mine did this, that friendship would be over in a heartbeat. Your actions define who and what you are. Mayor West is nothing more than a self-serving, self-loathing hypocrite.

Related entry

The hundreds of cards and letters, some written by schoolchildren, some signed by Arizona legislators, were tacked up along a wall in Lois Fraley’s home. They were physical evidence of the community’s support. They helped boost Fraley’s spirits, helped the corrections officer recover from being held hostage for 15 days in a prison tower.

The letters of support ended up in the home Fraley makes with her partner of five years, Tere Knight. But that home is not getting much support now. Fraley’s relationship is not recognized by her employer and might be under attack at the ballot box.

“It’s, uh, what is that called?” Fraley said, searching for words over a vanilla latte at the Starbucks at Park Central. “Someone, like, backstabbing. Where you can praise somebody face to face and...”

“Hypocritical,” offered Knight, who was seated next to her.

“Hypocritical,” Fraley said, nodding. “Either you like me or you don’t. But don’t sit there and say, well, that you like me as a person, but you don’t like me because I’m gay.”

Last week, a group called Protect Marriage Arizona announced the drive for a ballot initiative that would not only define marriage as being between a man and a woman, but also deny benefits to any couple that’s not married.

That would mean Fraley and her partner. Someone the state flooded with support and lauded for courage would have her unequal status enshrined in the constitution.

“That’s the shame of it, that people can’t understand who you are,” she said.(source)

The Lois Fraley Foundation

That is the shame of it. People don’t understand us, and I don’t know what the solution to that is. My neighbor has made his opinion of us known. There’s really nothing I can do to change his mind, because he has made his mind up long before he ever met us. Gays are queers and bad for society. That is what I’m up against in having him know us for the people we are.

So what can I do? Not a hell of a lot. People want to know us, or they don’t. I suppose it’s easier to sit back and quote venomous quotes from the Bible than actually getting up off their collective asses and make an effort to see us as people.

And this is why so many of us are depressed and lose hope. Tonight was tough. I came home and somewhere in the middle of making dinner, I sat down on the couch, and just started crying. I think at times that there are so many things we are up against, and it all seems so overwhelming at times.

Tomorrow will be better. I’ll go to bed early, and try to arm myself with a good nights sleep. We have to keep our hope up.

I was at least gratified that the American Psychiatric Association has endorsed gay marriage for our community. Maybe that’s where we start. I don’t know.

Representatives of the nation’s top psychiatric group approved a statement Sunday urging legal recognition of same-sex marriage.

If approved by the association’s directors in July, the measure would make the American Psychiatric Association the first major medical group to take such a stance.

The statement supports same-sex marriage “in the interest of maintaining and promoting mental health.”

It follows a similar measure by the American Psychological Association last year, little more than three decades after that group removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.

And they wonder why we want marriage...

This is one of the reasons.

For more than a decade, a focus of gay rights groups and other activists has been persuading employers to offer health insurance and other benefits to the domestic partners of unmarried employees. And Jessup was pleased that his employer was among those that did. [...]

Employer-provided group insurance “was a great plus for us because he is a self-employed writer and content developer,” Jessup, 39, said of partner Bob Chenoweth. J.P. Morgan’s coverage “was much cheaper than what he could get on his own.”

But there was shock in store.

“Something I didn’t understand at the time was how much the taxes would be. I was very surprised when I started doing my taxes” this spring, said Jessup, who is in Morgan’s commercial banking division in Indianapolis.

Under federal law, any portion of an employer-paid insurance premium that goes for coverage for a domestic partner is treated as taxable income to the employee. The employee also may not make any payments for partner coverage, such as premiums under a “cafeteria” benefit plan, with pretax dollars. [...]

“My taxes went up $150 a month. That’s something I hadn’t planned for,” he said of the reduction in his paycheck caused by additional withholding.

First, employer-paid health insurance is tax-free only for employees, their spouses and dependents. “A man and a woman who have not officially gotten married are in the same boat,” said Christopher Colwell of the accounting firm BDO Seidman LLP.

Heterosexual couples have the option of getting married; same-sex couples do not, except in Massachusetts. Even if they did, it wouldn’t help with the tax treatment.

The Defense of Marriage Act, passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, defines marriage for the purposes of federal law as “a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife” and stipulates that “spouse” refers “only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.” It requires that both these definitions be used “in determining the meaning of any Act of Congress.”

Thus, same-sex couples, no matter what states do, will remain unable to get federal-tax-free health insurance for one partner through the other’s employer. A 1997 study by the General Accounting Office found 1,049 federal laws in which marital status is a factor. (source)

BOSTON -- Matt Laderer figured it was the kind of stuff straight people talk about with their moms and dads: When is the right time to get married? How do you pop the question?

“I realized, I don’t know that information,” the 24-year-old mechanical engineer said on a recent night out with his boyfriend at Club Cafe, a gay bar in Boston’s South End. “I don’t know when to buy the ring.”

When Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage one year ago, it was hailed by gays and lesbians as a milestone in their struggle for acceptance. But it also added a new dimension to the gay dating scene -- the pressure to get married. (source)

This is something new to think about. I also realize that I never really gave much thought to how this would change the dating scene for gay and lesbian people. Questions like, “Should I propose?”, “What’s the right time?”, were never an option for Kent and myself. We just kind of... happened, over time. Part of that angers me greatly. We overcame all kinds of bad stuff to be where we are today because we had zero support, and that didn’t have to happen. Are we stronger because of it? I think we probably are. We know that, no matter what happens, we can rely on each other, because on so many occasions in our adult lives, we’ve had to do just that.

But for a lot of gay and lesbian people who are dating, this adds a new dimension to the scene - commitment. And not only commitment, but societal commitment - it’s marriage. We’ve never had that before or had access to that. This is new for the couples in Massachusetts. For the first time, but only in one state in this nation, we actually belong and are part of society.

With friends like Spokane Mayor Jim West, who needs enemies?

I’ve not written anything about Mayor West, because I hate to kick someone while he’s down. And down he is - big time. Not only is his political career ruined (that’s unfortunately, a good thing for the gay community), but he may also be spending some time in prison, if allegation of child molestation are proven to be true. He denies that this happened. I’m not going to judge that here. It will be ironed out in the court room. The allegations of molestation of two boys happened decades ago. He is accused of using the trappings of his office to try to court a young man on a gay Web site.

What I will talk about is his absolute hypocrisy on the issue of gay rights. Here, we have a man, who now claims to be gay, who has worked for years against equal rights for gay. Here’s a run down:

James West’s votes on gay rights issues as a state legislator and as mayor

In January 1986, West and 14 other state House Republicans introduced a bill to bar gays and lesbians from working in schools, daycare centers and some state agencies. The bill, which called for firing state workers whose sexual identities became known, failed.

Also in 1986, he voted to bar the state from distributing pamphlets telling people how to protect themselves from AIDS during sex.

West opposed gay rights bills introduced in 1985 and 1987.

In 1998, as a senator, West voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

In 2003, West, as Senate majority leader, bottled up a gay rights bill in committee, where it died.

As incoming mayor of Spokane in November 2003, West opposed giving benefits to domestic partners of City Hall workers; the City Council approved domestic partner benefits in a 5-2 vote in April - enough to withstand a mayoral veto that did not occur. (source)

Yet, he wants to claim that his private and public life are two different things. Wrong. If you are a public servant, how you live your personal life is up for public scrutiny. This is especially so if the mayor was making decisions making life more difficult for gay people while being a gay man himself.

A lifelong Republican and former state Senate majority leader, West was best known in Olympia as a fiscal conservative. He rarely led on social issues.

Still, he opposed extending protected-class status to gays during his two decades in the state Legislature, and last week threatened to veto a city ordinance giving benefits to the gay partners of city employees.

In 1986, he supported legislation barring gays and lesbians from working in schools and day-care centers. At the time, he was actively involved in the Boy Scouts.

“He acknowledged he compartmentalized, building a wall between his public and private selves,” said Blaine Garvin, a political-science professor at Gonzaga University in Spokane. “When you do that, you’re not being honest with yourself. I think it’s appropriately called hypocrisy.”

State Rep. Bob McCaslin , a Spokane Valley Republican who served with West, disagrees.

“If you talk about [gay] rights, and his philosophy, I don’t see any hypocrisy,” he said. “I’m sure some people will, if in fact he’s gay.”

West told The Spokesman-Review newspaper that his opposition to gay-rights legislation doesn’t mean he supports discrimination. “I have never been outspoken against gays, I have never discriminated against gays,” he said. “It’s dicey to vote for those bills I consider an extension of a benefit that didn’t exist, need to exist.” (source)

Bullshit. When you prevent bills from becoming laws that would protect gay workers from being fired for being gay, you are supporting discrimination. He did this in 1985 and 1987.

In 1986, West, along with 14 other state House Republicans introduced a bill to bar gays and lesbians from working in schools, daycare centers and some state agencies. Think about that. Yet, this mayor sits there and says, “I have never been outspoken against gays, I have never discriminated against gays.”

This is a man with a deep seeded hatred for people like... himself. He has to deal with these demons as we all have. With all the negative information about gay people that has been thrown at me in my lifetime, it has been very difficult for me to come out on top and feel genuinely good about myself as a person. What has made that happen is my own personal integrity.

I don’t even have to think, “If I were in his position, I would like to think that I would be better.” I simply know that I would be. I wouldn’t put down others to make myself look better. Not ever. Not one time. That is called integrity and it is also why I would not make a good politician. I don’t play the game of politics. If I look someone in the eye and make a statement, they can assume it’s true.

That is what we need in politics today. That is what is missing in Mayor Jim West, our Congress, our Vice President, and our President. None of them - NOT ONE OF THEM - gives a damn about people. None of them can see beyond the issue of how it will make them look in their current office or for their future political aspirations (enter Bill Frist).

It reminds me of 57-year old Mary Mornin, a divorced single mother, who told President Bush, “I have one child, Robbie, who is mentally challenged, and I have two daughters.” The President replies, “Fantastic. The hardest job in America, being a single mom.” Morin tells the President that she works three jobs to do all of this. He said that was “uniquely American” and “fantastic.” He asks her if she gets any sleep. (source)

Maybe it is today “uniquely American” to work three jobs, but there is nothing “fantastic” about it. You have no time to spend with your family because you are busy just surviving, and life should be about more than just surviving. Do you think this President or most politicians for that matter really care about people like Mary Mornin? There are a lot of people like her out there. Maybe you are one of them.

Gay people are an easy target in all of this but what America doesn’t understand is that we are just the smoke screen to what is really happening in this country. You bash gays, you will get votes. That simple. After you get the votes and get into office (the last Presidential race), you can do what you really want to do (no longer have to really push for that anti-gay constitutional amendment against marriage for gays) and continue on your quest to rape the environment, drive our national debt to an all-time high, wage war on a country because they have weapons of mass destruction and when it’s shown that they don’t, create all kinds of diversions (enter Terri Schiavo) so that the American people will forget all about it. And, we will forget, because we have very short memories.

They have us figured out perfectly. So does Mayor Jim West, assuming he can survive the child molestation charges.

More on this released today.

Follow up - 05/24/2005
Follow up - June 5, 2005 - Wrestling with the conservative-approved model of being gay

(Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) The Oklahoma House of Representatives has passed a resolution that would ban books on gay families from the children’s sections of public libraries.

The measure does not have the power of law but calls on Oklahoma libraries to “confine homosexually themed books and other age-inappropriate material to areas exclusively for adult access and distribution.” (source)

Well yes..... Let’s keep the gay books away from the children and make the libraries a place for the bigots, because that is what they are really trying to teach children.

I’m all for keeping adult materials away from children. I really have no problem with that. My issue is with a legislative body doing everything in it’s power to make gay people and same sex couples in particular, to appear to be deviant and something children should not be exposed too.

We are people, just like anybody else. I’m sick and tired of parents trying to instill in their children fear against us. This is how gay bashings happen and that is exactly what killed Matthew Shepard and many others like him.

The bottom line in all of this is that if they want to keep gay couples from getting these benefits, there’s always a way to do it by killing the process of signing up with red tape.

It’s the same way with firing or hiring someone. If a company wants to get rid of someone bad enough for a reason that isn’t legally possible, they will do it by another means. For example, if an employee is over weight, or gay, or black, you can’t fire them for that reason (in 36 states, they still can fire you for being gay). Rather, they will find some other “legitimate” reason for getting rid of you.

The same holds true for age. I’m sure that many people are denied jobs that they are capable of doing because they are “too old” - not quite what the company is looking for. Of course, you will never be told that. Instead, some other person (who just happens to be a young, preferably white, and single male) will get the job. You will never know that you were discriminated against, illegally.

In this case, the university system in Montana is asking gay couples to come up with all kinds of different criteria to somehow prove they are a couple. But it goes beyond that. You can tell they are making it as tough as possible for gay couples to enroll. Many, I’m sure, are just saying to hell with it. That’s a shame.

And what are gay couples to do? None of this applies to straight married couples because of the legal power that marriage brings to the table. Gay couples cannot get married. They really have nothing to fight with, other than the court system.

Last December the Montana Supreme Court ruled that the state must provide lesbian and gay employees of the University System with the option of purchasing health insurance and other employee benefits for their domestic partners. [...]

But, Casey Charles, a University of Montana English Professor says the requirements for entering the benefits plan are “onerous” and “unreasonable”.

To obtain health insurance benefits for a partner, the University System requires that couples prove, among other things, joint tenancy or joint home ownership for the last 12 months and that the partner is ineligible for other insurance. In addition couples must prove three of the following criteria: that they have joint ownership or lease of motor vehicle, have at least one joint liability, such as a loan or credit card, have mutually granted powers of attorney for finances or health care, designated each other as primary beneficiary in wills, life insurance policies, or retirement annuities, or meet the Internal Revenue Service definition of a dependent. (source)

I came upon this letter several days ago. I was gratified that someone without a great personal gain in our struggle for equality would speak out for us. There are many like him. My straight friends, of course. But we also have to understand that there are many straight people in our country who does want to see us as equal citizens. I believe that. And, it’s one of the big things that keeps me going.

LEONARD PITTS JR. is a writer in the Free Press.

BY LEONARD PITTS JR.
May 4, 2005

Gay Holocaust?

That was the subject line of an e-mail I received last week from “Chris,” a lawyer in a red state. He wanted to know if anybody else sees a similarity between the beginning of the Holocaust -- the nibbling away of rights and personhood that ultimately led to the attempted extermination of a people -- and what is happening to gay people in the United States.

He knows it’s far-fetched. “But,” he says, speaking of the conservative element that is pushing hardest against gay rights, “we are not dealing with normal people here.”

Chris concedes that there are differences between the plights of Jews and gays. “But they also have this in common -- at one time in history, that time being the present for gays, they were the object of official government-sponsored hatred couched in the name of religion or morals.”

The bigger offense

Here’s what I think:

Steve Ballmer, the company’s chief executive, announced the reversal in an e-mail message sent to 35,000 Microsoft employees in the United States. “After looking at the question from all sides, I’ve concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda,” he said. “I respect that there will be different viewpoints. But as CEO, I am doing what I believe is right for our company as a whole.”

Long known for its strong internal policies protecting gay employees from discrimination and offering them benefits, Microsoft sparked an uproar last month when officials decided to take a “neutral” stance on the anti- discrimination bill this year, after supporting it for the two previous years. [...]

The bill, which would have extended protections against discrimination in employment, housing and other areas to gay men and lesbians, failed by one vote April 21. But it is automatically up for a new vote next year because bills introduced in the Washington Legislature are active for two years even if they are voted down the first time. [...]

Some lawmakers had said that Microsoft, a major employer based in Redmond, Wash., could have lent crucial backing to the legislation through influence on lawmakers from the more conservative Seattle suburbs. (source)

The bill that would have added “sexual orientation” to the list of protected categories in the state of Washington lost by ONE VOTE, after Microsoft withdrew it’s support for the bill.

The bill would have added protections for gay people against the threat of being fired or evicted just for being gay. Had Microsoft not withdrawn it’s support, would the bill have passed? I guess we will never know.

But now that the bill is dead, at least for this year, it’s nice and safe for Microsoft to say that in the future they will support diversity.

I have a couple of questions for Microsoft.

Why was supporting diversity so hard for you?

Why was it ever a decision that had to be made whether or not you would support the concept that people, some of whom are your employees, should be treated with dignity and equality?

You see, I don’t believe for one minute that Microsoft has changed it’s stripes. Now, they are busy doing damage control. They don’t believe what they are saying. Why should I?