Is It Time to Claim Victory in the Gay Rights Struggle?

Since I came out in mid-life, the changes in the legal rights for LGBT Americans have been stunning.  When I first came out, in Virginia a same sex relationship could land one with a felony convictions, you could be thrown out of the military for being LGBT, same sex couples could not marry and you could be fired at will by bigoted employers - as I was.  In a piece in New York Magazine gay conservative (and former Republican) Andrew Sullivan looks at the changes, starting with this week's stunning U.S. Supreme Court ruling which granted employment non-discrimination protections to LGBT Americans nationwide. I believe that Sullivan's inclination to declare victory is premature for three reasons: (i) contrary to Sullivan's statement, public accommodation protections remain missing in the majority of states - in Virginia we will have them starting July 1st - (ii) there will be years of lawsuits against employers who ignore the new scope of Article VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and (iii) Christofascists will continue to strive to use alleged religious belief as an excuse for ignoring the law. That said, the wins have been immense and many LGBT rights organizations will find the focus of their efforts much more circumscribed - already Equality Virginia seems largely focused on transgender rights.  Here are highlights from Sullivan's column:

The last major obstacle to civil equality for gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people was toppled this week — by another Republican-appointed justice, Neil Gorsuch. (It will surely be one of the ironies of this period that gay equality in America has been judicially delivered by white cis straight men nominated by, respectively, Ronald Reagan and Donald J. Trump). Gorsuch’s reasoning was far more constrained than Anthony Kennedy’s in Obergfell — which guaranteed gays and lesbians the right to civil marriage — and was, in many ways, a punt. He used the “sex” discrimination aspect of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to retroactively grandfather in gay men, lesbians, and trans people. 

I don’t buy Gorsuch’s stated logic for an instant, of course. Rather, the ruling is a way to give gay and transgender people practical protection from discrimination in all states, without creating a new, explicit standard. And it doesn’t even pass Gorsuch’s own standard for textualism.

Gorsuch relies on a very simple idea to counter that point: that “sex” in the 1964 Act meant discrimination on the basis of being male or female, and that because gay men are penalized for having relations with men, rather than women, lesbians with women rather than men, and transgender people because they may no longer be the sex they started out as, it’s all a form of sex discrimination. It makes sense from that semantic point of view — but it’s a stretch on the substance. It dodges the core question of civil rights specifically for gay and transgender people, by subsuming us under the rubric of an existing category, sex. And it does so by mere textual reading of a statute, invoking no grander constitutional principles.

Nonetheless, its impact is immediate and transformative. Every single goal the gay-rights movement set out to achieve in my lifetime has now been won. Gays can marry; we can serve our country openly with pride; we are categorically protected from discrimination in employment [except] and public accommodations in every state.

[T]he remaining business: a battle between religious freedom and gay and transgender equality.

With any luck, we’ll reach a deal in Washington, D.C., rather like that achieved in Utah, where, in a very Mormon compromise, key measures against discrimination against gays were balanced with strong protections for religious freedom. . . . . . if Evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics decide to die on the hill of firing gay people, they will experience a brutal defeat, and tarnish what credibility they still have. The Gospels are not about shunning sinners, or pharisaical puritanism. They are about the imperative to see in everyone the image of God.

But this comprehensive victory obviously presents the major institutions of the gay-rights movement with a dilemma: What do they exist for after this?

If current trends are any indication, these groups will simply merge into the broader intersectional left and become as concerned with, say, the rights of immigrants or racial minorities as they are with gay rights. In the political climate on the left at the moment, singling out gays as a separate category is increasingly impermissible.

None of this means that we live in a world where homophobia has ceased to exist, where discrimination is unknown, or where visceral fear of and disgust toward trans people does not endure. In fact, prejudice and discrimination against the unknown or different are part of human nature, and partly because of that, young trans people of color are very much at risk. So we can try to keep shifting the culture — and man, has it shifted — in order to lessen the prevalence of irrational prejudice. And we can ensure equality of opportunity and protections against discrimination in employment . . . . .
As Eleanor Roosevelt is believed to have said: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

One of the remarkable truths of gay history is how so many, under social and legal pressures exponentially greater than today, were able to withhold that consent. They were objectively victims, but subjectively free. It took real imagination, courage, and vision for these heroes and heroines of our past — and that past stretches for centuries before Stonewall — to live lives of authenticity and integrity. Now that the formal and legal obstacles to gay and transgender equality have been entirely removed, let’s follow their example, and forge a future that requires the consent and approval of no one but ourselves.

I like the last sentiment.  Part of being a self-accepting LGBT individual is gaining a mindset where you need no one else's approval for who you are.

The Silver Lining to Brett Kavanaugh's Confirmation

As a licensed attorney of many years and as a gay American who saw his legal rights legitimized by Supreme Court rulings such Lawrence v. Texas (which struck down Virginia's sodomy laws) and Obergefell v. Hodges (which legalized same sex marriage), I understand that the Supreme Court is very important and truly impacts lives, often tremendously so.  Now, with Brett Kavanaugh on the Court after a shame FBI investigation that was constricted by the Trump/Pence regime, both Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court are damaged goods.  Many conservative justice 5-4 rulings will automatically be deemed  illegitimate and, as a piece in New York Magazine argues, will be positioned for future decisions over ruling them.  Thus, while Trump and his Vichy Republicans may have "won" in the short term, like Nazi era laws, rulings of this Supreme Court will likely be rolled back and reversed in the future.  The other current unknown is how much the Kavanaugh debacle will motivate minorities and Millennials to vote in November.  If Millennials turn out, it may be the first victory in defeating Trump and the GOP.  Here are column excerpts:

The bloody Kavanaugh fight was not the beginning, middle, or the end of this bitter fight. It was just the latest battle in a culture war that pits one of America’s two major political parties against the nation’s women. The Republican war against women began well before Donald Trump ran for president — at least as far back as 1992, when, in the aftermath of the Anita Hill–Clarence Thomas debacle, the likes of Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, and Phyllis Schlafly jawboned the GOP into adopting a misogynistic religious-right policy agenda at the Republican National Convention in Houston. The perhaps inevitable byproduct, a quarter-century later, was Trump, who as a candidate was fully embraced by his party despite having mocked a female primary rival for her looks, ridiculed a network news anchor for her presumed menstrual bleeding, and bragged on tape about his serial sexual assaults. No one should be surprised that, once elected, Trump would nominate a likely sex offender to the Supreme Court, where Kavanaugh will help fulfill the long-held GOP dream of rolling back Roe v. Wade, among other egregious ideological goals that will chip away at the rights of all Americans except white men. Right up to the moment that narcissistic moral fraud Susan Collins gave her foreordained oration sealing Kavanaugh’s confirmation, many of those in opposition were holding out hope against hope that a silver bullet would yet emerge to doom his ascent: . . . . To me such hopes underestimated the gravity of the Republican Party’s misogynist mission. Let’s face it: even if someone had unearthed a crystal-clear photo or video of Kavanaugh exposing himself to Ramirez, the Senators of the “grab ’em by the pussy” party, Collins included, would still have voted to confirm him.

Had the FBI actually conducted a thorough investigation of Kavanaugh turning up still further evidence to back up Ford’s testimony, Trump would have attacked it too, dismissing the agency and its findings as a hoax much as he has every federal law-enforcement investigation of the apparently bottomless illegalities committed by the Trump campaign and administration.

So let’s stop pretending that there is another GOP than the Trump GOP. Let’s stop declaring that Trump is suddenly sounding “presidential” just because he waits a few days before publicly trashing Blasey Ford. Let’s stop maintaining the fiction that Collins, Jeff Flake, Ben Sasse, Bob Corker, and their fellow Vichy Republicans, including Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin, are not onboard with what’s going on.

When Collins says that she believes that the perpetrator of the attempted rape of Christine Blasey Ford was someone other than the man she elevated to the Supreme Court, she sounds like O.J. in search of the real killer of Nicole Brown Simpson. As we try to look forward after this sordid episode — no easy task — we can perhaps take a little comfort in the fact that Trump didn’t yank Kavanaugh for an alternative nominee like Amy Coney Barrett, who is just as far to the right, if not more so, and who would have been carrying far less baggage (if any) to her seat on the Court. Kavanaugh has been delegitimized to a clear majority of America over the past month. . . .
 No less delegitimized is the Supreme Court, whose already eroded image as a sanctuary of nonpartisan justice has now reached a nadir where Judge Judy may by default be the new gold standard of unbiased American jurisprudence. With such diminished moral authority, and with an unceasing run of 5–4 verdicts likely in major cases to come, the Court’s voyage to the right may well be buffeted by civic and political unrest that, as in other eras of American disunion, ultimately vacates those rulings out of sync with the majority of the nation’s citizens.

How will the Kavanaugh nomination affect the midterms, which are in less than four weeks?  It would be foolhardy to guess. Certainly the failure of the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee to come up with a coherent strategy for questioning Kavanaugh hardly fills one with hope about the party’s management of the midterms. When you read simultaneous post-Kavanaugh columns in the Times headlined “Get Angry, and Get Involved” and “Liberals, This Is War,” you feel further frissons of anxiety. Such columns are right on, but they are preaching to a choir that is already registered to vote and will. The turnout the Democrats need for a blue wave — from voters under 30 and minorities — tend to skip non-presidential elections and don’t read newspaper op-ed columns.

Brett Kavanaugh Is A “Direct Threat” To LGBT People

Kavanaugh and Der Trumpenführer who has been waging a relentless war on LGBT Americans.

While I have been at times critical of the Human Rights Campaign ("HRC") because in the past it has at times put more emphasis on self-promotion and maintaining "access" to politicians by not putting the rights of its LGBT supporters first, when it comes to research, generally does a first class job. Today, HRC released a research piece that concluded that Brett Kavanaugh, Der Trumpenführer's nominee to replace Anthony Kennedy, is a "direct threat" to LGBT Americans.  Why?  Because, Kavanaugh seemingly does not believe in a constitutional right to privacy which is the principle that under grids not only Roe v. Wade, but also Lawrence v. Texas and even the Obergefell marriage ruling. Equally disturbing is Kavanaugh's deference to "religious liberty" claims that increasingly are being utilized by Christofascists to demand exemption from non-discrimination laws and public accommodation laws.  BuzzFeed looks at HRC's concerns.  Here are highlights:

h,The Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBT advocacy group, has concluded that Judge Brett Kavanaug President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, is “a direct threat to the constitutional rights of everyday Americans and for the LGBTQ community in particular.”

In his dozen years as a federal appeals court judge, however, Kavanaugh has not heard any significant cases addressing LGBT issues and has said hardly anything about LGBT people. As a result, HRC’s opposition to his nomination — detailed in a new report to be released Tuesday, a copy of which was reviewed by BuzzFeed News — drew primarily on Kavanaugh’s opinions regarding reproductive rights and religious liberties, as well as the dearth of information about his work in the George W. Bush White House, to back up its conclusions about the threat the group says his confirmation would pose to LGBT Americans.

The fact that Kavanaugh would replace Justice Anthony Kennedy — the author of all of the Supreme Court’s key decisions advancing LGBT rights over the past 25 years — also appeared to figure into HRC’s stance.

The HRC report also expressed concerns about Kavanaugh’s views on the Affordable Care Act, voter ID laws, and federal agency power, as well as his rulings in employment discrimination cases.

“During his 12 years on the D.C. Circuit, [Kavanaugh] did not substantively address any of the Supreme Court’s seminal LGBTQ decisions in Lawrence v. Texas, Romer v. Evans, United States v. Windsor, or Obergefell v. Hodges, nor its discredited ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick,” the report stated. 

In the absence of opinions on LGBT-related cases, HRC pointed to speeches Kavanaugh gave “extensively praising” former chief justice William Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia — whom the group claimed “have some of the most pronounced anti-LGBTQ records of modern jurists.”

“Judge Kavanaugh’s record on reproductive rights, the right to privacy, and religious liberty indicates a potent combination of ideological views that could significantly and unnecessarily reshape constitutional doctrine and nondiscrimination protections as they apply to LGBTQ persons,” the group concluded.

The next five sections of the HRC report laid out the legal areas where the group argued that Kavanaugh’s opinions and other statements suggest he will be opposed to LGBT people’s interests.

·      Right to Privacy: HRC argued that Kavanaugh’s dissenting opinions in two reproductive rights cases — one involving an undocumented minor seeking an abortion and the other involving the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage opt-out procedures — signal a “critical and constrained perspective” on Roe v. Wade. His record, the report concluded, “suggests that he does not accept the enduring precept that the Constitution protects the right to privacy,” adding that this relates to LGBT issues as “the Court’s 2015 momentous marriage equality decision built upon this logic further.”

·         Religious Liberty: The group pointed to Kavanaugh’s dissenting opinion in the ACA case, which the majority of the DC Circuit judges called “a potentially sweeping” interpretation of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, and concluded that Kavanaugh “seems all-too-ready to carve out any number of other religious exemptions into statutory and constitutional law.”

·     Nondiscrimination Protections: Calling Kavanaugh’s opinion upholding South Carolina’s voter ID law “troubling,” HRC also noted that the judge repeatedly dissented in discrimination-related cases where his colleagues “upheld a claim or finding of discrimination.”

·         Separation of Powers: Citing his criticism of “independent agencies [as] … a headless fourth branch of the US government” in a case challenging the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the HRC report expressed concern that Kavanaugh’s reasoning “could regularly disempower federal agencies and narrow federal laws, which often serve as crucial bulwarks against LGBTQ discrimination.”

Finally, HRC echoed concerns expressed by Senate Democrats about records from Kavanaugh’s time in the White House — first as a lawyer in the counsel’s office and then as Bush’s staff secretary. Specifically, the group noted that records from Kavanaugh’s work in the Bush administration may include information regarding his views on LGBT issues.

“The years of 2001 to 2006 (when he served in the Bush White House), was an especially consequential period for the LGBTQ rights and marriage equality movement,” the report said. “This era included the Lawrence v. Texas decision, multiple pronouncements by President Bush about the institution of marriage and marriage-related amendments to the federal Constitution, and civil rights litigation and referenda at the state and circuit levels.”

As most readers will recall, the George W. Bus White House used anti-gay marriage initiatives and anti-gay animus in general as a means to rally the Christofascist vote in 2004.  What role Kavanaugh played in this anti-gay witch hunt and demonizing of LGBT Americans needs to be made public BEFORE any vote takes place on Kavanaugh's nomination. 

Abortion and LGBT Rights Are Next the Trump/Christofascist Hit List

Like many in the LGBT community, I felt physically ill when I heard the news that Justice Anthony Kennedy would be retiring from the U.S. Supreme Court at the end of the current term.  His retirement means that Der Trumpenführer, whose approval ratings remain in the toilet outside of Christofascist and white supremacist circles, will nominate another ideologue like Neil Gorsuch who will purse the Trump base's dream of outlawing all abortions, rescinding LGBT rights, and disenfranchising as many minority voters as possible.  Short of a miracle where moderate Republicans - if such a thing still exists - in the U.S. Senate buck Trump and their party and reject Trump's nominee, for at least a generation, the U.S. Supreme Court will be openly hostile to minority rights of all kinds. How bad will it be?  Likely, very bad and if "friends" who voted for Trump think I will forgive them, they are delusional.  They have stabbed so many of us in the back and deserve nothing but derision and ostracizing from the company of decent, moral people.  A piece in The Daily Beast, looks at the coming nightmare.  Here are highlights:

The judicial apocalypse is here, and there’s nothing Democrats can do to stop it.  Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing voter in most of the Supreme Court’s close cases of the last decade, is retiring at age 81. President Donald Trump will choose his successor.

With the Senate filibuster of Supreme Court nominees eliminated last year by Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, anyone Trump nominates will be rubber-stamped.  That has been the pattern so far, with 39 judges confirmed so far, often in an expedited process, with not a single Republican vote opposing any of them.

Moreover, Trump’s judicial nominees thus far have been chosen by the far-right Federalist Society, which has put forward extreme ideologues in the mode of Justice Clarence Thomas, whose ideas were once considered on the fringe but are now increasingly within the [GOP] mainstream. 

While Justice Neil Gorsuch replaced another conservative, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, whoever replaces Justice Kennedy will likely be a conservative firebrand replacing a moderate.  The shift will transform the Court for decades to come.

Among the Court’s precedents that will be on the chopping block are Roe v. Wade, protecting women’s rights to choose to have an abortion, and Obergefell v. Hodges, protecting gay people’s rights to marry.

Roe has been significantly limited in recent years, and all four sitting conservative justices have either opposed it directly, or opposed the doctrines on which it is based.

Justice Kennedy wrote the Obergefell decision, over a vigorous dissent by Chief Justice John Roberts, and the vote was 5-4.  Even the Court’s own doctrines of respecting precedent will not protect same-sex marriage; just this week, the Court directly overturned a precedent regarding public-section unions. 

It is quite likely that the both rights will come to an end within two to three years: there are cases pending that would further limit each, and more will soon follow.

In the case of abortion rights, Justice Kennedy was the swing vote striking down Texas’s junk-science regulations that would have shuttered most abortion clinics in the state; with him gone, other states will surely pass and litigate their own versions.  Iowa’s new law, known as the heartbeat bill, bans abortions once a heartbeat is detected, usually the sixth week of pregnancy – the lawsuit about that law will provide the next Supreme Court with an opportunity to further limit Roe, or overturn it entirely.

Likewise for marriage rights. There are already cases pending about whether same-sex spouses are entitled to spousal benefits, and numerous cases about when private actors may discriminate against gay people.  Each of these provide opportunities to limit or overturn Obergefell.

Assuming the Senate fast-tracks the nomination – as McConnell and Trump have already said will happen – the confirmation vote will take place before the November elections.

Democrats’ only hope is to somehow persuade moderate Republicans like Jeff Flake or Susan Collins to oppose Trump’s nominee, although they have been mostly unable to do in the first two years of the Trump presidency.  (Senator Flake recently said he would block Trump’s nominees if the Senate did not act to restrain Trump on tariffs.)

Understandably, the consequences for the Supreme Court, and civil rights as we know them today, are eclipsing, . . . Justice Kennedy turned out to be the unlikely hero of the LGBT equality movement, writing every major pro-LGBT opinion in the Supreme Court’s history, culminating in Obergefell in 2015.

n an ideal world, a responsible Republican president would nominate a thoughtful moderate-conservative who is respected by his colleagues and who lies within the judicial mainstream – basically, a conservative version of Merrick Garland.

But in the world we live in, Trump is likely to please his base by nominating an extreme conservative, like his recent picks who have compared abortion to slavery, called Justice Kennedy a “judicial prostitute,” and called transgender children “evidence of Satan’s plan at work.”  All of those nominees, by the way, were confirmed without a single Republican vote against.

I am not many years from retirement and, if my fears are realized, the husband and I may find ourselves looking to retire somewhere outside of the United States.

Another LGBT Rights Victory at the U. S. Supreme Court

Republicans in state legislatures across the country continue to prostitute themselves to Christofascists and push anti-gay legislation that would roll back rights flowing from same sex marriage.  No issue seems too trifling to push as part of the agenda to make LGBT citizens second class citizens under the nation's laws.  Texas Republicans and Republicans in other states have sought to strip same sex spouses of employee benefits afforded to heterosexual couples and Georgia Republicans are pushing a bill that would allow discrimination against same sex adopting parents.  In Arizona one of the slights aimed at same sex couples was to bar the non-biological parent from being named as a parent on birth certificates.  Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has blocked the anti-gay effort in Arizona by declining to review the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling that recognized a woman as the legal parent of a child she and her same-sex spouse conceived through assisted reproduction.  A piece in The Advocate looks at this victory for LGBT Americans.  Here are highlights:

The U.S. Supreme Court today let stand an Arizona decision that recognized a woman as the legal parent of a child she and her same-sex spouse conceived through assisted reproduction.

The high court declined to review the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling in the case, issued last September, reports the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which along with the firm of Ropes & Gray represented the mother who sought to be recognized as a parent. The Arizona court had ruled, “It would be inconsistent with Obergefell [the U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision] to conclude that same-sex couples can legally marry but states can then deny them the same benefits of marriage afforded opposite-sex couples.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has twice explained in Obergefell v. Hodges and Pavan v. Smith that the U.S. Constitution requires states to provide the exact same rights to same-sex spouses and different-sex spouses,” said NCLR family law director Catherine Sakimura in a press release. “States across the country should take careful note of this decision. Discrimination against married same-sex couples will not be tolerated.” Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Pavan v. Smith that states had to treat married same-sex couples the same as opposite-sex couples when it came to listing them as parents on birth certificates. The state of Arkansas had claimed that birth certificates can list only biological parents, even though birth certificates for straight couples list a mother’s male spouse even if that man is not the biological father.

Blame Trump for Growing Anti-LGBT Backlash

The year 2015 saw heady advances for LGBT Americans under a gay-friendly presidential administration and the Supreme Court's marriage ruling in the Obergefell v. Hodges decision.  Fast forward three years and triumph has turned into nightmare as the Trump/Pence wages war on LGBT citizens, argues that we have no civil rights protections and can be rejected by health care professionals that cling to Bronze Age beliefs.  In larger metropolitan areas, most of us still fell some remaining sense of safety, but in the hinterland and "Red America", things must be terrifying for many, especially LGBT youth who may see their hopes for the future fading and suicide perhaps looking more attractive as a means of escape.  An article in the Washington Post looks at the increasing and well justified anxiety felt by many LGBT Americans who now find themselves back in the cross-hairs of hate merchants and a vile White House regime.  Here are excerpts:

The movement for LGBT rights has made stunning progress in recent years. But the latest results of an ongoing poll commissioned by the gay rights organization GLAAD, which is releasing the results at the World Economic Forum in Davos today, suggests that just because change has come swiftly doesn’t mean it’s durable. For the first time since the survey began in 2014, non-LGBT Americans told pollsters that they’re less comfortable with their LGBT neighbors. And the number of LGBT survey respondents who told pollsters that they’d experienced discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity jumped by 11 points. [T]he results suggest that Americans are taking advantage of an environment in which it has become more permissible to express discomfort with marginalized groups, even as people don’t want to be thought of as bigots. The number of non-LGBT Americans who gave what Gerzema called “the PC response,” telling pollsters that they support equal rights for LGBT people, held steady at 79 percent. But the number of respondents who said they would be somewhat or very uncomfortable having LGBT members of their faith communities, learning that a family member was LGBT, having their child taught by an LGBT teacher or study LGBT history in school, finding out that their doctor was LGBT, or even seeing same-sex couples holding hands all ticked upward. President Trump’s most venomous public statements haven’t targeted LGBT Americans. But his policies have, from his selection of Mike Pence as his running mate and Neil Gorsuch as his first Supreme Court nominee to his attempts to ban transgender people from the military. The rollback of LGBT rights may be quiet, but it’s still consequential. . . . . especially w1hen it means failing to respond to rising homophobia and anti-LGBT violence in countries such as Chechnya, Egypt and Indonesia.
 Yet facing off against procedural changes when other Americans have to contend with the president’s undisguised animosity “is actually more of a challenge for us, because it keeps it out of the headlines more so than immigration,” said GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis.  Philanthropist Ari Getty is supporting some of that work via a $15 million grant to GLAAD that she sees as an investment in the future for her children, August and Natalia, both of whom are LGBT, and their friends. She hopes in particular that storytelling can focus as much on the achievements of LGBT youth as on their struggles. It’s a revelation that progress isn’t always permanent. The Supreme Court struck down elements of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 2013, and efforts ranging from voter ID laws to attempted purges of voter rolls have made it harder for many Americans to cast their ballots. The Americans who integrated city buses, public schools and lunch counters are held up as heroes even as the country has become increasingly segregated once again. But these reversals represent slow declines after major victories. This rising discomfort with LGBT Americans comes just eight years after Obama signed a repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that kept members of the military closeted and a mere 2½ years after a Supreme Court ruling made marriage equality the law of the land. A 2015 GLAAD study found that 50 percent of Americans “said that we were done, that we had achieved full rights and acceptance,” even as “in 29 states, you can still be fired for being LGBT,” Ellis said. 

Gay Rights Icon Edith Windsor Dead At 88

Many of us believe that we cannot make a significant difference in history and in shaping the future.  Edith Windsor who died today at the age of 88 proved that this misconception is not necessarily true. One individual who possesses courage, an indomitable determination  and a willingness to put themselves on the line can change history and the future for many.  Edith Windsor was one such person.  Thanks to her determination the Defense of Marriage Act in United States v. Windsor was declared unconstitutional and  the stage was set for the ultimate striking down of same sex marriage bans in the 2015 Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.  I never had the privilege of meeting Edie Windsor (I have met Jim Obergefell), but will always see her as an iconic figure.  Blogger friends who did meet and get to know her have universally said that she was inspiring. A piece in the New York Times looks at her passing.  Here are excerpts:

Edith Windsor, the gay-rights activist whose landmark case led the Supreme Court to grant same-sex married couples federal recognition for the first time and rights to a host of federal benefits that until then only married heterosexuals had enjoyed, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. She was 88.

Four decades after the Stonewall Inn uprising fueled the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in America, Ms. Windsor, the widow of a woman with whom she had lived much of her life, became the lead plaintiff in what is widely regarded as the second most important Supreme Court ruling in the national battle over same-sex marriage rights.

The Windsor decision, handed down in 2013, was limited to 13 states and the District of Columbia. But in a more expansive ruling in 2015, in Obergefell v. Hodges and three related cases, the Supreme Court held that same-sex couples had a constitutional right to marry anywhere in the nation, with all the protections and privileges of heterosexual couples. Its historic significance was likened to that of Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, which decriminalized gay sex in the United States.

Ms. Windsor had originally gone to court simply to obtain a tax refund. But for thousands struggling for gender equality, the stakes went far beyond tax advantages available to married heterosexuals, including Social Security, health care and veterans’ benefits; protection in immigration and bankruptcy cases; and keeping a home after a spouse had died.

Like countless others, Ms. Windsor had been snared by the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which barred same-sex married couples from federal recognition as “spouses,” effectively excluding them from the many federal benefits available to married heterosexuals. (Those benefits numbered 1,138, according to a count by the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s fiscal watchdog agency.)

After living together for 40 years, Ms. Windsor and Thea Spyer, a psychologist, were legally married in Canada in 2007. Dr. Spyer died in 2009, and Ms. Windsor inherited her estate. But the Internal Revenue Service denied her the unlimited spousal exemption from federal estate taxes available to married heterosexuals, and she had to pay taxes of $363,053.

She sued, claiming that the law, by recognizing only marriages between a man and a woman, unconstitutionally singled out same-sex marriage partners for “differential treatment.”

Affirming two lower court rulings, the Supreme Court, in the United States v. Windsor, overturned the law in a 5-4 ruling. It cited the Fifth Amendment guarantee that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”

By striking down the act’s definition of marriage as a union of a man and a woman, the Supreme Court invalidated the entire law and for the first time granted same-sex marriage partners the recognition and benefits accorded married heterosexuals.

But there was a catch. The decision did not say if there was a constitutional right to same-sex unions, and it left in place laws in 37 states that banned such marriages. As a practical matter, that meant the benefits would not extend to couples in states that did not allow same-sex unions, but only to those in 13 states and the District of Columbia, all of which recognized them.

She became a national celebrity, a gay-rights matriarch, a grand marshal of New York City’s L.G.B.T. Pride March and a runner-up to Pope Francis for Time magazine’s person of the year in 2013.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama said in a statement, “I had the privilege to speak with Edie a few days ago, and to tell her one more time what a difference she made to this country we love.”

“Because people like Edie stood up,” he added, “my administration stopped defending the so-called Defense of Marriage Act in the courts.” He said the day of the 2013 Supreme Court ruling was “a great day for America — a victory for human decency, equality, freedom and justice.”

In 1993, when New York City began a domestic partnership registry to extend housing, health insurance and other benefits to gays, lesbians and unmarried heterosexuals, Ms. Windsor and Dr. Spyer were among the first to sign up.

And marriage was still their hope in 2002, when Dr. Spyer had a heart attack, and in 2007, when doctors said she had only a year to live. With time running out, they traveled to Toronto with six friends and were married in a ceremony conducted by Canada’s first openly gay judge. It was later recognized as a valid marriage by New York State.

“Married is a magic word,” Ms. Windsor told a rally outside City Hall in New York a few days before Dr. Spyer, a quadriplegic, died on Feb. 5, 2009. “And it is magic throughout the world. It has to do with our dignity as human beings, to be who we are openly.”

Same-sex marriage became valid in New York State in 2011, too late for Ms. Windsor and Dr. Spyer. But Ms. Windsor’s 2013 Supreme Court victory was followed by an avalanche of lawsuits attacking same-sex marriage bans in jurisdictions where they remained. And on June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage a constitutional guarantee all over the land.

 As one who has benefited immensely from Edith Windsor's courage and determination, I want to say "thank you."  I will always look up to her as a role model.  Sometimes standing up and say "no" to bigotry and discrimination - even when it is wrapped in a smoke screen of religion - is demanded from each of us.  May we all find courage such as hers to do the right think.  RIP Edith Windsor. 

North Carolina GOP Bill Seeks to Ban Gay Marriage

Not content with the economic damage wrought to North Carolina's economy wrought by HB2 and now it's fake repeal, North Carolina Republicans are pushing a bill that would outlaw same sex marriage and without a doubt bring much more negative coverage - both nationally and internationally - to North Carolina.  Since the Republican Party has taken control of the state legislature, the state which was once know as being moderate and pro-business has become a veritable insane asylum.  Here are excerpts from The New Civil Rights Movement on this latest bastshitery:

22 months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, North Carolina Republican lawmakers have filed a bill nullifying all marriages between people of the same-sex. The bill, which is unconstitutional, falsely invokes the 10th Amendment and claims the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over marriage. It also falsely claims the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over the Christian Bible.

The "Uphold Historical Marriage Act," known as HB780, says, "the ruling of the United States Supreme Court not only exceeds the authority of the Court relative to the State of North Carolina and a vote of the People of the State on an issue pertaining solely to the State of North Carolina and the People of North Carolina but also exceeds the authority of the Court relative to the decree of Almighty God."

It then quotes Genesis 2:24, "a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh."

HB780 "declares that the Obergefell v. Hodges decision of the United States Supreme Court of 2015 is null and void in the State of North Carolina." It also declares that marriages "whether created by common law, contracted, or performed outside of North Carolina, between individuals of the same gender are not valid in North Carolina."  

The bill's primary sponsors are . . . . . . Rep. Larry Pittman, Rep. Michael Speciale, and Rep. Carl Ford.

Were the bill ever to become law, it would be declared unconstitutional, and the taxpayers in the State of North Carolina would have to pay court and attorneys fees, which easily could reach more than a million dollars.

If there is any good news in this, it is the fact that Virginia will likely gain more business from companies avoiding North Carolina - especially if Democrats win a clean sweep in November's state wide elections. 

Gays to Donald Trump: Shove It, You Homophobe

Trump at an anti-gay hate group gathering

Outside the tiny circles of homocons - many of whom, in my opinion suffer from severe cases of internalized homophobia and whether they admit it or not are self-loathing - the LGBT community thinks little positive about Donald Trump.  Yet in a typical delusion Trump claims that gays love him and that he'd be "better for gays" than Hillary Clinton.  How he reaches that insane conclusion as he talks of reversing the Obergefell marriage decision and plans next week to pander to 400 of the most vile anti-LGBT Christofascist leaders is beyond dumbfounding.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at Trump's narcissistic delusions and the reality of what the vast majority of the LGBT community thinks of Trump.  Here are excerpts:

The orange stripe in the gay flag symbolizes healing. At this rate, Donald Trump will be claiming that it stands for him by the end of the week.

This Tuesday, two days after the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, the presumptive GOP nominee inexplicably thanked the LGBT community on Twitter. It didn’t take long for LGBT Twitter users to respond in kind with the hashtag #LGBTQHatesTrumpParty.
 Because while most Americans don’t like Donald Trump, LGBT people despise him.
 Based on his tweet, Trump seemed to be under the impression that the mass shooting had convinced a sizable number of LGBT people to support his proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the country. LGBT social media users quickly disabused him of that notion with witty replies and, of course, a flood of GIFs: GIFs of Tyra Banks, GIFs of Tyler Oakley, and, of course, GIFs of RuPaul.
 There’s more proof than a few thousand tweets that LGBT Americans loathe the Republican candidate for president.
 According to May Gallup polling, Trump has a favorability rating of just 18 percent among LGBT people as compared to Hillary Clinton’s 54 percent rating with the same demographic. This gap between them is one of the widest, surpassed only by Trump’s large deficits among non-white and Muslim voters.
 Another May poll indicated that more than four out of five LGBT voters would rather pull the lever for Clinton. In true Trump fashion, his sudden concern for the safety LGBT Americans comes after years of mocking them and opposing their rights. Indeed, the LGBT animus against Trump runs so deep because it has been so long in the making. It’s easy to list off Trump’s most memorable displays of homophobia. For example, in a2011 New York Times interview, Trump compared his stance on same-sex marriage to his “traditionalist” attitudes about golf putter size. The bizarre analogy implied that gay men and lesbians were “weird.”

In 2014, as Gawker reminded its readers on Tuesday, Trump reacted badly when Michael Sam made NFL history as the first openly gay NFL draftee. He had some particularly choice thoughts about the celebratory kiss Sam shared with then-boyfriend Vito Cammisano, telling Fox & Friends that the football player was “really going at it.”
 And, in what should by now be familiar rhetoric, Trump complained that the “country is going to hell” because homophobes were “afraid to express their own thoughts” about the lip-lock because we’re too “politically correct.”
 The Trump campaign has been somewhat murky on same-sex marriage, too. In January, he told Fox News that he would “strongly consider” appointing Supreme Court judges to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges. But as Politico reported Wednesday, some gay Republican advocates now see a Trump White House as an opportunity to soften their party’s stance on same-sex marriage.
 While it may not be certain what a President Trump would do on LGBT issues, the things that he has said about LGBT people are crystal clear. It seems unlikely that a demographic that already hates him—and that he has spent years offending—would turn to him now for protection.

As noted at the outset, the only gays I know who support Trump have serious internalized homophobia issues and most insanely continue to attend anti-gay churches where their very being is maligned repeatedly.  To me, it's a form of sick masochism.

Electing Hillary and the Importance of Filling the Supreme Court

A piece in The Advocate looks at an issue that ought to wake up Bernie Sanders supporters from their impossible dream: the desperate need to put a Democrat in the White House in November and the potential horrific consequences if Donald Trump - who has condemned the Obergefell ruling - were to be the one making nominations to the Court. Sanders may be endangering progressive causes for a generation if he allows his ego to over rule pragmatic, common sense thinking that may save the nation, and certainly LGBT citizens from the disaster of Trump appointments to the Court.   Here are some article highlights that ought to make Sanders supporters to awake from their dreams:

The post-Scalia court will likely confront a host of legal questions important to the LGBT community, from antigay “religious liberty” and employment discrimination to trans rights and bathroom access. It is not at all clear that the champion of marriage equality, Justice Anthony Kennedy, will again side with the liberals on these knotty issues. And it therefore seems quite likely that Scalia’s successor will hold the key to LGBT equality on a divided court. 

Given Kennedy’s famously sentimental marriage-equality opinion, the justice is often presumed to be a reliable vote in favor of gay rights against discrimination. But Kennedy has several competing passions — one of which is a near-absolute belief in a constitutional right to free association. In one especially regrettable 2000 decision, Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, Kennedy joined an opinion holding that the Boy Scouts have a First Amendment right to exclude gays from their group. Allowing gays to join, a slim majority of the court held, would “force the organization to send a message, both to the youth members and the world, that the Boy Scouts accepts homosexual conduct as a legitimate form of behavior.” Thus, the group was constitutionally exempt from LGBT nondiscrimination laws.

Kennedy’s willingness to join the Boy Scouts opinion has deeply troubling implications for the series of antigay “religious liberty” cases making their way toward the court’s docket. These cases typically involve businesses (such as photographers and florists) who refuse to serve same-sex couples on account of their religion, often couching their refusals in the language of free-speech and free-association claims. The antigay business owners who turn away gays insist that the First Amendment protects their right not to associate with gay couples; doing so, they assert, would express a message that they approve of same-sex relationships. 

This argument is cleverly crafted to capture Kennedy’s heart. The key difference between the Boy Scouts case and the “religious liberty” cases is the distinction between a private organization and a business. But the constitutional importance of this distinction can easily be waved away if one buys into the idea that merely associating with a gay person sends a message of tolerance — as Kennedy clearly does. Moreover, Kennedy provided the fifth vote for Hobby Lobby, a decision that vastly expanded private, for-profit corporations’ right to discriminate on religious grounds. With Scalia gone, the Hobby Lobby majority is now a man down; the justice’s replacement could reverse that case’s license to discriminate — or extend it to antigay businesses.

Gay and trans Americans have another Supreme Court showdown on the horizon. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans employment discrimination “because of sex.” . . . . the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled that Title VII also proscribes anti-trans discrimination and antigay discrimination. Anti-trans discrimination, the agency held, is inherently based in sex stereotyping about women’s femininity and men’s masculinity; distaste for an individual’s gender identity is, by definition, a sex-based judgment call. Homophobia is similarly sexist, according to the EEOC:

But EEOC is just a federal agency, with no actual power over federal judges. Some federal courts have accepted these EEOC rulings; some have rejected them; none are bound by them — until the Supreme Court signs off, which it has not yet done. LGBT advocates have long been nervous that Kennedy will reject the EEOC’s comprehensive definition of sex discrimination and sex stereotyping. . . . . Once again, Scalia’s replacement may tip the balance one way or the other.

A constitutional challenge to North Carolina’s vicious new anti-LGBT law, which nullifies local LGBT rights ordinances and bars trans people from using many public bathrooms, centers its analysis on Romer. As well it should: Romer’s basic rule — that laws motivated by animus toward a single group are constitutionally invalid — would seem to obviously implicate bathroom bills. With no evidence that trans people pose a threat in bathrooms, the anti-trans animus driving these bills is essentially undeniable. Legislatures simply want to disadvantage trans people because they don’t like them. And if Romer means anything at all, it means the government doesn’t get to do that.

Which side of Kennedy will trans activists face? The compassionate author of Romer or the sexist traditionalist? With any luck, trans people’s rights won’t hinge on this question: A Democratic appointee to the high court is almost certain to side with equality over intolerance. Indeed, that justice may well hold the critical vote in the next round of LGBT cases. 

Let’s hope he or she makes it onto the bench in time to ensure that Obergefell was just the beginning of a new era of LGBT constitutional equality.