Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was that an amazingly gracious church who, on a hot, San Bernardino summer day, had 200 sweltering people emotionally overheated and packed into its hall with an AC struggling to keep up.

Or maybe it's because the California LGBT population has cannibalized its leadership to the point where no one is willing to take the unpopular stance of leading this wounded community made up of people that will bite anyone's head off who has a slightly different opinion from theirs.

Whatever you believe the reason to be, the Leadership Summit on Sunday was an utter failure. And we have no one to blame but ourselves.   Read More »

July 2nd could mark the beginning of the end to Prop 8, the controversial initiative that stripped California's LGBT population of the right to marry.

Why? Because on July 2nd, the first hearing of the federal case brought against Prop 8 by power team Ted Olson and David Boies will be heard in the North California U.S. District Court with the case assigned to Judge Vaughn Walker.

Even more dramatically, Olson and Boies, who have an amazing track record of winning cases, had requested a preliminary injunction against the initiative while the courts heard the merits of their case. In other words, this would have put the enforcement of Prop 8 in the Golden State on hold during the trial, consequently allowing same-sex marriages to occur again.

The hearing on July 2nd would've centered around the merits of the injunction, but Judge Walker had other thoughts in mind, calling recently for a move to “proceed expeditiously to trial."

“Given that serious questions are raised in these proceedings ... the court is inclined to proceed directly and expeditiously to the merits of plaintiffs' claims," the judge declared. “The just, speedy and inexpensive determination of these issues would appear to call for proceeding promptly to trial."

(See Case Document and Motion for Preliminary Injunction, Judge Walker's Order for Trial)   Read More »

MAINE

Before you start rushing off to Maine to get married, the new marriage equality law hasn't quite cleared all its hurdles. Though it's supposed to take effect in 90 days, there's a chance it will never happen.

Marriage equality opponents, the conservative Maine Marriage Alliance, are wasting no time. Just yesterday, Thursday, they filed a challenge, an attempt to block the new law with Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap. The challenge was filed under the state's "people's veto" provision.

The signature-collecting deadline will probably fall in mid-September, Dunlap said.   Read More »

From CBS News:

Forty-two percent of Americans now say same sex couples should be allowed to legally marry, a new CBS News/New York Times poll finds. That's up nine points from last month, when 33 percent supported legalizing same sex marriage.

Support for same sex marriage is now at its highest point since CBS News starting asking about it in 2004.

See Unite the Fight's post on CBS News' earlier poll for comparison.

This reflects others polls, such as New Hampshire voters supporting marriage equality by 55% (which will hopefully send a strong message to New Hampshire's senate which will vote on a same-sex marriage bill tomorrow), as well as anti-gay Gary Randall's poll which indicated, to Randall's chagrin, that Washington state also supports full marriage equality by 43%.   Read More »

Californians Against Hate (CAH) are launching their own ad campaign in the US Northeast to counter the NOM ads that ran in the region with their anti-gay messages. “We believe that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church) established the National Organization for Marriage as its front group in order to qualify Proposition 8 for ballot last year in California,” said Fred Karger, Founder of Californians Against Hate. “After spending several million dollars in California, NOM recently moved into 7 Northeast States considering marriage equality." In reference to the 234th anniversary of Paul Revere's famous midnight ride, the CAH ads rewrote Longfellow’s famous poem “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” which contains the famous refrain "The British are coming!" and have reworked it to read, "The Mormons are coming!"   Read More »

VERMONT SAME-SEX MARRIAGE BILL SURVIVES VETO!


With the Senate's vote to override 23-5 and now the House with a vote 100-47, there is now officially same-sex marriage in Vermont! It now joins Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa, becoming the fourth state in the country to allow same-sex marriage. (Four states! That's double the number in less than a week!)

Struggling to keep his voice from cracking, Vermont House Speaker, Shap Smith, proudly announced that Gov. Jim Douglas' veto to keep same-sex marriage out of Vermont had been overridden.

This override is historical for many reasons, but one of the main reason is that this is the first time in history that marriage equality has come to existence in a state not through the courts, but through the legislature. And not only that, but survived a veto.

Vermont yet again stands by its history of progress and civil rights legislation.   Read More »

I pledge allegiance
To the Flag
Of the United States of America
And to the Republic
For which it stands
One nation
Under God
Indivisible
With liberty and justice
For all

When was the last time you really thought about the words that you had to speak everyday at the beginning of class throughout your childhood? At that time, after awhile, you spoke it by rote while barely placing your hand over your heart, not really paying attention to what you were saying, giggling with your friend at the next desk over about some joke on the playground. So over time, it lost all meaning.

But suddenly, your rights are stripped away, and you think, "How the hell did this happen?" And then you remember. "Didn't I pledge something, about a Republic?" And suddenly, that droning recital you gave every morning at school has a whole lot of meaning.

I pledge allegiance   Read More »

The first state in the union to issue civil unions to same-sex couples is now a step closer to issuing same-sex marriage licenses, possibly joining Connecticut and Massachusetts as the only states legalizing same-sex marriage.

Impassioned pleas came from supportive senators who went to last week's public hearing, where opposition claimed that straight marriage was like a cruise ship full of heterosexual couples, and that homosexuals followed the vessel in their tiny dinghies but wanted to get on the straight marriage ship, not carrying whether or not they sank it. The underlining theme of this metaphor, said a senator, was the appalling inequality, and what was most offensive was that the opposition felt this was acceptable, and on top of that, proclaimed it.

An alternate bill was presented to the floor stating that the issue should go to the people in a referendum instead of being decided by the legislature, urged by the belief that the legislature was moving too quickly on the issue. Opposing views claimed that it could be very expensive and referred to the millions and millions spent in California on Proposition 8, and that more pressing issues, such as the economy, needed the state's full resources instead of it being distracted by the marriage debate. This was countered that if same-sex marriage was approved by the people of Vermont, then the institution would have more sound standing and acceptance than if only approved by the legislature. This bill was voted down.   Read More »

According to many of the university's alumni, he is.

With the infamous lawyer's long track record, ranging from being the prosecutor that impeached President Bill Clinton to Solicitor General, and now his position as lead counsel for the supporters of Proposition 8, many who attended Pepperdine are not comfortable having Ken Starr as the current dean of the university. They feel his stance on Proposition 8 is "a disgrace."

So they've decided to take action. They've formed a Faceebook group, Pepperdine Law Alums in Support of Repealing Prop 8 and have addressed a letter to be sent to the dean.   Read More »

The People for the American Way is "dedicated to making the promise of America real for every American: Equality. Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. The right to seek justice in a court of law. The right to cast a vote that counts. The American Way."

Recently, they issued an insightful report titled "Marriage Equality Opponents Blur Distinction Between Civil And Religious Marriage. Link to full report is below.

A part of the report worth quoting:

"In focus groups conducted by People For the American Way Foundation in 2008, a number of churchgoers who strongly backed the general principle that gays and lesbians should be free from discrimination on the job, and should have the same rights and legal protections as other Americans, stopped short of applying that principle to marriage, largely because they saw marriage as a religious institution, a covenant between a man, a woman, and God. Helping people understand the difference between civil and religious marriage is crucial to winning broader support for the right of same-sex couples to be legally wed.   Read More »

Though I appreciate everything that President Obama has done, everything he has said and everything he stands for, the time has come to put his money where his mouth is. The gauntlet has been dropped.

In many interviews during his presidential campaign (and some before), he's been quoted as saying that he supports full equal rights for gays and lesbians. The fact that he doesn't support gay marriage but still says he supports equal rights is a discussion for another time. What is occurring now? The Obama Administration is experiencing pressure from the rulings of two federal judges stating that the federal government cannot hide behind DOMA to avoid giving benefits to employees in a same-sex relationship. So if these judges are to enforce their ruling (which the plaintiffs in the case are pushing for because the rulings weren't mere statements, they require consequences), how will the president respond?

The president is swept up in a historical, economical crisis in which he needs both parties of Congress on his side in order to pull the country out from its mire. Because of this, many argue that the LGBT issue is not a priority. But I disagree. Without the rights and full protections that marriage laws provide, same-sex couples have higher expenses, less disposable income and as a result, less money flows through our dry economy. (Not to mention all the money put back into the economy from all those weddings.) But putting the economic crisis aside, when in the history of our country have civil rights taken a back seat to a temporary crisis? Never.   Read More »

In preparing this post, I can't but help use the first-person perspective because the impact that Camp Courage in Fresno had on me personally as a facilitator is so profound that distancing myself from it would, not only be difficult, but wrong in how I should communicate what needs to be told about the amazing change that is happening in Fresno, CA.

For the sake of time in telling this story, I first need to direct you to my Op-Ed on the first Camp Courage in LA so you can know what Camp Courage is and what it's about. This exact same model was brought to Fresno, but effectively expanded upon over the course of two days.

On Saturday morning, we facilitators anxiously waited for our pre-assigned group to arrive through the conference room doors, excited to know who we would be working with for the whole weekend. The expected 160 and more attendees were randomly divided into groups to help mix it up, and I was curious to see whom I and the rest of the facilitators would get. Many of us had either been to the energized Camp Courage in LA or had worked at several Camp Obamas, whose model Camp Courage has adopted. So we were expectant of the same amount of energy.   Read More »