- Could gay superdelegates make the difference in the Democratic presidential nomination? Writer Lisa Keen explains why, and also looks at how ordinary LGBT voters may have an impact on the race. A long piece, but a good overview of the situation.
- The U.S. State Department lifted the ban on hiring people with HIV to be foreign service officers, and will now evaluate people with HIV on a case-by-case basis. (That still seems like it leaves room for bias, but it’s a big step in the right direction.)
- The Freddie Mac Foundation has given HRC’s “All Children — All Families” initiative a one-year, $25,000 grant. The initiative seeks “to remove barriers between waiting foster children and loving families headed by qualified GLBT parents,” and the grant “supports the implementation of culturally competent practices in adoption and foster care agencies nationwide”.
- The City Council of Tucson, Arizona approved domestic partner benefits for opposite-sex couples, matching the ones for same-sex couples approved in 1997.
- The death of Lawrence King, a 15-year-old gay student shot in Oxnard, California, last week, has prompted California Assemblyman Mike Eng to introduce a bill to establish school diversity and sensitivity training. Kudos to Eng; let us hope, however, that schools will be motivated on their own to institute such training before it is too late for another student.
- Just a few weeks after E. Denise Simmons took office in Cambridge, Massachusetts as the nation’s first openly lesbian, African-American mayor, Connecticut State Representative Jason Bartlett came out as gay, making him the first openly gay black legislator in the United States.
- The leader of the Indiana House Rules Committee said he would not hear Senate Joint Resolution 7, a constitutional ban on the marriage of same-sex couples. This kills the bill, although the state law against marriage of same-sex couples still stands.
- Same-sex couples in Oregon are already finding some bumps in the implementation of the state’s new domestic partnership law, as I discussed in an earlier post. On the other side of the country, the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission found that civil unions constitute “second-class status” for same-sex couples.
- A proposed ban on any discussion of “homosexuality” in Tennessee schools died in a House subcommittee.
- Texas Governor Rick Perry argues in a new book that attacks on the Boy Scouts because of their anti-gay stance are part of a “culture war” that could lead to “a world where moral relativism reigns and individualism runs amok.” Scout leaders, he claims, “do not believe that someone whose personal agenda is to make an open issue of his sexual orientation should be a Scout leader. Scouting is not about sex, but about building character.” Does this mean he wants all straight scout leaders not to talk about their wives, for fear of revealing their straight sexual orientation? Or does it mean he’d be okay with gay scout leaders keeping their orientation private, not “open,” a Scouting version of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”? As with the military, all that lying and hiding sure builds character and honor, hmm?
- A Utah Senate committee is stalling over a bill that would extend parental rights to stepparents who raise children. Some fear it could give similar rights to same-sex couples, and would “gut” the Utah Supreme Court’s ruling last year that denied visitation rights to a non-biological mother.
- The Washington State House of Representatives passed the 2008 Domestic Partnership Bill, which would expand the rights of domestic partners in the state. The bill now moves to the Senate.
Around the world:
- Australian senator Kerry Nettle introduced a marriage equality bill calling for recognition of overseas same-sex marriages and the ability to allow local ones. Elsewhere, LGBT advocate Rodney Croome explains the difference between civil union bills in Tasmania and the Australian Capitol Territory. The Tasmanian registry was designed to look less like a traditional marriage, with no verbal declaration necessary. This was partly to avoid criticism from the right that such unions were in effect marriage by another name, and partly because it gives equal legal rights to “all significant relationships – same-sex, opposite-sex, companionate and familial” of people who cannot or do not wish to join in marriage.
- An Israeli MP says that the country’s recent passage of gay rights legislation is the cause of a spate of earthquakes. He called on lawmakers to stop “passing legislation on how to encourage homosexual activity in the state of Israel, which anyway brings about earthquakes,” the BBC reports. Next week: “Lesbians Cause Locusts.”