Weekly Political Roundup

• Barack Obama appointed David Noble, director of public policy and government affairs at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and former executive director of the National Stonewall Democrats, as director of the LGBT vote for his campaign. The presidential candidate also sent an open letter to LGBT voters and said “I will place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act to outlaw hate crimes and pass a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”
• A federal appeals court upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit filed by 12 gay and lesbian veterans challenging the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
• Four legal groups and five other leading LGBT groups put out a joint statement advising same-sex couples who go to California to marry not to return to their home states to sue. The statement says ill-timed lawsuits are likely to set back the fight for marriage equality.
• Allowing same-sex couples to marry will result in approximately $64 million in revenue for the state of California (PDF link) over the next three years, according to a new study from the Williams Institute at UCLA.
• The San Jose Mercury News reminds us that same-sex couples who marry in California won’t really have equal rights because they will inevitably travel to a state that doesn’t recognize their marriage or deal with the federal government.
• Kern and Butte Counties in California will halt all civil wedding ceremonies because county clerks found they could not refuse to marry only same-sex couples.
• The conservative Campaign for California Families has petitioned the state Court of Appeal to to suspend the Supreme Court ruling until Californians vote in November on a proposed constitutional amendment to ban marriage of same-sex couples. The group claims that based on the wording of the California Supreme Court ruling, the appeals court will take over jurisdiction of the case beginning at 5:01 p.m. on June 16, and could suspend the marriages. Pro-LGBT lawyers say the move is “frivolous.”
• Florida Governor Charlie Crist signed the state’s first anti-bullying measure, named after Jeff Johnston, who committed suicide in 2005 after enduring years of harassment.
• A grandfather and leader of the Maine Christian Civic League says he plans to file a complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission, objecting to the likelihood that a child born as a boy who identifies as a girl will be allowed to use the middle-school girls’ bathroom as she does at her current elementary school. Ugh. If the child identifies as a girl, what’s the big deal?
• Katherine Patrick, daughter of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, came out as a lesbian.
• A new poll found that New York voters support Gov. David Paterson’s order to state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions, 53 to 40 percent. Still, 55 to 30 percent say the issue should have been decided by the Legislature, not the Governor. 48 percent of women support marriage equality vs. 34 percent of men.
• A Rhode Island Superior Court judge refused to hear the divorce case of a lesbian couple married in Massachusetts, but questioned whether the applicable law unconstitutionally denied them a right enjoyed by heterosexual Rhode Islanders.
• In Tennessee, the Nashville’s Metro School Board unanimously approved adding measures to protect students and employees from discrimination based on sexuality and gender identity.

Around the world:

• Gay Pride parades were held in Athens, Rome and Warsaw, despite protests by and concerns over extreme-right groups. Meanwhile, after banning his city’s Pride march, Budapest’s police chief caved to international pressure and agreed to let it take place as scheduled.
• The European Commission announced that sexual orientation will be included along with disability, religion or belief and age in a new directive on discrimination.
• Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced his support for gay rights and said he would do “all that is possible” to establish civil unions and criminalize homophobia, “the most perverse disease impregnated in the human head.”
• Cuba’s Public Health Ministry has authorized the national health care system to perform free gender reassignment surgery for transgender citizens.
• The Greek government will introduce legislation to allow unmarried opposite-sex couples, but not same-sex ones, to register their relationships.
• Norway has legalized marriage for same-sex couples, joining Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, South Africa and Canada. A 1993 law gave same-sex couples the right to enter civil unions, but refuses right to church weddings or to be considered as adoptive parents. The new law also makes it easier for lesbians to undergo in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment, and gives their spouses all the rights of parenthood “from the moment of conception.” When partners, gay or lesbian, adopt a child not biologically connected to either of them, they would have complete joint parenting rights.
• In the U.K., the Westminster Catholic Children’s Society, a Catholic adoption agency, says it will not comply with the British government’s equality laws that require it to place children with same-sex couples.