- President Bush reauthorized the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which allocates $48 billion over the next five years to treat people living with HIV and fund prevention programs in poorer countries for men who have sex with men. The reauthorization also contains changes that should remove legal roadblocks for HIV-positive immigrants wishing to live in the U.S. It still contains the requirement that countries receiving PEPFAR funding must spend at least 50 percent of it on abstinence-until-marriage programs.
- In related news, the Peace Corps has said it will no longer terminate volunteers who are HIV-positive.
- Presidential candidate John McCain “clarified” his stance on adoption by gay people, saying, “I am for the values that two-parent families—the traditional family represents.”
- The California Attorney General’s office announced changes to the title and summary of Proposition 8, a ballot initiative to ban same-sex marriage, so voters will see it described thus: “Changes California Constitution to eliminate right of same-sex couples to marry.” Opponents of marriage equality say “the ballot language is so inflammatory that it will unduly prejudice voters against the measure.” Unduly? No. IMHO, it calls it like it is.
- Supporters of California’s Proposition 8 have raised about $3.7 million between Jan. 1 and June 30, according to state filings. Opponents of the ban have raised about $2.5 million.
- A Colorado man was arrested and charged in the beating death of Angie Zapata, an 18-year-old transgender woman. According to an affidavit, he beat her when he found out she had a penis.
- Hoping to address that imbalance, utility PG&E announced it is giving $250,000 to the No on Proposition 8 campaign. It will also spearhead the formation of a business advisory council to get other businesses in the state to defeat the ballot initiative.
- A federal judge ruled in favor of the Gay-Straight Alliance of Okeechobee High School in Florida, saying the School Board violated the club’s First Amendment rights by refusing to recognize it as a non-curricular student organization, and is is statutorily obligated by the federal Equal Access Act to let the GSA meet on campus like all other non-curricular school groups.
- A conservative group in Gainesville, FL is attempting to repeal a law offering protections on the basis of gender identity. By tying the city’s human rights laws to state protections, however, their ban could end protections for all LGBT people in the city.
- Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has signed a repeal of the 1913 law prohibiting out-of-state couples from marrying in the state if their home states forbid the unions. He also signed the MassHealth Equality bill, forcing the state to pay for equal Medicaid benefits to married same-sex and opposite-sex couples. MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program, receives federal funding and was prohibited from recognizing same-sex marriages by the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
- A group of same-sex couples in Minnesota are organizing a group lawsuit similar to the one in California that resulted in marriage equality.
- BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York will begin allowing spousal health care benefits to married same-sex couples.
Around the world:
- Homophobic attacks marred the start of EuroPride in Stockholm. They left two gay men in life-threatening condition, two others seriously beaten, and three churches vandalized.
- A march organized by the Costa Rican Evangelical Alliance drew some 20,000 people to the country’s capitol to protest a legislative proposal that would legalize marriage between same-sex people.
- Boris van der Ham, an MP in the Netherlands, will use this Saturday’s Pride march in Amsterdam to highlight ongoing anti-gay discrimination and argue that the constitution be amended to include gay people as a protected group.
- The Estonian Ministry of Justice is drafting a law that would allow same-sex partners to register their cohabitation.
- Greenland, a self-governing Danish province, will introduce a law banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The law is set to take effect in 2010.