Some good news from Gainesville!

This is breaking news from The Advocate about the recent election in Florida:

March 24, 2009

“Antidiscrimination Repeal Fails in Gainesville

Gainesville, Fla.’s Amendment 1 — which, if passed, would have repealed a number of antidiscrimination protections for LGBT residents in the college town — failed at the polls Tuesday. With the majority of precincts reporting, results have the amendment failing with 61% voting no and 39% voting yes.

The repeal movement began last year after the city commission revised the antidiscrimination law to include protections for transgender people in employment, housing, and public accommodations — including restrooms.

Opponents using scare tactics about mixed-sex public bathrooms gathered enough signatures to place a referendum of the protections on the ballot. Charter Amendment 1 would have eliminated not only transgender protections but also protections for gays and lesbians in the North Florida city. It also would have forbade the city to add protected categories that are not included in the Florida Civil Rights Act, which does not recognize sexual orientation or gender identity. ”

Another news station reports: “With 100 percent of the precincts reporting Tuesday, the vote was 11,717 or 58 percent against changing the law.”

The campaign in favor of Charter Amendment 1 was viciously transphobic, in particular. Commercials aired depicting a big, husky guy following a small girl into a girl’s bathroom, essentially equating transgender women with child molesting men.

There’s been lots of news around LGBT issues lately.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the “Obama administration reverses Bush policy, backs UN anti-discrimination text on gay rights”.

On Monday Advocates of queer rights protested Florida’s ban on the right of gay people to adopt children, according to the St. Petersburg Times.

In the meantime, The Concord Monitor reports that lawmakers in New Hampshire are debating whether or not to add “gender identity and expression” to anti-discrimination law in the state, which, if added, would positively impact transgendered people the most. Proponents like Lucy Weber, a Walpole Democrat, asserts, “We had testimony about people who had had stellar job reviews and job performance for years and years and years, and who, when they finally made the choice to act on their gender issues, had been fired.” ‘The outcry against the bill, she said, had “given me a deep sympathy for the people who sought protection.”

And in Pittsburgh lawmakers are debating whether or not to add ’sexual orientation’ to anti-discrimination law. “I’m here to tell you and my colleagues that the sky will not fall — the world will not end — if we stop discriminating against gay, lesbian, transgender and bi-sexual people. It will not happen,” said Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, sponsor of House Bill 300.” No shit, shirlock, right? Well, not really since there’s strong conservative opposition that’s making this bill controversial, with some Republican lawmakers and others on the radical right arguing that religious people will be discriminated against if the state outlaws discrimination against gay people.

The 4th annual California Transgender Leadership Summit is planned for March 27 - 29 at UC San Diego.

Go to this website for more information and to register!

Some of the highlights of the summit include an opening plenary on “Making History from Stonewall to Today,” with speakers Susan Stryker and Sylvia Guerrero. And on Saturday there are more than 20 workshops to help people refine their organizing/activist skills. Click on the above link for more info and to download a pdf document of the event schedule.

We are Joe and Frank Capley-Alfano, and we are legally married. We were married during the 2004 Winter of Love, and we wed again last year, when California embraced Marriage Equality legally.

We are a part of One Struggle, One Fight and the March to Sacramento for three important reasons.

First, we believe that Prop. 8 is an unconstitutional revision and not an amendment to the California Constitution, and we stand in solidarity with the other 18,000 same-gender couples that legally married last year in California to ask our State Supreme Court to protect us and other minorities from the tyranny of the majority and to stand for fairness and equality for all.

Second, we want to articulate that Domestic Partnerships and Civil Unions are not the same as Legal Civil Marriage. Domestic Partnerships and Civil Unions are state or local ordinances that stop at the state line, and are trumped by federal legislation, so Domestic Partnership and Civil Unions are inadequate to address and most often don’t address tangible real-life issues like an employee’s union benefits, immigration, and/or taxes which are governed by federal laws. Same-gender couples simply can not and should not be burdened to create a myriad of ad-hoc legal contracts to provide a tiny percentage of the 1,138 legal rights, responsibilities, and benefits that are afforded through one stroke of a pen and an “I do” with legal civil marriage. In short, it is redundant and wasteful to create cumbersome additional institutions, when a perfectly functional one already exists.

Finally, on a personal note, we want to explain why national marriage recognition and civil equality is so important to us.

Frank explains, “Joe is disabled and he can only work part time. As a result, he doesn’t qualify for healthcare through his employer, and private health policies cost too much for our working-class family, because of his pre-existing condition. What is more, he is disqualified from public assistance, because the State of California counts us as legally married.”

He adds, “The situation is devastating to me, because I am watching my spouse slowly loose his ability to walk and I can’t do anything about it. I work for the International Union of Elevator Constructors and my union refuses to recognize my Domestic Partnership and legal civil marriage. They use the Defense of Marriage Act to justify denying equal treatment to my family. All of the heterosexual guys that I work for can add their spouses to their health plan and I want to be treated equally! I am sick of being a second class citizen, because of my and my spouse’s gender. I work just as hard as my co-workers; I humbly and respectfully represent the human face of IUEC in the field every day just like they do, and I pay my union dues just like they do.”

Lastly he said, “It is time that all people are treated with dignity and respect, and we are not going to stop fighting for civil equality until we achieve it: nothing more nothing less.”

Joe stated, “The march seemed sort of ridiculous but also kind of like a perfect fit for us, when we heard about it, because it may be one of the last times that I can actually be a part of anything like this, before I am no longer physically capable. In fact, I am not even actually walking in this event. I am following in one of the support vehicles. Frank is going to march for our family, because I simply can’t.”

He continued, “What I hope will come of this event, is that our group will travel through the heartland of California and through municipalities, where other historically discriminated against groups carved out a home for themselves against great odds. I hope that we learn about the struggles of those groups and from them personally. Further, I hope to understand, learn, and grow from their stories and experiences, taking those lessons back to my community in an effort to utilize the collective knowledge of those that have gone our way before, in our current struggle against Prop. 8. Finally, I hope that we can give back to the communities that we are passing through as well by volunteering, making donations, supporting local businesses, and by bringing light to their struggles, as our own. After all there is really only One Stuggle One Fight, and it is our collective human struggle and human fight to flourish in peace and harmony.”

This comes directly from an announcement made by the National Black Justice Coalition:

Moving Beyond History: LGBT Civil Rights in a Post-Racial America?
A National Dialogue with the National Black Justice Coalition

“Our National Town Hall focusing on the intersection of race and sexual orientation is only a few weeks away! Moving Beyond History will be a conversation between African American lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people and mainstream LGBT organizations. This groundbreaking discussion will be held on March 28th, 2009 at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, CA.

African-American LGBT people find themselves at the center of a controversial action taken by the NAACP—but this time, the nation’s oldest civil rights group is advocating on their behalf. The passage of California’s Proposition 8 has forced the realization of the gay rights struggle as central to the goal of civil rights for all Americans, and last week this resulted in action, with the groundwork in place for meaningful progress. In a historic action the NAACP wrote California legislators asking them to overturn Prop 8. This national dialogue is particularly important given the racial tensions revealed in the aftermath of the passage of Proposition.”

Click here for more information.

Organizers with the March to Sacramento took to the streets on March 4th, joining thousands of others at the “Eve of Justice” march from the Castro to the Civic Center. This protest happened the night before the Supreme Court of California was set to hear the oral arguments around the repeal of Prop 8. Thousands returned to protest in San Francisco on March 5 as the Supreme Court heard the oral arguments about whether or not to repeal Proposition 8, the initiative that stripped away the right for gay people to marry last November. The Supreme Court has 90 days to issue a decision, but several news outlets are reporting that the prospects of the Supreme Court actually overturning prop 8 aren’t looking so hot.

Check out BeyondChron’s article, Repealing Prop 8: Ballot May Be Last Option, by Paul Hogarth for an analysis.

While not terribly hopeful about the Supreme Court actually overturning Prop 8, Hogarth does highlight the newly-galvanized LGBT rights movement that has sprouted up since last November’s election, pointing out the formation of new grassroots groups fighting for the rights of LGBT communities. Among these groups? One Struggle, One Fight and the upcoming March to Sacto.

What’s amazed me is how many groups organically sprouted out of Prop 8’s passage. Join the Impact is still going on strong, and One Struggle, One Fight is planning a March to Sacramento at the end of the month. The Courage Campaign is building the grassroots infrastructure we’ll need to run a successful statewide campaign, and a new group – And Marriage for All – is doing the critical outreach to communities of color. And I’d be remiss not to acknowledge what Marriage Equality USA and Molly McKay has done for years, cultivating a network of grassroots chapter leaders through the state.

In its reporting about the protests, The New York Times published a photograph with a sign for the March to Sacto that Heather Tomkins made. Check it out:

Another article in The San Jose Mercury News focuses on One Struggle, One Fight and our March to Sacramento: Same-sex marriage supporters rally around Supreme Court hearings, by Jessica Lipsky.

And if you can read German check out this article that mentions us: Auf den Spuren von Harvey Milk

Workers need unions to improve their benefits and protect their rights, but current US labor law makes it way too hard for workers to form unions. The Employee Free Choice Act, which I hope will pass through Congress and get signed by President Obama this year, would make it easier for workers to form unions. This comes straight from the AFL-CIO, one of two major labor federations in the U.S.

What is the Employee Free Choice Act, you ask?

“The Employee Free Choice Act, supported in 2007 by a bipartisan coalition in Congress, would enable working people to bargain for better benefits, wages and working conditions by restoring workers’ freedom to choose for themselves whether to join a union. It would:

* Establish stronger penalties for violation of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations.
* Provide mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes.
* Allow employees to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation.

Check out the AFL-CIO’s Q &A for more info by clicking here.

Also download Pride at Work’s “Fact Sheet for The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Community.”

According to this document, “There are no federal job non-discrimination protections that protect on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. In 30, and 37 states respectively, it is legal to fire someone on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Since 1975, unions have been bargaining contracts with non-discrimination protections that include these categories.”

Contact your senator (202-224-3121) and congressional representative (202-225-3121) and ask them to Co-Sponsor the Employment Non-Discrimination Act — which provides federal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity — and the Employee Free Choice Act.

Deb Price, in “Educators fail gay students of color,” an article article at The Detroit News (2/23/2009), describes a report put out by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) that “captures what school feels like for America’s LGBT minority youth.”

Price writes:

The survey results paint a grim picture of kids so hardened to anti-gay remarks, shoving or worse that they don’t even bother reporting the abusive incidents to a school official or parent.

These students rarely read about LGBT people in textbooks, nor do they learn about gay history or people in class.

What they too often learn firsthand is that school is a place where they can expect to be hurt — emotionally or physically. The predictable but sad result is that many of these kids skip classes and see their grades drop.

To read the full report go to GLSEN’s website by clicking here.

And here you have it, the speech given by Dustin Lance Black, who won the award for best original screenplay:

“Oh my God. This was, um. This was not an easy film to make. First off, I have to thank Cleve Jones and Anne Kronenberg and all the real-life people who shared their stories with me. And, um, Gus Van Sant, Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, James Franco, and our entire cast, my producers, Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, everyone at Groundswell and Focus, for taking on the challenge of telling this life-saving story. When I was 13 years old, my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas to California and I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life, it gave me the hope to one day live my life openly as who I am and that maybe even I could fall in love and one day get married”.

(He chokes up, audience begins to applaud.)

“I want to thank my mom who has always loved me for who I am, even when there was pressure not to. But most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he?d want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are less than by their churches or by the government or by their families that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights, federally, across this great nation of ours. (Wild applause from the audience.) Thank you, thank you, and thank you God for giving us Harvey Milk”.

And here it is on video:

Milk, the movie starring Sean Penn about Harvey Milk, the first elected openly gay political figure in the United States, is up for a Best Picture award at the Oscars tonight.

As we’re reminded of Milk’s legacy, it’s important to also remember the efforts to get Harvey Milk Day passed as a state holiday. Equality California’s website says, “This bill would require the governor proclaim May 22 each year as Harvey Milk Day. It would encourage public schools and educational institutions to conduct suitable commemorative exercises on that date.”

Unfortunately, though the legislature approved the bill by a 45 to 23 vote, when it got to governor Schwarzenegger’s desk on September 30, 2008 he decided to veto it. One can only assume this was a sad effort to appeal to the Republican Party’s socially conservative base.

Let’s hope that one day, very soon, our state is able to officially recognize the contributions that people in the LGBT people have made to our history.

Here’s the trailer for the excellent documentary about Harvey Milk’s life, “The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.”

Also, check out Harvey Milk’s now famous “Give ‘Em Hope Speech.”