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Forwarded from Paul Krantz:
Have you seen the video "Anne Coulter Defends Herself" currently on MSNBC's
website
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/
In the footage from Chris Matthew's show, there are no attempt to edit or censor Coulter's hate language and homophobic jokes ("Bill Clinton's not gay, but Al gore: total fag. I'm only kidding... hahaha") made in front of a crowd of laughing college students.Matthews, who previously made homophobic jokes with Imus on Imus's show, took no issue with the gaybashing.
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Forwarded from Ken's List <Kenneth.Sherrill@hunter.cuny.edu>
To: kenslist@groups.queernet.org
Download ILGA's new magazine for free
Dear Friends,
The latest issue of ILGA's magazine, Campaigning, is now available online! To browse the articles, visit
http://doc.ilga.org/ilga/publications/campaigning/2006/july_06_n_121.
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Rational Lampoon: How to make a
thorny constitutional question disappear
Slate, July 26, 2006
http://www.slate.com/id/2146580/
Rational Lampoon
How to make a thorny constitutional question disappear.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Let's say you're a justice on the Washington State Supreme Court. You have anice life, a quiet life. Cozy chambers. Huggable clerks. And then in Marchof 2005, you hear oral arguments in a case about the state ban on gay marriage.Eighteen months later, the dumb decision is still pending. You've tossed.You've turned. What to do?If you vote to strike down the ban, the president will take your name invain. You'll be vilified as an "activist" in the national media.
Bloggers will publish photos of your children and pets. You'll have toapologize for the courage of your convictions for the rest of your career.
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Revenge of the anti-conjugalists
Window Media Newspapers (blog)
(Washington Blade, Southern Voice, Houston Voice, New York Blade),
July 26, 2006
http://www.newyorkblade.com/blog/index.cfm?start=7/21/06&end=7/28/06
Revenge of the anti-conjugalists
Chris Crain, Editor
Brace yourself. They've come up with a new "-ism," and you're more thanlikely one of the "-ists." It's not that we've conquered racism or sexism and now have free time toaddress some heretofore unexposed privilege given over to some but notothers. To the contrary, there's still much work to be done against allsorts of "-isms" and "-phobias," according to the mostly gay left-wing signatories to the "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage" manifesto released this week.
[http://beyondmarriage.org/full_statement.html]
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Seattle Post-Intelligencer, WA, July 27, 2006
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/278930_conruling27.html
Ruling doesn't respect equality
By LISA M. STONE AND PATRICIA NOVOTNY, GUEST COLUMNISTS
More than a century ago, a U.S. Supreme Court justice dissented when amajority declared that our federal Constitution permitted citizens ofAfrican descent to be made to ride in "separate but equal" railway cars.That was wrong, Justice John Harlan said in Plessy v. Ferguson, because the
Constitution "neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens." As KingCounty Executive Ron Sims said Wednesday, Harlan's lesson is one we mustlearn again and again and again.Just as the plaintiffs in Plessy did, our plaintiffs looked to theWashington Supreme Court for vindication of their rights, and, just as in Plessy, the court failed them. Their disappointment, their outrage, theirgrief are beyond what words can measure. Though a majority of the court,seven justices in all, acknowledged the hardships our couples and those likethem are forced to endure as second-class citizens, the plurality shrankfrom its duty to uphold that most fundamental of democratic values:equality. The court left them and their families without the basicprotections that all other families in Washington enjoy.
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Seattle Post Intelligencer, WA, July 27, 2006
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/278932_marriaged.asp
Supreme Court: I do's to do
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
The Washington Supreme Court's decision refusing to legalize same-sexmarriage casts a challenge before the people of this state to make better laws.We can do better than to treat some neighbors as more worthy than others intheir ability to love, to share all life's experiences and to visit oneanother in hospital rooms. Our lawmakers should quickly create civil unions
that offer same-sex couples legal recognition and practical benefits.Unlike same-sex marriage, civil unions ought to be politically possible in ashort time. The public should demand of this year's legislative candidates what they are prepared to do to improve the treatment of committed, same-sexpartners. In ways both overt and implied, the court's 5-4 ruling on
Wednesday and the justices' legal opinions amount to a call for political action.
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Gay Leaders Admonished For Marriage Tunnel Vision
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
July 27, 2006 - 11:00 am ET
http://www.365gay.com/Newscon06/07/072706marriage.htm
(New York City) Some of the nation's leading gay scholars, writers and activists say there is too much focus on the issue of same-sex marriage.The group - some 260 national gay leaders - calls for a broader vision ingaining rights for gay families.Signatories of the statement include writer Armistead Maupin, Columbia lawprofessor Kendall Thomas, American University Law Professor Nancy Polikoff,Terry Boggis the director of the family program at the New York LGBT Community Center, and Joseph DeFilippis of Queers for Economic Justice.While the document supports efforts to secure marriage equality for LGBTcouples, it also states that "marriage is not the only worthy form of familyor relationship, and it should not be legally and economically privileged above all others".
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Dems Have a Plan to Counter Growing Success of State Marriage Initiatives
Jody Brown July 27, 2006
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/7/272006a.asp
Opposition Research: Agape Press
(AgapePress) - The Democratic Party has apparently decided to take adifferent tack in its efforts to bring legalized homosexual "marriage" toevery state in the country. Determined to provide more coordinated supportto advocates of same-sex unions, the Democratic National Committee (DNC)recently announced it has adopted a five- point plan for fighting state ballot measures defining marriage as between one man and one woman. In 2004, the Democratic Party made it clear it stood opposite President George W. Bush on defending traditional marriage. "We repudiate President Bush's divisive effort to politicize the Constitution by pursuing a 'FederalMarriage Amendment,'" it says on page 38 of The 2004 Democratic National
Platform for America. In the statement prior to that, the party says such an issue should be left to the states. "In our country, marriage has been defined at the state level for 200 years, and we believe it should continue to be defined there," it says.
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Top Md. court takes up gay marriage case
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-gaymarriage0727,0,2896249.story?coll=bal-home-headlines
Appeal challenging ruling that ban is unconstitutional to be heard in Dec.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Originally published July 27, 2006, 1:24 PM EDT Maryland's highest court hasagreed to hear a challenge to the ruling by a Baltimore Circuit Court judgein January that the state law banning same-sex marriages isunconstitutional.In a brief order dated Wednesday and issued today, the Court of Appealsgranted a motion to bypass the Court of Special Appeals and put the case on
the docket for arguments in December. That means there will be no action onthe politically explosive issue until after the November election.The decision to bypass the intermediate appeals court was not a surprise since the Court of Appeals sometimes takes cases directly when new and important legal questions are at stake.
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UK Lords Value Biology Over Correct Behavior
by Prof. Art Leonard
Thursday, July 27, 2006
http://newyorklawschool.typepad.com/leonardlink/2006/07/uk_lords_value__1.html
A unanimous five-judge panel of the U.K. House of Lords Law Committee(Britain's highest appellate court) ruled on July 26 that biological tiestrump bad behavior in a residential custody dispute between a birth motherand her former same-sex partner, the lesbian co-parent of her children. Thecase is In re G (Children)(FC), [2006] UKHL 43 (July 26, 2006).The parties are referred to by their initials. CG and CW lived together asa couple from 1995 until 2002. They were raising CW's biological son,conceived using donor insemination from a prior relationship. They decidedto have children together, and CG, by far the younger of the two, bore two
daughters through donor insemination.
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Alternative to same-sex union
- Wyatt Buchanan, SF Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, July 27, 2006
The gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights movement has become toonarrowly focused on marriage and needs a broader vision, a coalition of 260gay leaders and straight allies said. A statement the coalition released Wednesday -- "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: ANew Strategic Vision for All Our Families & Relationships" -- offers "a newvision for securing governmental and private institutional recognition ofdiverse kinds of partnerships, households, kinship relationships andfamilies."Current and former leaders of national gay rights organizations, such as theNational Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, signed the 25-page statement, along with the likes of scholarCornel West, Ms. Magazine founder Gloria Steinem, essayist Barbara Ehrenreich and novelist Armistead Maupin.
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San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/26/MNG3HK5LC71.DTL
Broad opposition to World Pride in Jerusalem
Religious, gay leaders criticize international event;
crisis in Lebanon ends parade plans
Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
An international gay pride event scheduled to take place in Jerusalem inless than two weeks is facing unprecedented opposition not only fromreligious leaders in the city, but from elements of the gay, lesbian,bisexual and transgender communities worldwide.Already, the violence between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon has led to thecancellation of a planned parade, the centerpiece of the five-day WorldPride Week. With many of the security personnel needed to guarantee the
safety of marchers diverted to northern Israel, city police denied theparade a permit.
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Join AIDS advocates and activists from around the country for a one-hourconference call to learn more about www.aidsvote.org and the 2006 AIDSVotecampaign. National conference calls to explain how and why it's legal - andimportant - for nonprofit groups to get involved in election-related issue advocacy.
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Latvian democracy trashed, Riga Gay Pride march suppressed
Peter Tatchell
Guardian - Comment Is Free - 25 July 2006
Shades of the bad old days
The Riga Pride march was a litmus test of Latvian democracy - and theformer Soviet state failed it miserably.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/peter_tatchell/2006/07/latvia_attacks_gays_trashes_de.html
Having successfully intimidated Latvia's judges and politicians into banningthe Riga Gay Pride march, a violent homophobic alliance of neo-Nazis,Christian fundamentalists and extreme nationalists were given analmost free hand by the police to terrorise an indoor gay rights rally
in the Latvian capital last Saturday, 22 July.Private armed guards had to be drafted in to provide security, afterthe Latvian police repeatedly failed to halt the aggression of the
homophobic mob.I was there and witnessed the hate, abuse, threats, intimidation and violence first-hand, in the heart of an EU member state, where Latvianand European law was trampled into the ground by politicians, judges and police.
