GLBT DIGEST - March 14, 2009

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New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
Go to the links for the following articles:

-Progress on Family Planning
Tucked into the big spending bill just signed by President Obama is a welcome provision designed to make affordable birth control available to millions of women across the country. The provision is not a subsidy and will impose no burden on taxpayers. It will restore a limited exemption from Medicaid pricing rules that was in effect for nearly 20 years. It allowed pharmaceutical companies to supply contraceptives to college health clinics, all Planned Parenthood offices and other family-planning centers at an extreme discount that could be passed on to patients.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/opinion/14sat4.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

-Governor Challenges Utah's Conservative Verities
By KIRK JOHNSON
Among Utah Republicans, who hold every statewide elected office and more than two-thirds of the State Legislature, Hamlet-like quests for purpose and direction are hardly the norm.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/us/14utah.html?scp=3&sq=gay&st=cse


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Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Go to the links for the following articles:

-The Trouble With Michael Steele
By Colbert I. King
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele took office declaring he would show the country that his party cared about minorities. As a shining example of that which he claimed, Steele cited himself, the GOP's first African American chieftain.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/13/AR2009031302808.html

-Where to Now?
2008 was a spectacular year for women in politics. But the sober reality is that the race has just begun.
By Vanessa Gezari
Jennifer James Soto arrived in Georgia on a Friday afternoon. The air was thick with humidity, and the campus on the outskirts of Atlanta was deserted except for her and the other women. They carried their suitcases into dormitories and laid out their clothes on narrow student beds. That evening, Jennifer dressed carefully, choosing dangly earrings because her kids weren't around to tug them. This weekend would be the longest she'd spent away from her son and daughter since they were born. She made her way downstairs, where she and the other women found seats in a windowless conference room. They would spend the next two days here, listening to women who held elected office and women whose job it was to prepare other women to run.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/06/AR2009030601712_pf.html


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Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/public/us
Go to the links for the following articles:

-Rethinking Original Intent
Write to Jess Bravin at jess.bravin@wsj.com
The debate over the Constitution's meaning takes a surprising turn; a pivotal gun-rights case
After the Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia's handgun ban last June, gun-rights advocates trained their sights on similar restrictions in Chicago and Oak Park, Ill. Last month, the National Rifle Association received ammunition from an unlikely source: the Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal litigation shop.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123699111292226669.html


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Sun-Sentinel
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/
Go to the links for the following articles:

-Susan Stanton, the former Largo city manager who drew national media attention after being fired for announcing plans for a sex change, is a finalist for the city manager's job in Lake Worth. The former Steve Stanton worked as assistant city manager and manager for Largo for more than 16 years. He was fired by Largo commissioners in February 2007 after announcing plans to change his gender. Later that year, Stanton appeared as Susan Ashley Stanton while lobbying for transgender rights in Washington. She finished third in the competition for the city manager's job in Sarasota in May 2007. Stanton, 50, formerly of Clearwater, has since moved to Arizona, according to Connie Hoffman, vice president of The Mercer Group, which conducted the city manager search for Lake Worth.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/community/news/lakeworth/sfl-bn-0313lakeworth-manager,0,1969885.story


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Forwarded from Kenneth Sherrill - Ken's List
kenslist@groups.queernet.org
Go to the links for the following articles:
Contact rays.list@comcast.net if you can't access the article

-Yesterday, LGBT leaders from across the globe once again packed UCLA School of Law for day two of The Global Arc of Justice Conference. The main topic of the day focused on implementing the Yogyakarta Principles. Named after the city in Indonesia in which they were drafted, the Yogyakarta Principles explain how existing international human rights laws apply to LGBT people and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression. The Principles include rights ranging from the right to be free from employment discrimination and laws criminalizing sexual behavior; to state recognition of parenting and couples rights; to affirmative rights for adequate standard of living, healthcare, education, housing and participation in public life. Signatories of the Yogyakarta Principles attending the Global Arc of Justice Conference include Mauro Cabral (Argentina), Sonia Corrêa (Brazil), Alice Miller (USA) and Robert Wintemute (Canada and the UK).
http://www.law.ucla.edu/WilliamsInstitute/programs/GlobalArcofJustice2009.html>

-Anal condom is no pain in the ass; FDA approval omits sodomy
News flash! Gay man engage in anal sex and need devices to ensure HIV and STDs are not transmitted during such sex, but Gay Inc and AIDS Inc remain silent about Reality:
http://mpetrelis.blogspot.com/2009/03/anal-condom-is-no-pain-in-ass-fda.html

-Support Oklahoma Teacher Suspended for
Teaching The Laramie Project
Tell Superintendent Ed Turlington: Teach Respect! Reinstate Teacher Debra Taylor!
A number of organizations have been monitoring a school controversy in Grandfield, OK where a teacher was recently suspended for teaching The Laramie Project, an award-wining play about the murder of Matthew Shepard, a young man in Wyoming who was killed because he was gay. Debra Taylor, who teaches the Ethics and Street Law class, was using pieces of the play to help her students examine how hatred and intolerance can be justified by attitudes within a community, a church, or in the home. Midway through the unit, Superintendent Ed Turlington told her to stop teaching the material. She held a mock funeral for the play to give her students closure and was subsequently suspended. She has now accepted a resignation agreement, as she feared that she would otherwise be fired. Her students are standing behind the play and their teacher. "She always taught us to speak our minds and have our voices heard," said one student. We need to tell Superintendent Turlington that Debra Taylor is a dedicated teacher who is willing to confront issues of respect and acceptance for all people regardless of sexual orientation and that she deserves to be immediately reinstated. TAKE ACTION NOW.call Superintendent Turlington at 580-479-5237 or send an email to eturlington@grandfield.k12.ok.us and tell him: "Debra Taylor did not deserve this kind of treatment. Young people need dedicated teachers willing to confront issues of respect and acceptance for people of all sexual orientations. She should be commended for creating a safe space for all her students and should be reinstated immediately."

-FOXSexpert: Defining Sexual Freedom
By Yvonne K. Fulbright
We've been getting the messages for years: Be sexually expressive. Live by
your own sexual rules. Explore your sexual fantasies. Own your true sexual nature. I, for one, am a huge supporter of anything that involves healthy sexuality. What I'm not a big fan of is the muddled meaning in "becoming sexually liberated." While sexual liberation is often touted as a form "healthy sexuality," this isn't always the case. We're told that being sexually free involves showing what you want, saying what you want, doing what you want, and taking what you need. But does this pursuit of happiness have anything to do with personal choice? We've been declared "sexually liberated." But are we?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,509035,00.html

-Florida: Man jailed, accused of sex with 16-year-old he calls his wife
A relationship that started in Puerto Rico between a 47-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl led to the man's arrest Monday in Hollywood, Florida.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/broward/story/943477.html

-Sex Column causes controversy; First Amendment issues raised
A University of Montana law professor who opposes the content of the Kaimin's weekly sex column could eventually take the issue to the state legislature unless the newspaper establishes written policies for hiring columnists and reviewing content. Since February, assistant law professor Kristen Juras has made clear to the Kaimin her opposition to senior Bess Davis's "Bess Sex Column" by writing a letter to the editor as well as e-mailing and meeting with Kaimin editor Bill Oram. Juras said the material in the column is inappropriate for college students and reflects poorly on the university's School of Journalism and UM itself.
http://www.uwire.com/Article.aspx?id=3855010

-Is Craigslist the world's biggest bordello?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10190334-93.html?tag=nl.e703

-ACLU files suit against Nassau schools over 'gay' club
Pastor urges 'prayer' after judge's comments
A Nassau County pastor attending a hearing in federal court March 4 about a "Gay-Straight Alliance" (GSA) at Yulee High School said he believes it's a matter of prayer. The School Board of Nassau County has been sued by the ACLU on behalf of Hannah Page, 15, and Jacob Brock, 16, students at Yulee High School who late last year organized a GSA at their school which met only once. At the hearing for a preliminary injunction, Frank Sheppard, the school board's attorney, said students were not denied access as has been claimed under the federal Equal Access Act, but were told in order to continue to meet they needed to change the name of the organization to exclude sexual orientation to comply with school board policy.
http://www.floridabaptistwitness.com/9985.article

-Florida lawmaker files bills that would legalize gay adoptions
BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
As gay rights advocates and religious groups queue up in an effort to influence the outcome of a Miami appeals court case that will help decide whether gay people can adopt children in Florida, a state lawmaker has quietly introduced two bills that could render the dispute moot.
http://www.miamiherald.com/1374/story/944128.html

-"Beyond Backlash: Assessing the Impact of Judicial Decisions on
LGBT Rights"
In a new article in the journal Law and Society Review, Political scientist Thomas Keck "evaluates the widespread scholarly claim that the courtroom victories of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights movement have invariably provoked a counterproductive political backlash." He concludes: Those victories have indeed provoked conservative countermobilization, but that has not been their only or even their most prominent effect. Assessing the political reaction to the movement's judicial victories, the policy impact of those victories, and the alternative strategic paths that were available to the movement at the outset, I argue that here, as elsewhere, legal mobilization has sometimes been a promising avenue for pursuing policy changes whose prospects were otherwise quite limited.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/122255963/HTMLSTART

-In Interview, Republican Chairman Strays From the Party Line on Abortion
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
This was supposed to be the week that Michael Steele, the beleaguered new chairman of the national Republican Party, got his groove on, as he might put it: From filling vacancies left by the mass-firing he conducted upon taking office to issuing 100-day plans on how to make the Republican Party competitive on fund-raising and the Internet, among other things. But no. On Thursday Mr. Steele found himself yet again explaining what he had meant to say, this time after a lively interview with GQ in which he seemed to suggest, among other things, that women should have the right to decide whether to have an abortion. "I think that's an individual choice," he said. A moment later, he appeared to clarify his remarks, saying that abortion policy should be decided by the states. [...] The interview - in which Mr. Steele also appeared to stray from the view of many conservatives on homosexuality while offering a steady patter of joke and irreverent observations - rippled through Republican circles as soon it was posted on GQ's Web site Thursday morning. If the interview, conducted several weeks ago, fueled the existing concern among party leaders, it was hardly a surprise after four weeks in which Mr. Steele had left many Republicans anxious about their new chairman. He had tangled with Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk show host, and become the target of mirthful parodies by Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and "Saturday Night Live" over his call to apply the party's principles to "urban-suburban hip-hop settings."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/us/politics/13steele.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

-We must know of the ancestors on whose shoulders we stand.
Lorraine Hansberry's Gay Politics
Why the 'Raisin in the Sun' playwright's homosexual ties have been straight-washed from black history.
http://blackmanspirit.blogspot.com/2009/03/lorraine-hansberrys-gay-politics.html


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365Gay.com
http://www.365gay.com/
Go to this link for the following articles:

-Lowenstein: We must not compromise on equality
By Jenna Lowenstein
We can compromise on taxes and on infrastructure funding and on health care costs. But we cannot-- we must not-- sell out the fundamental right to equality. Read more...
http://www.365gay.com/blog/lowenstein-we-must-not-compromise-on-equality/

-Gay marriage bills heading for showdowns in Maine, Vermont
Support is growing for legislation that would allow same-sex couples to marry in Maine. The bill now has more than 60 lawmakers as co-sponsors.
http://www.365gay.com/news/gay-marriage-bills-heading-for-showdowns-in-maine-vermont/

-Kings and Queens
NBC's new epic saga Kings imagines a modern-day monarchy with a queer spin -- complete with late night trysts and a jab at 'don't ask, don't tell.' With all of the personal betrayals and courtly intrigues, it would be easy to think that Kings, NBC's new mid-season drama, takes its inspiration from one of Shakespeare's great plays. After all, the show boasts a tragic king with upstart children, a conniving queen, and a nation exhausted by war.
http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid74991.asp

-Obama in Hot Seat Over Partner Benefits
By Julie Bolcer
Two strongly worded court orders place President Obama in an awkward position on the issue of whether the government must provide health insurance benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees, The New York Times reports.
http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid75170.asp


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