Women's Rights Employment Law Blog

States ban gay marriage

The midterm election news wasn’t all good for gays. Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia, Tennessee and Wisconsin passed amendments to their state constitutions banning gay marriage.

The only such initiative to be rejected by voters was Arizona’s, which came close with anti-amendment votes exceeding pro amendment votes by about 32,000 out of about 1.1 million cast. That breaks down to about 51 percent who voted against the amendment compared to about 48 percent who supported it.

Three of the states that passed such amendments did so by considerable margins. Tennessee’s passed with 81 percent of the vote, South Carolina’s with 78 percent and Idaho’s with 63 percent. The votes were closer in the other states.

In Virginia, 43 percent of voters opposed the gay marriage ban as did 48 percent of South Dakota residents.

While these amendments — except for Arizona’s — passed with relative ease, some gay marriage advocates are optimistic and point to decreasing margins when these numbers are compared to similar laws passed just a decade ago.

While gay marriage advocates lauded the Arizona outcome, it was later revealed that most voted against the measure because they felt the government should stay out of the issue, not because they supported gay marriage, according to a poll released later in November. Among those surveyed, only 8 percent said they supported same-sex marriage.

Catholics call gays ‘disordered’

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops overwhelmingly passed a document called “Ministry to Persons With a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care” in Baltimore in November.

The document maintains the Catholic Church’s long-standing teaching that homosexual activity of any kind is sinful. Anyone ministering to homosexuals under the auspices of the church must strictly adhere to the document’s teachings, which claim that same-sex attractions are “disordered.” The vote passed 194 to 37.

Most who rejected the document said it wasn’t worded strongly enough, though a few rejected the language altogether.

Although the document stipulates that gays be treated with respect and compassion and that violence, scorn and hatred against gays is wrong, it says any form of gay sexual expression also wrong.

Gay Catholics who live celibate lives are free to take active roles in their faith communities but gay adoptions, civil unions and same-sex marriages are forbidden.

The one concession the bishops made was that children of gay couples are not to be refused baptism in the hope they’ll be raised Catholic.

Critics of the document, including members of gay Catholic group New Ways Ministry, said they wish the church had consulted with gays to seek their input regarding the document. Some speculated that the guidelines won’t be universally observed in Catholic churches.

Jefferts Schori to lead Episcopals

Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori became the first woman to lead the Episcopal Church Nov. 4 and is the first female priest to head an Anglican national church worldwide. Her election is notable because she teaches that homosexuality is not a sin and supports ordaining gay priests.

She faces a challenging situation — the Episcopal Church has an eroding membership that could lose its place among Anglicans in a fight over the Bible and sexuality.

Jefferts Schori acknowledged the rift during a sermon at the three-hour ceremony in which she was formally handed the primatial staff, symbolizing her role as chief pastor of the 2.2 million member Christian denomination.

“If some in this church feel wounded by recent decisions, then our salvation or health as a body is at some hazard and it becomes the duty of all of us to seek healing and wholeness.”

She was likely referring to the 2003 consecration of the first openly gay bishop, v. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Jefferts Schori faced instant opposition. Seven conservative U.S. dioceses immediately rejected her authority and asked Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Anglican spiritual leader, to assign them another national leader. Other churches across the nation have followed, including nine in Virginia.

But not everyone’s upset. Jefferts Schori’s election was celebrated as a victory for female clergy and for Episcopalians who support full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the church.

N.J. enacts civil unions

The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in late October that the state legislature had 180 days to amend its laws to provide for equal benefits to gay couples. By mid-December, New Jersey became the third state to enact a civil union law.

Some gay marriage proponents have criticized New Jersey, Vermont and Connecticut for using the term “civil unions” instead of marriage, arguing the status constitute a separate-but-equal approach. Still, the New Jersey decision was widely praised among gay activists as a positive step. Massachusetts is the only state that allows same-sex marriage.

The proposal for civil unions passed 56 to 19 in the state Assembly and 23 to 12 in the Senate. During discussions, the possibility of changing the terminology from civil unions to marriage was mentioned.

The court decision resulted from a lawsuit filed by seven gay couples seeking full marriage rights. The court ruled 4-3 in October that, “the unequal dispensation of rights and benefits to committed same-sex partners can no longer be tolerated under our state constitution.”

Catholic Church officials petitioned the legislature to consider a watered-down benefits measure that would allow any two adults, including elderly siblings or an adult and his or her parent, to form a state-approved relationship to receive various benefits.

Gay activists lobbied for full marriage rights. Members of the state’s Garden State Equality say their cause is gaining momentum and predict that full marriage rights will be available to gays within two years.

Sen. Rick Santorum defeated

Gay rights supporters had lots to celebrate after November’s congressional election results, but arguably no single race brought greater cheers than the defeat of Pennsylvania’s Sen. Rick Santorum by Democrat Bob Casey.

The uber-conservative Santorum was loathed among many gays for equating gay sex with bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery in a notorious 2003 Associated Press interview in which he also criticized gay marriage, a topic he focused on even in the aftermath of 9/11.

“In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever, to my knowledge, included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that, you have dramatic impact on the quality.”

Gays weren’t the only targets of Santorum’s righteous indignation. He drew equal ire for blaming pedophilia in the Boston Archdiocese on Massachusetts liberalism, comparing filibustering Democrats to Nazis, describing a charity group called CARE as being “pro-prostitution” and “anti-American,” and accusing Casey, Pennsylvania’s state treasurer, of supporting terrorism and genocide.

Santorum, a second-term Republican and chair of the GOP conference in the Senate, was the third-ranking member of his party in the Senate.

The senator, who once described himself as a rhetorical bomb-thrower, realized his opinions were polarizing.

“I know that I’ve had some pretty strident debates here on the floor of the United States Senate,” Santorum said in an exit interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “But I will tell you that, in my heart, it was never personal. It was always about what the issue was about.”

The senator was gracious in defeat, even calling his successor a “good man,” and urging his supporters to applaud Casey.

Gay author and columnist Dan Savage gleefully promoted the use of Santorum’s last name as a sexual neologism and campaigned for Casey.

Hate crimes make headlines

Gays may have made strides politically in 2006 but hate crimes, unfortunately, showed no sign of abating.

In one of the highest-profile attacks, New York City singer and drag queen Kevin Aviance, was beaten in the early morning hours of June 10 in the city’s East Village neighborhood after leaving a gay bar.

According to the singer’s publicist Len Evans, the four men who attacked Aviance were members of two violent New York street gangs. They were charged with first-degree assault as a hate crime. Aviance suffered a broken jaw, fractured knee, fractured neck and bruises.

In October, another gay man, Michael Sandy, was attacked in a suspected hate crime and hit by a car while trying to escape. He died just weeks later when his family opted to take him off life support.

Two men arrested in connection with the beating are facing murder and manslaughter charges. Investigators believe Sandy was lured to a Brooklyn street corner with the online promise of a sexual encounter.

These incidents and others in 2006 are nothing new. Over the past decade, more than 50 young people aged 30 and under were killed by assailants who targeted them because they did not fit traditional societal expectations for masculinity and femininity, according to the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition, which released a report in December in honor of Human Rights Day.

The report, which found age and race to also factor into gender non-conformity violence trends, said that the chances of a fatal assault occurring increase exponentially when those factors or present and/or exhibited by an individual.

“These victims tended to share the same characteristics: they were mostly black or Latina, were biologically male and presenting with some degree of femininity, and were killed by other young males in attacks ... and often multiple attacks of violence,” said Riki Wilchins, executive director of GenderPAC, which conducted the study.

Mary Cheney announces pregnancy

When Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, announced her pregnancy in December, reactions were, as expected, mixed.

Gay rights opponents were predictably appalled at the idea of a gay couple — Cheney and her partner of 15 years Heather Poe — raising a child. Supporters expressed frustration that by working on her father’s re-election campaign in 2004, Cheney had supported a political regime that would deny her own partner’s parenting rights.

The baby is due in spring, 2007. Cheney has not responded to any media requests for interviews and neither she nor Poe have stated how the child was conceived.

The statement did say that she and Poe plan to raise the child together. The mothers-to-be live in Virginia, which, has some of the most restrictive anti-gay laws in the country.

Cheney has been criticized for not taking a firmer stand against the anti-gay rhetoric of President George Bush’s administration. Bush told People magazine he’s happy for the couple.

Cheney, who long dodged the media, finally granted some interviews to coincide with the release of her autobiography, “Now It’s My Turn: a Daughter’s Chronicle of Political Life,” in May.

Cheney was reportedly paid a cool $1 million for the tome, which tanked at bookstores, selling just a few thousand copies according to Nielsen Bookscan.