Tag Archives: gay rights

Montana Still Trying to Legalize Gay Sex

by wqds234der Posted on February 20, 2013

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On Wednesday, by a 38 to 11 vote*, the Montana state Senate passed SB 107, a bill to “generally revise deviate sexual conduct laws.” Put another way: They voted to decriminalize homosexuality.

Although the 2002 Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas ruled that state laws prohibiting sodomy are unconstitutional, the effect has been slow to sink in. Montana is one of four states, along with Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, that still have laws on the books specifically outlawing gay sex. Ten more states—Idaho, Utah, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and (obviously) Florida—maintain a blanket prohibition on sodomy for persons of all sexual orientations.

The laws have stayed on the books partly because of institutional inertia; culling unenforceable laws isn’t exactly the most urgent issue facing cash-strapped states. But when advocates have generated legislative momentum to repeal the sodomy statutes, they’ve invariably been thwarted. As I reported in 2011, lawmakers in Texas have repeatedly sought to purge the state’s anti-sodomy law from the books without success. (It likely doesn’t help matters that GOP Gov. Rick Perry believes Lawrence was wrongly decided.) In 2012, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, also a Republican, formed an Office of the Repealer to delete unnecessary laws from the state books, but pointedly left out his state’s invalidated ban on sodomy.

This isn’t the only notable LGBT legislation up for consideration. Another bill before the legislature would extend the state’s anti-discrimination protections to gays and lesbians for the first time—a more substantive reform that advocates hope would serve as a bulwark against bullying.

But neither proposal stands much chance of becoming law in 2013. As the Billings Gazette notes, a bill to eliminate the sodomy statute passed the Senate in 2011 only to fail in the house. “We are expecting this bill to go to House judiciary, which is a very ideologically driven committee, and we expect it to die in that committee,” says Jamee Greer, a lobbyist for the Montana Human Rights Network, an LGBT equality group. “They’re not showing a lot of respect to the LGBT community and I don’t expect them to pass 107.”

*Among the 10 Republicans voting against it: This guy.

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Montana Still Trying to Legalize Gay Sex

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The 49ers’ Embarrassing Gay-Unfriendly Fumble

by oks23po Posted on February 1, 2013

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Remember all the excitement when the San Francisco 49ers became the first NFL team to make an “It Gets Better” video in support of bullied LGBT teens? Now the Niners are the first NFL team to have its “It Gets Better” video pulled from Dan Savage’s site.

What brought this on: In the same week that 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver said at Super Bowl media day that he “don’t do the gays, man,” and that gay players wouldn’t be welcomed in the locker room following news reports that effectively outed former Niners offensive lineman Kwame Harris, two more San Francisco players, Ahmad Brooks and Isaac Sopoaga, then denied any involvement with making the “It Gets Better” videoâ&#128;&#148;even after a reporter showed them the clip on an iPhone.

The 49ers issued a statement Wednesday separating the organization from Culliver’s comments. He apologizedâ&#128;&#148;but not before offending even more people by riffing on menstrual cycles in a since-deleted tweet. Some teammates and coaches have voiced their concerns; Seattle Seahawks punter Jon Ryan thinks the NFL should suspend Culliver.

Anyway, if you’re still on the fence about Super Bowl XLVII, here’s a helpful reminder: Brendon Ayanbadejo plays for the Ravens.

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The 49ers’ Embarrassing Gay-Unfriendly Fumble

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Boy Scouts May Allow Gay Members…Sort Of

by irj972ys Posted on January 29, 2013

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The Boy Scouts of America announced today that it will consider allowing local troops to decide whether to admit gay members, an unprecedented move that comes after months of online protests, lost funders, and scouts renouncing their memberships. But even if the organization rules next week to drop their longstanding ban on gay scoutmasters and scouts, packs would still be allowed to discriminate if they choose to. As BSA director of public relations Deron Smith explained in a statement, “The Boy Scouts would not, under any circumstances, dictate a position to units, members, or parents.”

Rich Ferraro, a spokesman for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), says that the announcement is “a big accomplishment,” as it’s “the first time the Boy Scouts have said it is publicly considering changing the ban.” But lifting the ban without prohibiting troops from discriminating might not go far enough, he adds. “We’re not going to rest until every gay young adult out there is able to safely participate.”

Nonetheless, since the Boy Scouts reaffirmed its ban on gay members last summer, the organization has seen at least four big funders pull or postpone their funding. Thousands of scouts have spoken out against the policy, and more than 1.2 million Americans have signed petitions against it, according to Scouts for Equality.

The Boy Scouts was also losing local leaders because of the policy. Just last week, pack 442 in Cloverly, Maryland was pressured by its regional council to take down an anti-discrimination statement or risk losing its charter. Theresa Phillips, the pack’s committee chair, told Mother Jones that after the pack was forced to take the statement down, she asked for her name to be removed from the charter. Her husband, a den leader, had renounced his Eagle Scout award months before. “My family loved participating in scouting, and I look forward to the day when we might once again be able to take part,” Jennifer Tyrrell, an Ohio mom who was forced to stop leading her son’s troop because she is gay, told GLAAD. Kate Brown, a former den leader in the Washington, DC area, says that she took her two sons out of the program after she saw what happened to Tyrrell.

Advocates are optimistic that if the Boy Scouts’ national leadership lifts the ban, troops like Brown’s, Tyrell’s, and Phillips’ will allow gay members and their families to openly participate. But just how many gay-friendly troops might emerge if the ban is rolled back? According to CNN, 70 percent of Scout troops are affiliated with a church or religious group, and the Catholic and Mormon churches are some of the Scouts’ biggest backers. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that 52 percent of Americans are against having openly gay adults serve as Boy Scout leaders. The conservative Family Research Council is encouraging scouts to “stand strong,” asserting that rolling back the antigay policy “would be devastating to an organization that has prided itself on the development of character in boys.”

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Boy Scouts May Allow Gay Members…Sort Of

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Boy Scouts Threaten to Kick Out Troop For Supporting Gay Members

by rikkiqlyons Posted on January 25, 2013

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Prayitno, Flickr

The Boy Scouts council in charge of overseeing scout programs in the Washington, DC-area is threatening to kick out a Maryland troop for posting a statement on its website declaring it won’t discriminate against gay scouts. The troop has to decide by tomorrow whether to remove the statement.

In September, the families of Pack 442, which is based in Cloverly, Maryland (a small town less than 20 miles from the nation’s capital), anonymously voted and overwhelmingly approved to adopt a non-discrimination statement. According to Theresa Phillips, committee chair of Pack 442, the pack wanted Boy Scouts of America to know “we will not stand for the discrimination of homosexual minors or adults whatsoever.” Here’s the sentence causing the controversy:

Not long after the statement was posted, the National Capital Area Council (NCAC), one of the bigger local councils of the Boy Scouts of America, asked the pack to strike it from the website. “At first they said they would “allow” us to leave it up based on our right to freedom of speech. Now they are doing a 180 and basically asking us to either conform to BSA’s discriminatory policy or get out,” says Phillips.

Les Baron, CEO and Scout Executive of NCAC, confirms to Mother Jones that if the pack doesn’t erase the declaration, “they will not be recognized as an organization, although that’s our last resort.” That means that the troop will lose access to member insurance, rank badges, and scout camps. The only problem with the statement, Baron acknowledges, is the reference to sexual orientation. “That’s a message that’s against our policy, and we don’t want it continue to be out in our community,” Baron says.

In July 2012, the Boy Scouts reaffirmed its ban on gay scouts and scoutmasters, and the organization has been losing financial backers as a result. This isn’t the first time the organization has threatened to kick out a troop for welcoming gay members. In 2003, scouts in Sebastopol, California, lost their charter for refusing to drop a similar statement. In 2012 in Ottawa Hills, Ohio and Redlands, California, families were forced to choose between accepting gay members and retaining membership.

“To think that the Boy Scouts would rather cast out elementary school children than accept a parent-approved policy allowing gay children and parents to participate is just unconscionable,” Herndon Graddick, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, tells Mother Jones. “How many young Scouts is the BSA willing to sacrifice in order to preserve its harmful and discriminatory policies? This despicable act of bullying and intimidation is yet another reminder that the BSA is out of touch with its members and the American public at large.”

Baron says that “we’re working through our differences with the pack right now.” Pack 442’s website is hosting an online poll, open to the public but intended for pack families, on whether it should remove the non-discrimination statement. It must decide whether to apply for membership by January 26, so it is closing the poll at 8 PM on Friday. Phillips says the pack has not determined yet whether it will take it down, and is waiting for the poll to determine “how families feel on this matter.“ According to Pack 442’s website, if they do decide to remove it, they plan to return to a “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy.

“Clearly the Council’s threat reflects a fear that Boy Scouts of America will crack down on NCAC, which has a lot on the line,” says Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout raised by two lesbian mothers, and founder of Scouts for Equality. “It’s unfortunate and disappointing that they’re bowing to this pressure instead of opposing the ban and being brave, as Scouts swear to do every time they recite the Scout Law.”

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Boy Scouts Threaten to Kick Out Troop For Supporting Gay Members

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Boy Scouts Losing Big Funders Over Anti-Gay Policy

by HarralGeidl697 Posted on January 23, 2013

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The Boy Scouts of America teach young men how to build fires, pitch tents, weave camping chairs, and “be prepared”—unless your son happens to be gay. But the Boy Scouts long-standing policy of banning “open or avowed homosexuals” is starting to cost it some major financial backers: In the last six months, companies including UPS, United Way, the Merck Company Foundation and the Intel Foundation have announced they will drop or postpone funding for the Boy Scouts. Verizon Communications could be next: Over 70,000 people have signed a petition asking the corporation to stop funding the Scouts over their discriminatory policies.

“We more than understand how much value the Scouting program offers to our Nation and its youth,” Brad Hankins, a campaign director for Scouts for Equality, the organization behind the Verizon petition and others, tells Mother Jones. “However, we feel that over the long term the damage the ban has caused to Scouting’s perception in our changing cultural climate is much greater than a temporary loss of funds.”

Since at least the late 1970s, the Boy Scouts executive leadership has discriminated against gay members. In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that forcing the organization to accept gay members would violate its rights under the First Amendment, and the Boy Scouts reaffirmed their ban on gay scouts and scoutmasters in 2012. Since then, hundreds of Scouts have returned their pins in protest, and the Boy Scouts anti-gay stance has even outlasted the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy.

Hankins says it’s hard to say how much money the Boy Scouts have lost from donors since the petitions began, because the “information isn’t immediately disclosed.” However, according to The American Independent, in the 2009 tax year, the biggest donor to the Boy Scouts was the Intel Foundation, who donated nearly $700,000. Intel announced in September it will stop funding Scout troops that adhere to the ban, and UPS followed suit (Scouts for Equality ran petitions against both companies.)

Intel, UPS, and other companies have recently stopped funding the Boy Scouts. The American Independent

Verizon gave at least $300,000 to the Boy Scouts in 2009, according to The American Independent, and Scouts for Equality claims that Verizon’s donations conflict with its policy of not funding organizations that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Harry J. Mitchell, a spokesman for Verizon, told Mother Jones that the company “does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation” and they expect “all of its grant recipients to comply with all applicable laws.”

But that won’t stop customers from boycotting the company. “Our family uses Verizon: each of our three sons included, one of which is gay. Two of them are Eagle Scouts and one is 13 and is a Life Scout. We fully support a full financial boycott,” writes Christie Draper, from Aliso Viejo, California. “Give the money to the Girl Scouts instead.”

The Boy Scouts did not respond to request for comment.

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Boy Scouts Losing Big Funders Over Anti-Gay Policy

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Chris Kluwe Won’t Turn You Into a Lustful Cockmonster

by biglermyrta910 Posted on January 8, 2013

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In a corporate sports world dominated by controversy-averse players giving boilerplate non-answers, Chris Kluwe is a glimmering sparklepony of candor. The Minnesota Vikings punter is best known for his now-infamous letter to a same-sex-marriage opponent in the Maryland General Assembly, assuring Delegate Everett C. Burns Jr. that gay people “won’t turn you into a lustful cockmonster.”

Kluwe’s devastating takedown, posted on the Gawker sports blog Deadspin in September, generated 2.3 million pageviews and launched the 31-year-old into a new stratosphere of visibility. So much for the stereotypically lonely kicker: Kluwe now has nearly 150,000 Twitter followers (his handle, @ChrisWarcraft, is a nod to his gaming habit) and was even named Salon‘s Sexiest Man of the Year. And be sure to catch him tonight (!) on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report. (We’ll add the video to this post once it’s available.)

While Kluwe’s marriage diatribe prompted some homophobic trolling, he says the response to it and his other outspoken opinions on climate change, corporate responsibility, and “stupidity in general” has been overwhlemingly positive, even in hostile territory. “We were at Green Bay,” he says, recalling pregame warm-ups in a nearly empty Lambeau Field. “All of a sudden I hear from the stands: ‘Chris Kluwe, I love your politics!'”

Yet even internet celebs aren’t immune to their boss’ grumbling: In mid-December, the Vikings’ special-teams coach complained that the punter was becoming a distraction. Asked if he’d approached Kluwe, the coach responded, “Nah. He don’t listen.”

Mother Jones: What first prompted you to dive into the marriage-equality debate?

Chris Kluwe: Minnesotans for Equality. One of the people involved with them had been following me for a while on Twitter and figured I would help them out in terms of defeating the amendment, and so I said, “Yeah, that sounds like a great thing.” There’s no reason to enshrine discrimination into a state constitution.

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Chris Kluwe Won’t Turn You Into a Lustful Cockmonster

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