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Judge keeps gay marriages in California on hold

Written by ECWR Web
Thursday, 12 August 2010 13:19
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By PAUL ELIAS (AP)
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge on Thursday put gay marriages on hold for at least another six days in California, raising hopes among same-sex couples that they soon will be able to tie the knot after years of agonizing delays.

Judge Vaughn Walker gave opponents of same-sex weddings until Aug. 18 at 5 p.m. to get a ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on whether gay marriage should resume. Gay marriages could happen at that point or be put off indefinitely depending on how the court rules.

Walker struck down the state’s voter-approved gay marriage ban last week in a case many believe is destined for the Supreme Court.

Dozens of gay marriage supporters who had gathered outside San Francisco’s City Hall, a block from the federal courthouse, erupted in cheers when the decision came out. The crowd included a handful of same-sex couples who had arrived early Thursday morning to fill out marriage license applications in hopes that the judge would allow nuptials to commence immediately.

Teresa Rowe, 31, and her partner, Kristin Orbin, 31, said they were still happy with the decision even though the ceremony didn’t happen.

“It’s sad that we have to wait a little longer, but it’s been six years,” Rowe said.

In his original ruling, Walker moved to suspend gay weddings until he could consider arguments from both sides on whether the marriages should be allowed during an appeal of his ruling. He now says gay marriage should resume, but he gave conservatives the extra time to get the appeals court to weigh in.

Charles J. Cooper, lead counsel for the Proposition 8 supporters, said his legal team intends to ask the appeals court to immediately impose a stay of Walker’s ruling, a move that would halt gay marriages while the case is pending before the 9th Circuit.

California voters passed Proposition 8 as a state constitutional amendment in November 2008, five months after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex unions and an estimated 18,000 same-sex couples already had tied the knot.

Three people protested among the crowd to oppose Walker’s ruling Thursday.

“It’s a really sad day for Californians, for families, for our future and for voters that a federal judge has trampled on the civil rights of voters,” said Luke Otterstad, 24, of Sacramento.
Lawyers for gay couples, California Gov. Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown filed legal motions Friday asking that same-sex marriages be allowed to resume immediately.
Walker said on Thursday that ban proponents didn’t convince him that anyone would be harmed by allowing same-sex marriages to resume.

“The evidence at trial showed, however, that Proposition 8 harms the state of California,” Walker said.

Walker also turned aside arguments that marriages performed now could be thrown into legal chaos if Proposition 8 is later upheld by an appeals court.

But Walker said such weddings would appear to be legal even if the ban is later reinstated. He pointed to the 18,000 same-sex couples who married legally in the five months that gay marriage was legal in California as proof.

Walker also said that no one can claim harm by allowing same-sex weddings to go forward, but banning them harms gays.

Finally, Walker said it also appears doubtful that the opponents of the ban have any right to appeal his decision striking down a state law that he said should have been defended by either Gov. Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Brown.

Schwarzenegger and Brown each last week urged Walker to allow same-sex marriages to resume immediately and its unlikely they will join the appeal of Proposition 8.
“I am pleased to see Judge Walker lift his stay and provide all Californians the liberties I believe everyone deserves,” Schwarzenegger said after the ruling.

The case now goes before a special “motions panel” of three judges at the appeals court, the largest and busiest federal appeals court in the nation with jurisdiction over nine western states.

The panel consists of two judges appointed by Democrats and a third by a Republican.
President Ronald Reagan appointed Judge Edward Leavy to the appeals court in 1987. Leavy, who is semi-retired, has served as judge in the state and federal courts in Oregon since 1957.
President Bill Clinton nominated Judge Michael Daly Hawkins to the court in 1994 and Judge Sidney Thomas in 1995.

Hawkins, based in Phoenix, served as Arizona’s U.S. Attorney under President Jimmy Carter and also worked as a special prosecutor for the Navajo Nation from 1985 to 1989.

Thomas, who keeps his chambers in Bozeman, Mont., made President Obama’s short list to fill the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy that was filled last week by Elena Kagan.

A new three-judge panel will be chosen sometime next year to decide the appeal. Lawyers for both sides have been ordered to file their legal arguments by the end of the year.

 

Poll finds Majority in California support gay marriage;

Written by ECWR Web
Sunday, 08 August 2010 01:19
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Los Angeles Times

April 6, 2010

Less than two years after Californians approved a ban on gay marriage, a new poll found that more residents support same-sex unions than oppose them.

A poll from the Public Policy Institute of California released in March found respondents backing gay marriage 50% to 45%. And a Times/USC poll last November found a 51%-to-43% division on the issue.
The poll shows Democrats and liberals supporting same-sex marriage by large margins and Republicans and conservatives opposing it by equally lopsided margins. There is also a huge variation by age, with registered voters younger than 30 supporting same-sex marriage by roughly 3 to 1, while a majority of those 64 and older were opposed.

The poll was conducted for The Times and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences by two polling firms, the Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and the Republican firm American Viewpoint.

The People have voted twice on this issue in California to define marriage as between a man and a woman. In fact, We the People, have never voted to allow same sex marriage. The only states that allow it were either through Judicial orders or Legislative mandates. Put the issue to the vote and The Will of People is clear.

Angie wrote: Marriage is a not a “rights” issue…I’m so tired of gays thinking and convincing themselves that this is about rights!! Its not…and YES a MAJORITY of AMERICANS not just Californians do not support gay marriage…what you do is your business, you will be judged as we all will – but do not infringe on what the definition of Marriage is just because you want people to accept you for what you do!! Sorry….as long as you push we will continue to pull. But, polls like this are part of the liberal media machine…

Oh suuuuuure wrote: Riiiiiiight. Funny, first I heard about the ‘poll.’ I didn’t see it to put my two cents in. This is a liberal publication supporting a liberal cause. Anybody can make up a poll to ‘prove’ their point of view but this ‘issue’ has passed TWICE in this state by voting of the public to define marraige between a man and a woman. Now millions of dollars has been wasted for this issue. How long we gonna keep wasting money? Until the crying liberals get their way…

Alex wrote: I fully support gay marriage!!! and the tide is shifting, 50 years ago it was also the “will of the people” to ban inter racial marriage, but since then things have changed. Europe has already said all European countries will allow gay marriage within ten years, so far we have Spain, Sweden, Portugal, Norway that recognize gay marriage and scores more have civil unions like France, Germany, Brazil, UK etc. USA is next, they took long enough, but at least they recognize that marriage is a right and gays should therefore get it.

Gay marriage is coming to a town near you! Coming soon.

Nancy wrote: I guess I just don’t get it. I am in a happy, heterosexual relationship that is leading to marriage. I am religious – Babtist in my upbringing, in fact. Yet I simply cannot figure out how and why the marriage of a gay couple would threaten my partner and me in any way. I know of no divorces that were caused by some gay couple somewhere.

The arguments against gay marriage are arbitrary and completely irrational. It’s time to get on to far more important issues, like education, the economy and the environment. I believe the polls and seriously doubt that it’s some sort of liberal plot to convert everyone to gayness. Come on, folks, get a grip.

An ironic story – someone very close to me who is against gay marriage is in a mixed-race relationship. It wasn’t that long ago that her partner, a black man, would have been lynched for being with a white woman. The message: we who believe in equal rights shall overcome. And there’s a lot of hypocrisy in this whole issue.

Hang in there, my gay friends. We shall indeed overcome.
Our readers had a lot to say. We can’t include all the comments, but you can read more here. We want to hear from you. What are your thoughts on the poll? Do you believe it’s an accurate portrayal of how Californians feel about gay marriage now?

– Gerrick D. Kennedy (Follow me on Twitter @GerrickKennedy)

Photo: Joni Boettcher, left, kisses roommate Tika Shenghur during a protest march along Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood in November 2008. Credit: Kevork Djansezian / Associated Press

 

Gay Rights Movement Becoming More Confrontational with Religious Right

Written by ECWR Web
Sunday, 08 August 2010 01:18
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Voice of OC
Sun Jun 20, 2010.
ADAM ELMAHREK


Monday, June 21, 2010 | As religious activists prepare a conference this week in Irvine aimed at praying away homosexuality, gay rights activists are confronting the gathering on several fronts, saying its message doesn’t lead to understanding and instead fuels hate.


Unlike past decades, gay rights activists say they increasingly are fighting back against misperceptions that fly in the face of science and the U.S. Constitution.


It’s an extension of the gay civil rights movement, they said, which is confronting religious teachings that tend to marginalize members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.


Exodus International, the organization putting on the conference this week at Concordia University, promotes “freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ,” according to its website.


Jeff Buchanan, director of the Exodus Church Association, says the annual conferences are to “promote a biblical worldview” and to offer an alternative for gays and lesbians struggling with their identities.


Over the weekend, gay rights activists held a counter-conference in Irvine, broadcasting a different message — you can’t pray away the gay.


In the biblical sense, “exodus” means a journey of escape by a large group from oppression or a hostile environment — as in the story of the Israelites’ Exodus from slavery in Egypt.
But critics — including an Exodus co-founder — say Exodus International’s ideology leads to the hostile environment that gay rights activists have been trying for decades to unweave from the social fabric. They also say attempts to treat homosexuals as having a disease is dangerous and could lead to self-harm or suicide.


“It morphed into something very different than what we intended,” said Exodus co-founder Michael Bussee. “I think something very dangerous.”


Bussee left Exodus in 1979 — three years after he started the organization — when he became disillusioned with the idea that anybody, much less himself, could become “ex-gay.”
Bussee also has personal experience with the consequences of promoting ideas that give way to a social stigma against gays and lesbians. While Bussee was in his hometown in Riverside in 2002, he and a gay friend, Jeffrey Owens, were attacked and stabbed by men shouting “faggot” at him. Bussee was beaten and stabbed in the back, but he survived.
Owens died on the operating table.


“I think the guys that attacked me and killed my friend were taught that gays are going to hell and need to repent,” Bussee said.


Although “it’s not cool to be homophobic anymore,” as Bussee put it, hatred against gays and lesbians lingers in the U.S. — one Bussee says that shouldn’t be encouraged.
“When you repeat the message that gays are sinful, diseased and broken,” Bussee said, “when you keep repeating that message to people who already feel marginalized … it fuels violence against them.”


There were 11 hate crimes against gays and lesbians reported in Orange County in 2008, according to an Orange County Human Relations Commission hate crime report.
Karen Ocamb, in a piece for the Huffington Post, noticed a stark uptick in Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties in the number of hate crimes against gays and lesbians in 2008, which was the year Proposition 8 was on the ballot.


Proponents of Proposition 8 argued, among other things, that traditional marriage is threatened by gay marriage and that sex education in schools would be perverted with descriptions of homosexual acts.


With that kind of opinion prevalent on the airwaves, hate crimes against gays and lesbians in Los Angeles County rose by 33 incidents, according to the county’s Commission on Human Relations.


And in Santa Clara County, half of the violent crimes reported in 2008 were hate crimes against gays and lesbians — up from 15 percent the year before.


Gay rights activists say they’re winning the battle against homophobia in the U.S., but groups like Exodus International undermine that struggle. They say Exodus doesn’t understand the social harm its approach unleashes.


A history of anti-gay sentiment in Orange County offers one example. A 1978 California ballot initiative that would have banned gays and lesbians from working in public schools was proposed by John Briggs, who was a Republican state senator from Orange County.
A majority of statewide voters rejected it.


One worst-case scenario has recently manifested in Uganda, an African nation that not only criminalizes homosexual acts, but might also see a law passed that would impose the death penalty on people convicted of them.


The month before the introduction of the bill in early 2009, speakers at a workshop in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, made sweeping accusations against gays, saying that gay men had tendencies to molest children and that there was a gay agenda to destroy the marriage-based society.


That workshop featured, among other American evangelicals, Exodus board member Don Schmierer.


Exodus President Alan Chambers has since released a public apology for Schmierer’s involvement with the conference:
Criticism is easy to come by at Exodus. We are a large and diverse organization made up of many members. Our growth over the years has caused us to not always know what the hand or foot are doing, which sometimes causes us to look like we are “all butt.” That’s humanity for you, even Christian humanity.


Mainstream psychology shuns treatment of homosexuality as an illness, and the American Psychological Association says guideline No. 1 when giving psychotherapy to gays and lesbians is that “psychologists understand that homosexuality and bisexuality are not indicative of mental illness.”


Psychology professor Daniel Helminiak, who spoke at the counter-conference, says that engaging in behavior control to suppress homosexual feelings is psychologically damaging.
“Sexuality is a central part of what a person is,” Helminiak said. “Unless somebody makes peace with it — all other personal growth dead ends.”


And Chris Prevatt, an activist who has been involved with gay rights and HIV awareness causes since the mid-1980s, says the Exodus ideology gives gays and lesbians a hopeless view of life.
“They give these people they supposedly want to help two choices — change or be damned,” Prevatt said.
But Buchanan says there are no adverse psychological effects as a result of Exodus’ message or its methods. He says suppressing homosexual feelings is “no different than anyone that is trying to live up to biblical standards” and that the idea that sexual identity defines a person with that kind of totality is overblown.
“I am more than just my sexual identity, and I don’t see this as a strictly sexual identity issue,” Buchanan said.
Critics say that because the approach doesn’t work, leaders of groups like Exodus often turn out to be hypocrites.
Wayne Besen, a gay rights activist, caught John Paulk — former chairman of the board of Exodus International in North America — at a gay bar flirting with men. Besen snapped a photo of Paulk at the bar, and Exodus ended up firing Paulk.
Then there’s George Rekers — who sat on the board of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. Rekers was caught at an airport with a male prostitute he allegedly found on a male escort website.
Rekers’ excuse? He hired the man to help him with his luggage.
“George Rekers was an industrial-sized nail in their coffin,” Besen said.
Buchanan dismissed the actions of Rekers and Paulk, saying they were irrelevant to the cause.
“It does not discredit the experience of hundreds of thousands of men and women regarding our message,” Buchanan said.
Not all Christian denominations view gays through the Exodus International lens. Episcopalians, for example, have elected two openly gay bishops in the past seven years,
Bussee is a Christian, and so is Helminiak.
Reverend Paul Tellstrom of the Irvine United Congregational Church, which hosted the counter-conference, said Exodus’ conference mirrors prejudices still ingrained in American culture and has nothing to do with Scripture.
Tellstrom said his church has come a long way since its members hanged women during the Salem Witch Trials. He said a Congregational church was the first to ordain an African-American, Lemuel Haynes, as minister in 1785, and the first to ordain a woman as minister, Antoinette Brown, in 1853.
Tellstrom points to his church’s progressive interpretation of the Bible as proof that churches can change their positions on issues over time.
“When you look in retrospect, I think we’ve been right on the main issues of justice,” Tellstrom said.
Please contact Adam Elmahrek directly at aelmahrek@voiceofoc.org and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/adamelmahrek. And add your voice with a letter to the editor.