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Home > Blog > All > LGBT issues

LGBT issues

  • May 11, 2012

    The Cynical, Offensive Response to Obama’s Support of Marriage Equality

    by Jeremy Leaming

    Quickly after President Obama announced his support of marriage equality, the president’s knee-jerk detractors doused the moment with cynicism. The president, they said backed into the announcement or they snidely asked what’s the difference between a flip-flop and evolving.

    The response from the far right – Obama is a scourge, a menace to society, God is surely irked now – was overwrought and hardly surprising. The cynicism, however, was offensive for its insensitivity and cluelessness. Did the dunderhead crowd listen to the president’s comments or was it expressing a latent distaste for gay Americans or ignorance of the challenges lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender Americans face in a society where many are still bent on oppressing and marginalizing them.

    Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, argues that listening to Obama’s comments is, surprising as it may seem, helpful, writing, “Whatever your view of President Obama’s motives, or the legal consequences of his statement …, it is not in dispute that the words he spoke gave many Americans – including gay children and teenagers – the message that he had heard them, and that their experiences mattered so much that he’d changed his views – personal, political and legal.”

    Or as James Fallows, the longtime correspondent for the Atlantic, said:  

    I am aware that there are various slice-and-dice cynical assessments one could make of the president’s comments today. (Why did he take so long? Why did he back off the support he’d expressed in the 1990s? Might this be useful as a wedge issue in the election? It doesn’t have any immediate since it’s still up to the states. And so on.) But the fact remains that five minutes before his announcement, no one could be sure that he would take the step of staying that his personal views had changed. He did – and it was important, brave, potentially risky, and right. That should be noted It’s a significant day.

    More
    Tags:
    LGBT issues, Equality and Liberty, Amendment One, Dahlia Lithwick, gay marriage, James Fallows, marriage equality, North Carolina, President Obama, Same-sex marriage
  • May 10, 2012

    EEOC Affirms Expanded Definition of Sex Discrimination

    Guest Post

    By Lisa Mottet, Transgender Civil Rights Project Director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

    Though garnering less attention than North Carolina's disheartening constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and President Obama's monumental announcement to support same-sex marriage, another recent piece of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) news deserves significant attention.

    In what is accurately hailed as a game-changing decision for the LGBT community, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled in April (Macy v. Holder) that transgender people are protected by Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination in the workplace.

    The precedential decision involved Mia Macy, a transgender woman represented by Transgender Law Center who was all but officially hired by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) when, after she told them she is transgender, she was told the position had been cut due to funding. ATF actually hired someone else and Mia lost her home as a result of the lost job opportunity.

    When ATF discriminated against Mia she became part of the horrifying statistics on employment discrimination faced by transgender people. According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey: 26 percent lost a job for being transgender; 50 percent were harassed at work; and many others face humiliation, have their privacy breached, and are denied access to appropriate restrooms. Overall, 78 percent have experienced mistreatment, harassment, or discrimination on the job.

    More
    Tags:
    Administrative law, Civil rights, Other courts, LGBT issues, Constitutional Interpretation and Change, Economic, Workplace and Environment Regulation, Equality and Liberty, EEOC, Employment Discrimination, Employment Non-Discrimination Act, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Guest Post, Title VII, transgender
  • May 10, 2012

    Obama’s Support of Marriage Equality: Political Pressure Aside, a Powerful Moment Producing Change

    Guest Post

    By Paul M. Smith, Partner, Jenner & Block. Mr. Smith successfully challenged the constitutionality of sodomy laws in the landmark Supreme Court opinion, Lawrence v. Texas, and is a former chair of the ACS Board.

    It takes no great insight to say that President Obama’s announcement of support for equal marriage rights for same-sex couples reflected, in part, mounting political pressure on the president. As Adam Nagourney said in Thursday’s New York Times, the president “was at risk of seeming politically timid and calculating, standing at the sidelines while a large number of Americans – including members of  both parties – embraced gay marriage.”  In fact, it became clear the campaign had misjudged the politics of this issue. Experience was showing it was close to impossible for Mr. Obama to talk with core members of his base without facing the same awkward question over and over – when are you going to get done “evolving” on the issue of equal marriage rights?  That said, it does seem over the top for the Log Cabin Republicans to call the announcement “offensive and callous” on the same day when so many others, gay and straight, were inspired by the fact that a sitting president had moved so far toward advocating complete equality for LGBT citizens.

    The more interesting question is why the original decision to avoid this issue until after the election proved to be so wrong. After all, candidates avoid controversial issues all the time when voters and the press will allow it. The answer is in part that the issue of equal marriage rights is constantly being brought up this year as a result of referenda that will occur in four states in November (not to mention the vote just held in North Carolina) as well as the Prop 8 and DOMA lawsuits. 

    More
    Tags:
    LGBT issues, Equality and Liberty, DOMA, Guest Post, marriage equality, Paul M. Smith, President Obama, Prop 8, Same-sex marriage
  • May 9, 2012

    Obama Throws Support Behind Marriage Equality, Marking ‘Historic Turning Point’

    by Jeremy Leaming

    Although it may make little difference in states bent on barring same-sex marriage, President Obama made a historic announcement today on marriage equality, becoming as TPM notes the “first sitting president to come out in support of legal same-sex marriage.”

    President Obama told ABC News, “At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.” (Picture is linked to video excerpt of the president’s interview.)

    The president’s comments come on the heels of the North Carolina vote in favor of a constitutional ban on marriage equality, and Vice President Joe Biden’s recent statement that he is “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriage.

    The president defended his record of advancing equality, noting, “I’ve always been adamant that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally. And that’s why in addition to everything we’ve done in this administration, rolling back ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ so that outstanding Americans can serve our country, whether it’s no longer defending the Defense Against Marriage Act, which tried to federalize what historically has been state law, I’ve stood on the broader side of equality for the LGBT community.”

    But Obama said he “hesitated on gay marriage in part because I thought that civil unions would be sufficient,” by giving gay couples the many rights that legally married couples enjoy. The president added that he was “sensitive to the fact that for a lot of people the word ‘marriage’ was something that invoked very powerful traditions, religious beliefs, and so forth.”

    More
    Tags:
    LGBT issues, Equality and Liberty, Amendment One, Evan Wolfson, Freedom to Marry, marriage equaltiy, North Carolina, President Obama, Same-sex marriage, Vice President Joe Biden
  • May 9, 2012

    N.C. Swayed by Religious Right Tactics Embraces Discrimination

    by Jeremy Leaming

    The North Carolinians who voted to alter the state’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage were largely moved by fear-tactics fueled by far right religious groups bent on punishing lesbians and gay men. The vote also makes North Carolina, as The New York Times notes, the last state in the South to marginalize gay people with a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

    Until yesterday’s vote, a string of states had provided victories for marriage equality. (In February, Maryland joined seven other states and the District of Columbia in approving same-sex marriage.) North Carolinians, however, were moved by an ugly animus toward gay people. Not only did the state’s constitutional amendment ban same-sex marriage it is so vaguely worded that many commentators have argued that it would outlaw domestic partnerships or civil unions.

    A group of North Carolina family law professors warned voters about the scope of the antigay amendment.

    Maxine Eichner, a law professor at UNC School of Law, in a video focusing on the sweep of Amendment One, said, the amendment would “certainly ban civil unions, it would ban domestic partnerships at the state level, and it would also ban the domestic partner insurance benefits that a number of municipalities and counties currently provide to their employees.” (Eichner is author of an ACS Issue Brief on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, aimed at banning employers from discriminating against workers or potential employees based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.)

    The Daily Beast blogger Andrew Sullivan in a post dubbed “The Politics of Spite,” slammed the reach and impact of the vote:

    Remember how meretricious this assault on gay couples was. They already are banned by state law from marrying. Now their own state constitution bans them from any civil rights as couples whatsoever: no domestic partnerships, no civil unions, nothing. It’s an act of pure punishment of citizens who are gay, a deliberate psychological blow to their self-esteem, their sense of citizenship, their core equality as human beings. A 60 percent majority decided that 2 percent of their fellow citizens are and must remain inferior in law. When gay rights advocates seek recourse in the courts, is it so surprising?

    Sullivan noted the involvement of the so-called National Organization for Marriage, a Religious Right outfit that has spent boatloads of money and many years on demonizing gay people and promoting bigotry. The group claims it does not advacne bigotry, but instead protects "marriage and the faith communities that sustain it."

    President Obama, who has not embraced marriage equality, but whose administration has stopped defending the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court and ended the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” policy said he was “disappointed” in North Carolina’s vote. (DOMA is a Clinton-era federal law that discriminates against lesbians and gay men.) Later today, the president is expected to address gay marriage in an interview with ABC News, according The Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone.

    More
    Tags:
    Civil rights, LGBT issues, Equality and Liberty
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