Councilman Ritchie Torres broke out to an early lead Tuesday night in the hotly contested battle for an open Bronx congressional seat, as the openly gay city lawmaker appeared to turn away a challenge from one of New York’s most high-profile conservative politicians.
Torres led the crowded field to replace retiring Rep. Jose Serrano (D-Bronx) with 30 percent of the votes cast during early voting and Primary Day, according to returns from 61 percent of precincts. Assemblyman Michael Blake (D-The Bronx) was in second place with 18 percent.
Councilman Ruben Diaz Sr., a conservative firebrand and minister best known for making homophobic statements, trailed in third place with just 15 percent of the vote.
The final result won’t be official for another week as most people voted by absentee ballot. Still, this is very encouraging. As you can see in the clip below, Diaz was in rather a foul mood last night. Bronx United, a coalition formed to oppose Diaz, has already declared him the loser, snarkily using Diaz’s standard “you should know” opening to all of his press releases.
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The four justices appointed by Democratic presidents were joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Republican appointee. Within two years, more than 150,000 same-sex couples got married. According to U.S. Census estimates, there are more than 500,000 married same-sex couples in the country.
The impact of those unions has been more than cultural. Same-sex weddings have generated more than $3 billion over the past five years, the Williams Institute study estimates, which also said the weddings have generated some $244 million in state and local taxes and created nearly 50,000 jobs.
The 5-4 Supreme Court ruling has been pelted by countless other minor challenges, but so far, none has seriously threatened it. In fact, earlier this month the high court ruled in Bostick v. Clayton County that employers couldn’t fire workers simply for being gay or transgendered.
In 1996, only 27 percent of Americans supported the freedom to marry for same-sex couples. By 2015, decades of activism, visibility, and engagement had grown that to a 63 percent majority.
Gallup confirmed this month that support has continued to grow and broaden. Today at least two-thirds of all Americans are in favor of marriage equality, including 83 percent of Democrats, 71 percent of independents, and even a 49 percent plurality of Republicans.
As recently as 1996, at the time of the world’s first-ever freedom to marry victory in Hawaii, there were zero states, zero countries in the world, where loving and committed same-sex couples could marry. As of last month’s win in Costa Rica, there are now 29 freedom to marry countries, representing more than 1.1 billion people.
In July 2013, Jim Obergefell married his longtime partner in love, John Arthur, who was gravely ill with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Because Ohio at the time didn’t allow same-sex unions, the couple flew to Maryland to exchange vows.
Arthur died of the disease three months later, and Obergefell sued to be listed on the death certificate as Arthur’s husband. That case was one of six argued together before the high court. Obergefell was the lead plaintiff, meaning the case bore his name, though he was joined by dozens of other plaintiffs.
The whirlwind of that suit meant Obergefell was never alone with his thoughts. But as the focus has shifted to other minority groups, he’s had time to learn that, contrary to the self-help books, grief does not come in clean stages. “That implies it’s the same for every person, and it isn’t,” he said. “I’m still grieving, I’m still processing.”
Five years ago in June, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to strike down all same-sex marriage bans. Of the four cases, [Michigan Attorney General Dana] Nessel asserts, DeBoer was most significant, which is why it rankles her that the landmark is known as Obergefell v. Hodgesbecause of a quirk in the order in which the appeals were filed. “To my dying day, this will make me bitter,” she says.
“We were the only case that was truly just about the right to marry your same-sex partner. We were the only ones who tried the case. We put in more in terms of blood, sweat, and tears than anybody else. April and Jayne should have been synonymous with that case. If you read the opinion, the justices mostly talk about April and Jayne’s case. Ultimately, from an historical perspective, honestly, April and Jayne got robbed.”
The US Marine Corps has released a statement celebrating Pride month and a decade since the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, and one officer is on a mission to shut down homophobes who disagree.
The Marine Corps released a statement in support of its LGBT+ members at the beginning of Pride month, which said: “During [Pride] month, we take the opportunity to recognise our LGBT service members and reflect upon the past.
“We celebrate their successes and recognise the contributions they have brought to our Corps.
“This year we celebrate the ten year anniversary of the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ .”
It added: “Commanders and leaders are encouraged to take time to recognise the 2020 LGBT Pride Month, and promote participation in observance events throughout their local communities.”
However, the statement went largely unnoticed until it was posted on Facebook by the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in Parris Island, South Carolina.
The post quickly amassed more than 2,000 comments, and while a lot were supportive, many others were severely offended by the celebration of LGBT+ marines.
This year we celebrate the ten year anniversary of the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”. The Marine Corps takes pride in…
One man wrote: “Never thought I’d see this BS…I’m all for doing your own thing, but for it to be celebrated… wtf, over!”
Luckily, Chief Warrant Officer (CWO) Bobby Yarbrough, who conducts communication, strategy and operations for the Marine Corps, was there to shut down the homophobes.
In a response, Yarbrough wrote: “We also celebrate Black History Month, Asian Pacific Heritage Month, Month of the Military Child, etc. Should we stop celebrating those too?”
Another anti-LGBT+ commenter wrote: “What in the heck is this about? Is this what the Corps is coming to? A social experiment?”
Yarbrough swooped in again, responding: “Nope. We still fight wars. Some of our warfighters are LGBT. We like them to know we support them.”
When another commented that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell worked just fine”, the CWO hit back: “I would imagine all the LGBT [people] that was kicked out of service would disagree. No heterosexuals were kicked out due to sexuality.
“The policy was terrible and needed to go away.”
A more positive commenter told Yarbrough: “Sir, may I please have your command photo so I may turn it into a candle and place next to my Joe Exotic one?
What’s so bad about a rainbow burrito? If you’ve been following the rift in the L.G.B.T.Q. movement over the corporate embrace of Pride, the question may have crossed your mind. Last June, the West Village was a labyrinth of rainbows, with every bank branch and Shake Shack festooned with messaging for Pride Month. Chipotle sold limited-edition Pride merch, including tank tops with a rainbow burrito and the slogan “¿Homo Estas?” The hoopla—always big, but this time bigger—marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising and culminated in the annual NYC Pride March, which drew some five million revellers and boasted sponsors including MasterCard, Macy’s, Uber, and Diet Coke.
Amid the festivities, a group of activists staged an alternative: the inaugural Queer Liberation March—a smaller, rawer, more radical cousin to the established parade. In spirit it was closer to the roots of the Pride March, which was originally called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, and began, in 1970, to mark the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots. The new march even re-created the original route, from Greenwich Village up to Central Park. There were no branded floats, no police contingent, no corporate funding. “One of our mottoes was ‘We’re here for queer liberation, not rainbow capitalism,’ ” one of the organizers, Natalie James, said recently. The group is now planning a second annual march, which will take place Sunday, while the main Pride March has been cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic—meaning that, by happenstance, the upstart march has usurped the Goliath in the space of a year, just in time to draw on a renewed spirit of spontaneous protest.
The critique that Pride marches have become corporatized and depoliticized has been building for years, part of a perennial tension in the L.G.B.T.Q. movement between assimilation and radicalism. “A lot of longtime activists had just stopped going to Pride,” another organizer, Jay W. Walker, said. “They were kind of sickened by it.” He brought up the concept of pinkwashing, in which “corporate bad actors” use a show of acceptance to buy good will while distracting from less savory practices. For instance, Walker mentioned Wells Fargo, which has had floats in Pride marches for years while maintaining (until recently) financial ties with the National Rifle Association, which opposed gun-control measures after the Pulse night-club shooting, in 2016. “A big part of our issue with the corporations is they’re not consistent in their support for us throughout the year,” Francesca Barjon, the group’s twenty-four-year-old social-media organizer, said. “It’s about being able to profit off of us in June.”
Cathy Renna, a NYC Pride spokesperson, countered, “We’re so far past that with these corporations. They know they gotta do better than that. This is not about waving a rainbow flag in June in your window.” The Chipotle merch, for example, benefitted the Trevor Project, which provides services to queer youth. “It’s really easy for Pride to be a target, because Pride is something that everybody has some sense of ownership in,” Renna said, adding, of the breakout march, “If we’re going to continue to make the kind of progress that we want to make, I think it’s important that we not—I’m trying to think of a way to say this that’s family-friendly—crap on each other, because some people like to do things differently.”
The Queer Liberation March had its roots in the 2017 Pride March, which featured the disruptive début of the Resistance Contingent, a consortium of activist groups that formed in response to the Trump Administration. It included groups such as Gays Against Guns, which staged a die-in, and Hoods4Justice, which formed a blockade to prevent the N.Y.P.D. marching band from joining the parade, with banners reading “There are no queer friendly cops” and “Decolonize pride.” A dozen people were arrested. During the planning for the Pride March in 2018, Heritage of Pride, the organization that produces New York’s Pride events, tried “dissolving” the Resistance Contingent, James said. It was eventually reinstated, but the activists were disillusioned with what the march had become. “We realized we all were very dissatisfied with the event itself, the degree of corporate floats, the corporatization, the bank sponsorship, as well as having a fully uniformed police contingent given a place of honor right at the front of the march,” James said. The N.Y.P.D. presence struck the activists as particularly ironic, since the Stonewall riots had been provoked by a police raid. After delivering a set of demands to H.O.P., the mayor, and the police commissioner and getting brushed off, the group, calling itself the Reclaim Pride Coalition, took on the “colossal task” of organizing its own march.
James, who is an organizer for the queer caucus of the Democratic Socialists of America, helped arrange the first meetings at the caucus’s space at the L.G.B.T. Center, in the West Village. One point of contention was whether to allow the Gay Officers Action League, or goal, to participate. “Eventually we came out on the side of the fact that the N.Y.P.D. as an institution, as a whole, is a racist one, and therefore having any representation of it wasn’t proper,” James said, though police officers were welcome to march as individuals, out of uniform. (Renna defended the presence of goal at the main march, saying, “It’s a free-speech march. If you’re going to let the Communists march, you’re going to let the police who are queer.”) “We wanted to get rid of the barricades, and we wanted certain police-free zones within the area,” James said. A subgroup negotiated with the N.Y.P.D. “We didn’t get a formal permit,” she said. “But we did get an assurance that they would not interfere with our march.”
The start time was set for 9:30 a.m. That morning, things did not start off promisingly. “We were there at the intersection, and there was just us,” Jon Carter, one of the marshals, recalled. “We looked around and we could see empty streets, and there was a real question about what the day would look like.” Then, after thirty-five minutes, there was an “If you build it, they will come” moment, as marchers materialized. (The group estimates that forty-five thousand people attended.) “We were very intentional about having trans people in the front,” Barjon said. It ended with a rally on the Great Lawn, with speakers who included the act up veteran Larry Kramer. Walker recalled, “Larry did his normal thing that he always does, which is to scream at queer people and go, ‘You’re not doing enough!’ ”
The group was busy planning a 2020 edition of the march when covid-19 struck. After New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, temporarily banned large gatherings, the Pride March and its rambunctious challenger both cancelled. The Reclaim Pride Coalition decided to hold a virtual event, called Livestream for Queer Liberation. (The group also protested the controversial field hospital that was set up in Central Park by Franklin Graham’s organization Samaritan’s Purse, which asked volunteers to sign a statement opposing same-sex marriage.) But the calculation changed in early June, after the killings of George Floyd and other black Americans by the police sparked a wave of mass protests. “There was unanimity that we needed to have a march,” Walker said. “And we needed to have it centered on the movement for black lives.”
With only weeks to plan, the march’s scrappy, D.I.Y. quality worked in its favor. “The simplicity of our approach to organizing marches and actions makes things very fluid and flexible, and we’re able to pivot in a way that a more complex plan wouldn’t allow us to,” Carter said. The main Pride March, which Carter called a “polished spectacle,” is still not happening this year. It’s as if the covid-19 meteor killed off a twelve-million-dollar dinosaur, and a smaller, more resourceful organism survived to fill the parade-size void. Nevertheless, the group has adapted to the new circumstances: it’s gathering masks and hand sanitizer and will still put material online for people who can’t take the health risk of attending in person. It isn’t seeking any type of police blessing, advertising only the starting point (Foley Square). Also, James said, “We have voted on a start time, 1 p.m., so for the queers that utterly took umbrage at our 9:30 start time last year, I’m sure they’ll be relieved.”
The group’s timing is apt. Outside Stonewall, there’s now a sign reading “pride is a riot!”
An activist in Russia has claimed that authorities in the notoriously anti-LGBT+ country have recognised his same-sex marriage through a legal loophole.
Same-sex marriage is not legal in Russia, and the country’s “gay propaganda” law prohibits the promotion of homosexuality.
But a legal loophole in the country’s family law has led to Russian authorities unintentionally recognising the marriage of Igor Kochetkov and Kir Fyodorov, The Moscow Times reports.
Because of the loophole, the Russian tax service was reportedly forced to grant Kochetkov a tax deduction on his husband’s behalf – a benefit commonly enjoyed by married couples.
A loophole in the Family Code of Russia forced the state to recognise their same-sex marriage.
On the third anniversary of the couple’s marriage in the United States, Kochetkov posted on Facebook about the tax service’s recognition of their marriage.
“Today is a beautiful day!” he wrote. “Exactly three years ago, Igor and I officially became husbands.
“But I wanted to tell you about something else,” he said.
Russia, in the face of its official institutions, recognised the same-sex marriage.
Kochetkov explained that he and his husband studied the country’s Family Code and found that, while it did not allow for same-sex marriages, it also did not prohibit them.
He said the country’s Family Code recognises marriages that took place abroad – which includes Kochetkov and his husband.
“No recognition procedure is required, you can simply start enjoying family rights on the basis of marriage documents,” he wrote.
The country granted them tax benefits without asking any questions.
The couple decided to put the loophole to the test to see if they could force the Russian government to recognise their marriage.
“At the end of last year Igor insured my life, after which we collected a package of documents and sent it to the tax to receive social deductible for the spouse.
“We were waiting for a refusal after which we could start suing for recognition of our marriage in Russia. And completely unexpectedly, the Federal Tax Service approved this deductible to us and has already transferred money.”
He added: “Which means that Russia, in the face of its official institutions, recognised the same-sex marriage.”
This is not the first time a same-sex couple has received legal recognition in Russia. In 2018, Yevgeny Voytsekhovsky and Pavel Stotsko had their marriage, which also took place abroad, recognised through the same legal loophole.
However, they were later forced to flee the country after anti-LGBT+ activists threatened them. They later vowed to never return to Russia.
The latest legally recognised union comes just a week before Russia will vote on a series of constitutional amendments which would allow Vladimir Putin to remain president until 2036 and could also see marriage defined as being a union between a man and a woman.
Lawmakers in the Central African country of Gabon just voted to decriminalise homosexuality, after making gay sex illegal just last year.
In 2019, Gabon, on the west coast of Central Africa, criminalised same-sex relations with a penalty of up to six months in prison as well as a fine of 5 million CFA francs (£6,393).
At the time, LGBT+ rights activists in Gabon said that the new law against homosexuality had “further sent the LGBT+ community underground and has created harassment”.
But, according to Reuters, lawmakers in the country’s lower house of parliament voted on Tuesday, June 23, to revise the 2019 law and decriminalise homosexuality. Forty-eight members of parliament backed the revision, while 24 voted against it and 25 abstained.
Sylvia Bongo Ondimba, the wife of Ali Bongo Ondimba, president of Gabon, wrote on Twitter: “Parliament is restoring a fundamental human right for its citizens: that of loving, freely, without being condemned.
“The republic defends respect for everyone’s privacy and remains one and indivisible beyond feelings.
Although the vote has been celebrated as a win for the LGBT+ community in Gabon, the country still has no legal protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and sexuality remain taboo.
One member of parliament who voted against legalising gay sex told Reuters: “Forty-eight lawmakers have shaken an entire nation and its customs and traditions.”
Gay sex is illegal in 33 out of 54 African countries, and many of the laws are remnants of European colonialism. Six have legalised it since 2012.
An incredible 90 per cent of people in the United States agree with the Supreme Court ruling banning workplace discrimination for LGBT+ people, according to a new poll.
Last week, the US Supreme Court ruled that LGBT+ people are entitled to protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace.
The surprise ruling extends sex-based employment discrimination protections to LGBT+ people in all 50 states.
And a new nationally representative poll of 1,001 adults in America has found that the vast majority of the public support the ruling.
The poll, which was conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), found that 9 in 10 adults (90 per cent) agreed that it should be illegal to fire people because of their sexual or gender identity.
The poll also found that 7 in 10 Republicans agree that discrimination against LGBT+ people in the workplace should be illegal.
However, Republicans are also less likely to believe that LGBT+ people, as well as Black and Hispanic people, face discrimination.
Elsewhere, pollsters found that 69 per cent of adults support laws that ban discrimination against lesbian, gay and bisexual people, while 68 per cent believe trans people should be legally protected from discrimination.
That figure is similar to the percentage of people who support laws banning discrimination based on race (71 per cent) and disability (76 per cent).
Meanwhile, 79 per cent of those surveyed believe trans people face at least some discrimination in the United States, while 74 per cent thought the same was true for lesbian, gay and bisexual people.
The public is shifting more quickly on these issues than the political and legal landscapes are.
The poll revealed that 49 per cent of Americans believe society has “not gone far enough in accepting people who are transgender”, up 10 percentage points from a 2017 poll.
Conversely, just 15 per cent said society has “gone too far” in accepting trans people, while 32 per cent said it “has been about right”.
The poll was conducted between June 16-21 through telephone interviews in English and Spanish.
“Most Americans – including most Republicans – oppose discrimination against people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender,” said KFF president Drew Altman.
“The public is shifting more quickly on these issues than the political and legal landscapes are.”
The ruling found that an employer who fires an LGBT+ employee because of their identity ‘defies the law’.
The poll comes just over a week after the Supreme Court delivered its surprise ruling.
In the court’s 6-3 ruling, conservative justice Neil Gorusch said: “It is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.
“We do not hesitate to recognise today a necessary consequence of that legislative choice: An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law,” he said.
Trump’s Department of Justice had sought to assert that the Title VII provisions should only apply based on the “ordinary meaning of sex” as male or female, not covering sexual orientation or gender identity.
Effective July 1, California will restrict state-funded travel to Idaho as a result of two anti-trans bills signed into law despite “significant concerns” from that state’s attorney general, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s office said in a press release.
Idaho Governor Brad Little signed House Bills 500 and 509 into law on March 30, 2020.
“U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced in a statement Friday the Trump administration would intercede in the lawsuit against the Idaho law, known as House Bill 500 and the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, to protect the statute on the basis that “allowing biological males to compete in all-female sports is fundamentally unfair to female athletes.”
“Under the Constitution, the Equal Protection Clause allows Idaho to recognize the physiological differences between the biological sexes in athletics,” Barr said. “Because of these differences, the Fairness Act’s limiting of certain athletic teams to biological females provides equal protection. This limitation is based on the same exact interest that allows the creation of sex-specific athletic teams in the first place — namely, the goal of ensuring that biological females have equal athletic opportunities.”
“The Justice Department takes this position even though the Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County determined anti-transgender discrimination is a form of discrimination, thus prohibited in employment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The logic of the decision applies to all laws against sex discrimination, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in schools and requires schools to offer equal opportunities boys and girls in athletics.”
Restrictions on California state-funded travel resulting from another state’s anti-LGBTQ laws has been in place since 2016.
House Bill 500 repeals protections that enabled transgender students to compete on athletic teams consistent with their gender identity and House Bill 509 prohibits the amendment of birth certificates to be consistent with gender identity, says the release.
“Where states legislate discrimination, California unambiguously speaks out,” said Becerra.“The State of Idaho has taken drastic steps to undermine the rights of the transgender community, preventing people from playing sports in school or having documentation that reflects their identity. Let’s not beat around the bush: these laws are plain and simple discrimination. That’s why Idaho joins the list of AB 1887 discriminating states.”
The press release notes:
“Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden had raised concerns about the bills’ compliance with equal protection and privacy laws. House Bill 500, among other things, runs contrary to existing guidance by the National Collegiate Athletic Association that encourages equal opportunity for transgender students to participate in athletics. Dubiously named the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” House Bill 500 overrules existing local school policies in Idaho and directly works to ban transgender girls and women from school sports. Similarly, House Bill 509 not only authorizes but actually requires discrimination by prohibiting the amendment of birth certificates consistent with gender identity, a right previously recognized by an Idaho federal court on equal protection grounds. The laws are currently set to go into effect in Idaho on July 1, 2020.
AB 1887, which took effect beginning in 2017, restricts state-funded travel to states with laws that authorize or require discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. AB 1887’s restriction on using state funds for travel applies to California state agencies, departments, boards, authorities, and commissions, including an agency, department, board, authority, or commission of the University of California, the Board of Regents of the University of California, and the California State University. Each applicable agency is responsible for consulting the AB 1887 list created by the California Department of Justice to comply with the travel and funding restrictions imposed by the law.
For additional information on AB 1887, including the list of states subject to its provisions, visit: www.oag.ca.gov/ab1887.’