The California legislature passed a bill that would allow organ transplants between HIV-positive donors and HIV-positive recipients. Senate Bill (SB) 1408, authored by Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) and co-sponsored by Equality California, AIDS Project Los Angeles, the Los Angeles LGBT Center, and Positive Women’s Network-USA, would bring state law in line with federal law. The bill passed both the Assembly and the Senate unanimously.
“These lifesaving surgeries have been proven safe and are now allowable under federal law,” said Sen. Allen. “There is no reason for state law to maintain an antiquated prohibition on organ donation by HIV-positive persons. By expanding the pool of organ donors, we will shorten the time for all persons on the organ donor waiting lists, and save lives in the process.”
The number of individuals in need of organ transplants far exceeds the availability of healthy organs. Yet California law criminalizes transplantation of organs and tissue from an HIV-positive donor to an HIV-positive recipient. Allowing the donation HIV-positive organs and tissue would save the lives of hundreds of HIV-positive patients each year, and shorten the waiting list for individuals awaiting transplants.
“It should not be a crime to save someone’s life, yet current law criminalizes the donation of HIV-positive organs to HIV-positive recipients,” said Rick Zbur, executive director of Equality California. “There are currently HIV-positive people in California waiting desperately for an organ transplant. This is the first step in what we hope will be a number of measures to modernize California’s antiquated laws that harm and stigmatize people living with HIV. We urge Governor Brown to sign SB 1408 swiftly.”
SB 1408 is a first step towards modernizing a number of California laws that stigmatize people living with HIV by treating HIV differently than other communicable diseases. Most of these statues were enacted in the late 1980s, at a time of public panic about HIV and its transmission. Societal and medical understanding of the disease has since greatly improved, and effective treatments minimize transmission and give people living with HIV a normal lifespan. However, people living with HIV still can face felony charges, even when no real risk of transmission is present.
Equality California is working with Californians for HIV Criminalization Reform (CHCR), a coalition dedicated to modernizing California’s HIV criminal laws.
SB 1408 now goes on to the governor for his signature.
With an unemployment rate of 3.8 percent for April, the lowest level in Sonoma County in nine years, desperate job recruiters are turning to extreme measures.
How extreme? A group of Calistoga employers is holding a job fair in Santa Rosa on Wednesday and offering a shuttle service to attract new hires from Sonoma County.
“We’re seeing a huge need to fill this workforce,” said Jessica Taylor, Job Link manager for the Sonoma County Human Services Department.
Joanne Sanders, founder of the recruitment firm Bolt Staffing in Sonoma, said the job market is the tightest it has been since the dotcom boom, right after the turn of the millennium.
“It’s a great job market right now,” Sanders said. “Companies have to pay more to get the talent we need.”
Service workers in the hospitality sector are in constant demand in Sonoma County, Sanders added.
Some service jobs can offer up to $14 per hour at some restaurants and hotels, given the labor demand along with the push by labor groups for a national living wage at $15 per hour.
Other in-demand areas where companies are looking for applicants include accounting, health care and education, Sanders said.
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A list of the recent positions filled by Bolt Staffing showed project manager at a fitness company in Sonoma County at $20 per hour; a staff accountant at a health care firm in Santa Rosa at $25 per hour; and a customer service representative at a medical firm in Marin County at $14 per hour.
“You are seeing this across the board,” she said.
The Calistoga event, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 2227 Capricorn Way, will feature 13 employers, mostly in the hospitality business. They will be offering many positions from $15 to $20 per hour, some with benefits. In the arms race to attract employees, every offering helps.
“We’re hoping to get people who are excited about this extra perk,” Taylor said of the shuttle.
The shuttle will have three stops in Santa Rosa and the rides will be subsidized by employers, said Chris Canning, executive director of the Calistoga Chamber of Commerce. More than 20 percent of Calistoga workers reside in Santa Rosa. Local governments are ramping up their hiring activity, too, Sanders said, many of which have rebounded after suffering cutbacks as a result of the recession and decreased tax revenue. For example, Bolt just recently placed an applicant in an administrative assistant position with a municipality within Sonoma County at $18 per hour.
Sanders is on the board of the Sonoma County Library Commission and noted that even the library system has been hiring lately.
Abdelbraki Mezin asked me over coffee last week if homophobia was dead in the United States.
“I mean, you’ve had marriage equality for almost a year, surely that’s enough time,” the Tunisian human rights defender said. His partner, Bouhdid Belhedi, laughed, adding, “Yes, much like winning the Nobel Peace Prize solved all of Tunisia’s human rights issues.”
Mezin and Belhedi are LGBT rights defenders in Tunisia. As members of Tunisia’s first organization working openly for LGBT rights, they have suffered attacks, death threats, and lost family relationships.
Criminalizing Sexuality
Homosexuality is illegal in Tunisia, punishable by up to three years in prison under Article 230 of the penal code. Introduced by the French during colonial rule, Article 230 criminalizes “sodomy” in the original French text, and “homosexual acts” in Arabic. It’s a wider net that applies to men and women.
In 2010, protests in Tunisia marked the start of revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa, and the country’s new democracy has been dubbed the “Arab Spring’s sole success story.” Its civil society is so revered that the country’s National Dialogue Quartet won the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for their contribution to building a “pluralistic” democracy post-revolution.
Tunisia also made headlines in 2015 when authorities legally registered Shams, the country’s first organization openly working for LGBT rights. Yet, despite the seemingly positive step, the government did nothing to amend the criminalization of homosexuality in the penal code. This means that human rights defenders (HRDs) promoting sexual rights and protecting LGBT survivors of attack, discrimination, and rape are working for the rights of people who — according to the law — have committed a crime.
Mariam Manai, a Tunisian LGBT rights defender, met with me during a break in the packed program of Chouftouhonna, a feminist art festival put on by Chouf Minorities in Tunis. Manai said that repealing Article 230 is “not just the most important step for protecting the community, but a critical step for HRDs.”
“If homosexuality is a crime, there’s no legal framework for the rights we defend,” she said. “If someone is attacked, we can’t report it. If someone needs medical care, they’re too scared to go to the hospital because they might be arrested. We are defending people who, according to the government, deserve no defense.”
Normalizing Attacks
HRDs in Tunisia say that Article 230 makes seeking justice for survivors of assault nearly impossible, and that police are often complicit in crimes against LGBT people. Mezin said that because homosexuality is a crime, survivors are treated as criminals and subjected to violent physical examinations to prove their “guilt.”
“The police are performing anal exams on male victims of homophobic attacks,” he said. “In front of other police officers, someone claiming to be a doctor puts on a glove and ‘proves’ the victim is guilty of sodomy. The police then ask for a confession and usually put the man in jail. Some victims have confidentially reported to us that in order to ensure he ‘failed’ the anal exam, police raped him in the van after his arrest and before the exam. This is torture, and a violation of international human rights and our own constitution. But because Article 230 exists, the police act with impunity against LGBT victims.”
HRDs are quick to point out that the penal code — and the police violence it seems to allow — is only one element of the problem. Belhedi said that local religious leaders are also contributing to a climate in which “normal Tunisians think homophobic violence is acceptable, and even deserved.”
Two weeks ago, three men attacked Belhedi on a busy street at nine in the morning.
“When the men insulted me and grabbed me, people just watched. When they started to beat me, people just watched. When the beating got brutal enough someone stepped in and the men ran away. Violence against LGBT people has been normalized, even called for, in our laws and in our mosques.”
He told ThinkProgress that in his home region of Hammamet, imams leading local prayers have called on followers to attack Tunisians “who act gay.” At least two mentioned Belhedi by name. He said that last year “Islamic extremists” came to his house and threatened his mother, telling her that her son’s LGBT advocacy was “against Islam.”
Yet, despite the strong social prejudices that put Bouhdid and other LGBT defenders at risk, he remains adamant that a legal change — repealing Article 230 — is the critical first step towards protection.
“We have proof in Tunisia that if you change a law, society changes with it — even if it contradicts Islamic tradition,” he said. “When polygamy, which is permissible in Islam, was criminalized, people said it was haram [forbidden] to contradict the Prophet. When [former President Habib] Bourguiba made adoption legal, which is haram in Islam, of course people fought it. But the law affects how people think about social issues. Today, adoption is socially acceptable, and polygamy is barely talked about.”
Woman spray paints a column during the Chouftohounna Feminist Art Festival in Tunis, 15 May 2016.
CREDIT: Erin Kilbride
Raising Tunisian Consciousness
“Individual protection — keeping our community alive — is the most effective thing we can do today,” said Manai, whose organization Without Restrictions helps survivors access legal assistance, medical care, and housing following a violent attack or family dispute. “But in the long run we need education. That’s the only way the attacks will end. We have such a problem with — a fear of — sexuality in Tunisian society. If you use words like gender, binary, or queer, people stare blankly. Even in LGBT spaces, people confuse trans, cross-dressing, and queer identities. Outside of those spaces, sexuality as a concept, as an identity, is missing from most Tunisians’ consciousness.”
Senda ben Jebara, an HRD working with the human rights group Mawjoudin (“We Exist”), believes sexual and gender education — “slowly, and using our own language” — is the only way to end homophobia. “How can we expect people to understand homosexuality if they don’t understand heterosexuality as a sexuality? If the very word terrifies them?”
Artists and HRDs at Fanni Raghman Anni (“Artist Without Choice”) are similarly working to raise consciousness. FRA is a human rights organisation born out of Tunisia’s 2011 revolution that uses performance art to push discussions about individual, cultural, and sexual rights into public spaces.
Asma Kaouch and Seif Eddine Jlassi, two of the group’s leaders, told ThinkProgress that their performances are a strategy to defend human rights. They introduce gender, sexuality, and personal freedoms as concepts, without explicitly using words that will turn away some parts of Tunisian society.
“We stage events where normal people will see them — not tucked away in an elite theatre,” said Kaouch. “We want to draw people from the street and the grocery store. Our performances are about the relationship between an individual, a body, and society — concepts that most Tunisians don’t have the opportunity to think about critically. We don’t want to entertain, we want to shock.”
Fanni Rahman Anni is linking up youth in remote, conservative areas who want to perform. They have also built art centres in poor villages, said Kaouch, “where we know Islamic extremists are very active. We provide an alternative, and we introduce concepts that lay the groundwork for human rights.”
What’s Next?
Their strategies are as varied as their own identities, but Tunisian LGBT rights defenders are in near universal agreement about at least two things: that “solving” the country’s violent homophobia requires abolishing Article 230 and that providing public education in gender, sexuality, and human rights.
Many are also clear on the international community’s role in this struggle. They say Tunisia’s allies need to take a stronger line on the penal code article that criminalizes LGBT rights defenders and the communities they protect.
“Visiting diplomats and representatives need to be called on to bring up Article 230 at every opportunity. The decriminalization of homosexuality should be linked to trade and foreign investment,” said Belhedi. Others add that international employers must ensure Tunisian workers have the same rights as their international colleagues and can’t be prosecuted for their sexuality.
In the meantime, the work of deconstructing oppressive notions about gender and sexual rights — the work that will end and not just outlaw homophobic attacks – will be done by the Tunisian defenders themselves.
“Before the revolution, none of this was possible, there was no room for expression,” said Kaouch. “Now, Tunisian civil society is one of the most powerful in the world. The influence we have is real. And we have to take advantage of the space we fought to create.”
Imagine you are a young man alone in a park. Another man approaches you. He flirts with you. You flirt back, flattered that the handsome stranger likes you. He asks you to come back to his place. When you accept the invitation, he slaps handcuffs on your wrists and says you are under arrest.
Yes, it’s unlawful for police to arrest someone for being gay, but it still happens.
In its landmark ruling Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court ruled that antisodomy laws —sometimes referred to as “crimes against nature” laws — are unconstitutional. But 12 states, including Louisiana, continue to keep such laws on their books.
You may believe antisodomy laws are not harmful because they can’t be enforced. But they are an important symbol of homophobia for those who oppose LGBT rights. What’s more, the laws create ambiguity for police officers, who may not be aware they are unconstitutional.
If a policeman looks it up, he will see that sodomy is a violation of Louisiana state law, according to Marjorie Esman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana.
“So if you [are a police officer] and haven’t been trained to know that this is no longer enforceable, you [may] think you have basis to arrest someone,” Esman says.
One example includes a string of about a dozen undercover arrests by East Baton Rouge Prrish police targeting gay men in a park. The arrests, which stretched over a 10 year period until 2013, demonstrate how problematic state laws can be when they contradict court rulings.
“Cops would sit in public parks in unmarked cars, propositioning [men] for sex, then when the men agreed, the police would arrest them for attempted crimes against nature,” says Matt Patterson, managing director of Equality Louisiana. “People were being arrested for agreeing to have sex in private at a future time.”
Despite the arrests, the charges were dropped because they were not enforceable.
In a separate 2015 incident, two men were arrested in Baton Rouge for having sex in a car parked in a public park after hours. The officer charged them with “crimes against nature.” The charge was later dropped and the men were charged only with trespassing.
In response to the incident, Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie sent a memo out informing officers they can’t make arrests under the “crimes against nature” statute.
Patterson says someone who is arrested for sodomy in Louisiana is not likely to come forward because the state, like many others, does not have civil rights protections for LGBT people. That could make them vulnerable to housing and job discrimination.
“As long as it’s still on the books, I’m worried about the next person or the one after that or the next Baton Rouge police chief,” Patterson says, “or some sheriff somewhere else in the state that thinks they can get away with it because after all, they got away with it in Baton Rogue for a decade.”
Sodomy laws in some states are linked to rape and bestiality. That can make it difficult for legislators to remove them from the books.
Attempts have been made to repeal the Louisiana antisodomy statute to no avail. In 2014, Louisiana state Rep. Patricia Smith proposed such a bill, which failed to pass.
Republican Louisiana state Sen. Dan Claitor this month proposed a series of bills that would remove outdated laws from Louisiana’s books, but none addressed the antisodomy law or a state ban on same-sex marriage, according to The Advocate, a Baton Rouge-based newspaper.
Gene Mills, president of the Louisiana Family Forum, told the Baton Rouge Advocate he would oppose any bills related to changing sodomy laws or same-sex marriage.
“History has proven that ‘unenforceable’ doesn’t mean ‘useless,’” Mills, speaking on Lawrence v. Texas, told the newspaper. “They’re called opinions because that’s all they really are. The Supreme Court has reversed itself on more than 250 occasions.”
Opponents of the sodomy law argue that leaving it in place because the Supreme Court may reverse the Lawrence vs. Texas decision someday is nonsensical.
“To keep laws on the books that could confuse law enforcement — and the public — as to what their rights are, simply on a principle that has lost, is counterproductive at best and harmful at worst,” says Esman. “It’s an argument that is dangerous.”
Last night’s annual ‘Out at the Park’ event turned into ‘Nightmare at Petco Park’ as the San Diego Gay Man’s Chorus took to the field to sing the National Anthem.
Instead of their voices, fans of the Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers heard a recorded voice of a woman singing the anthem, and when the group stepped off the field at the end of the song it was to taunts such as, “You sing like a girl,” according to a statement on the San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus Facebook page.
Within hours the Padres had apologized on Twitter calling the incident a “mistake in the control room.” However, the Gay Men’s Chorus were not happy stating, “No attempt was made to stop the recording and start over. No announcement of apology was made to the singers or their friends and families in the stands. No attempt to correct the situation occurred other than to force the 100 men to stand in the spotlight of center field for the song’s duration and then be escorted off the field to the heckles of baseball fans shouting homophobic taunts.”
According to the Gay Men’s Chorus, “This incident followed several days of troubling comments and behavior within the San Diego Padres organization. “Three days before the game, San Diego Padres representatives aggressively sought to prevent singers from performing the National Anthem unless they purchased a ticket to the game — even if they did not plan to stay for the game — which was not part of any previous discussion or written or verbal agreement and would have cost the small, community-based non-profit thousands of dollars. The demand eventually was rescinded on Friday following repeated complaints made by SDGMC and San Diego Pride to San Diego Padres management.”
The Gay Men’s Chorus are demanding a full investigation and are calling on the Padres to determine if someone or some people intentionally engaged in anti-gay discrimination or a hate crime. The Chorus is also calling on the City of San Diego City Attorney’s Office and the City of San Diego Human Relations Commission to independently investigate the incident.
San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus singer Dan England posted on Facebook, “I was just shocked someone didn’t stop the recording! Then there was no announcement saying sorry! We just a stood there like fools, and then we were escorted off and out of the park. Definitely embarrassing.”
“We were just excited to be at a game and let the audience see us and hear us and let us know that we’re sports fans too, and we’re normal guys,” said RC Haus, artistic director for the Chorus. “And then a woman sings over us, and it was mortifying.”
“I really want to believe that it was an error,” said Bob Lehman, executive director of the San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus. “But the first thought was, did they do this on purpose?”
“I don’t want to live in a city where the LGBT community thinks the Padres hate them,” Lehman continued. “Even if it’s perception, it’s got to be fixed.”
The incident gained national and even international traction in media outlets ranging from the New York Daily Newsand USA Today, to the British publication The Daily Mail, reported the Union-Tribune. People on both sides of the issue weighed in on Twitter, arguing whether the incident was offensive or the reaction to it overblown. The Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus posted a musical video in support of their San Diego counterparts.
The gathering traditionally functions as a key site of right-wing strategy development to curtail or roll back LGBT equality gains and restrict or deny women access to abortion and related healthcare, attracting religious and political leaders. Six months later, WCF will hold its tenth congress in Tbilisi, Georgia, beginning Sunday, a date close to the anniversary of a violent 2013 mob attack on an anti-homophobia rally in the city, which occurred on May 17 which is often commemorated as the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia. Thousands of anti-LGBT protestors led by Orthodox priests broke through a police cordon and pursued gay rights supporters, injuring at least twenty-eight people.
This year’s theme for the congress is “Civilization at the Crossroads: The Natural Family as The Bulwark of Freedom and Human Values.” The conference, the Web site claims, “will help the international pro-family movement to establish a beachhead in the region,” because one reason “sexual radicals” have targeted these countries, the site continues, “is to demonstrate their ability to overcome traditional cultures and compel people who cling to normative values to bend to their will.”
“The World Congress of Families focuses on bringing in the most notorious anti-LGBT activists from around the world, leaving terrible harm and discrimination in their wake,” said Ty Cobb, director of HRC Global. “Try as they might to hide behind so-called ‘pro-family’ rhetoric, the World Congress of Families is a hate group that convenes thousands of extremists from around the globe to strategize about how to make the world a more dangerous place for LGBT people.”
WCF works closely with extremists spreading anti-LGBT rhetoric and promoting laws and policies that criminalize not only LGBT people, but also those who speak out to support them. HRC’s report on the group, Exposed: The World Congress of Families, underscores the reality that WCF and many of its affiliates are laser-focused on promoting policies and rhetoric that put LGBT people and their families at incredible risk.
The conference speakers include Theresa Okafor, a notorious exporter of hate who has compared LGBT people to the terrorist group Boko Haram, and Brian Brown, president and co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a once-prominent anti-LGBT group. In 2011, Brown said, “When you knock over a core pillar of society like marriage, and then try to redefine Biblical views of marriage as bigotry, there will be consequences. Will one of the consequences be a serious push to normalize pedophilia?”
“WCF has honored a Nigerian activist who claims LGBT advocates conspire with terrorists with a “Woman of the Year” award, and lauded Vladimir Putin’s ‘morality,’”Cobb said. “The work of WCF supports positions and policies that harm LGBT people around the world. Their advocacy abroad incites hatred against LGBT people from Russia to Nigeria and beyond.”
San Francisco will have two events to commemorate Harvey Milk Day this year, which falls on Sunday, May 22 and would have been the slain gay supervisor’s 86th birthday.
The state of California held the first Milk Day on May 22, 2010 to mark the birthday of the first out politician elected to public office in the Golden State. In 1977 Milk won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors but was assassinated the following year.
Harvey Milk Day is considered a day of special significance, meaning public employees do not receive the day off and schools are not closed when it falls on a weekday.
For the seventh annual observance, the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club will present a screening of The Times of Harvey Milk , the 1984 Academy Award-winning documentary, at 3 p.m. at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro Street. Tickets are $12 and available online at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-times-of-harvey-milk-birthday-screening-the-castro-theatre-tickets-25012714703. More information is available at the Facebook page, “The Times of Harvey Milk – Birthday Screening at the Castro Theatre.”
Earlier in the afternoon, at 1, gay Supervisor Scott Wiener, whose District 8 includes the Castro, will join other community leaders at Harvey Milk Plaza (Castro and Market streets), to celebrate and honor Milk. The San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band will perform. Interested people are welcome to attend.
This week, more than 170,000 undocumented children became eligible to enroll in state-funded health insurance plans in California, going beyond Obamacare to allow more immigrants to have access to comprehensive health services for the first time in the state.
The “Health4AllKids” health care expansion allows low-income children under the age of 19 to receive affordable care under Medi-Cal, the name for California’s Medicaid program, regardless of their immigration status. This will allow undocumented kids to access the full scope of Medi-Cal benefits — such as regular preventive and primary care, dental, and mental health services, as well as behavioral health treatment for children with autism.
The aim of the expansion is to ensure health care for a population that “for the most part only had limited access to emergency-only services,” the children’s advocacy group First Focus said in a statement on its website.
California’s Department of Health Care Services estimates that 114,981 undocumented children were previously eligible only for restricted-scope Medi-Cal benefits, while another 55,019 children couldn’t receive any Medi-Cal benefits at all.
To qualify for the program, children must belong to a family that meets low-income requirements, making no more than $65,505 for a year for a family of four. Families with lower incomes may be able to receive coverage for free, while other families may pay between $19 per child or $39 for all their children, according to the Desert Sun. About one-sixth of the newly eligible low-income undocumented children live in the agricultural areas of Sacramento and Kern counties.
California is the fifth state to extend coverage to undocumented children, following Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Washington, D.C., and Washington state.
Anywhere between 2.7 million to 3.4 million Californians are uninsured, including 1.4 million undocumented immigrants who may not be able to afford private insurance. Although the Affordable Care Act extended affordable insurance options to millions of Americans, undocumented immigrants were left out of health reform.
Health4AllKid‘s original sponsor, State Sen. Ricardo Lara (D) — who is himself the son of an undocumented immigrant — argued that extending coverage to more immigrants would help the government save money in annual emergency room bills. Many uninsured, undocumented individuals do not seek out medical treatment until they have to be rolled into the emergency room, which cannot deny care to anyone regardless of immigration status. In turn, emergency room visits cost the California economy between $18.3 billion and $36.7 billion in lost productivity, according to a 2009 Center for American Progress report.
For practical reasons, not seeking treatment for illnesses can also lead to significant financial hardship, since uninsured people are more likely to fall into medical bankruptcy than insured individuals, according to a 2007 American Journal of Medicine study.
Health advocates also argue that the extending health care services to the undocumented population has the potential of saving lives through preventative care, particularly because uninsured individuals are less likely to seek out services for major health conditions and chronic disease, which could have a big impact in their sunset years.
In another historic moment for the Obama administration, the Senate on Tuesday evening confirmed the long-stalled nomination of Eric Fanning to be Army secretary.
Fanning thus becomes the first openly gay leader of any U.S. military service — a milestone not lost on gay rights groups and coming five years after the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” which had prohibited gay and lesbian service members from being open about their sexuality.
This photo provided by the U.S. Air Force shows Eric Fanning speaking at the 30th Space Symposium Corporate Partnership dinner May 20, 2014, in Colorado Springs, Colo. Duncan Wood / U.S. Air Force via AP file
“Eric Fanning’s historic confirmation today as Secretary of the U.S. Army is a demonstration of the continued progress towards fairness and equality in our nation’s armed forces,” Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin said in a statement.
The voice vote to confirm, Fanning, 47, came after Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., dropped his opposition in a dispute over Obama administration efforts to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer detainees to the United States.
Roberts said he received assurances from the administration in private discussions that the clock has run out on moving detainees to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was among the first politicians to congratulate Fanning publicly Tuesday, tweeting that he is “capable, experienced & will lead with honor!”
A slate of senators from both parties joined in the praise for Fanning. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, tweeted that Fanning’s selection is “an historic moment for #LGBT servicemembers,” while Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, tweeted that he “appreciated (Fanning’s) recognition of Alaska’s strategic importance & need for larger @USArmy.”
Fanning served as the Army secretary’s principal adviser on management and operation of the service. He was undersecretary of the Air Force from April 2013 to February 2015, and for half a year was the acting secretary of the Air Force.
Fanning’s path to the post began roughly eight months ago, but was stymied when Roberts held up confirmation.
“Let me be very clear on this — as a veteran, a Marine — I support Mr. Eric Fanning for this post,” Roberts said on the Senate floor late last month. “If the White House calls and assures me that terrorists held at Guantanamo will not come to Ft. Leavenworth, I will release the hold — immediately.”
White House officials suggested Roberts was grandstanding and fellow senators pleaded with Roberts to lift his hold. Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee — who calls Roberts a “good friend” — took the floor last month and pleaded with him to move the process along.
The pushback centered on the president’s announcement of a long-anticipated pitch to Congress in February to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. The Obama administration is considering 13 locations across the country, including seven existing prison facilities in Colorado, South Carolina and Kansas and six additional sites on current military bases.
Dozens of LGBT activists and allies fanned out across the California Capitol Monday, meeting with legislators in support of ten bills that form Equality California’s 2016 legislative package and priorities. Each of the priority bills would significantly improve the lives of LGBT Californians in various ways and stand in direct contrast to laws in North Carolina, Mississippi and elsewhere that target LGBT people for discrimination.
“We are heartened to see so many faces eager and willing to create a more inclusive and fair society,” said Asm. Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton), chair of the LGBT Legislative Caucus. “The LGBT community is often at the frontlines of progress and we, as members of the LGBT Caucus, rely on their input and support to continue effecting change here in California and across the country. Marriage equality was a huge victory for our community, but recent events remind us why LGBT advocacy is more important than ever. Our movement towards equality has been and will continue to be a grassroots effort. And these participants show us that we are in good hands.”
“As North Carolina, Mississippi and other states enact regressive laws that target the most basic freedoms of LGBT people, look what we are doing together in California,” said Equality California Executive Director Rick Zbur at a morning rally outside the Capitol. “In this legislative session alone, the bills making their way through the legislature make it clear that our state is heading in a different direction.”
Two of the bills specifically address challenges facing the transgender community. AB 1732, by Asm. Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), would require that existing single-stall restrooms be labeled as “all-gender”. AB 1887, by Asm. Evan Low (D-Campbell), would ban state-funded travel by California state employees to jurisdictions with laws in place that discriminate against LGBT people.
AB 1888, also by Low, would deny Cal Grant funding to colleges and universities that seek a waiver on religious grounds for federal anti-discrimination protections. SB 1146, by Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Long Beach), would require those institutions to disclose that intent to discriminate to potential applicants.
Two other Equality California-sponsored bills save lives. AB 2246, by Asm. Patrick O’Donnell, would require schools statewide to have a suicide prevention policy in place to get teachers the materials and support they need to identify at-risk students. SB 1408, by Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Redondo Beach), would allow organ and tissue donations between HIV positive donors and HIV positive recipients.
LGBT Advocacy Day was co-sponsored by the California LGBT Legislative Caucus, Genders & Sexualities Alliance Network, National Center for Lesbian Rights and Lambda Legal.
