Author: Brett

2012 proving busy year for Victory Fund

It’s been a busy month for Victory Fund President Chuck Wolfe.

The organization raised more than $450,000 in a D.C. fundraiser, helped elect Pennsylvania’s first openly gay state legislator and announced that South Dakota has its first out public official.

“Angie, I think she’s been thinking about it for a while, and then she was finally ready to come out — she used our Coming Out Project to assist her, counsel her, guide her through that,” Wolfe told the Blade, referring to newly out, bisexual state Sen. Angie Buhl. “I think being a coach to our candidates is probably one of the things that people know the least about what we do. They know we endorse candidates and they know that we make contributions to candidates, but the time spent coaching candidates, helping them hire a team around them, helping them design their mailings and their field plans is a lot of what we do. And that also includes helping people in the closet come out.”

Buhl is the latest LGBT official to be listed as out on Victory Fund’s site. She joins openly gay lawmakers recently identified in North Dakota, Kansas, Mississippi and West Virginia. The group says it has, for the first time, identified openly LGBT elected officials in all 50 states, and has listed the names of openly LGBT officials in 49, saying that it has also identified a local official in Alaska whose name will be made public soon.

http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/1-will-pennsylvania-elect-six-out-lgbt-freshman-legislators-in-november/politics/2012/04/05/37445

Here in Pennsylvania, where we have rapidly fallen behind neighboring states New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware in recent years when it comes it LGBT rights, we have zero out legislators, and zero statewide LGBT civil rights. Equality Pennsylvania has had policy wins such as working with PennDOT to make gender marker changes on driver’s licensees and photo ID’s far less invasive for transgender Pennsylvanians. Equality PA has also played a major role in passing over twenty five local non-discrimination ordinances. But, despite having some wonderful allies in Harrisburg, our best chance to finally achieve state-wide LGBT civil rights will come from electing out candidates. We have not one or two, but six chances to do that this year. In 2013, Pennsylvania could have six out, proud, qualified Representatives in our state House.

All six out candidates (that I’m currently aware of via various endorsements) are running as Democrats and all six are running in different districts for the Pennsylvania State House. Three of the candidates face primary challenges on April 24th; the other three are the only Democrats running in their districts and will run against Republicans, incumbent or otherwise, in the November general election. Pennsylvania is the second largest state to have never elected an out legislator, and each of these candidates have received various endorsements, from both LGBT and other organizations, based not on their identities but their values, abilities, and campaign platforms.

Among the six out candidates, four are gay men, all white, and two are lesbian women; one is white and one is a Muslim woman of color. To have even a third of the out candidates be women is almost twice as strong a showing as the current makeup of the Pennsylvania General Assembly (GA). According to the Center for American Women and Politics, Pennsylvania comes in at a lowly 42nd place in the nation for gender parity in legislative bodies, with only 17% of legislators being women. By comparison, Colorado leads the nation with 41%.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/04/26/pennsylvania-set-to-get-its-first-openly-gay-lawmaker/

Pennsylvania is set to get its first openly gay state lawmaker, as a 33 year old is set to win a Democratic State House primary, leaving him with an open path to election this November, unless an independent candidate decides to compete for the seat.

Brian Sims, a lawyer based in Philadelphia, is set to win the primary against his fellow Democratic opponent, Babette Josephs, with 51.6 percent of the vote, reports the Philadelphia Enquirer.

Mr Sims, the son of two military parents and a former football star, served as his opponent’s campaign treasurer when she won re-election in 2010. Ms Josephs, who is 71, has been herself a champion of liberal causes since first being elected to her post in 1984, though that did not stop her from approving strongly-worded leaflets against Mr Sims during the campaign leading up to the election.

In a statement, Mr Sims said: ”It’s because of the work Babette has done over the years that I was able to run and win in a district like this… The campaign was about ideas and who could do the best job going forward, not a referendum on the past 27 years.”

It is possible that he could join the legislature simultaneously with another gay Democrat candidate, Chris Dietz, who is running in the Harrisburg area of the state.

Kyrsten Sinema, a seven-year veteran of the Arizona legislature, is running to become the first openly bisexual member of Congress. She’s part of a bumper crop of LGBT candidates nationwide, including four in Arizona, a state lately infamous for right-wing legislation on abortion and immigration but built on libertarian ideals—and where four out candidates are currently running for office.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/26/gay-politicians-come-out-in-force-for-2012-races.html