Tag: LGBT Politics

LOS ANGELES — On a warm Friday afternoon three years ago, Rob Reiner, the director, arrived for lunch at the Beverly Hills estate of David Geffen, the entertainment mogul. Mr. Reiner and his political adviser, Chad H. Griffin, had spent six months drafting an ambitious legal campaign aimed at persuading the United States Supreme Court to establish a constitutional right of same-sex marriage.

Mr. Reiner, joined by Mr. Griffin and Mr. Reiner’s wife, Michele, told Mr. Geffen they would need $3 million to challenge Proposition 8, a California voter initiative approved the previous November banning same-sex marriage. He informed Mr. Geffen that they had recruited two renowned lawyers, David Boies, a Democrat, and Theodore B. Olson, a Republican, to argue the case.

“Our feeling is not to go state by state,” Mr. Reiner said. “Our strategy is to make this wind up in the United States Supreme Court and have this a settled issue for all time.”

http://www.thegavoice.com/news/atlanta-news/4285-lesbian-us-rep-tammy-baldwin-to-keynote-hrc-atlanta-dinner

The Human Rights Campaign has announced its keynote speaker for the upcoming HRC Atlanta Dinner and Awards Gala.

U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wi.), who represents the state’s 2nd Congressional District, will be the dinner’s featured keynote speaker. Baldwin, a candidate for one of Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate seats, is the founder and co-chair of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus and one of only four openly gay members to serve in the U.S. Congress. She was the first person to be openly gay when elected to Congress (others had come out while in office) and if successful in her current campaign, would be the first openly gay U.S. senator.

http://metroweekly.com/poliglot/2011/11/ebbin-elected-to-state-senate.html

Del. Adam Ebbin (D-Arlington) was elected as Virginia’s first openly gay senator in the state’s Nov. 8 elections, even as other politicians who oppose LGBT equality won victories and Democrats likely effectively lost control of the upper chamber.

With 88 of precincts reporting, Ebbin, who will replace retiring State Sen. Patsy Ticer (D-Alexandria) in a district that includes parts of Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax counties, led his opponent, Republican Tim McGhee, 67-33, according to results from the Virginia Board of Elections.

“It feels wonderful,” Ebbin said of his victory. “It’s been almost 11 months of planning and campaigning, so it’s a relief to see that come to fruition. The margin and the confidence of the people of the 30th District is amazing.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-emanuel-gay-marriage-20120216,0,2716931.story

Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday that he would press for legislation pending in Springfield that would legalize same-sex marriage in Illinois.

“I’ll push for it because it is consistent with the values base, and the practical values base, that I think is right as a city, as a state and as a country,” said Emanuel, who supported gay marriage during the mayoral campaign.

http://www.out.com/news-commentary/2012/02/14/alex-morse-gay-mayor-holyoke-massachusetts?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OutComFeatures+%28Out.com+Features+|+Fashion%2C+Style%2C+Celebrity%2C+Opinion+for+the+Modern+Gay+Man%29

Alex Morse has a slick of red hair, crisp blue eyes, and a complexion the color of vanilla Häagen-Dazs. The hair is inherited from his father, Tracey, who retains a splash of it in his full beard. No one knows how he came by his eyes, shared neither by his Jewish mother nor Scots-Irish father, or either of his two brothers. “My mom always jokes around, ‘I don’t know where you came from,’ ” says Morse, who sits upright in his chair in the spacious wood-paneled mayor’s office he inherited January 3, following an election that pitted the 22-year-old against the 67-year-old incumbent, Elaine Pluta, a veteran of city politics. It was a race that galvanized voters around youth and experience, roused the press, and shifted the balance of power from the old guard to the new in Holyoke, a blighted mill town of 40,000 people—among the poorest in Massachusetts.

“We were never supposed to win,” says Morse. “I mean—22, openly gay, in an old Irish Catholic community.” He has not wasted time, firing five staff and quietly persuading the city council to vote off the president who had held the position for 26 years. That was on his first day. “Unfortunately, a lot of folks in Holyoke City Hall assume they are going to be here for their entire lives, and my mindset is that if you want to be here, you have to live, eat, and breathe it—the job has to be your life.”

Dori Dean, Morse’s Scotch-drinking, Patriots-loving chief of staff, recalls that, before his inauguration, there was plenty of ribbing in City Hall about Morse’s age—a running theme during the campaign. “The joke was that they were going to bring diapers and talcum powder, rattles, and all these baby accoutrements to City Hall to accommodate our arrival,” she says. “Then, when we showed up with the axe and started chopping folks’ heads off, the tenor changed. No one is talking any shit now.” To date, four lawsuits for wrongful termination have been filed by former city employees.

The state legislature of Massachusetts passed a measure on November 15 to extend discrimination protection for transgender people in matters related to housing, credit, and employment. Further, the bill will include such individuals in the definition of a “hate crime.”

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