U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has withdrawn his support for a gay Black Miami judge nominated for a federal judiciary position, keeping the nominee from receiving a Senate confirmation vote, Advocate.com noted. Rubio said he would no longer support the nomination of Miami-Dade circuit judge William Thomas to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, saying he was concerned about Thomas' rulings in two criminal cases. Florida's other senator, Democrat Bill Nelson, has endorsed Thomas, who would be the nation's first openly gay African-American federal judge.
Sean Eldridge, the husband of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, has formally announced his 2014 congressional campaign in New York, CNN.com reported. Sean Eldridge, 27, will run as a Democrat against Republican incumbent and 24-year Army veteran Chris Gibson in the Empire State's 19th Congressional District, located in the Upper Hudson Valley. Eldridge is president of Hudson River Ventures, a small business-investment fund, and counts billionaire George Soros and Napster co-founder Sean Parker among his donors.
An out lesbian has been confirmed as a judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims, Advocate.com noted. The Senate confirmed Elaine Kaplan by a vote of 64-35 on Sept. 17. Kaplan, currently the acting director of the United States Office of Personnel Management, had been nominated for the position by President Obama in March. She will serve a 15-year term in this judgeship, where she will hear monetary claims against the federal government.
In Georgia, 22-year-old Marietta native Andre Pierre Walker already facing charges of borrowing his mom's car to pose as a cop and sexually assault a man now faces allegations that he used the same ruse to assault three other men, according to Project Q Atlanta. Clayton County police said that Walker's DNA linked him to the other assaults as he sat in jail on charges of impersonating an officer, false imprisonment and aggravated sodomy. Police arrested Walker in July after a man alleged that Walker, posing as a sheriff's deputy, eventually assaulted him after searching him for drugs.
Citing a voter-approved constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages in her state, Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin ordered the state's National Guard to stop processing benefits requests for same-sex couples, according to the Atlantic Wire. That makes Oklahoma—after Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana—the fourth state to go against a federal directive requiring agencies to grant legally married same-sex couples the benefits wedded opposite-sex couples receive. However, unlike the three other states, Fallin has seemingly overridden a previous decision by the state's National Guard to process requests from married gay and lesbian couples.
The U.S. Department of Labor has announced new guidance interpreting the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Windsor, whose ruling struck down the provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act that denied federal benefits to legally married, same-sex couples, according to a White House release. In a technical release, the department's Employee Benefits Security Administration provides guidance to plans, plan sponsors, fiduciaries, participants and beneficiaries on the decision's impact on the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974. The release states that, in general, the terms "spouse" and "marriage" in Title I of ERISA and in related department regulations should be read to include same-sex couples legally married in any state or foreign jurisdiction that recognizes such marriages, regardless of where they currently live.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Republican Sen. Susan Collins introduced bipartisan legislation to extend employee-benefit programs to cover the same-sex domestic partners of federal employees, according to Advocate.com . The Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act of 2013 would reportedly put the federal government on par with a majority of Fortune 500 companies, as gay and lesbian domestic partners would be covered to the same extent as married opposite-sex spouses of federal workers. Almost 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies now offer health benefits to employees' domestic partners, up from just 25 percent in 2000.
In Perry Township, Ind., a teen said he was bullied for being gay and then physically attacked on a school bus, Fox59.com reported. Police are investigating the incident, which happened on a bus ride home from Southport High School. The teen, known only as "W.R.," said he's openly gay and has endured bullying through the years; however, the physical confrontation has left him shaken.
The City Council of Porterville, Calif., removed Mayor Virginia Gurrola from office—allegedly because of her declaration that June be regarded as LGBT Pride Month in the town, the Huffington Post reported. The governing body also removed Vice Mayor Pete McCracken from his position, placing city council members Cameron Hamilton and Brian Ward in the mayor and vice mayor seats, respectively. Porterville is reportedly the only one in California to officially support Proposition 8 in 2008.
In New York City, prosecutors have claimed that convicted felon Alfonso Lanier sent a gay couple to the hospital in a random hate attack in Chelsea last month, the New York Daily News reported. Lanier, 23, was walking with a group when he targeted Peter Nortman, 53, and his boyfriend Michael Felenchak, 27. After the group and the gay men exchanged words, Lanier "repeatedly punched and kicked those two individuals," Assistant District Attorney Leah Saxtein said. During the beating, someone in Lanier's group was heard using anti-gay slurs.
In Virginia, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has framed gay-friendly state policies as a pro-business issue and a key distinction in his campaign against GOP counterpart Ken Cuccinelli, DailyPress.com reported. Cuccinelli has said he believes that marriage should be between one man and one woman, and claimed he shares that view with many Virginians. Still, he said at the time, the "notion that this somehow chases business out of Virginia would be laughable if it weren't so offensive."
A Minnesota appeals court has ruled that a Christian man can continue to freely distribute Bibles at a gay pride festival, Charisma News noted. A previous ruling from a lower court was reversed, and now Brian Johnson can hand out Bibles at the Twin Cities Pride Festival in Minneapolis—something he had been doing for more than a decade. Johnson distributed Bibles every year from a booth at the festival from 1998 until 2009, when event organizers took issue with his beliefs and banned his stall.
U.S. Reps. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), along with U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released a statement in response to a letter from Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on the department's ongoing efforts to re-evaluate blood-donation criteria for men who have sex with men (MSM), according to a press release. The lawmakers' letter reads, in part, "While we appreciate the letter from HHS and the department's initial steps to reexamine the ban on men who have sex with men (MSM) donating blood, we remain deeply disappointed by the slow pace of progress to change this discriminatory policy." MSM are currently banned from donating blood—a policy put in place during the rise of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
The conservative group National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is behind an effort to repeal a California law that allows transgender students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity while at school, according to Advocate.com . The organization is planning for a ballot initiative in November 2014 to repeal the law through a voter initiative. NOM President Brian Brown said the transgender-rights law was "a horrible attempt by activists to strip society of all gender roles and uses children as a weapon in their culture war."
In Huntington Beach, Calif., 16-year-old Cassidy Lynn Campbell has become Marina High School's first transgender homecoming queen, according to ABC News. "I wasn't doing this for me," Campbell told ABC affiliate KABC-TV shortly after being proclaimed the winner, "I was doing this for so many others, so many others around the nation." Although she faced some backlash after being named one of the top 10 contenders for the crown, Campbell—who, up until three years ago lived as Lance Campbell—did not let the negativity deter her, defending her decision to run on her Twitter account.
In the U.S. House of Representatives, Idaho Republican Raul Labrador introduced the Marriage and Religious Freedom Act, which is designed to make it possible for government and private agencies to deny legally married same-sex couples the same rights and freedoms heterosexual couples enjoy, Raw Story noted. However, several pro-LGBT organizations have spoken out against the measure. Human Rights Campaign Legislative Director Allison Herwitt said, "The purpose of the legislation ... is simply to let federal employees, contractors and grantees refuse to do their jobs or fulfill the terms of their taxpayer-funded contracts because they have a particular religious view about certain lawfully-married couples—and then to sue the federal government for damages if they don't get their way."
In Pennsylvania, state Sen. Anthony H. Williams (D) and state Rep. Brian Sims (D), the state's first openly gay lawmaker, announced a plan to introduce a complementary, bipartisan bill in the state House that would ban conversion therapy, according to the Huffington Post. However, both men said they had thought it wise to wait to see how the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would rule on a similar ban that had been passed in California, the first such law in the United States. Soon after California Gov. Jerry Brown signed that state's bill into law last year, the ban was challenged in two separate lawsuits that argued it represented an unconstitutional violation of free speech and parental rights. In August the federal appeals court upheld the ban, and the Pennsylvania lawmakers decided it was time to press their case.
In an Outsports.com profile, Colorado high-school track-and-field/cross-country coach Micah Porter talked about come out of the closet in 2009 after marrying a woman for 13 years and having two children. Porter—who was named Teacher of the Year at D'Evelyn High School in West Denver in 2004—said he reached a point where he couldn't live a lie anymore. Porter—who is now dating Brandan Rader, a psychology student at the University of Colorado at Denver—has more recently come out to his team; the squad members said his sexual orientation didn't matter to them.
Ohio state Rep. John Becker, a Republican who represents Union Township, wants to impeach the federal judge who declared the state must recognize the same-sex marriage of a terminally ill gay man and his husband, Advocate.com reported. Becker wrote a letter to one of Ohio's representatives in the U.S. House asking the fellow Republican to initiate impeachment proceedings against Judge Timothy Black. Among other things, Becker wrote, "Judge Black has demonstrated his incompetence by allowing his personal political bias to supersede jurisprudence."
Azusa Pacific University, a Christian school in California, has asked professor H. Adam Ackley to leave after he came out as transgender, according to the Huffington Post. Heather Clements taught theology at the university for 15 years (even chairing the theology/philosophy department at one point), but this past year he began referring to himself as Ackley. Ackley, who is in his third year of a five-year contract at a school that does not use the tenure system, said university policies seem to be silent about transgender issues, except that "Humans were created as gendered beings."
Gay Men's Health Collaborative (GMHC) hopes to become a driving force in providing resources and services to northern Virginia's LGBT community, thus filling the void left by the closure this summer of another organization that once provided those services, according to TheBody.com . Based in Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va., GMHC provides intervention and prevention services as well as hosting and supporting social opportunities. A grant from the Virginia Department of Health and private donations will fund GMHC's activities.
In Florida, a Miami man who travels the state protesting at gay pride events has sued the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, claiming he was arrested because deputies didn't like his views, the Palm Beach Post noted. John Kranert claims he was deprived of his First Amendment rights when he was arrested for disorderly conduct at the 2009 PrideFest parade in Lake Worth; the charges were later dismissed. Kranert—who calls himself Brother K and campaigned against homosexuality in Lake Worth with a Bible, a bullhorn and the sign "Homo Sex is Sin"—created a disturbance at the University of South Florida in 2007.
Gun-rights advocate Colion Noir has claimed that Starbucks' recent request that gun owners don't bring guns into their stores is like asking gay people to tone down their homosexuality, according to Gay Star News. On Sept. 17, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz posted an open letter asking gun owners in states where people can legally carry unconcealed firearms to leave their guns at home. In response, Noir accused the coffee giant of "coming out of the proverbial anti-gun closet."
The ACLU is close to ending a 26-year-long battle with the Alabama Department of Corrections to get rid of a policy that segregates HIV-positive inmates and excludes them from certain rehabilitation programs, according to USA Today. Two fairness hearings are being held at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka as well as at Limestone Correctional Facility. Last December, U.S. District Court Judge Myron Thompson ruled the segregation policy violated the Americans With Disabilities Act. Female HIV-positive inmates were integrated into the general population at Tutwiler last month, and male inmates will be integrated next, from June to November of next year.
Providence College, a Roman Catholic school in Rhode Island, canceled a lecture on gay marriage by Dr. John Corvino, also known as the "Gay Moralist," On Top Magazine reported. Corvino, the author of What's Wrong with Homosexuality?, is a philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit and is known for taking on marriage-equality opponents. Hugh F. Lena, provost and senior vice president of Providence, has said he uninvited Corvino because the event largely focused on only one side of a controversial issue.
The U.S. Senate voted Sept. 24 to confirm openly gay nominee Todd Hughes to serve on the U.S. Circuit Court for the Federal Circuit. The 98-0 vote makes Hughes the first openly gay nominee to be confirmed for a federal circuit position. A native of Ohio, Hughes, 47, graduated from Harvard College and then Duke Law School and, since 1994, has served in the Commercial Litigation Branch of the Department of Justice Civil Division. The confirmation came just one week after the Senate confirmed Elaine Kaplan to serve as a judge on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
Fourteen individuals and two organizations will be inducted Nov. 12 into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame, the country's only known government-sponsored hall of fame that honors members of the LGBT communities, according to a press release. Among some of the inductees include Illinois Department of Human Rights Director Rocco Claps; Laura Rickett, the first openly LGBT owner of a Major League Baseball team; theater mainstay David Zak; and Lambda Legal. The event will take place at the Chicago History Museum.
A recently released poll from Indiana shows that nearly two-thirds of Hoosier voters (64 percent to 36 percent) oppose a proposed constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships, according to Bilerico.com . (The state already has a statute prohibiting same-sex marriage.) Former Gov. Mitch Daniels, President George W. Bush's director of the Office of Management and Budget, is rumored to announce his opposition to the amendment soon and has reportedly been quietly lobbying Republican legislators to let the bill die.
A Pennsylvania school board is backing high school administrators, who will not let a transgender teen run for homecoming king, according to Advocate.com . Administrators at Richland High School in Johnstown, Pa., told senior Kasey Caron they would take no action on his request to be listed on the male side of the ballot for homecoming royalty. Caron was assigned as female at birth but identifies and presents as male, and his driver's license lists him as male as well.
