Defense of Marriage Act Author Calls for Repeal

The author of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which, among other things, prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, has called for its repeal in a Jan. 5 Los Angeles Times opinion piece.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7th district in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican from 1995-2003, and ran for president in 2008 as a Libertarian. In 1996, he wrote DoMA, but no longer supports it.

Barr explains that the theory behind DoMA was to protect each state’s right to define marriage, while providing a definition for purposes of federal law only.

“I’ve wrestled with this issue for the last several years and come to the conclusion that DoMA is not working out as planned,” Barr wrote. “[I] have concluded that DoMA is neither meeting the principles of federalism it was supposed to, nor is its impact limited to federal law.”

“In 2006, when then-Sen. Obama voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment, he said, ‘Decisions about marriage should be left to the states,’” Barr went on. “He was right then; and as I have come to realize, he is right now in concluding that DoMA has to go. If one truly believes in federalism and the primacy of state government over federal, DoMA is simply incompatible with those notions.”

Nationwide demonstrations against DoMA organized by same-sex marriage proponents were scheduled to take place Jan. 10, including an “action fair” in West Hollywood sponsored by the Equal Roots Coalition. “We're hoping that the action fair will make an impact on individuals so that they go ‘Oh, hey! This struggle isn't over. There are still things that are needed to get done and I can do them!’" Matt Palazzolo of Equal Roots wrote in an e-mail to Frontiers.

Warren’s Uganda Ally Burns Condoms, Outs Gays

Defenders of President-elect Barack Obama’s tapping the Rev. Rick Warren, pastor of California’s Saddleback megachurch and bestselling author of The Purpose Driven Life, to deliver the inaugural invocation, sometimes point to Warren’s HIV/AIDS work in Africa. A Jan. 7 investigative report on Max Blumenthal’s Web blog The Daily Beast reveals certain hitherto unreported details of that work.

The Rev. Martin Ssempa of Uganda’s Makerere Community Church is Warren’s principal ally, Blumenthal wrote. Ssempa was a prominent participant at the 2005 Saddleback event where Warren announced his HIV/AIDS initiative, and Warren’s wife, Kay, referred to Ssempa as a “brother.”

Back in Uganda, however, “Ssempa’s stunts have included burning condoms in the name of Jesus and arranging the publication of names of homosexuals in cooperative local newspapers while lobbying for criminal penalties to imprison them,” Blumenthal wrote.

“Ssempa told me that Satan worshipers hold meetings under Lake Victoria, where they are promised riches in exchange for human blood, which they collect by staging car accidents and kidnappings,” Dr. Helen Epstein, a public health consultant and author of The Invisible Cure: Why We’re Losing the Fight Against AIDS in Africa, told Blumenthal. “Ssempa also spoke to me for a very long time about his fear of homosexual[s]...,” Epstein added. “He seemed very personally terrified by their presence.”

More generally, Warren and his allies “have sidelined science-based approaches to combating AIDS in favor of abstinence-only education” and “have rolled back key elements of one of the continent’s most successful initiatives, the so-called ABC program in Uganda,” Blumenthal wrote.

These efforts are “resulting in great damage and undoubtedly will cause significant numbers of infections which should never have occurred,” United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis told The New York Times.

Seceding Church Parishes Forfeit Property

Local congregations that secede from national churches must forfeit property owned by the parent churches, the California Supreme Court ruled Jan. 5.

Property used by St. James Anglican Church in Newport Beach, which has left the national Episcopal Church, was owned by the national church and must be given up, the court ruled. St. James is one of several congregations nationwide that have broken with the Episcopal Church over issues of homosexuality and the 2003 consecration of openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson.

Seven hundred conservative Episcopal congregations have decided to organize a new North American church.

Addiction Treatment Grants Available

End Dependence, which describes itself as an L.A.-based public benefit organization that offers financial grants for the biologic component of addiction treatment, currently has grants available for people addicted to meth, cocaine and/or alcohol, according to an End Dependence release. Grantees will receive access to Prometa, an outpatient medical treatment intended to reduce cravings and improve mental clarity, and assistance with designing a total therapeutic plan. Applications and grant guidelines are posted at enddependence.org, or call 310/456-8998 to request these documents. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis. For more information about Prometa, visit prometainfo.com.

Catholics Blame Newsom for Vandalism

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights is urging Catholics to protest vandalism at a San Francisco church to Mayor Gavin Newsom, the Los Angeles Times reported Jan. 5.

The league claims Proposition 8 opponents drew swastikas beside the names of the pope and local archbishop at Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in the Castro.

“Part of the blame for the latest attack goes to ... Newsom and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors [because] they say nothing [when] gay men dressed as nuns show up at mass,” a league e-mail said. —PETER DELVECCHIO

ACLU Sues Over Arkansas Gay Adoption Law

The Arkansas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Dec. 30 on behalf of 29 adults and children challenging a new Arkansas law prohibiting unmarried couples from fostering or adopting children, the AP reports.

The law was enacted by referendum Nov. 4, and applies without regard to sexual orientation. One of the measure’s principal proponents, the Arkansas Family Council, however, concedes that the law targets principally gay and lesbian couples.

The ACLU claims that the law’s language was misleading to voters and that it violates its clients’ constitutional rights.

Obama Taps Lesbian Harvard Dean for Solicitor General

President-elect Barack Obama announced Jan. 5 that he would nominate out lesbian Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan, 48, to be U.S. solicitor general, the Washington Post reported Jan. 5.

Kagan became dean in 2003 and has earned praise from across the political spectrum for easing ideological tensions at the law school that existed previously. She clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and held legal and domestic policy positions in the Clinton White House.

The solicitor general job is often seen as a step towards nomination to the Supreme Court.

Out Gay Man Becomes Mayor of Portland, Ore.

Openly gay Sam Adams, 45, was sworn in as mayor of Portland, Ore. at midnight Dec. 30, the Oregonian reports. He is the first openly gay man elected to the highest office in a top-30 American city.

Adams, a Democrat, served four years on Portland’s city council before being elected mayor in May. He is also a prominent LGBT activist, but neither side made his sexual orientation an issue in the campaign.

“I don’t want to be a gay mayor,” Adams said. “There is no gay pothole and no straight pothole. They’re just potholes.”
—PETER DELVECCHIO

This page compiled by Peter DelVecchio from The Associated Press and other news reports.

New Prop. 8 Studies Raise Questions About Strategy

Consternation over the passage of Prop. 8 continues to erupt in demonstrations, legal maneuvering and studies that attempt to analyze community response, voting patterns and trends.

On Jan. 4, Bienestar sponsored “Marcha Somos Familia: We Are Family” in East L.A. to march “against discrimination and homophobia.” On Jan. 10, Equal Roots sponsored “The Resolution” to unite for marriage equality and against the Defense of Marriage Act, part of a national “Day of Protest” coordinated by Join the Impact.

Meanwhile, Ken Starr, Dean of Pepperdine Law School, filed a brief Jan. 5 in response to Attorney General Jerry Brown’s brief calling on the California Supreme Court to invalidate Prop. 8. Noting that the court ruled that marriage was a fundamental inalienable right that had been denied same-sex couples, Brown wrote that "the amendment process cannot be used to extinguish fundamental constitutional rights without compelling justification."

Starr, arguing for the Protect Marriage coalition, said Brown’s reasoning "fails at every level" and that “[the] practical result of the attorney general's theory is that the people can never amend the Constitution to overrule judicial interpretations of inalienable rights."

Oral arguments in the case will be heard in March.

Attempting to understand the painful passage of Prop. 8, the LGBT community continues to conduct surveys and hold forums to analyze what went wrong to provide guidance for future strategies.

On Jan. 5, Marriage Equality USA released the first of three community surveys (see marriageequality.org for the full report). Entitled "We Will Never Go Back—Grassroots Input on California's No on Proposition 8 Campaign," the survey identified several major concerns, including the ineffective use of clergy, failure to substantially engage people of color and the lack of “heart” and the “inexcusable” exclusion of same-sex couples and their families from official No on 8 campaign ads.

Interestingly, a new precinct-level study conducted by political scientists Ken Sherrill of Hunter College and Patrick Egan of NYU commissioned by the Haas Jr. Foundation and sponsored by the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force Institute, found that age, ideology, religiosity and political party identification trumped knowing someone who is gay or lesbian.

On a conference call with reporters Jan. 6, the researchers focused on the black vote. Unlike the controversial National Election Pool exit poll that registered the black vote in favor of Prop. 8 at 70 percent, the researchers said their analysis concluded that black votes accounted for about 7 percent of the total California vote—between 57 percent and 59 percent of whom voted for Prop. 8. They attributed Prop. 8 support to the frequency with which black voters attend religious services.

"The study debunks the myth that African-Americans overwhelmingly and disproportionately supported Proposition 8," said Andrea Shorter, executive director of And Marriage for All. "But we clearly have work to do with, within and for African-American communities, particularly the black church."

The researchers said there were four key factors in passing Prop. 8. Party identification—81 percent of Republicans voted for Prop. 8; ideology—82 percent of conservatives; religion—70 pecent of those who attended weekly services; and age—67 percent of voters 65 or older supported Prop. 8, while majorities under 65 opposed it.

The researchers also looked at the impact of having lesbian or gay family or friends. Among California voters, 74 percent said they know someone gay—but 49 percent voted yes anyway.

“What we find is that knowing gay people didn’t make much of a difference. But there is a very big difference between knowing gay people and having serious conversations with us about our lives,” Sherrill told reporters. “It’s one thing to wave at that nice couple in the supermarket or to know somebody at work. It’s another thing to sit down and talk about everyday life and what marriage equality means and I think that some of what our findings lead to is a challenge to have more conversations with more people.”

But the real story, Eagan said, was the “dramatic shift” since 2000. The study found that overall support for marriage equality has increased by 9 percent, with the largest gain among Baby Boomers—voters age 45 to 64. That was up 16 percent—followed by a 13 percent increase among voters 18-29. That “augers well for the future of same-sex marriage in California and in the nation.” (See thetaskforce.org for the full study.)
—KAREN OCAMB