Missouri Catholic School Fires Teacher for Planning Marriage to Partner of 20 Years

Al Fischer, a music teacher at St. Ann Catholic School in north St. Louis County, Missouri, was fired earlier this month after church officials discovered he planned to marry his partner of 20 years. Fischer sent a letter to the parents of his students telling them the news, the St. Louis Dispatch reports:

In the letter, Fischer tells parents of "my joyful news, and my sad news" — the former being his plans to marry his longtime partner in New York City, and the latter, "that I can't be your music teacher anymore."

Fischer's partner, Charlie Robin, executive director of Washington University's Edison Theatre, told the Post-Dispatch that the couple's relationship was in no way a secret at St. Ann and that Fischer was fired after a representative of the St. Louis Archdiocese overheard him talking to co-workers about his wedding plans.

Shortly thereafter, according to Robin, Fischer was told he would be fired March 9, the couple's 20th anniversary and the day of their planned nuptials. But after Robin posted the news of Fischer's soon-to-come firing on Facebook on Feb. 16, Fischer was fired the next day, Robin said.

The Archdiocese indicated that Fischer signed a Christian Witness Statement, required for every educator in the Catholic school system: "The Christian Witness Statement, which educators sign when applying for Archdiocese work, says all who serve in Catholic education should, among other requirements, 'not take a public position contrary to the Catholic Church" and "demonstrate a public life consistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church.'"

Kids put out ‘like trash’ just for being gay

There are approximately 1.6 million to 2.8 million homeless young people in the United States and a disproportionate number — 20 to 40 percent — are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. LGBT youth often run away from home because of family conflict and then “face overt discrimination when seeking alternative housing, which is compounded by institutionalized discrimination in federally funded programs.”

A local CBS affiliate in Miami, Florida offered an in-depth look into the crisis of LGBT youth homelessness and the children who are put out “like trash” by parents who refuse to accept them:

Announcing the 2012 White House Easter Egg Roll Ticket Lottery

Tennessee Principal To Gay Students: You’re Going To Hell

A Tennessee principal is accused of singling out students she thought were gay and specifically telling them they are going to hell. Dorothy Bond, the principal at Haywood High School in Brownsville, Tennessee, also reportedly told other students in the room that if they get pregnant their lives are over. Bond also is accused of telling male students getting their hair braided they must be gay as well.

Gov. O’Malley Signs Bill, Making Maryland The Eighth Marriage-Equality State

Governor Martin O’Malley signed a marriage-equality bill, reports the AP, making Maryland the eighth state in the Union to allow gay marriages.

"More so than equal rights, more so than fairness, more so than justice or injustice, the word that allowed us to move forward was really dignity: The dignity of every home, the dignity of a job, the dignity of work, the dignity of every family, the dignity of every individual," he said. "When we succeed, if this goes to a referendum, I believe it will be because of that evolution of the public discourse."

Opponents have already mobilized to get the nearly 56,000 signatures, and the bill stipulated that marriage wouldn’t go into effect until January 2013, so gay couples in the state will have to hold their breaths to see if the signatures come through.

If they do, voters will decide on the issue in November, and, like Maine, the lawmakers’ marriage-equality bill could be silenced by the will of the public.

Suport for Same-Sex Marriage Jumps in California

'Who Does It Hurt if Someone Thinks I'm Gay?'

George Clooney talks to The Advocate's Brandon Voss about playing attorney David Boies in the upcoming one-night-only staged reading production of Dustin Lance Black's dramatization of the Prop 8 trial. Clooney says he chose to portray Boies because he though "that was the part he could best serve".

Voss also asks him about rumors that he is gay:

"I think it’s funny, but the last thing you’ll ever see me do is jump up and down, saying, “These are lies!” That would be unfair and unkind to my good friends in the gay community. I’m not going to let anyone make it seem like being gay is a bad thing. My private life is private, and I’m very happy in it. Who does it hurt if someone thinks I’m gay? I’ll be long dead and there will still be people who say I was gay. I don’t give a sh*t."

Clooney also says more on marriage equality:

"It’s always been this albatross that stood out to me as the final leg of the civil rights movement. It really came to a head during the 2004 elections, when it was used as a wedge issue, and it was a very effective tool to keep the Republicans in office and to avoid talking about other issues. Well before Prop. 8, I’ve made the point that every time we’ve stood against equality, we’ve been on the wrong side of history. It’s the same kind of argument they made when they didn’t want blacks to serve in the military, or when they didn’t want blacks to marry whites. One day the marriage equality fight will look as archaic as George Wallace standing on the University of Alabama steps keeping James Hood from attending college because he was black. People will be embarrassed to have been on the wrong side. So it’s encouraging to know that this too will seem like such a silly argument to our next generation."

Priest walks out on funeral over attendance of deceased woman’s lesbian daughter

A Catholic priest at St. John Neumann Catholic Church walked out on a funeral service two weeks ago and refused to perform the grave site ritual because he was bothered by the attendance of an openly lesbian woman — the lesbian was the deceased woman’s daughter.

Father Marcel Guarnizo also denied the daughter communion at her mother’s service because she is a “sinner.”

Record number of California voters now support marriage equality

A new poll finds that nearly six out of ten California voters now support marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples, a significant increase since the state voted to ban same-sex marriage a little more than two years ago.
According to the latest Field Research Poll, voter approval of same-sex marriage has reached its highest level ever recorded during thirty-five years of polling on the issue in California.

Currently 59 percent of this state’s registered voters favor allowing same-sex couples to marry and have regular marriage laws apply to them, while 34 percent disapprove. Another 7 percent did not express an opinion.

Glee’s Gay-Suicide Episode Sparked Record Traffic For The Trevor Project

As Entertainment Weekly is reporting, The Trevor Project saw their web traffic spike and their phone calls triple after the episode, which depicted former bully Dave Karofsky (played by Max Adler) attempting suicide -- to the tune of Young the Giant's "Cough Syrup" -- after being outed as gay to his classmates.

"What was great about the show is that they worked in conjunction with us so we knew in advance that there was going to in all likelihood be an increase in volume," Trevor Project co-founder Peggy Rajski tells EW. “What happened was the volume went up about 300 percent, but we were ready."

Adding extra punch, of course, was "Harry Potter" star Daniel Radcliffe's public service announcement, which also aired during the "Glee" time slot. "On average, our site probably attracts about an average of 1,500 visits a day,” Rajski said. “Tuesday we got 10,000. There’s the power of network TV.”

Notre Dame: 'It Needs to Get Better'

The "It Needs to Get Better" video was released in the midst of the ongoing call to action for the University of Notre Dame to officially recognize its gay-straight alliance student club and to include "sexual orientation" in its nondiscrimination clause. The University has repeatedly denied recognizing a gay-straight alliance 15 times now. These denials in club recognition and campus policy date back to before 1995, when students started citing concerns of discrimination, harassment, and fear for personal safety on campus.

Grandparents Speak Out In Favor Of Same-Sex Marriage

The Six Reasons Gays Cannot Have Marriage

Minnesota For Marriage has been producing these weekly “marriage minutes” to totally spin their reasons why marriage must be reserved for “one man-one woman” only unions.



This week, Kalley Yanta explains “How would redefining marriage impact your own marriage?” and gives the six simple (and stupid and bigoted and ignorant and false) reasons gay, lesbian, and bisexual couples cannot be allowed to have marriage:


1. Sex between a man and a woman has the unique capacity to create a child.
2. Pregnancy can occur regardless of whether the couple intends to create a child
or not.
3. The new human life that is created is vulnerable and needs the protection of
adults.
4. The man and woman who created the new life typically have the most interest in
and are best at protecting and guiding that child.
5. They agree that they will both be legally responsible for any child conceived during
the marriage.
6. Couples must work for decades together to raise a child from conception to
adulthood.

Rick Santorum's Secret Service Code Name Suggestions

Baltimore FOX Affiliate Helps Gather Names for Maryland Voter Referendum on Marriage Equality

Baltimore's WBFF FOX45 is helping anti-gay activists gather signatures for a voter referendum on marriage equality. See link (lower right) in front page banner image.

Writes Kevin Naff at the Blade:

So much for “fair and balanced.” I wonder what the gay employees of Fox News and its affiliates — like anchor Shepard Smith — think about the company endorsing this referendum. Let WBFF and Fox know what you think of their marriage opposition, email news@foxbaltimore.com or call 410-467-4545.

A WBFF employee who works on the website told me that the link did not originate with the local web staff and was posted by “corporate.” The number for that office is 410-568-1500. The person who answered that number referred me back to the local station.

Governor Martin O'Malley has not even signed the bill into law yet. That happens this Thursday.

Majority of Iowans Oppose a Ban on Same-Sex Marriage

Don Lemon

Don Lemon
CNN anchorman

With the publication last May of his unflinching memoir, Transparent, Emmy-winning CNN news anchor Don Lemon came out to the world at large. In a interview with The New York Times, he noted, “I guess this makes me a double minority now.”

Born in Louisiana, Lemon made his first on-air inroads as a co-anchor on Chicago’s NBC5 News and as a correspondent for The Today Show and The NBC Nightly News. Joining CNN as a reporter six years ago, he’s gone on to cover the 2008 presidential election (during which he was pushed into a golf cart by Marcus Bachmann) and the accusations of child molestation against Bishop Eddie Long (revealing he had been molested as a child in the process) and hosted a panel on transgender representations on The Joy Behar Show.

Currently a network correspondent and weekend anchor for CNN Newsroom, Lemon, 45, has won the Edward R. Murrow Award for covering the D.C. sniper’s capture and local Emmys for reports on Craigslist, Chicago real estate and Africa’s AIDS epidemic. In 2009, he made Ebony’s 150 Most Influential African-Americans list.

Best. Marines. Homecoming. Kiss. Ever.

Two Marines, Brandon Morgan and Dalan Wells share a passionate kiss as Morgan comes home after four tours of duty.

Brandon Morgan added this statement:

“To everyone who has responded in a positive way. My partner and I want to say thank you. Dalan, the giant in the photo, can’t believe how many shares and likes we have gotten on this. We didn’t do this to get famous,or something like that we did this cause after 3 deployments and four years knowing each other, we finally told each other how we felt. As for the haters, let em hate…to quote Kat Williams, everyone needs haters, so let them hate. We are the happiest we have ever been and as for the whole PDA and kissing slash hugging in uniform…it was a homecoming, if the Sergeants Major, Captains, Majors, and Colonels around us didn’t care…then why do you care what these random people have to say? In summation thank you for your love and support. I received a lot of friend requests off this. I don’t just accept requests so if your request was because of this post message me and let me know. Goodnight all, and Semper Fi.”



Two gay Marines, a couple for four years, struggling as all military couples do through various deployments to Afghanistan, shared a passionate and beautiful kiss that was captured in a photo that went viral over the past few days. Now the couple, Brandon Morgan and Dalan Wells, have given a short interview to their local news station which turns out is in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The couple talk about fighting for equal rights.

Gotta love the Marine Corps official statement: “It’s a typical homecoming photo.”

Almost too many equality victories to count!

Federal judge rules ‘Defense of Marriage Act’ unconstitutional in California case

A federal district court judge in San Francisco ruled Tuesday (February 22) that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) violates the rights of gays and lesbians to equal protection of the law.
The ruling by Judge Jeffrey White of the U.S. District Court for Northern California was the second time a federal judge has declared unconstitutional the federal law banning recognition of same-sex marriages. A federal district court judge in Boston made a similar ruling in July 2010, in consolidated cases brought by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
This week’s ruling came in a case, Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), brought by Lambda Legal Defense on behalf of a lesbian attorney, Karen Golinski, who is employed by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

Golinski married her female partner of 20-
plus years in August 2008, when it was possible to do so in California. She then applied for health care coverage for her spouse through her employer, the Ninth Circuit, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation. Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski ordered the court to provide Golinski benefits but the OPM, headed by openly gay appointee John Berry, instructed the insurance company not to enroll Golinski’s spouse, noting that DOMA precluded the federal employer from recognizing Golinski’s marriage.

Same-sex marriage advocates playing offense

The issue of same-sex marriage has returned to the national stage in an unprecedented way as numerous states throughout the country are seeing action on the issue.
In the past week, several states have seen developments on marriage. Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire signed into law marriage legislation, while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a similar bill that reached his desk.
The Maryland House voted to approve marriage legislation by a vote of 72-67, clearing what is seen as the most difficult hurdle in getting the legislation to Gov. Martin O’Malley’s desk. The Senate approved the bill on Thursday.

A surprise development in Hawaii was also announced on Wednesday. According to Hawaii News Now, Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) announced he would no longer defend in court a state constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage against federal legislation, while Health Director Loretta Fuddy said she’d continue defending the amendment.

These actions come on the heels of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against the constitutionality of Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage. Anti-gay forces this week appealed the ruling to the full appellate court.

The issue is also at the ballot. Advocates in Minnesota and North Carolina are working to beat back anti-gay marriage amendments, while advocates in Maine are preparing to push the first ever pro-marriage equality ballot in their state.

House Leaders to Appeal Calif. Gay Marriage Ruling

Three GOP congressional leaders are appealing a federal judge’s ruling that declared a law prohibiting the government from recognizing same-sex marriages to be unconstitutional, according to court papers filed Friday.

Private lawyers for the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group notified the federal court in San Francisco that they are asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the decision issued by District Judge Jeffrey White this week.

Ruling in the case of a lawyer who works for the appeals court and who had been blocked from enrolling her wife in a family health insurance plan, White said the Office of Personnel Management could not rely on the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act to deny the medical coverage.

House Speaker John Boehner appointed the five-member advisory group last year to defend the marriage law from legal challenges after the Department of Justice announced it no longer would back the law in court because the Obama administration concluded it violates the civil rights of gay men and lesbians.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy are joining Boehner in bringing the appeal, the appeal notice states. The advisory group’s two Democratic members, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, declined to participate.

U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California last year introduced bills to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, but neither has been put to a floor vote.

Nepal Recognizes a Third Gender

adri Pun slept in a gravel courtyard in rural Nepal for more than a week. After the first two days, he stopped eating. By night, he huddled under wool blankets, clutching a folder full of papers, some of which made his life legal -- his birth certificate, his motorcycle license, and his citizenship identification card -- and one which made a new life possible -- a 30-page, four-year-old court decision.

By day, he left the courtyard and entered the government building it encircled. He spent hours at the building shoving the documents in front of various government officials, insisting his ID papers were wrong. After 12 days of protesting, he won his case: Badri Pun was issued a new citizenship ID card, and it listed him as "third-gender."

The Court's decision was a stunning victory for the LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex) rights movement in Nepal, the formal movement just six years old. Its specific orders, however, have been slow to manifest. The Dec. 21, 2007 decision in Sunil B. Pant et al. v. the Government of Nepal ordered the government to scrap all discriminatory laws, form a committee to study same-sex marriage policy, and establish a third-gender category for gender-variant people. The piecemeal implementation of the third-gender category tells the story both of the relentless activism on the ground and of the politics of sexuality and gender rights in contemporary Nepal.

The third gender in Nepal is an identity-based category for people who do not identify themselves as either male or female. This may include people who want to perform or want to be presented as a gender that is different from the one that was assigned to them at birth, based on genitalia or other criteria. It can also include people who do not feel that the male or female gender roles that their culture dictates to them match their true social, sexual, or gender-role preference.

There are other countries that have third-gender policies, but none nearly as comprehensive as Nepal. India has used a third-gender category in several administrative capacities.

Gay Sex Legal in India

The Indian government Tuesday clarified to the Supreme Court that it accepts a recent ruling legalizing gay sex in the country.

A lawyer told the Supreme Court that the government would not challenge a 2009 order by the Delhi High Court striking down a colonial-era law that made gay sex a crime.

The order was appealed by conservative groups and the Supreme Court is now hearing opinions from those groups as well as gay rights activists.

The latest statement comes days after another government lawyer told the court that gay sex was "highly immoral" and should be banned. The government quickly denied that lawyer's statement, prompting confusion about its stance on the law.

On Tuesday, a Supreme Court justice asked the government's lawyers to file an affidavit to reconcile the two divergent positions heard in court. Neither lawyer explained Thursday's confusion.

The 2009 high court order had said that treating consensual gay sex between adults as a crime was a violation of fundamental rights protected by India's constitution.

Sex between people of the same gender had been illegal in India since the 1860s, when a British colonial law classified it as "against the order of nature."

Maine marriage equality advocates qualify for second ballot referendum

Three years after Maine voters rejected same-sex marriage, advocates have gathered the required number of verified signatures to put the issue of marriage equality back on the November 2012 ballot, according to Maine’s Secretary of State, Charlie Summers.

Equality Maine had gathered 85,000 verified signatures with another 30,000 left to be checked as of Wednesday, according to state officials. However, only 57,000 were required to put the measure before voters.

Maine’s legislature passed a marriage equality law in 2009 to give same-sex couples the right to marry, but in a state-wide ballot referendum that echoed California’s Proposition 8, nearly 53 percent of Maine citizens voted against same-sex marriage, reversing the legislative decision before the law took effect.

“Over the past few years, marriage supporters have been talking to their friends, families, coworkers and neighbors about why marriage matters,” said Marc Solomon, National Campaign Director of Freedom to Marry, in a statement Friday.

“As we work to win at the ballot, Freedom to Marry will be there every step of the way alongside Equality Maine, GLAD, and others to continue telling the stories of why marriage matters to loving, committed gay and lesbian couples in Maine, and secure a win at the ballot this November,” he said.

Two recent polls indicate that 53 percent of Mainers now favor same-sex marriage.

If same-sex marriage passes at the polls, Maine could become the first state to approve gay marriage through a popular vote.