Tag Archives: feds

Apple Corp, Dow Chemical, and Levi Strauss Come Out In Support of The Equality Act

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Gay USA

Earlier this week we posted about Democrats Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Cory Booker of New Jersey who will be introducing legislation in Congress today to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other federal laws to protect LGBT Americans from discrimination.

The Equality Act would amend Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include employment protections for sexual orientation and gender identity. Religious beliefs, race, sex, color, and national origin are already protected classes. The bill would not change existing religious exemptions for religious corporations, schools, and associations to make hiring decisions based on religious beliefs if the employee will be performing work connected with their religious activities.

Today three of America’s largest businesses came out in support for the upcoming legislation:

STATEMENT BY APPLE – “At Apple we believe in equal treatment for everyone, regardless of where they come from, what they look like, how they worship or who they love. We fully support the expansion of legal protections as a matter of basic human dignity.”

STATEMENT BY THE DOW CHEMICAL COMPANY – “Dow applauds the introduction of the Equality Act and continues to support a comprehensive federal framework that ensures fairness and opportunity for everyone. Full inclusion of our LGBT colleagues and citizens is quite simply the right thing to do – for business and for society.”

STATEMENT BY LEVI STRAUSS & CO. – “Levi Strauss & Co. is proud to support the Equality Act. We have a long history of supporting LGBT equality, and the time has come in this country for full, federal equality for the LGBT community. Ensuring fairness in our workplaces and communities is both the right thing to do and simply good business.”

Like ENDA, (The Employment Non-Discrimination Act) the Equality Act will see little traction in either GOP-dominated chamber and is on track for passage in 6 – 10 years.

 

Jeb-thro Bush Backs LGBT Workplace & Housing Protections (But Only On A State-By-State Basis)

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End jeb

Speaking to employees at San Francisco tech startup Thumbtack,  Jeb Bush declared that workplace and housing discrimination protections for LGBT Americans should be enacted, but only on a state-by-state basis.

An employee who identified himself to Bush as being gay asked about Bush’s position on legislation to ban discrimination of LGBT Americans. “I don’t think you should be discriminated because of your sexual orientation. Period. Over and out,” he replied.

Bush continued: “The fact that there wasn’t a law doesn’t necessarily mean you would have been discriminated against.” He added that in the wake of the Supreme Court decision to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide, the country must work to carefully balance the rights of those seeking to marry and the religious beliefs of those who oppose those unions.

Citing the frequently-used example by religious freedom advocates, Bush said that in the case of a florist approached by a gay couple, “you should be obligated to sell them flowers, doing otherwise would be discriminatory.” But he said that the objecting florist should not be required to participate in the wedding, a fine line that he hopes will appeal to all sides of the debate.

When the employee followed up to ask specifically whether he would support anti-discrimination laws for LGBT Americans for their housing and employment—the next target for gay rights marriage advocates—Bush said he would at the state level. “I think this should be done state-by-state, I totally agree with that,” he said.

As of this writing on 31 of the 50 states DO NOT offer LGBT protections. 

States Rights, nullification. How very confederate of him.

Lincoln weeps

Famed Gay Activist Frank Kameny To Be Into The Department of Labor Hall Of Honor – #ThankFrank

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Frank Kameny young

 

Via press release from the US Department of Labor:

Frank Kameny, who for decades fought to end discrimination in the federal workplace, will be honored by the U.S. Department of Labor in June with an induction to its Hall of Honor. Kameny’s legacy as a civil rights leader has made a monumental difference in improving the lives of all workers all across America.

A World War II veteran and Harvard-educated doctor of astronomy with the U.S. Army Map Service, Kameny was discharged and barred from federal government employment in 1958 after U.S. Civil Service Commission investigators asked if he was a homosexual.

Kameny fought the injustice, eventually taking his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied his petition in 1961. The setback led him to become a co-founder of the first gay rights organization in Washington, D.C., and began his tireless fight to force the nation’s largest employer — the federal government — to end discrimination in its employment practices based on sexual orientation.

“Frank Kameny was a groundbreaking leader in the LGBT civil rights movement. He fought tirelessly to live out his truth and to end workplace discrimination,” said Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez. “At the Department of Labor we work every day to carry on his legacy and ensure that all workers, no matter who they are or who they love, have equal access to opportunity.”

His activism led to the first gay demonstration for equal rights at the White House in 1965. Kameny later coined the slogan, “Gay is Good,” to combat negative stereotypes of gay and lesbian people and, in 1971, became the first openly gay candidate for Congress. That year, he also publicly challenged the scientific validity of the American Psychiatric Association’s theories on homosexuality as a mental disorder at its national meeting.

Founder of the Gay Activist Alliance (now the Gay and Lesbian Activist Alliance), Kameny and his fellow organizers campaigned relentlessly. Slowly, decisions in federal courts helped foster change. In 1975, almost two decades after he was fired by the Army, the Civil Service Commission announced it would no longer exclude homosexuals from government employment. Twenty years later, President Bill Clinton signed an executive order to allow lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees to hold security clearances and high government positions.

Franklin Edward Kameny died in 2011 at age 86.

Other Hall Of Honor inductees include Ted Kennedy, Bayard Rustin, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, and the 9/11 Rescue Workers. Kameny’s ceremony will take place on June 23rd and the Labor Department suggests the Twitter hashtag #ThankFrank.

#ThankFrank  A truer hashtag has never been written.

Congressional Democrats To Introduce Federal LGBT Rights Bill

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Hell Freezing over.

 

Congressional Democrats said Monda said that they will push and introduce federal legislation to prevent discrimination against gays and lesbians in states that lack broad non-discrimination laws.

Via USA Today:

It’s time for Congress to weigh in on what is happening across the country,” said Rep. Steve Israel of New York, who heads the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. “The recent examples of legislation in Indiana and Arkansas are not where we are as a country. It’s not who we are as Americans. And Congress needs to lead on this.” .” “In the wake of the backlash of Indiana’s misguided law, it is clear that the vast majority of Americans oppose this type of discrimination,” Democratic Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana said Monday. Carson plans to introduce a nonbinding resolution this week expressing lawmakers’ view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people should be protected from discrimination in the workplace, businesses, schools and elsewhere.

Carson plans to introduce a nonbinding resolution this week expressing lawmakers’ view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people should be protected from discrimination in the workplace, businesses, schools and elsewhere.

The resolution is intended as a prelude to legislation to be introduced later this spring by Rep. David Cicilline, D-Rhode Island.

 “Most Americans would be surprised to learn that, in most states, a gay couple can be married on Saturday, post photos of their wedding on Sunday and then be fired on Monday for no reason other than the fact that they are gay,” said Cicilline

The bill Cicilline plans to introduce will be a broad civil rights measure, fashioned after the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. It would protect the LGBT community from discrimination in housing, public spaces, schools, the workplace and other areas. So far there has been no mention of any religious exemptions and how exactly the Democrats plan to pass such an pro=lgbt legislation in the Republican controlled House and Senate.

Ever notice how the Democrats never introduce legislation like this when they are in control of Congress?

Feel good Dem Legislature that has no chance in hell of passing.  Good PR for the upcoming 2016 elections though.

#JustSaying

Lame Duck Democratic Congress Introduces Full DOMA Repeal

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Lame Duck

 

Via press release from Freedom To Marry:

Today Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) reintroduced the Respect for Marriage Act, a bill that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and ensure that the federal government respects all valid marriages across all agencies. The bill has 42 original cosponsors in the Senate, including every returning Senator to the 114th Congress who supported the bill in the past; and 78 cosponsors in the House.

“The U.S. Supreme Court took a crucial step in dismantling the so-called Defense of Marriage Act last year, and the administration has implemented the ruling forcefully, but the job is not yet complete,” said Jo Deutsch, federal director of Freedom to Marry. “The Respect for Marriage Act seeks to fix major gaps in federal protections for married couples, especially in social security and veterans’ benefits. We must keep working to end every vestige of federal marriage discrimination and send this mean-spirited law to the dustbin of history.”

The reintroduction in the Senate includes two new cosponsors: incoming Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senator Gary Peters (D-MI). The House bill has bipartisan support, while all of the cosponsors in the Senate are Democrats.

Legally married same-sex couples continue to suffer discrimination in the areas of Social Security and veterans’ benefits, which are determined by federal law based on whether the state in which they reside respects the marriage. If a same-sex couple is legally married but lives in or moves to a state that doesn’t respect the marriage, they cannot share in these programs. The Respect for Marriage Act fixes this inequity with a provision that requires the federal government to respect all legal marriages for the purposes of all federal programs.

Yes, now that the Democrats are a minority in both houses they are finally eager to put up the gay rights bills knowing they won’t pass. Just like Freedom to Marry which is all but irrelevant since working the “hearts and minds” turned out to be a bust is doing all it can to stay relevant and not lose any paychecks.

FDA Changes Gay Blood Ban Rules. Gay Men Must Now Be Celibate One Year To Donate Blood

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blood ban

 

The U.S. Food  and Drug Administration announced on Tuesday that gay men will now be able to donate blood but only if they had not han a man on man sexual experience for one year.

The proposal will be introduced early next year to end a ban that has been in place since 1983.

Via Reuters:

Scientific evidence shows the move will not create risks for the nation’s blood supply, the FDA said. The policy change is expected to boost the supply of donated blood by hundreds of thousands of pints per year. Blood donations from gay men have been barred since the discovery that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was being transmitted through transfusions.

The FDA said it will issue draft guidance on the policy, hopefully early in 2015. It would then review the comments and issue final guidance “as quickly as possible,” Peter Marks, deputy director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said during a press briefing. An FDA advisory committee met this month to discuss issues around changing the policy, such as the effectiveness of new blood supply tests for HIV infections. In November, an advisory committee to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommended a one-year deferral. The FDA stopped short of eliminating the ban for gay men altogether. Marks said during the briefing that scientific evidence for a ban shorter than a year was not “compelling.”

While still discriminatory Corey Dubin, a member of the FDA’s Blood Products Advisory Panel and founder of the hemophiliac advocacy group the Committee of Ten Thousand (COTT) the group represents hemppheliacs who have contracted HIV/AIDS through blood transfusions is against any lifting of the ban, no matter how incremental. “With the science so far, it’s a leap of faith, No matter how you stack it, there is a risk increase.” Dubin does not  have a medical background.

ACLU Legislative Representative, Ian Thompson countered:

“The FDA’s proposal must be seen as part of an ongoing process and not an end point. The reality for most gay and bisexual men — including those in committed, monogamous relationships — is that this proposal will continue to function as a de facto lifetime ban. Criteria for determining blood donor eligibility should be based on science, not outdated, discriminatory stereotypes and assumptions.” The FDA blood donation policy, which has been in place since 1983, prohibits any man who has had sex with another man, even one time, since 1977 from donating blood. The American Civil Liberties Union previously submitted comments urging the FDA to reassess its policy based on current scientific evidence.

The question still remains though who is going to  be the celibacy police?

 

 

 

Anti-Gay Male Hate Crimes Lead Offenses In Sexual Orientation Category of the FBI’s 2013 Hate Crime Statistics

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Bias Breakdown

 

For the first time  biases against gender (male or female)(0.3%) and gender identity (transgender and gender nonconformity which surprisingly ranked among the lowest at .05%) have been added to the FRI’s annual release of statics of hate crimes in America, and next to incidents of racial hate crimes (45.8%), sexual orientation hate crimes came in second with 20.8% with over over 60% of that statistic number accounting for crimes committed against gay males.

From the FBI:

Today, the FBI released its annual Hate Crime Statistics report, which revealed that 5,928 hate crime incidents involving 6,933 offenses were reported by our law enforcement partners to the Bureau’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program in 2013. These hate crime incidents impacted a total of 7,242 victims—which are defined as individuals, businesses, institutions, or society as a whole. Hate Crime Statistics, 2013—the first UCR publication to contain data collected under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act of 2009—has a few changes from previous reports. First, biases against gender (male or female) and gender identity (transgender and gender nonconformity) have been added to the list of bias categories. And in response to the Shepard/Byrd Act, we modified our data collection so that reporting agencies can indicate whether crimes were committed by, or directed against, juveniles.

And before the Christian Right extremist jump on the 17.4 percent Religious Hate Crime statistic:

Religious bias

Of the 1,223 victims of anti-religious hate crimes:

60.3 percent were victims of crimes motivated by their offenders’ anti-Jewish bias.

13.7 percent were victims of anti-Islamic (Muslim) bias.

6.1 percent were victims of anti-Catholic bias.

4.3 percent were victims of bias against groups of individuals of varying religions (anti-multiple religions, group).

3.8 percent were victims of anti-Protestant bias.

0.6 percent were victims of anti-Atheist/Agnostic bias.

11.2 percent were victims of bias against other religions (anti-other religion).

Our persecution is far from over.  Because for a minority that is said to constitute only two or three percent of the population, we certainly get a disproportionate amount of hate crimes directed at us.

Republicans Refuse To Give Up, Attempt Last Ditch Effort To Stall Executive Order On LGBT Federal Contractors

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GOP SCUM

 

Now that the Department of Labor has issued its final rule on the implementation of President Obama’s executive order banning federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT employees. House Republicans seeing a chance to screw with not only Obama but also the gays are now trying to stall the order’s enactment.

Via Buzzfeed:

House Education and Workforce Committee Chair John Kline, a Republican from Minnesota, and Rep. Tim Walberg, the Republican chair of the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, made the request for a 60-day public comment period for the rule in a letter to the head of the office responsible for enforcing it. “[W]e understand the public was not afforded an opportunity to submit comments as provided under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA),” Kline and Walberg wrote to Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs Director Patricia Shiu. “Public comment is essential to all rulemakings.” After laying out their argument, they write, “We therefore urge OFCCP to withdraw its final regulation submitted to [Office of Management and Budget] … so the process for implementing [Obama’s executive order] can be done with the transparency and public participation typically afforded under the APA.” They ask for a response from Shiu “no later than December 17, 2014.”

This is a preview of what the next 2 years will be like. Add the Senate to the House.

There is something seriously mentally wrong with Republican politicians.  And worse the people who voted them into office

 

AFTHA’s “Porno Pete” LaBarbera: The Government Should Stop Pushing Condoms And Let Them All Die Of AIDS

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porno pete

 

“The question is, if we know what behavior is causing these diseases, why don’t we encourage people not to practice the behaviors? Homosexuality, especially among men, is vastly overrepresented in HIV cases, so the government should be taking steps to discourage men and boys from practicing homosexual behavior.  We’re in a situation now where the government is encouraging groups to pass out condoms at homosexual clubs, as if that’s going to stop the disease. I mean, basically, we’ve done everything but publicly discourage men from practicing homosexuality. Instead the CDC goes around talking about stigma and ‘homophobia.’ This is really a politically protected class of disease because of its association. – American’s for Truth About Homosexuality’s hate group leader “Porno Pete” Peter LaBarbera, quoted by the AFA newsite OneNewsNow.

 

Too bad they weren’t pushing condoms when you were conceived you evil fucking douchebag.

LGBT Activist and Organizations Dispute Flawed Federal CDC’s LGB Population Count

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Miscount

 

Gay-rights activists and organizations are standing up against  the results of the first large-scale federal survey by National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) which attempted to measure sexual orientation in the United States.  The July report released numbers claiming that that less than 3 percent of the population identifies as gay, lesbian or bisexual.

The survey was conducted through a series of in-person interviews in people’s homes. Interviewers took verbal responses and entered them into a laptop. On sexual orientation, they asked, “Which of the following best represents how you think of yourself?’’ Respondents were given the option, depending on their sex, to respond as gay or lesbian, straight, bisexual, “something else,” or “I don’t know the answer.”

Over the years many surveys that have tried to size up the gay population Gary Gates flawed survey through the Williams Institute stated that the number of people who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual is about 3.5 percent to 4 percent, with about half labeling themselves bisexual. Gates only purpose behind his research was to discredit Alfred Kinsey’s 1 in 10 number (10%) from 1942 whose data was collected from his respondents of who had had gay and lesbian experiences not what sexual preference they self identified as.

Recently in  2012 poll conducted by Canada’s Forum Research showed that 5% of the population self-identifies as LGBT.

The recent gross undercount of the LGB’s and the non-representation of the T community is upsetting for many organizations and activists because  they worked for years to get sexual orientation added to the 57-year-old National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), the government’s premier measure of Americans’ health statuses and behaviors and now fear that the results will reduce the urgency of their causes and give ammunition to hate groups such as the American Family Association, the Liberty Council and the Family Research Council.

Meanwhile the CDC National Health Interview Survey is defending its survey and methods but says that it is looking into why its results were so much lower than other similar polls.

Nut the he ugly truth, is that this count is ALREADY being used by the bigots to justify keeping marriage bans in place, to try and pass “religious” freedoms and to basically justify any and all forms of discrimination against us.

WE MUST fight harder than ever and one of our organizations MUST embark on their own survey with FLAWLESS methodology to recufy this gross under-representation,