Florida Agenda

By Joe Harris

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Last week, the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization endorsed marriage equality for all Americans. The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) announced in a story in the Washington Blade that the organization’s national board of directors has voted unanimously to support same sex marriage.

Eric Rodriquez, Vice President of Public Policy for NCLR, said, “There was discussion for that period of time, but everyone really strongly felt that supporting what we had already put out there in terms of our statement was the right thing to do.”

The organization, founded in 1968, is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with regional offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Antonio, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. NCLR is funded by philanthropic organizations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Ford Foundation, as well as corporate benefactors, which number among them Citigroup and Walmart.

La Raza’s endorsement follows that of the Board of Directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which voted last month to support marriage equality at its national meeting in Miami. Janet Murguía, the President and Chief Executive Officer of NCLR, said of La Endorsement, “NCLR has taken a strong stand on marriage equality and our Board of Directors wanted to affirm and support that decision, which I very much appreciate.

That unanimous vote recognizes that marriage equality and LGBT issues are, and need to be, part of NCLR’s core civil rights agenda.” The endorsement of NCLR—and the earlier one by the NAACP— reflects a growing movement among minority leaders to reevaluate traditional attitudes toward LGBT rights. That momentum in the Hispanic community has previously taken the form of endorsements for same sex marriage by the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund and the Texas Chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

These changes also reflect a shift in the demographic support for gay marriage, with recent polls showing that as much as 54 percent of Hispanics now support some form of legal recognition for same sex unions. In 2008, 67 percent of U.S. Hispanics voted for President Obama, something that U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Illinois) thinks is important to remember.

“Most Latinos favor broader civil rights protections and inclusion in U.S. society, and the issue of same-sex marriage is no exception,” Gutierrez told The Huffington Post. “A majority of Latino voters favor legalizing same-sex marriage, as a recent NCLR study showed,” he added. And Pedro Julio Serrano, spokesperson for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) says that another factor contributes to growing Latino support for gay marriage: A strong sense of family.

“We know what ‘familia’ is,” Serrano said. “When we see same sex couples in loving and committed relationships, when we see that more that 40 percent are raising children, we want them to have the same rights and protections as the opposite sex couples have. In any case, if it has an effect, it will be a positive one.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Mary Cheney, the second daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, married her longtime partner, Heather Poe, last week in the nation’s capital. On her Facebook page, Cheney posted, “Very happy to announce that as of this morning, Heather and I are legally married (at least in DC), 20 years to the day after our first date.”

According to a statement from the Cheney family, the former vice president and his wife, Lynne, are “delighted” by the marriage.

“Mary and Heather have been in a committed relationship for many years, and we are delighted that they were able to take advantage of the opportunity to have that relationship recognized,” the statement read.

“Mary and Heather and their children are very important and much loved members of our family and we wish them every happiness.” Poe and Mary Cheney have two children, a son and daughter, both born to Cheney. They reside n Virginia.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – After Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank announced that he will not seek reelection next year, American Family Association (AFA) spokesman Bryan Fischer decided to celebrate Frank’s retirement by attacking the congressman for being gay.

According to Right Wing Watch, on “Focal Point,” Fischer claimed that Frank may have used his prominent position to “influence” other men into becoming gay who may have later contracted AIDS. “This is a dangerous, risky, immoral, unhealthy lifestyle, and Barney Frank has been an open practitioner of a lifestyle that is condemning one young man after another to an early grave,” Fischer said. “This is not somebody to admire, this is not somebody to honor.” Fischer went on to say that Frank “modeled a lifestyle which is really a death-style,” wondering, “Who knows how many people were drawn or encouraged in some way by Barney Frank’s example to dabble in a lifestyle that eventually cost them their health and maybe even cost them their lives.”