Florida Agenda

PORTLAND, MAINE — On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from a national anti-marriage equality group, in its bid to prevent its donor list from being released under Maine’s campaign disclosure law.

The justices refused the National Organization for Marriage’s (NOM) request, which was made in an effort to keep secret the names of contributors who helped fund the group’s $1.9 million donation to a political action committee (PAC) during the repeal of the state’s same-sex marriage law.

The state’s campaign disclosure law requires that groups which give more than $5,000 to PACs— or other efforts to influence an election—disclose their donors. Attorneys for Washington, D.C.- based NOM argued that releasing the donor list would curtail free speech and result in harassment for the donors. The group challenged the Maine law, but a lower court refused to overturn it.

In 2009, Maine voters repealed the state’s marriage equality law. That law is once more on the state ballot in the November 6 general election. NOM has donated $250,000 to the campaign opposing marriage equality. The donor list remains closed until a separate case works its way through the state courts.

CLIFF DUNN

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA – The group which successfully banned gay marriage in California has turned its sights on a mainstay of America’s breakfast table. The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), last week accused food products titan General Mills of supporting efforts to destroy the traditional definition of marriage. Brian Brown, the president of NOM, said, “General Mills makes billions marketing cereal to parents of young children. It has now effectively declared a war on marriage with its own customers when it tells the country that it is opposed to preserving traditional marriage.”

In November, voters in Minnesota will decide on a ballot measure that would amend their state constitution to ban same sex marriage. General Mills, which is headquartered in Minneapolis, issued a statement in opposition to the ban, which said, “We do not believe the proposed constitutional amendment is in the best interests of our employees or our state economy—and as a Minnesotabased company we oppose it.”

General Mills has a brand portfolio that includes more than 100 leading U.S. brands, including Betty Crocker, Yoplait, Pillsbury, Green Giant, and Häagen-Dazs. The Fortune 500 Corporation is frequently praised for its worker- and LGBT-friendly policies, and CEO Ken Powell recently spoke at a Minnesota gay pride event.

The company’s vice president of global diversity and inclusion blogged last week, “Obviously, there are strongly held views on both sides. We acknowledge those views, including those on religious grounds. We respect and defend the right of others to disagree. But we truly value diversity and inclusion—and that makes our choice clear.

Coffee Chain Embraces Diversity

in the Face of Religious

Conservative Boycott

SEATTLE, WA – Marriage equality supporters delivered a giant “thank you” card to Starbucks officials for their support of diversity and inclusiveness. The card, which contained more than 650,000 signatures, was partly delivered in response to an online campaign launched to protest the coffee chain’s progressive corporate policies.

Said James Olson, Starbucks’ Vice President of Global Corporate Communications: “We are long-standing supporters of a culture of diversity, and inclusion and equality for everybody, and I’ll share this with our fellow leaders and partners. Thank you very much.”

The gay marriage supporters—a coalition that included the groups MoveOn.org, Washington United for Marriage, and SumOfUs.org—said that “Thank Starbucks” was conceived in part after the Seattle-based chain was condemned by the National Organization of Marriage (NOM), which set up a “Dump Starbucks” to protest the company’s pro-gay policies.

“We are urging customers across the globe to ‘Dump Starbucks’’ because it has taken a corporate-wide position that the definition of marriage between one man and one woman should be eliminated and that same-sex marriage should become equally ‘normal.’ As such, Starbucks has deeply offended at least half its US customers, and the vast majority of its international customers,” reads a statement on NOM’S Web site. At press time, NOM’s site has 25,862 recorded pledges.

Last month, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz defended the chains policies during a shareholder meeting. Schultz said that the coffee giant had enacted its policies “through the lens of humanity, and being the kind of company that embraces diversity.”

By CLIFF DUNN

AUGUSTA, ME – According to confidential strategy documents made public last week, officials with the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) considered a plan to manipulate Latino and black groups—two core constituencies within the Democratic Party—into political opposition against LGBT rights organizations in general, and gay marriage in particular. The strategy also called for the recruitment of children in same-sex families in an effort to coax admissions from them on video of familial unhappiness.

The memos, which were released by court order on March 26, detail a well conceived strategy for manipulating Hispanic and African American opinions into opposing marriage equality for LGBT persons. They also suggest connecting marriage equality to unpopular topics including pornography.

The documents portray the Democratic Party leadership as “increasingly inclined to privilege the concerns of gay rights groups over the values of African-Americans,” presaging the strategy to play upon cultural differences.

One memo urges gay marriage opponents to “find, equip, energize and connect African-American spokespeople for marriage; develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots.”

“The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks–two key Democratic constituencies,” reads another of the NOM memoranda. The memo also lays out a social engineering scheme to “interrupt” the assimilation of Hispanics into mainstream American culture as a means of fracturing Latino support for marriage equality.

“Will the process of assimilation to the dominant Anglo culture lead Hispanics to abandon traditional family values?” posited one of the court released NOM memos. “We must interrupt this process of assimilation by making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity,” adding that this would become for Hispanic Americans “a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation.”

NOM’s memos also outline a strategy in which President Barack Obama would be depicted as a “social radical.”

The documents and memorandum were unsealed by Maine court officials as part of a legal challenge to the state’s financial disclosure laws. The courts must also determine whether NOM, the nation’s largest opponent of same sex marriage, must release the names of donors to its 2009 campaign that successfully banned gay marriage in the Pine Tree State.

“With the veil lifted, Americans everywhere can now see the ugly politics that the National Organization for Marriage traffics in every day,” said Joe Solmonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest LGBT rights organization.

“While loving gay and lesbian couples seek to make lifelong commitments, NOM plays racial politics, tries to hide donors and makes up lies about people of faith,” added Solmonese.

Julian Bond, the former chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) also denounced NOM’s strategy.

“NOM’s underhanded attempts to divide will not succeed if Black Americans remember their own history of discrimination,” condemned Bond, a veteran of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. “Pitting bigotry’s victims against other victims is reprehensible; the defenders of justice must stand together.”

Brian Brown, the president of NOM, refused to back down from his organization’s opposition to marriage equality for all Americans. “Gay marriage advocates have attempted to portray same-sex marriage as a civil right,” said Brown. “This claim is patently false.”

“Gay marriage is not a civil right, and we will continue to point this out in written materials such as those released in Maine,” Brown added.

“We proudly bring together people of different races, creeds and colors to fight for our most fundamental institution: marriage.”

Same-sex marriage supporters have gotten the issue placed on Maine’s November ballot. Although the court-released documents contain detailed information on NOM’s Maine campaign, they do not list the names of financial donors, among them three who contributed over one million dollars each in 2009 to defeat gay marriage.

G.O.P. Candidates Sign NOM’s Marriage Pledge

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Three Republican presidential candidates, Michelle Bachmann, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, have signed the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) Marriage Pledge. NOM’s marriage pledge was offered to all serious announced candidates for the G.O.P. nomination. An opportunity to sign the Marriage Pledge will be extended to Texas Governor Rick Perry and other major candidates, if and when they enter the race.

In signing the pledge, the candidates swear to: support and send to the states a federal marriage amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman, defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court, appoint judges and an attorney general who will respect the original meaning of the Constitution, appoint a presidential commission to investigate harassment of traditional marriage supporters and support legislation that would return to the people of D.C. their right to vote for marriage.

Gay Man Wins Right to  Be an Ordained Minister

MADISON, WI – Openly gay Scott Anderson, 56, won the right to be ordained by the USA Presbyterian Church. Anderson is believed to be the first gay person in a long-term same-sex relationship to be approved for ordination by the denomination.

The church’s judicial commission  dismissed a case against Anderson by opponents of gay ordination. Opponents brought the case last year, arguing Anderson could not be ordained because he was in an open relationship with a man. At the time, church rules required clergy members to live in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness. However, a shift in thinking earlier this year happened when a majority of the church’s regional bodies voted to allow openly gay men and women in a same-sex relationship to be orda

ined.

Another Indian Tribe Approves Same-Sex Marriage

SEATTLE, WA – A second American Indian tribe has adopted a law recognizing same-sex marriage. The Suquamish Tribal Council of Washington state voted to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples. The new law gained the support of more than 100 tribal leaders in their most recent meeting.

The law permits the tribal court to issue a marriage license to two unmarried people, regardless of their gender, as long as they’re at least 18 years old and one of the people is a member of the tribe.

Same-sex marriage is illegal in the State of Washington, but the state legislature has approved a measure stating they will recognize same-sex marriages that took place in other jurisdictions and other nations. The legislature has also approved a bill called “Everything But Marriage,” which grants same-sex couples many of the same rights as married couples except for using the word “married”.

The Coquille Indian Tribe in southern Oregon is the only other tribe that recognizes same-sex marriage.

New Data Shows Annual HIV Infections in U.S. Relatively Stable

ATLANTA, GA – The Centers for Disease Control (CDC)’s first multi-year estimates from its national HIV incidence surveillance find that, overall, the annual number of new HIV infections in the United States was relatively stable at approximately 50,000 each year between 2006 and 2009.  However, HIV infections increased among young men who have sex with men (MSM) between 2006 and 2009, driven by alarming increases among young, black MSM – the only subpopulation to experience a sustained increase during the time period.

The new estimates were published online in the scientific journal PLoS ONE.  The incidence estimates are based on direct measurement of new HIV infections with a laboratory test that can distinguish recent from long-standing HIV infections.

“More than 30 years into the HIV epidemic, about 50,000 people in this country still become infected each year. Not only do men who have sex with men continue to account for most new infections, young gay and bisexual men are the only group in which infections are increasing, and this increase is particularly concerning among young African American MSM,” said CDC Director Thomas Frieden, M.D. “HIV infections can be prevented. By getting tested, reducing risky behaviors, and getting treatment, people can protect themselves and their loved ones.”

Warner Brothers Sets November for Release  of J. Edgar

HOLLYWOOD, CA – Warner Brothers Studios has set November 9th as the release date for the film, “J. Edgar,” a biopic on the first director of the F.B.I. being produced by Clint Eastwood. The motion picture completed filming in February.

The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio and was written by Dustin Lance Black; the timing of the release will make it eligible for nomination for next year’s Academy Awards. In addition to DiCaprio, the cast includes Armie Hammer (from The Social Network) as Hoover’s assistant and closeted lover, Clyde Tolson; Josh Lucas as aviator Charles Lindbergh; Ed Westwick as Agent Smith, an operative gifted with writing skills; Damon Herriman as Bruno Hauptmann, the man convicted of kidnapping and killing the Lindbergh baby; Judi Dench as Hoover’s mother; Naomi Watts as Helen Gandy, a Justice Department file clerk who ended up being Hoover’s personal secretary; Ken Howard as lawyer and jurist Harlan F. Stone; Jeffrey Donovan as Robert F. Kennedy and Stephen Root as Arthur Koehler, a wood specialist at Forest Product Laboratories who uses his expertise to help Hoover investigate the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby by tracing the origins of the ladder used by the perpetrator.

Major Psychology Group Comes Out to Support Gay Marriage

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The policy-making body of the American Psychological Association (APA) voted unanimously to approve a resolution to support full marriage equality, a move that observers say will have a far-reaching impact on the debate. This was the world’s largest organization of psychologists’ strongest stand to date in support of same-sex marriage and cited new research in their decision.

The group, with more than 154,000 members, has long supported full equal rights for gays, based on social science research on sexual orientation. Now, the nation’s psychologists, citing an increasing body of research about same-sex marriage, as well as increased discussion at the state and federal levels, took the support to a new level.

The resolution points to numerous recent studies, including findings that many gay men and lesbians, like their heterosexual counterparts, desire to form stable, long-lasting and committed intimate relationships and are successful in doing so.

Rupert Murdoch to Cash in on Gay Marriage

NEW YORK, NY – According to Gay City News, Rupert Murdoch’s New Corp is ready to cash in on same-sex marriage with a new magazine, Wedding Pride: The Magazine for Gay and Lesbian Wedding Planning. The first issue will hit newsstands this September with an initial 35,000 copy run, which will likely remain confined to the gay-friendly communities of Chelsea, Park Slope, Fire Island, Montclair, South Orange and Asbury Park.

Murdoch’s News Corp. is most famous for its other publications, such the New York Daily News and its cable Fox News Channel.

“Glee” Star to Replace Daniel Radcliffe in  “How to Succeed”

NEW YORK, NY – The producers of the 50th anniversary production of the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical comedy “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” announced last week that Darren Criss, of Fox’s Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning hit television show, “Glee,” will make his Broadway debut as J. Pierrepont Finch, performing a strictly limited three week engagement from January 3, through January 22, 2012. He will replace Daniel Radcliffe, who will play his final performance on Sunday, January 1, 2012.

Criss plays Blaine Anderson, Chris Colfer’s love interest on “Glee”.

Esurance Donates $50K  to The Trevor Project

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Esurance, the online car insurance company, announced that the company donated $50,000 to The Trevor Project, the leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services for LGBT youth.
Esurance recently launched the charitable giving campaign on its Facebook page. For each new “Like,” the company donated $10 to The Trevor Project to help support the Trevor Lifeline, a 24/7 crisis intervention phone hotline offering free and confidential suicide prevention counseling to youth nationwide.

With Twitter and Facebook support from The Trevor Project itself, and the mentions from celebrities such as Perez Hilton, Jonathan Knight of New Kids on the Block, and others spreading the word, Esurance quickly reached its stated goal of $50,000.

Ann Coulter to Serve  as Honorary Chair of GOProud’s Advisory Council

WASHINGTON, D.C. – GOProud, a national organization of gay conservatives, announced that Ann Coulter was joining the organization’s Advisory Council as Honorary Chair. Coulter’s official title will be “Honorary Chair and Gay Icon”.

“Ann Coulter is a brilliant and fearless leader of the conservative movement, we are honored to have her as part of GOProud’s leadership,” said Christopher Barron, Chairman of GOProud’s Board in a written statement. “Ann helped put our organization on the map. Politics is full of the meek, the compromising and the apologists – Ann, like GOProud, is the exact opposite of all of those things. We need more Ann Coulters.”

Coulter responded with “I am honored to serve in this capacity on GOProud’s Advisory Council and look forward to being the Queen of fabulous.”

Coulter joins Margaret Hoover, Grover Norquist, Andrew Breitbart, Liz Mair, Chuck Muth, Lisa De Pasquale, Christian Josi, Roger Stone, Andrew Langer, Kathryn Serkes and Bob Carlstrom on the GOProud Advisory Council.

Coulter is the author of “Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America,” as well as seven other New York Times bestsellers: “Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America,” “If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans,” “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must),” “Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism,” “Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right” and “High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton”.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Former member of the National Organization for Marriage, Louis Marinelli, has formed  a new organization, the National Organization for Marriage Equality.

Marinelli, was the bus driver for last year’s NOM “Summer of Marriage Tour” and, according to his new website www.wearenome.org, he is planning a tour this summer for marriage equality visiting 17 states.

The tour will be visiting the cities he visited last year when he came up with the idea of the bus tour for NOM. He said it was because of the counter-protesters at the stops he made last year that gave him thought and a change of heart and his resignation from NOM.

“I am personally responsible for that tour,” said Marinelli. “It was my idea and I proposed it to Brian Brown, NOM’s President, who agreed to endorse and sponsor the project. As a result, I feel compelled to revisit the cities of last year’s marriage tour to meet the thousands of people who came out to meet discrimination and bigotry head-on in the streets of their hometowns.”

NEW YORK, NY – The National Organization for Marriage has promised at least $2-million for the 2012 election to make sure that Republicans understand that voting for gay marriage in New York had its consequences.

NOM’s president, Brian Brown, said that the organization is not giving up the fight to protect marriage in New York and will continue to fight against gay marriage in both New Hampshire and Iowa.

DES MOINES, Iowa –

 When voters go to the polls, many do not focus on the people running for various city, county or state justice positions. Some leave those contests blank or choose the name they like the best. Prior to 2010, only four judges had not been retained since 1962 in elections in Iowa, and zero of them were on Iowa’s Supreme Court, according to American Judicature Society. That all changed this year when three of Iowa’s Supreme Court Justices were ousted out of office, thanks to an influx of spending cash from the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a group that’s only purpose is to keep marriage between one man and one woman.

Iowa Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and Justices David Baker and Michael Streit did not receive the 50 percent vote needed to keep their seats. These three justices had voted in favor of allowing same-sex marriage in the state in 2009. The three justices issued a joint statement in defeat.

“We hope Iowans will continue to support Iowa’s merit selection system for appointing judges. This system helps ensure that judges base their decisions on the law and the Constitution and nothing else.

Ultimately, however, the preservation of our state’s fair and impartial courts will require more than the integrity and fortitude of individual judges; it will require the steadfast support of the people.”

NOM President Brian Brown was proud of the work he and his team did in Iowa.

“This election, we want Iowans to know that their values and their votes matter,” Brown said. “They need to know where these Justices stand, and unfortunately they stand on the idea that as Justices they are elite and are above the scrutiny of the people’s voice. Our opponents claim there is no such thing as an activist judge, but these judges have substituted their own values for the values of working families in Iowa.”

Iowa Gov. Chet Culver, the politician who was pro-LGBT rights, lost his election for another term to Gov.-elect Terry Branstad, who in July told The Des Moines Register that there would be sufficient political pressure to force a vote on a marriage amendment.