Florida Agenda

Richardson Election Provides Framework for LGBT Legislative Caucus

By Cliff Dunn

MIAMI BEACH – Although Florida remains one of the largest states without significant statewide LGBT anti discrimination protections, it can no longer claim to be the largest without an openly gay lawmaker. The election last week of David Richardson to the Florida House of Representatives breaks what activists have called the Sunshine State’s “lavender ceiling.”

Acknowledging the import of his accomplishment to history, Richardson, 55, told reporters, “I am the first openly-gay legislator in the history of Florida. And forever will be.” Richardson defeated three other candidates to represent State House District 113, which serves Miami Beach.

A forensic accountant who grew up the son of a taxi driver father in Orlando, Richardson earned degrees in biology and accounting at the University of Central Florida, and a master’s in Business Administration at the University of Tampa. The former Big Six accounting firm auditor started his own CPA practice in 1993, and moved to Miami Beach in 2001.

In last week’s Democratic Primary, Richardson garnered a plurality of 33 percent of the 9,458 votes cast, defeating consumer advocate Waldo Faura Jr.; attorney Adam Kravitz; and Mark Weithorn, the husband of Miami Beach City Commissioner Deede Weithorn. No Republicans ran to challenge the seat.

According to the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, until this election season, Florida was one of 17 states “with zero ‘out’ state lawmakers.” The Victory Fund supported Richardson, as did Equality Florida, Florida Together, and SAVE Dade, which reportedly spent about $50,000 towards Richardson’s election. During the campaign, Richardson told supporters, “I don’t want people to vote for me or not vote for me because I’m gay. I just want people to look at my record.”

Other openly-gay lawmakers may join Richardson in Tallahassee, with gay candidates running for state office in Brevard County ( John Alvarez), Orange County ( Joe Saunders), Monroe County (Ian Whitney), and here in Broward County (Scott Herman); all but the last one are Democrats.

Richardson said that his legislative priorities will be the state’s schools and its budget. “I got an incredibly good public school education and went to UCF, which is a publicly-supported university in Florida,” he told reporters. “I’m concerned about the cuts made in the last five years. I intend to get my hands very dirty and get into details of a $70 billion state budget. I have to believe there is a lot of waste and abuse.”

He also plans to introduce legislation to provide state employment protections for LGBT Floridians.

By Joe Harris

The decision by Mitt Romney last weekend to name U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as his presumptive vice presidential nominee may be the kind of political cover the Republican presidential contender needs as he shifts his campaign from primary season-mode to a general election campaign status—a “calibration” the former Massachusetts governor may find more to his liking, especially as it relates to the values stuff with which he seems most uncomfortable.

Despite his credentials as a returned Mormon missionary, a graduate of Mormon Church-owned Brigham Young University, a captain of finance, and an active Republican (since 1993, anyway; prior to that, he was a registered Independent, who had previously voted for some Democrats, including the late Paul Tsongas during the 1992 Massachusetts presidential primary), Romney has been viewed with suspicion by the social Right and other values voters.

His single term as governor of the Bay State (2003 to 2007) did not endear him to fiscal and small governmentconservatives outside—or frankly, inside—of “Taxachusetts,” especially after his 2006 signing into law of the state’s health care reform legislation (or, more informally, “Romneycare”), the first of its kind in the U.S., which provided nearuniversal health coverage access via statelevel subsidies and individual mandates to purchase insurance.

Although in Massachusetts he presided over eliminating a projected $3 billion deficit—in part by reducing state funding for higher education, and cutting aid to municipalities—the pragmatic Romney approved the raising of fees, and his public austerity was aided by an unanticipated windfall of federal funds, and unexpected revenues generated via a capital gains tax hike.

Conservatives can be forgiven for being confused about where Romney actually stands on the subject of gay civil rights, and Democrats like to point to the candidate’s perceived contradictions on the subject, as when, during his 1994 campaign against Ted Kennedy for the late Liberal lion’s U.S. Senate seat, Romney promised the Log Cabin Republicans of Massachusetts that he would seek “full equality” for LGBT persons, and went so far as to say that he was more supportive of gay rights than Kennedy.

In May, when President Obama announced his support for gay marriage, Romney acknowledged that, “Benefits of that nature may well be appropriate, and states are able to make a provision for the determination of those kinds of rights.” The practicing Mormon has said that his opposition to marriage equality stems from his religious beliefs.

In 2003, when the Massachusetts courts legalized same-sex marriage, the governor complained that the state was becoming “San Francisco East.” He also warned in (mock?) horror a conservative audience that “some are actually having children born to them.”

How will his Ryan selection impact this election cycle’s yet-to-be-seen Romney, particularly for gays? It may have already started, with the announcement last week by a Romney campaign spokesperson confirming the candidate’s opposition to the Boy Scouts of America’s ban on gay leaders, something which he publicly expressed during his failed 1994 Senate bid. Andrea Saul told reporters that the former governor believes “all people should be able to participate in the Boy Scouts regardless of their sexual orientation.” That won’t play well with the people most uplifted by Ryan’s selection for the ticket. Stay tuned.

By Joe Harris

It has been a dozen years, and three presidential elections, since a contentious 5-to-4 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court handed the presidency to George W. Bush. The 2012 general election cycle is shaping up to be a squeaker, with a razor thin margin possible for deciding the next Occupant of 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue. As is typical in many cases of much-needed reform, meaningful change has been paralyzed—for going on a decade, now— by the familiar nemesis to democracy: Partisan politics.

In state after state, efforts to tackle some of the more flawed elements of elections—voter identification and the accompanying fraud—have stalled over questions of whether honest efforts are in reality disguised attempts to prevent the disadvantaged and minorities from voting. The laudatory labors of a 2005 bipartisan commission led by former President Jimmy Carter (Democrat) and former Secretary of State James Baker (Republican) found that in Florida alone, 140,000 voters were also registered in four other states—46,000 of them in New York City. (Among these, 1,700 had registered for absentee ballots in their other state-of-record, with no subsequent investigation.)

The Carter-Baker Commission suggested reforms that included impartial administration of elections, and uniform photo ID rules, but little was done once the partisans had picked clean the bones of bipartisanship. Experts say that although there have been election irregularities in the past—like rules that excluded immigrants or African-Americans from voting—things have gotten worse since the 2000 election.X

Unlike nearly every other nation with free elections, ours is administered by partisan officials who are elected as candidates of their parties. (It was in this spirit that our seventh president, Andrew Jackson, said, “If there’s a job that can’t be done by a Democrat, let’s get rid of the job.”) Traditionally, Republicans call for tightening of voter ID regulations (which goes hand-in-glove with their support for immigration restrictions), while Democrats want ease of access to polls (and more broad-minded rules on immigration).

Each typically looks with suspicion at the motives of the other, especially in matters of election reform. According to Pew research, in 2008, 2.2 million votes were lost because of voter registration difficulties. Those are votes both parties are eager to net.

The actual mechanics of voting systems could also stand freshening up. According to the authors of a study released last week by the Brennan Center for Justice, at New York University School of Law, during the combined 2008 and 2010 general elections, nearly 400,000 absentee or provisional ballots were rejected because of technical mistakes made by voters on the ballot forms or envelopes. The report, “Better Designs, Better Elections,” adds that the lost votes were mostly found among minority and low-income voters, along with the disabled and the elderly.

By Dale Madison

Richard Cimoch has been involved in South Florida’s LGBT community for over two decades, serving on the board of such organizations such as Pride South Florida, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg of his activism, political and otherwise. An early supporter of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential run, Cimoch has been a member of the Broward County Democratic Executive Committee, and is a former Secretary of the Dolphin Democratic Club.

Cimoch, a native of Philadelphia, served on the Human Rights Campaign, and is a former Co-Chair of Pride South Florida, as well as the Pride Center at Equality Park. In the August 14th primary, Cimoch is a candidate for Democratic Precinct Committeeman, Precinct 004, which covers the area around west Wilton Manors, from the North Andrews Avenue Bridge, to West Oakland Park Boulevard.

The former Penn State Nittany Lion says that voter turnout is key to his party’s victory, and believes his record as a voter activist will translate to numbers at the polls come November. Cimoch says that since his announcement for precinct committeeman, he has helped a few dozen voters to update their polling eligibility, or to register outright. “I have always been proud of the connection with motivating people to get out and vote, and we will need turnout that’s higher than normal to ensure an Obama victory,” Cimoch says. “Florida is crucial to Obama’s victory, and as gay men and women, we have a lot to lose if he doesn’t win.”

By Joe Harris

Gay men’s hook up app Grindr is finding new life—sort of—as a modernday Paul Revere, sounding the clarion and alerting an otherwise torpid citizenry about matters of political import. Take the case last summer when gay men in Saratoga County, New York received Grindr notifications that Republican State Senator Roy McDonald and others were possible “yea” votes in upcoming marriage equality legislation.

The evidence is far from empirical that the call “to arms” impacted the decisions of five GOP Senators (and one very religious Democrat), who eventually voted in favor of same sex marriage, but the final vote itself, 33 to 29, with McDonald and a handful of other GOP lawmakers in the “yea” column— and the fact that Grindr’s message was accompanied by an electronic option to connect automatically with McDonald’s office—shows the kind of legerdemain both sides in the gay marriage debate must employ to maximize message, and its impact.

Although location-based, the Grindr phenomenon is most assuredly a global one, with the app having about 4 million users spread across 192 countries. Although its primary use—and original intention—is to connect gay men for casual hook ups, it also serves as a way for men to offer recommendations to one another about sights and scenes in foreign locales, and to let gay men in less-open societies know that they are not alone. It also includes large user bases in such destination-lands as Brazil, France, and Thailand.

On its Web site, Grindr for Equality—which was launched in August 2010—notes that “Grindr has a greater capacity to provide assistance within the [LGBT] community, and harnessing the power of our global user base is where the idea for Grindr for Equality was born. The ability to contact people in specific geographic areas en masse aided us in swaying voters in California, and enabled users to contact their representatives in New York to vote in favor of the marriage equality bill. There is strength in numbers, and this initiative will enable our users to use our platform for the greater good of our community. The goal of Grindr for Equality is to raise awareness for [LGBT] issues, and spur action across the globe.”

Grindr’s muscle flexes globally. In November, Grindr for Equality directed over 57,000 people to an online petition to prevent politicians in St. Petersburg— the one in Russia—from criminalizing “gay propaganda,” a classification so broad that human rights organizations rightly argued that it would be tantamount to making homosexuality illegal in the former playground of the Tsars. The developer is also partnering with Web-based equality group All Out in a campaign to condemn violence against LGBT persons in Iraq.

In November, several states will include same sex marriage initiatives—either in favor of establishing the institution, or to ban the concept in the states’ constitutions—including legislation to legalize it in Maine, and a Washington State referendum to overturn it. In some ways, too, the presidential election in November will be a plebiscite on Barack Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality, which his likely Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, opposes. Says Grindr founder Joel Simkhai: “Electing officials that support gay rights is probably the most important thing you can do to support gay rights.”

Cliff Dunn – Editor

For about five seconds today, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) became my intellectually favorite person. Florida’s junior United States Senator—of which the Republican vice presidential nomination is generally viewed to be his to lose—gave an interview with Christianity Today in which, among other things, he responded to the question, “Are Christians who oppose gay marriage fighting a losing battle?”

Rubio—the darling of the Tea Party movement and, therefore, to some Progressives and left-of- Centrists at least, a barely-disguised joke—offered the usual conservative boilerplate response (“In terms of the Bible’s interpretation of marriage, what our faith teaches is pretty straightforward”), before throwing some red meat to the Sensible Center—which, frankly, caught me off guard.

“The debate is about what society should tolerate, and what society should allow our laws to be.

I believe marriage is a unique and specific institution that is the result of thousands of years of wisdom, which concluded that the ideal— not the only way but certainly the ideal—situation to raise children to become productive and healthy humans is in a home with a father and mother married to each other.

Does that mean people who are not in that circumstance cannot be successful? Of course not. It’s not a discriminatory thing. I’m not angry at anyone because of it, but I also have to be honest about what I believe marriage should be in our laws.”

I have to tell you, more thoughtful discourse of that sort, and Rubio may be positioned to reinvent the modern Republican Party into something the late Jack Kemp dreamed of—but never really believed could happen, at least in his lifetime: A truly Big Tent GOP, where religious Christians, Jews, and Muslims could espouse their religious faiths, while respectfully agreeing to disagree with one another, and allowing other “conservatives” (of a more fiscal or libertarian bent) to preach the gospels of Capitalism and Small Government. The two sides’ arguments would not be mutuallyexclusive of one another, because— as Rubio acknowledged—men and women of goodwill understand that there exists an “ideal” way (whatever that may be to the individual), but that this is “not the only way” for other men and women of goodwill to comport themselves, and they may do so providing they don’t infringe upon others’ way of life. Pass the tolerance, please, and don’t hold the mayo.

This would be a GOP where gays and lesbians (and not a few Bis, Transgenders, Questioningers, and Intersex-ers) would be comfortable as members (“Partyers”?), because the “debate,” to use Rubio’s word, would focus on differences of policy, rather than hyperbole. Rubio—come to think of it, he is kind of cute, isn’t he?— may be uniquely positioned to herald in this Age of Tolerance, returning the Party of Lincoln to its liberty-loving, “abolitionist” Christian roots.

Social and religious conservatives are free to think that people who do not subscribe to their worldview are going to a Hot Place (and by a narrow interpretation of scripture, it’s going to be a crowded Lake of Fire, indeed), but they are not free to use that worldview to deny their fellow citizens rights which are immutable and inalienable, and should be universal. (This is another place where Rubio exhibited a sobriety of thought not usual for his purported political ilk: He refused to attack Obama’s faith.).

As we locally commemorate Stonewall this weekend, let us remember that the original men and women who fought back against an intolerant and unbalanced system did so with feelings of real PRIDE about being who they were—not gay men and women, but men and women who are deserving of respect, regardless of what they look like, how they dress, or whom they love, whether by choice or by chance.

The prophet of Islam, Muhammad, said, “The most holy jihad is the one that is fought within oneself.”

So, too, is the greatest pride—in being gay, in being human—to be found within.

BY JOE HARRIS

The endorsement last month of President Obama for same sex marriage has all the usual suspects up in arms— social and religious conservatives, Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and traditionalists who are nervous about governmental intervention into an institution older than God (the word itself, I mean, which dates back to around the 6th Century), as well as the center-right candidates who are anxious to assuage them, and thereby earn their political backing.

But the president has been making all the right noises for an important constituency, and his campaign coffers are seeing the windfall results. So stoked is this segment of moneyed Democratic supporters—which comprise wealthy LGBT donors—that an Obama campaign fundraiser held yesterday required a larger venue, after organizers were bombarded with a barrage of RSVPs for the event, which featured pop performer Pink, after Obama’s May announcement. According to an analysis by CNN, among President Obama’s biggest fundraisers—known in the parlance of campaign finance as “bundlers”—at least 33, or about one out of every 16 of them—is openly gay.

The Washington Post reports that as many as one out of six bundlers who supports Obama is gay. The Advocate.com estimates one in five. All told, they raised at least $8 million for the Obama reelection campaign from January to the end of March. That compares to the efforts of bundlers from the entertainment industry—which includes some of the biggest names in film, music, and television, among them actor and director George Clooney— who, during the same timeframe, raised $6.8 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Laws on campaign finance require that donors disclose their names, addresses, jobs, and employers, but there is no such disclosure required for sexual orientation. The law also doesn’t require that candidates release information about their bundlers. The Obama campaign has released its list, but the campaign of his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, hasn’t. After the initial excitement of his 2008 campaign wore off, support for the president in the LGBT community waned—in large measure a result of what was seen as Obama’s lukewarm support for a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT), and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). In 2010, actor Alan Cumming wrote, “We keep hearing that Obama is an ally—that DADT will end under his watch—but what do we actually get? Diddly squat.”

DADT—the Pentagon policy that banned openly-gay men and women from serving in the armed forces— officially ended on September 20, 2011. Among the wealthy LGBT Americans who have opened their checkbooks to Obama’s reelection efforts are software entrepreneur and Gill Foundation benefactor Tim Gill, who has donated, with partner Scott Miller, $672,800 to Obama for America. Fred Eychaner, the owner of Chicagobased Newsweb Corp., has given $1,220,550, and co-hosted in February a $35,800-per-person LGBT fundraiser for Obama.

Kathy Levinson, the former President and CEO of E-Trade, has donated $202,150. Karen K. Dixon and Dr. Nan Schaffer, her partner, hosted a Washington, D.C. fundraiser that was reported to have raised over a million dollars for Obama’s campaign. On the Republican side, Mitt Romney has not disclosed his bundler list, which makes it hard to know if there are any openly gay bundlers working for the GOP. But the presumptive Republican nominee is on record opposing same sex marriage and civil unions, and supports a Constitutional amendment to ban marriage equality for all Americans.

By Cliff Dunn

TALLAHASSEE – The battle lines are forming up, following President Barack Obama’s history-making endorsement last week of same sex marriage. In an interview with ABC News that aired in part last Wednesday night and concluded the next day on “Good Morning America,” the chief executive became the first sitting president to support full marriage equality for gays and lesbians, saying, “I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”

The spin doctors of both major parties immediately set about offering words of encouragement and condemnation. On Thursday, Gov. Rick Scott (R-Florida) told CNBC host Larry Kudlow that Obama’s public statement could have a strong negative impact in Florida, an impact that may be felt in his campaign for reelection and his ability to win Florida, with its large bloc of 29 electoral votes.
While referring to same sex marriage as a “non-issue” in the Sunshine State, Scott, who was elected governor in 2010 after spending approximately $75 million of his own fortune in his bid for the state’s top office, said that the conservative views of most Floridians had been heard at the ballot box, and that the president should take heed.

“It has already been decided,” Scott told Kudlow. “In 2008, over 60 percent of our voters passed a constitutional amendment saying there is not going to be same-sex marriage in Florida, so it’s a non-issue here. It will hurt the president here in Florida, his position.” During the 2008 presidential race, Obama won in Florida, beating his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, 51 to 48 percent. That margin is cause for concern as Democratic strategists weigh the numerous factors that will come into play in deciding the outcome in swing states with large electoral vote counts, including Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Virginia, all of which swung to Obama four years ago.

Other Republicans joined the chorus questioning Obama’s decision. “I think it’s going to cause an incredible discussion in the black community, because, as you know, on Sundays in the black community the most conservative people in America are in those black churches,” Rep. Allen West (R-Florida) said to ABC News last week. “I think it may have been a huge miscalculation, especially when you have 41 states that recognize marriage between one man and one woman, and you just came off an incredible loss to them. Sixty-nine percent voted [to ban same-sex marriage] in North Carolina, which is a key swing state he barely won last time,” said West said, who added that even though blacks supported the president four years ago, marriage equality was banned in both Florida and California.

In 1997, the Republican-controlled Florida legislature adopted the Defense of Marriage Act and likewise banned recognition of gay marriages performed in other states. At that time, only 27 percent of American said they supported same sex marriage. In 2008, opponents of marriage equality successfully championed passage of an amendment banning it the Florida state constitution.

Among the “big picture” questions being asked at water coolers and in the halls of Congress alike is what precisely motivated President Obama to announce his support for gay marriage, after more than two years of professing an “evolving” view on the topic? The appearance of Vice President Joe Biden days earlier in an interview in which he offered his own support for same sex marriage is seen by many as a happy (or unfortunate, depending on your point of view) unguarded moment on Biden’s part that “forced” Obama’s hand in making his own endorsement.

A new CBS News/New York Times survey shows that 67 percent believe that the president made his policy shift “mostly for political reasons,” and 24 percent say he did it “mostly because he thinks it is right.” The poll also shows that Americans’ ideas of fairness and equality have shifted, but remain complicated. According to the survey, 38 percent of Americans favor full marriage equality rights for gays, while 24 percent support civil unions that include many of the rights and privileges of formal marriage. A full third—33 percent—of Americans are against any kind of legal recognition. That number jumped when civil unions were dropped as an option, with 51 percent opposing same sex marriage and 42 percent supporting it.

Another important factor in the marriage equality debate is the growing number of Americans who admit to knowing or being friends with a gay or lesbian individual. In 2003, a CBS News/New York Times poll found that 44 percent had a coworker, friend, or family member who was gay. That number jumped to 69 percent in the new survey, with those individuals who know a gay person more likely to favor marriage equality.

Last month, the CBS News/New York Times poll found Obama and Romney tied, with 46 percent supporting each man. The most recent survey shows a slight edge for Romney over Obama—46 to 43 percent, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points, meaning the race remains a statistical dead heat.

The president’s vulnerability remains in spite of increased optimism about the economy. This may explain, at least in part, his shifting the debate away from “daddy” issues—those which relate to the economy, national security, and other policy matters where Republicans tend to hold sway among voters—toward “mommy” issues, which swing voters to Democrats, and which include social policy and spending, healthcare topics—and LGBT rights. By changing the conversation from those issues which are contentious for the president—jobs, the still-anemic economy, and the continuing distrust for Wall Street—to those which have the support of moderates and independents, Obama may be able to influence the dynamics which have thus far shaped the presidential race, and the way his countrymen perceive him.

Among those Americans who may perceive the president in the most critical light are social and religious conservatives. The president, who has professed his religious faith many times, must now convince religious voters, many who are divided over marriage equality, that his views on gay marriage don’t represent an attack on religious liberties or the freedom of churches to refuse to perform services that run contrary to their core beliefs. “We’re both practicing Christians,” Obama said during the interview, referring to his wife and himself. “And obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others.”

In recognition of that important base of the electorate, shortly after declaring support for marriage equality, Obama placed a conference call to more than a half dozen African American ministers to explain his announcement and defend its consequences. The pastors represent one of the most divided constituencies the president has: black Americans who overwhelmingly support Obama while at the same time opposing marriage equality rights for gays.

According to the Rev. Delman Coates, a pastor who was on the conference call, the chief executive told the ministers that his decision had been a struggle of conscience, but that he believed he had made the right one. Most of the participating pastors agreed to “work aggressively” for the president’s reelection, but not all of them. “They were wrestling with their ability to get over his theological position,” said Coates, pastor of Mt. Ennon Baptist Church in Clinton, Maryland. “Gay marriage is contrary to their understanding of Scripture.”

Rev. Joel C. Hunter, the pastor of Northland, a conservative mega-church based in Central Florida, also spoke with the president on the phone after the ABC interview. “Some of the faith communities are going to be afraid that this is an attack against religious liberty,” Hunter told the president. “Absolutely not,” the president assured Hunter, who was elected President of the Christian Coalition in 2006, and who delivered a blessing for Obama in 2009 prior to his inauguration. “That’s not where we’re going, and that’s not what I want,” the president added.

“Marriage is an important part of getting ahead. It lets people know
you’re not a homo. A married guy seems more stable. People see the
ring, they think ‘at least somebody can stand the son of a bitch.’
Ladies see the ring, they know immediately that you must have some
cash, and your **** must work.”

Cliff Dunn

The latest attack on the civil liberties
of LGBT Americans came on Friday, when
the three highest ranked Republican
members of the U.S. House leadership
filed an appeal with the U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San
Francisco, and asked them to overturn the
decision of U.S. District Judge Jeffrey
White, who on Wednesday ruled that the
loathsome Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA) is offensive to the Constitution.

Judge White—a Republican
appointed by President George W. Bush–
is the second federal jurist to rule that
Section 3 of DOMA, the part that defines
marriage as between one man and one
woman, violates the Constitution’s equal
protection clause. In his ruling, White—
in the 1970s, a Nixon-appointed Justice
Department lawyer–said that the 1996
law does not satisfy a “heightened
scrutiny” test, which means that DOMA
does not further any ‘important’
government interests. This means that
the DOMA potentially could fail a
“rational basis” test, which is a lower
standard that asks if the law furthers a
‘legitimate’ interest. The case White ruled
upon concerns a gay attorney for the 9th
Circuit, Karen Golinski, who was refused
spousal health care benefits for her wife.

“The Court finds that DOMA, as
applied to Ms. Golinski, violates her right
to equal protection of the law,” wrote
White “by, without substantial
justification or rational basis, refusing to
recognize her lawful marriage to prevent
provision of health insurance coverage to
her spouse.” White then became My
Favorite Person This Week when he threw
the hypocrisy of the states’ rights crowd
back into the teeth of Ron Paul and the
Tenth Amendment Set who hide behind
federalism when pointing an accusing
finger at a bullying federal government.

He lambasted the law as an egregious and
“stark departure from tradition and a
blatant disregard of the well-accepted
concept of federalism in the area of
domestic relations.” I now know what is
meant by an “honest constructionist.”
Far from protecting marriage, DOMA
actually weakens it, denying as it does
federal benefits to same-sex spouses. If
two gay men marry in Massachusetts, for
instance, where marriage equality is legal,
they can’t file a joint federal tax return,
and aren’t entitled to Social Security
survivors’ benefits. That’s un-American.

Last February, the Attorney General of
the United States said that his
department would no longer defend
DOMA in court. That’s when Boehner and
the Republican leadership of the House
formed the conspiracy called the
Bipartisan Legal Advisory Committee, to
take up the Justice Department’s slack.

It was a clever idea, since they appointed
the two senior House Democrats, Nancy
Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, to sit on
the board and ensure there was no
funny business.

That funny business was in full force
last week, however. Once Judge White’s
ruling was made, any pretext of states’
rights and that other Constitutional
inconvenience, Separation of Powers,
went out the window, along with the
suggestion of an actually “bipartisan”
Bipartisan Legal Advisory Committee,
whose Democrat members abstained
from challenging the civil rights of
LGBT Americans.

There’s an old joke about marriage
being a “three-ring circus: there’s the
engagement ring, the wedding ring, and
the suffering.” If Boehner & Co. would
only dish out less of the suffering.

Cliff Dunn - Editor

Cliff Dunn is the Editor of Florida Agenda. He can be reached at editor@floridaagenda.com

Cliff Dunn

I woke up this morning and realized that I had experienced a dream-within-adream thing last night, but with a twist: the dream that I was- dreaming-I-was-dreaming was somebody else’s dream. In one of those Jungian (or is it Freudian?) glitch-in-the- Matrix deals, I can’t recall precisely if the second party whose dream I was “experiencing” was Rick Santorum or Michele Bachmann (and, honestly, it could have been Ron Paul, who in certain light has an “aging Judy Garland”-thing going on). Anyway, the gist of the dream was this: in the midst of a 9/11-style terrorist attack, the Republican Whose Name Shall Not Be Known was faced with certain annihilation in the streets of a large U.S. metropolis unless he or she was able to take shelter with a group of—wait for it—LGBT Americans who had crafted a makeshift refuge.

Truth be told, I was pulling for whomever the Unknown Candidate was, as this was still technically my dream, and so I got to experience all the raw emotion associated with a borderline nightmare: accelerated heart rate, increase in blood pressure, more perspiration than usual (as witnessed later on my pillow), etc. And you can imagine his/her/my despondency when the leader of the queer survivalists (played in this dream sequence by Tony “Paulie Walnuts” Sirico of “The Sopranos”) refused the request for shelter, saying simply, “There’s no margin,” which is a quaint New York/New Jersey way of saying “no profit margin.” In other words, in the minds of these post-apocalyptic gays, there was nothing to be gained by according Bachmann/ Santorum/Paul/Whomever the same treatment as they would have, say, a dog (ironic, Senator Santorum, no?).

I am not sure if my subconscious was giving me a few stolen, pre-dawn laughs, but it did put me in mind of the rights and privileges we are still denied, under the guise of Judeo-Christian values, or conservative principles, original intent, states’ rights, strict constructionism, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. This weekend, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie defied the will of the people’s representatives in vetoing a marriage equality bill that would have extended the same rights and benefits enjoyed by their straight fellow citizens and taxpayers. The governor reaffirmed his public spiel about letting the voters decide whether to change the definition of marriage in the Garden State. He did this with a “straight” face (pardon my pun) nearly 150 years after citizens of his state fought and died to “redefine” what it means to be a “full” American person (as opposed to the three fifths, pre-1865 definition advocated by that generation’s “strict constructionist-,” “states’ rights-” types).

“I am adhering to what I’ve said since this bill was first introduced: an issue of this magnitude and importance, which requires a constitutional amendment, should be left to the people of New Jersey to decide,” Christie bloviated with the fire of a civil rights supporter, pre- Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (anyone recall separate but- equal?).

This kind of rhetoric is populism for the lowest-common-denominator, “Jim Crow” regurgitated for the Tea Party Generation. Perhaps most malignant about this kind of political talk is that it is couched in the language of reasonableness and the spirit of compromise. In vetoing the bill, Christie proposed creating a state office to oversee compliance with the state’s civil union law, which New Jersey’s same-sex couples say is flawed and promotes discrimination.

Christie, like Ron Paul–another “populist” who appeals to the mouth breathing set—would have us believe that he is defending the conservative values upon which America was founded. Maybe so. But some of those values originate in the spirit of discrimination and exclusion that permeated much of colonial America. True, the Mayflower pilgrims and others came here to practice their religion in an unfettered manner. But the reverse (and largely forgotten) side of that coin was that most felt that the England they were leaving was too permissive in its religious freedoms. In short, they wanted the “freedom” to establish a religious theocracy where intolerance—and certainly a lack of religious freedom for non-believers–was the order of the day.

Their cultural descendants likewise practiced an institutional bigotry that mandated segregation of public schools, public transportation, and public places, including restaurants, restrooms, and drinking fountains for whites and blacks.

“I continue to encourage the Legislature to trust the people of New Jersey and seek their input by allowing our citizens to vote on a question that represents a profoundly significant societal change. This is the only path to amend our State Constitution and the best way to resolve the issue of same-sex marriage in our state,” said Christie, who could just as easily have been speaking in the Alabama, Mississippi, or Arkansas of the 1960s’ segregationist south, channeling the spirit of George Wallace, Ross Barnet, or Orval Faubus, preservers of conservative values one and all. No matter how well-meaning the supporters of civil unions and domestic partnership legislation may be, they must understand that for LGBT Americans, we cannot, we will not, endure an era of “Jim Queer” laws and be thankful that things are “starting to move our way.” That’s just plain un-American.

Cliff Dunn - Editor