Florida Agenda

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has halted the release of video-taped testimony on
the constitutionality of California Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage. Earlier last week, a lower court ordered that the recording be released to the public but the Circuit Court put the order on hold until they can be further briefed on the matter.

The lower court originally ruled that the public has a right to access the recordings just like any other court record, even though the judge who presided at the trial said they were for his own personal use.

The appeals court asked Proposition 8 sponsors and the lawyers for two same-sex couples who sued to overturn it, to get their written arguments in by October 10. The 9th Circuit already is considering whether another federal judge erred when he struck down the ban, known as Proposition 8, as unconstitutional.

Gay rights advocates want to use the recordings to try to puncture political arguments used by opponents of same-sex marriage.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) announced that it has approved an important policy that clarifies opportunities for transgender student athletes to participate on college athletic teams in accordance with their gender identity.

The NCAA, which governs sports for more than 1,200 colleges and institutions, worked closely with the National Center for Lesbian Rights’ Sports Project and Griffin Educational Consulting to develop the policy, which according to the announcement “will allow a transgender student athlete to participate in sex-separated sports activities so long as the athlete’s use of hormone therapy is consistent with the NCAA policies and current medical standards.”

A transgender male student athlete who has a medical exception for testosterone hormone therapy may compete on a men’s team, but is no longer eligible to compete on a women’s team without changing the team status to a mixed team.

A transgender female student athlete who has taken medication to suppress testosterone for a year may compete on a women’s team.
Under the new policy, transgender student athletes who are not undergoing hormone therapy remain eligible to play on teams based on the gender of their birth sex and may socially transition by dressing and using the appropriate pronouns that match their gender identity.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – A judge in San Francisco has struck down a proposed anti-circumcision ban from the city’s November ballot.

Proponents of the ban argued that circumcision was not a medical procedure and that the ballot measure included an exception in cases where circumcision was needed for health reasons. They also compared the procedure to female circumcision, which is regulated and argued that the ballot measure would protect boys the same way.

Both Jewish and Muslim religious groups filed a suit claiming the initiative violated a state law that bars local governments from regulating health care professionals.

After hearing oral arguments, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Loretta Giorgi struck the measure off the ballot claiming the measure attempted to regulate a medical procedure.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Wells Fargo & Company (known as Wachovia in South Florida) is gearing up for its busiest LGBT pride season to date. The bank will participate in 40 LGBT pride parades and festivals in 2011, stretching from March through November, with more than 20 in June alone.

Wells Fargo sponsored its first LGBT Pride event in San Francisco in 1992. Since that time, the company has continued to broaden its participation, culminating with a presence this year in pride festivals and parades coast to coast, in locales both familiar and surprising. In addition to some of the country’s largest pride festivities taking place in New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., Wells Fargo is also excited to announce support of 2011 LGBT Pride events in Boise, Idaho and Birmingham, Alabama. The iconic Wells Fargo Stagecoach will appear in 22 of these celebrations, making LGBT Pride one of the company’s busiest seasons for stagecoach appearances.

Wachovia/Wells Fargo is also a major sponsor of The Pride Center at Equality Park in Wilton Manors.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – California legislators are debating placement of gay history in their school’s textbooks.
Conservatives claim that including gay history studies would indoctrinate students, undermine religious values and politicize the curriculum.

The State Senate approved a measure last week barring gay studies last week but it still needs to clear the Democratic-controlled State Assembly and Governor Jerry Brown’s pen.

Currently, there is legislation in California that would add lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans gender people to the list of social and ethnic groups that schools must include in social studies classes. The legislation requires the California Board of Education and local school districts to adopt textbooks and other teaching materials that cover the contributions and roles of sexual minorities. The current measure also prohibits any materials that “adversely reflect” on gays or any particular religions. However, individual school districts would have the flexibility to decide what to include in the lessons and at what grades the students would receive them.

NEW YORK – Fort Lauderdale may have the Stonewall Library and Archives, but San Francisco now claims the first-ever museum in the United States that is dedicated to LGBT history. The GLBT History Museum opened at 4127 18th St., in the heart of the Castro district, the gay and lesbian part of San Francisco made famous by Harvey Milk.

The museum includes 1,600 square feet of gallery and program space built to the specifications of the Historical Society, with custom fixtures, lighting and multimedia installations reflecting professional standards.

The museum features two debut exhibitions: In the main gallery, “Our Vast Queer Past: Celebrating GLBT History,” curated by historians Gerard Koskovich, Don Romesburg and Amy Sueyoshi; and in the front gallery, “Great Collections of the GLBT Historical Society Archives.”

“A quarter century after the founding of the GLBT Historical Society, we’re proud to open a museum to showcase our community’s history,” said Paul Boneberg, executive director of the Historical Society. “The GLBT History Museum is in the heart of the Castro, a neighborhood visited not only by locals, but also by tens of thousands of tourists every year who come in search of queer culture. At our museum, they’ll discover treasures from our archives that reflect fascinating stories spanning nearly a century of GLBT life. We have gone all out to create a museum as rich, diverse and surprising as the GLBT community itself. Whether they are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or straight, visitors are sure to be moved, enlightened and entertained.”

The GLBT History Museum joins the Schwules Museum, the queer museum founded 25 years ago in Berlin, as one of only two stand-alone, full-scale museums devoted to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history. A number of other LGBT archives and libraries also offer periodic exhibitions in the same location as their research collections or in space borrowed on an occasional basis from other organizations.

Amber Yust Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. –

One of the most annoying experiences a person has to go through is getting a new license from the Department of Motor Vehicles. But for one transgender woman in California, that annoyance turned to harassment. Amber Yust, 24, claims that the DMV worker who helped her change her name from David to Amber sent a harassing letter to the address on her newly printed driver’s license.

“Although I helped you with the name change, I have to say I do not support the reason for it,” says the letter, signed with only a first name and typed on plain paper. “I also do not believe the state’s recognition of it – through official documents – makes it legitimate or any less evil.”

Yust said she also received a pamphlet from a New York-based conservative Catholic ministry.

“Going into a DMV isn’t exactly a fun experience,” Yust said. “So to have someone who dislikes something about you or has some strange interest in you decide to use your personal information for something other than what it was supposed to is really scary. I want people to feel safe.”

Yust has filed claim against the DMV for $25,000 in damages stating that its employee’s actions violated her privacy and civil rights.

In addition to trying to receive damages and attorney’s fees from the DMV, Yust said she plans to seek a court order requiring the DMV to prevent future discrimination “If it was an African-American who went to the DMV and the DMV person sent a letter saying you should be lynched and then sent the address to the KKK, people would be going berserk,” said Yust’s attorney Chris Dolan. “That’s exactly what happened here, but you just insert the word transgender for black and religious fanatic for KKK.”

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. –

The Log Cabin Republicans (LCR), a Republican gay rights group, is taking the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell fight all the way to the Supreme Court. Lawyers for LCR asked the high court to vacate a 2-1 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals until it considers the government’s appeal of the judge’s decision declaring the policy unconstitutional.

 “Unless the court of appeals stay is vacated, the respondents will be free to continue to investigate and discharge American service members for no reason other than their homosexuality, in violation of their due process and First Amendment rights,” the LCR’s lawyer wrote in its appeal.

The request was directed to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who handles emergency motions from the 9th Circuit. President Barack Obama, meanwhile, has pledged to push the Senate to repeal the policy in the lame duck session before a new Congress is sworn in. “It is unfortunate the Obama Justice Department has forced the Log Cabin Republicans to go to the Supreme Court,” R. Clarke Cooper, the group’s executive director, said. In their filing Friday, Log Cabin lawyers disputed that the military would be harmed if the policy were suspended immediately.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA: Judge Vaughn Walker, the U.S. District Judge who ruled in August that Prop 8, California’s voterapproved ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, has announced he will retire from his post on the San Francisco federal court in February of 2011. Rich Wieking, clerk of the court, stated in an e-mail that Walker will step down from the bench on December 31st and retire in February.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA: After meeting with students in August, University of Rhode Island (URI) President David M. Dooley acknowledged that discrimination is all too frequently an issue for the school’s LGBT community. Since that meeting, steps have been taken to alleviate discrimination, but some students insist there’s much more that needs to be done.

According to Brian Stack, president of the Gay Straight Alliance and a volunteer at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Center at URI, the range of discrimination endured by students has been wide. “We have had students throwing used condoms into students’ rooms, drawing offensive images on people’s doors and an epidemic of people yelling ‘faggots’ as they drive by the GLBT center,” Stack told The Providence Journal. A recent report from advocacy group, Campus Pride found that many LGBT individuals feel uncomfortable on campus. Approximately 25 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual students and university employees have been harassed due to their sexual orientation, as well as a third of those who identify as transgender, according to the study and reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education. The study asked 5,150 people at about 100 colleges about their experiences last year.