Obama to Call for ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Repeal, Adviser Says

by Laurie Ure | CNN

President Obama will ask Congress Wednesday night to repeal the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that bars gays and lesbians from openly serving in, White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod told CNN.

The request will be included in the president’s State of the Union address, Axelrod said.

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NCLR’s Legal Director Shannon Minter on Perry v Schwarzenegger Proceedings, Day 11

cross-posted from Pam’s House Blend

Today was one of the most dramatic days of the trial, with startling admissions by the proponents’ two expert witnesses: Professor Kenneth Miller, testifying about the political power of gay people, and David Blankenhorn, testifying about the purposes of marriage.

The morning began with the conclusion of David Boies’s cross-examination of Professor Miller. Boies confronted Prof. Miller with several of Prof. Miller’s own earlier writings, which were highly critical of the ballot initiative process and particularly highlighted the risk that majorities will use the initiative process to target minority groups. Prof. Miller admitted that ballot measures can, and have, drawn upon anti-minority sentiment. Indeed, one of Prof. Miller’s own articles cited Proposition 22, the California initiative prohibiting marriage for same-sex couples that passed in 2000, as an example of such an anti-minority initiative.

Following the conclusion of Prof. Miller’s testimony, the afternoon was taken up by questioning of the proponents’ final witness, David Blankenhorn, the president of a private think tank called the Institute for American Values. Blankenhorn is best known as the author of a book called Fatherless America, in which he argued that fatherlessness is “the most harmful demographic trend of this generation” and the leading cause of “our most urgent social problems, from crime to adolescent pregnancy to child sexual abuse to domestic violence against women.” Blankenhorn is also one of the most visible and culturally influential opponents of marriage for same-sex couples.

The Prop 8 proponents asked Judge Walker to accept Blankenhorn as an expert in marriage, fatherhood, and family structures. But as plaintiffs’ attorney David Boies quickly made clear in his initial questioning, Blankenhorn lacked the usual qualifications for an expert witness in those areas. He has a bachelor’s degree in social science from Harvard and a master’s in the unrelated field of labor history from the University of Warwick in Coventry, England. He has no academic affiliation and has never taught at a college or university, and he has authored only two peer-reviewed publications, neither of which addressed marriage for same-sex couples. Judge Walker permitted Blankenhorn to testify, but noted that he might have ruled differently if this were a jury trial.

Charles Cooper (the lead attorney for the proponents) led Blankenhorn through what seemed to be a highly scripted presentation. Blankenhorn argued that the concept of marriage as “a socially approved sexual union between a man and a woman” is a “universal” definition that exists in every culture. He said the primary purpose of marriage is to make it as likely as possible that children will be raised by their biological parents.

Blankenhorn testified that he is opposed to allowing same-sex couples to marry because, in his view, that would promote the idea that the purpose of marriage is to serve the needs of adults rather than children. He also claimed that permitting same-sex couples to marry will lead to reduced rates of marriage by heterosexual people, higher rates of divorce, and more children born out of wedlock.

Blankenhorn did not claim to have any scientific data supporting that belief. Instead, he argued that letting same-sex couples marry might contribute to the “deinstitutionalization” of marriage, which he defined (rather vaguely) as any change that weakens “the rules” of marriage. He testified that marriage is a social institution, like baseball, and that when the rules are changed, fewer people will want to play. Blankenhorn stressed that he could not be sure that letting same-sex couples marry would have that effect, but he feared that it would.

Blankenhorn also noted that he supports domestic partnerships for same-sex couples as “a humane compromise.” In the past, he explained, he had not given the issue of domestic partnership much thought. But after being challenged by Jonathan Rausch (a conservative gay author) in 2007, he concluded that even if providing domestic partnership for same-sex couples might also contribute to the deinstitutionalization of marriage, considerations of fairness made it worth the risk.

For the last hour of the day, plaintiffs’ attorney David Boies began what is sure to be a dramatic and grueling cross-examination. Repeatedly, Blankenhorn bridled at Boies’s questions and often refused to answer them, leading to several interventions by Judge Walker instructing Blankenhorn to respond. The bulk of the cross-examination is still to come tomorrow, but thus far, Blankenhorn has acknowledged that letting same-sex couples marry would be beneficial to the couples and their children. He also admitted that there are no studies showing that children of same-sex couples are worse off than children raised by heterosexual parents.

Tomorrow will be the last day on which evidence will be presented. Judge Walker has announced that he will then take a few weeks to review the evidence before scheduling closing arguments in the case.

Change: Now It’s Personal

by Kate Kendell | Change.org

Like many others, I was not sorry to see 2009 come to an end. A lot of misery, great expectations, dashed hopes, deferred dreams, and daily anxiety were packed into those twelve months. While I’ve certainly had more difficult and personally painful years, 2009 was difficult and personally painful for a record number of folks in this country. As 2010 dawns, one can’t help but hope for better this year.

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For Transgender People, Name Is a Message

by William Glaberson | New York Times

Katherine used to be Miguel. Olin had a girl’s name. And in October, Robert Ira Schnur, 70, became Roberta Iris Schnur, a Manhattan retiree with magenta lipstick and, she noted the other day, chipped silver nail polish.

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NCLR’s Legal Director Shannon Minter on Perry v Schwarzenegger Proceedings, Day 10

cross-posted from Pam’s House Blend

Today was another exciting day as the Prop 8 trial heads into the home stretch. The plaintiffs finished their case today, and defendants got started with their first witness, Professor Kenneth Miller.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys closed their case by playing excerpts from two simulcasts that were broadcast to gatherings of evangelical voters during the Prop 8 campaign. These simulcasts were sponsored and paid for by ProtectMarriage.com, the official Yes on 8 campaign organization. In the portions shown, one speaker said, “The polygamists are waiting in the wings, because if a man can marry a man and a woman can marry a woman, the polygamists are going to use that exact same argument and they probably are going to win.” Another speaker referred to a man marrying a horse, and a third speaker compared the impact of permitting same-sex couples to marry to the 9/11 attacks.

The videos of these outrageous statements, made in a forum sponsored and paid for by the official Yes on 8 campaign, provided a fitting end to the plaintiffs’ case. It brought the focus back to the long history of demonization the LGBT community has faced in the public sphere– from the grim historical events described in Professor George Chauncey’s testimony two weeks ago to the themes of the Yes on 8 campaign, as shown in today’s videos and the highly inflammatory testimony of Prop 8 proponent Dr. Bill Tam. The plaintiffs have done an admirable job of laying out the case that Prop 8 was a product of the same kind of prejudice that has driven many other anti-gay laws throughout our nation’s history.

After the plaintiffs rested their case, the Prop 8 proponents called their first witness, Prof. Kenneth Miller, who is a professor in the Department of Government at Claremont McKenna College. He was offered as an expert on the political power of gay men and lesbians in California and nationally. Prof. Miller defined political power as the ability to get the attention of lawmakers. In support of his conclusion that gay men and lesbians have significant power, he cited the support for LGBT causes in California among allies such as the Democratic Party and organized labor, the number of LGBT elected officials in California, and the number of LGBT-friendly laws that have been passed by the California legislature in recent years.

This simplistic analysis contrasted sharply with the nuanced approach adopted by the plaintiffs’ expert, Professor Gary Segura, in his testimony last week. Prof. Segura emphasized that to understand a group’s political power, one has to consider not only the number of legislative victories or the number of elected officials, but also the broader context-including factors such as the incidence of anti-gay hate violence, the number of initiatives attacking the civil rights of gay people and our persistent inability to defend ourselves against them, and the long history of government-sponsored discrimination against gay people in employment, which continues to the present day in the military’s ban on openly gay servicemembers. This rigorous attention to detail was notably lacking from Prof. Miller’s testimony.

In fact, under Prof. Miller’s definition of power as the ability to attract any favorable legislative attention, it’s hard to think of any group that would not qualify as politically powerful. Certainly, neither race nor gender would be a suspect classification under the Constitution, since many federal and state laws prohibited discrimination on those bases before the United States Supreme Court held that women and racial minorities were sufficiently politically powerless to merit constitutional protection. In contrast, we still do not have a single federal law that prohibits sexual orientation discrimination, and, most states still permit employers to fire workers because of their sexual orientation. If Prof. Miller’s analysis were correct, no type of discrimination would be subject to heightened constitutional scrutiny.

In addition to offering a surprisingly superficial account of political power, Prof. Miller made several admissions that undermined his credibility as an expert. Under a withering cross-examination by David Boies, Prof. Miller admitted that, at the time of his deposition, he did not know how many states prohibited sexual orientation discrimination. He did not recognize many of the leading scholars on gay politics and history, and acknowledged that he had not read their work. He could not offer an opinion on whether gay people have more political power than African-Americans, even though much more of his scholarship has dealt with the African-American community than the LGBT community. He also declined to comment on the level of prejudice and negative stereotyping LGBT people face compared to other groups such as African-Americans or women. Prof. Miller did concede that lesbians must face more prejudice than other women, however, because they experience discrimination on the basis of both gender and sexual orientation.

Boies also questioned Prof. Miller at length about articles Prof. Miller has authored or coauthored that are critical of the initiative process. In fact, at times, it almost seemed that Prof. Miller might have been offered as an expert by the plaintiffs on the dangers of the initiative process. For example, Prof. Miller has written that initiatives violate the democratic norms of openness, fairness, and accountability and tend to preclude compromise and informed deliberation. When asked if he still agreed with those statements, Prof. Miller agreed that he did. He also acknowledged that initiatives are particularly troubling when they target disfavored minorities.

Tomorrow, Boies will continue his cross-examination of Prof. Miller in the morning, and the proponents then intend to call their final expert, David Blankenhorn, who is expected to testify about parenting by gay men and lesbians.

Work/Life and the LGBT Community

What are the unique challenges that LGBT people face in the workplace and with our families? What are the best ways for us to tell our stories and educate about the need for the same protections granted most other Americans under the Civil Rights Act? What are the specific hurdles to passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act? And thinking outside the box, what are the ways we should be rethinking policy to support all non-traditional families?

Listen here on Wednesday, January 27, at 1:00 PM EST

Host:
Heather Holdridge

Guests:
Jaime Grant
Director of the Policy Institute, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

Bil Browning
Founder, The Bilerico Project

Obama to Make Announcement on Gay Ban

by Rick Maze | Marine Corps Times

The announcement of congressional hearings on the ban on open military service by homosexuals has been delayed at the request of the Obama administration until after Wednesday night’s State of the Union Address because the president may announce that military leaders will support changing the law, according to a key lawmaker.

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NCLR’s Legal Director Shannon Minter on Perry v Schwarzenegger Proceedings, Day 9

cross-posted from Pam’s House Blend

After two weeks of powerful and often emotional evidence, the plaintiffs presented their last live witness today. On Monday, after playing some videos of deposition testimony, the plaintiffs will rest their case, and then the defendants will have their turn. Typically, at the end of all witness testimony, the attorneys present closing arguments. This morning Judge Walker announced that there will be a two week break before closing arguments to give the parties a chance to review the evidence.

Today, we heard expert testimony from Dr. Gregory Herek, a professor at U.C. Davis, who is an authority on sexual orientation and stigma.

On direct examination by the plaintiffs’ attorney Ethan Dettmer, Dr. Herek explained that a person’s “sexual orientation” can be defined based on an enduring pattern of attraction to men, women, or both, and can also include a person’s own self-identification, as well as their pattern of sexual behavior. Dr. Herek testified that since the 1970s it has been the consensus in the field of psychology that homosexuality is not a mental disorder and that sexual orientation has no inherent connection to a person’s ability to contribute to society, be happy, and lead a normal life.

Strongly supporting one of the plaintiffs’ core arguments, Dr. Herek testified that there is no evidence “conversion therapy” is effective in changing a person’s sexuality. In fact, he testified, the American Psychological Association has expressed concern about LGBT adolescents participating in “conversion therapy,” which sends a harmful and false message to young people that homosexuality is a disorder.

Dr. Herek testified that “structural stigma” in the form of laws that discriminate against LGBT people (like Prop 8 ) directly encourages social stigma, harassment, and violence.

Dr. Herek’s cross examination by the proponents’ attorney Howard Nielson lasted for more than five hours, and was characterized by monotonous and repetitive questions largely focused on the definition of “sexual orientation.” Nielson attempted to get Dr. Herek to admit that definitions of sexual orientation vary widely. (The proponents have argued that LGBT people don’t deserve constitutional protections because, they claim, it is impossible to define “sexual orientation.”) Showing admirable patience, Dr. Herek simply reasserted that sexual orientation is a combination of attraction, identity, and behavior, and that the complexities researchers face in defining sexual orientation are no different than those they face in defining other characteristics such as race.

Nielson asked a series of questions aimed at establishing that sexual orientation is not constant, that peoples’ preferences change over time, and that a gay identity does not guarantee exclusively same-sex experiences. Dr. Herek agreed that over the course of a lifetime sexuality can evolve, particularly because most young people face significant social pressure to be heterosexual and to engage in different-sex relationships even if they ultimately come to realize that they are lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Dr. Herek repeatedly testified that defining sexual orientation is not nearly as complicated as Nielson was suggesting, because for nearly all people, self-identity (as gay, straight, or bisexual) correlates closely with both behavior and desires.

A quick note about yesterday’s testimony from Dr. Bill Tam. Some readers have asked for more information about why Judge Walker required Dr. Tam to testify, but may still allow him to withdraw from the case as a party. The key here is the difference between being a party and just being a witness. Once a person has entered into a case as a party — either by suing, by being sued, or by intervening, as the Prop 8 proponents (including Dr. Tam) did in order to defend Prop 8 — that person does not have a right simply to withdraw from the suit. For example, if you hit someone with your car and the person sues you, you can’t just tell the judge that you would rather not be involved. You must continue to participate until the lawsuit is over. Here, Dr. Tam and the other proponents specifically asked Judge Walker to allow them to join the case. But then, having made himself a defendant, Dr. Tam asked to withdraw from the case. He is not entitled to do so, although Judge Walker has the power to allow him to.

Separately from being a party, Dr. Tam is also a witness. As an official proponent of Prop 8 and a leader in the campaign, he was able to testify yesterday about the messages the Yes on 8 campaign used, his own reasons for fighting to pass Prop 8, and other evidence that relates to the plaintiff’s claim that Prop 8 was the product of anti-gay bias. The plaintiffs had the right to call him to testify for that reason. Even if Judge Walker decides to allow Dr. Tam to withdraw as a party, his testimony will still be part of the record in the case.

This has been an unbelievable week, with testimony that ranged from highly technical and informative to deeply personal, emotional, and moving. The plaintiffs put on an impressive array of witnesses whose testimony, taken as a whole, overwhelmingly supports their case and underscores the profound harm Prop 8 has caused to LGBT people. Next week, the proponents’ witnesses will take the stand.

Proud to Testify for Marriage Equality

by Jerry Sanders | Huffington Post

I was proud to testify this week in what I believe will soon be seen as one of the defining civil rights cases of our time, Perry v. Schwarzenegger. I did so as a Republican mayor, a father, and a former police chief with over 26 years of experience on the force. But I also testified as an American who has seen the effects of discrimination – and who believes that discrimination against anyone, anywhere, is unacceptable.

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U.S. Senators to Ugandan President: Stop the Anti-Homosexuality Bill

The Honorable Yoweri Museveni
President of the Republic of Uganda
c/o the Embassy of Uganda
5911 16th Street N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20011

Dear Mr. President,

We write to express our deep concern regarding the anti-homosexuality bill currently before Ugandan Parliament.

This troubling legislation would sanction prejudice toward people in Uganda based solely on sexual orientation, or even HIV status.

read the full letter (pdf)