Tag Archives: GLBT

Comprehensive Immigration Reform, Faith, and Rick Warren

  By Maegan la Mamita Mala | December 16, 2009 - 8:43 pm |
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CIR ASAP is without a doubt one of the most progressive pieces of legislation we have seen, especially when it comes to comprehensive immigration reform. But progressive reform is not radical and in negotiations around policy it is often those that need the most help, some of the most marginalized in our communities, who get left out in the cold in the name of the greater good. Luis Gutierrez’s bill isn’t any different.

From the start, the language of the bill is grandiose, referring to the U.S.’s commitment to families and civil rights and yet the bill leaves out members of the immigrant community where I live, GLBT families.

From the bill:

Dividing American families is not a moral or just solution to the broken immigration system. We need policies that treat all families equally and keep them together, to support each other and build strong communities.

Unless you are a GLBT family? From the ACLU’s response to the Gutiettez’s bill:

…it fails to include immigration
parity provisions that would allow gay U.S. citizens and permanent residents to sponsor their permanent partners for permanent residency, an immigration right that heterosexual spouses have long enjoyed. Without these immigration parity protections, immigrant families in the U.S., including many with U.S. citizen children, will continue to be torn asunder.

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Texas Mayor Steps Down, Reveals His Love for Undocumented Immigrant

  By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo | May 27, 2009 - 5:45 pm |
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Central Texas doesn’t get a lot of public officials coming out of the closet, either about their sexual orientation or about their emotional relationships with undocumented immigrants, but the city of San Angelo got a double whammy when Mayor J.W. Lown sent in a resignation letter “from an undisclosed location in Mexico“, revealing the nature of his personal life (see a video of the reading of the letter above). The Houston Chronicle reports:

What made it stunning wasn’t the status of Lown’s office, which pays $600 a year, but the status of his lover.

Lown fell for an illegal Mexican immigrant.

A man.

Lown told the San Angelo Standard-Times he had fallen for the man in March, after he had already filed for re-election. The man came to the U.S. five years ago to study at Angelo State University.

It was unclear whether he had a student visa, but if he did it apparently had expired.

Lown told the Standard-Times he chose not to take the oath of office while “aiding and assisting” a person who was illegally in the country.

Lown had been an extraordinarily popular mayor. Only 32 years old, he was elected in 2003 as the city’s youngest mayor. Serving in an office that inevitably requires decisions that accumulate enemies, he managed to get re-elected three times with increasing margins of victory each time. Two weeks ago he defeated two challengers by garnering 89 percent of the vote.

Lown did not give the name of his lover, but said he planned to stay in Mexico to try to obtain a visa so that his partner can return with him if “the people of San Angelo will welcome me back.”

Hats off to Mayor Lown on his courage and honesty. Here’s hoping his partner gets a visa and San Angelo will indeed let him come home.

Check out a tape of the official press conference after the jump. It’s quite poignant.

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El Salvador Just Says No to Same Sex Marriage and Gay Adoption

  By Maegan la Mamita Mala | May 4, 2009 - 6:00 am |
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elsalvadorWhile the recent presidential election in El Salvador signaled a change in politics as usual, recently the legislature in the Central American country made a legislative move that feels like a move backwards for equal rights.

El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly approved an amendment to the constitution to ban marriage between same-sex couples and same-sex couples’ ability to adopt a child. This amendment was proposed in the final hours of the current Legislative Assembly session, which ends April 30th.

“Marriage is only for men and women, born that way. It remains consecrated in our country that this is not possible for same-sex couples,” (El Diario de Hoy, 30 April 2009) announced Rodolfo Parker, the major proponent of the amendment.

The amendment is being strongly pushed by the Catholic Church in el Salvador, which is leading activists to fight the amendment from the perspective of an issue of separation of church and state.

Activist and law student Andrea Ayala explained her presence at one of the many demonstrations the Alliance held in front of the Legislative Assembly, “Personally I am not asking them for marriage, because, well, I think we are light years away from this…I simply ask that they do not obstruct our rights to equality. Our right to equality is protected in the United Nations Human Rights Charter…For me, as a lesbian, it is humiliating that they are trying to continue obstruct the right that we have to freely exercise our sexuality.”

Via / Narcosphere

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Gay Marriage Bills Pass in New Hampshire and Maine

  By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo | April 30, 2009 - 9:19 pm |
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marriage1Miss California might have joined “the storm” against gay marriage, but in New Hampshire it appears that there isn’t a drop of rain. Fresh on the heels of Iowa, the New Hampshire State Senate passed a bill on Wednesday making gay marriage legal:

Even though the marriage equality bill had been rejected by a key legislative committee, Ray Buckley, the out gay chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, spent the day April 28 “whipping” support for both that measure and a transgender rights bill. NowHampshire.com reported that Buckley was pulling out all the stops, meeting with the Senate Democratic leadership in what proved to be a successful effort to bring the marriage bill over the top in the April 29 vote. The House of Representatives passed the marriage measure in March. Some opponents of the transgender rights bill have derided it as a “bathroom bill.”

The historic move makes New Hampshire the fifth state to let gays and lesbians marry. Wow, we’ve now got New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts and even Iowa, and my beloved California can’t get it together. Pretty sad.

The bill still needs to be signed into law by NH Governor John Lynch, a Democrat, who has expressed in the past that he believed that the word “marriage” be limited to unions between partners of the opposite sex.

UPDATE:
But wait, that’s not all. Maine passed a similar bill late this afternoon! This one also needs to get past the governor, but that’s two states in one week!

Via / Gay City News

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Miss California Joins Fight Against Storm of Gay Marriage

  By Maegan la Mamita Mala | April 30, 2009 - 1:09 pm |
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Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Who does marriage need protecting from? Yes, haters you can say mujeres like me, pero I’m really talking about the scary gays who now have to fight off California beauty queens.

You have to love how Prejean says it’s all about respect. Hmm. Now mira I do not think it’s cool in any way to call Prejean a bitch or to make jokes about killing her. That’s not acceptable y punto. Pero, that said, where Prejean does need to be attack is in her defense of “marriage” while excluding others. Where is the respect there?

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Who Said Latinos Are Against Gay Marriage?

  By Maegan la Mamita Mala | April 20, 2009 - 6:15 am |
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Huge props to Blabbeando for posting and translating this debate on the “storm” of gay marriage in NYS.

Sometimes leaders say things on the Spanish language media that they wouldn’t say in the English marriage media, or take an issue from a perspective that isn’t usually covered. For example, is Luis Tellez, a board member behind NOM (who are behind the storm commercial)really saying that no fault divorces have done more harm than good to women of color since apparently they are to blame with the problems people of color families face? Sure sounds like it.

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Obama Administration Will Reportedly Sign UN Gay Rights Agreement

  By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo | March 18, 2009 - 11:07 am |
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3105057712_feec724e1bNot to be all Obama administration “rah, rah, sis, boom ba!” but after quietly celebrating the latest reversal to the Bush farm worker rule, I’m celebrating this piece of unofficial news as well:

The Obama administration will support a United Nations declaration affirming that sexual orientation and gender identity are included in international human rights protections, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday evening.

According to officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Congress was still being notified, the Obama administration had reviewed the reasons why the Bush administration opposed the declaration, and decided to notify the French sponsors that the United States would support it.

As you might already know, the U.S. was, thanks to the prior administration, part of a shameful list of oppressive, anti-gay countries such as Saudi Arabia, Uganda, Egypt and the Vatican City. It’s impossible for people in Europe and other places that signed the agreement to understand this kind of hatred. Luckily, with this move, we are a millimeter closer to a more dignified world image.

There’s still a lot left for the Obama administration to do when it comes to gay rights. Namely: approve gay marriage.

Via / Advocate

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Colombian Gay Activist Murdered

  By Maegan la Mamita Mala | March 9, 2009 - 10:24 am |
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alvaro2-viI wasn’t aware of the work of Alvaro Miguel Rivera, a Colombiano living and working in a FARC controlled area of Colombia who was dedicated to LGBT individuals and HIV positive people in what could be called one of the most homophobic regions in the country: El llano oriental (Colombia’s rural eastern plains).

From Blabbeando:

Back in 2001, Alvaro was living in Villavicencio, Meta, in a region set aside by the government as a ‘safe haven’ zone where FARC guerrilla members could walk around without fear of government intervention (it was part of a failed effort to reach peace with the armed insurgents). Alvaro, who had finished a degree in Agricultural Engineering, worked in a region known for it’s cattle ranches and was already known as a public advocate for sexual minorities and those who were HIV positive.

He loved Villavicencio, not the least because his family lived there. But, as FARC troops began to move in, Alvaro began to receive anonymous phone calls, felt he was being followed by strangers, and reported harassing calls to his employers with the intent to tarnish his repuation. In April of 2001, he finally reported it to the local authorities and they told him that they could only wait until something actually happened to take any action. Police only began to investigate when Alvaro went public sending a series of e-mail messages to different organizations (at the time, I translated some of them on his behalf, and alerted human rights organizations in the United States, including IGLHRC).

All this in a worsening environment for those in the area who were HIV positive. In October of 2001, El Tiempo reported that the FARC had begun to require local residents to get tested for HIV and were giving a week-long ultimatum for people who tested positive to leave the region.

A week after the article was published, Alvaro actually reported having attended a meeting held between local hospital personnel and members of the FARC in which the FARC agreed to temporarily suspend the program. El Tiempo had reported that by then, they already had access to testing equipment and had tested more than 3,ooo individuals for HIV.

The ‘safe haven’ zone might have been lifted since then, but the death threats and harassment against Alvaro continued, forcing him to leave a place he loved so much. He decided to move to Cali – the third largest city in Colombia, following Bogota and Medellin – where he became the Director of Colectivo Tinku, a local LGBT rights organization.

He also became one of the founders and leaders of the local gay chapter of the Alternative Democratic Pole political party (which is why, the moment I read “Pole LGBT leader murdered” headline, I feared it might be Alvaro).

Alvaro was murdered in his apartment on Friday night. I am saddened not just at the loss of Alvaro’s life pero also at the fact that even with my own following of events in Colombia around the FARC, that I didn’t know about Alvaro’s work.

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Prop 8 Vigils Across California

  By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo | March 5, 2009 - 12:22 pm |
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ba-samesex05_0499868478“When all else fails, pray!” is what comes to mind upon reading about the multiple candlelight vigils that were held throughout my state on the eve of the hearing that will make or break California’s most discriminatory law against LGBT citizens. Last night San Franciscans, like Californians in other cities big and small, held vigils and marched. What else can you do at this point? The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

The crowd, bundled against the chill, carried signs reading, “We All Deserve the Freedom To Marry,” and “Down with Prop. 8!” as they marched along Market Street. The peaceful protest stretched for two city blocks past stopped Muni street cars while police held back traffic at the intersections.

The group made their way to City Hall, where a pianist and singer entertained the crowd with love songs. Some of the participants planned to camp out in the Civic Center Plaza to be there for the hearing.

It will be shown on a JumboTron for those who don’t have access to viewing rooms set up in the San Francisco Public Library.

Will the great State of California overturn what has been called “the will of the people”? Or will it let thousands of gay families remain together? I am pessimistic, but we’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is reportedly all booked up…the media is just clamoring to get his take. Check out an interview with Mayor Newsom and hear his thoughts after the jump.
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