EQCA to close some offices

The statewide LGBT advocacy group Equality California is reducing its field operations after next week's elections. The move comes as EQCA shifts strategy in its public education efforts around marriage equality, and as the federal Proposition 8 legal case is fast-tracked through the courts. EQCA Executive Director Geoff Kors said this week that the field office closings were still being finaliz...

Bay Area Reporter • Oct 28, 2010

Christie's and Gladstone Unite for a Charity Auction to Fight Prop 8

This Thursday, Gladstone Gallery's 21st Street space will host an auction benefiting the American Foundation for Equal Rights -- a group aimed at overturning California's gay-marriage-halting Proposition 8 -- that will present just such an opportunity, offering choice work by a variety of established and up-and-coming artists, including many that rarely figure in these philanthropic affairs. Amo...

Artinfo • Oct 26, 2010

Will California's New Leaders Side with the Bigots? This Week in Prop 8 for Monday, October 25, 2010.

It's been a quiet week on the Prop 8 front, but it's the calm before the storm: all eyes are on the fast-approaching election, when California's current pro-equality legislators may be replaced by anti-gay bigots. Meg Whitman, Abel Maldonado, and Steve Cooley are the Republican candidates for Gover...

Stop8.org • Oct 25, 2010

Victory by Whitman and Cooley could revive Proposition 8 appeal

Schwarzenegger and Brown made the decision not to defend Proposition 8 after U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker shot down its ban on same-sex marriage, calling it unconstitutional. The battle has now moved to a federal appeals court. But now, both Republican candidates -- Meg Whitman for governor and Steve Cooley for attorney general -- say the state should defend Proposition 8. They could do that...

Desert Sun • Oct 24, 2010

Appeals Court to Hear Prop 8 Arguments on December 6th

The Federal Appeals Court today announced that oral arguments for the appeal of Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California, will be heard at 10 a.m. on December 6th. Prop 8 backers are appealing a lower court desicion from August where Judge Vaughn Walker's August struck the voter-approved initiative down, calling it unconstitutional. The American Foundation for Equal Rights, which f...

LAist • Oct 22, 2010

Prop. 8 and similar measures create bias and isolation, attorney tells court

The suicide of a Rutgers University freshman last month and a later attack in the Bronx on two teenagers suspected of being gay stemmed from discrimination and isolation that measures like Proposition 8 perpetuate, opponents of the measure told an appeals court. "Incidents such as these are all too familiar to our society," wrote Theodore B. Olson, one of the lawyers for two gay couples challeng...

LA Times • Oct 20, 2010

National Organization for Marriage is Using Children as Political Pawns... Again.

This post is by guest-writer Chris Moore. Cross-posted with The California Majority Report.

The folks behind the divisive and hurtful Yes on Proposition 8 T.V. ads just couldn't help themselves -- The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is once again using children as political ...

Stop8.org • Oct 20, 2010

City Tells Appeals Court Prop 8 Is 'Peculiarly Irrational'

In an appeal brief filed in September, Proposition 8 sponsors argued the measure was justified to promote "responsible procreation and child-rearing" by biological parents within heterosexual marriages. But that reasoning makes no sense because California law treats gay and lesbian parents the same as heterosexual parents and makes no distinction in the rights and responsibilities of biological a...

KTVU • Oct 19, 2010

Lawyers: Gay marriage ban aim was to deny stature

The lawyers argued that the 2008 ban's only purpose was to deny same-sex couples of "the honored stature" of marriage and to avoid having anyone "view gay relationships as 'OK.'"...

Washington Post • Oct 19, 2010

BREAKING: AFER files brief to 9th Circuit; Plaintiffs defend Judge Walker's Prop 8 decision

"Fourteen times the Supreme Court has stated that marriage is a fundamental right of all individuals. This case tests the proposition whether the gay and lesbian Americans among us should be counted as 'persons' under the 14th Amendment, or whether they constitute a permanent underclass ineligible for protection under that cornerstone of our Constitution," attorneys Theodore B. Olson and David Boi...

Prop 8 Trial Tracker • Oct 19, 2010

NOM is not MLK: A 10 point examination

We were up all night, kept awake by the noise from the rolling around going on inside of Martin Luther King Jr's grave. So that gave us time to think about a few more things that are super annoying about the National Organization For Marriage's offensive decision to lift and co-opt MLK's "Give Us The Ballot" speech for their current war against same-sex marriages in Minnesota: 1) Whereas NOM has...

Good As You • Oct 18, 2010

Gay Marriage is in the Hands of Republicans: This Week in Prop 8 for October 18, 2010

Although there wasn't much movement on the Prop 8 case this week, there's been some drama around how Republicans could control the future of marriage equality in the upcoming election. Conventional wisdom has it that although the GOP is behind the curve when it comes to civil rights, th...

Stop8.org • Oct 18, 2010

California's next attorney general could delay ruling on Proposition 8

Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, the Republican candidate for attorney general, has promised to defend Proposition 8. His opponent, San Francisco Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris, a Democrat, has said she would not challenge a federal court ruling that found the measure unconstitutional. UC Irvine Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, speaking at a news conference sponsored by Equality California, a g...

LA Times • Oct 15, 2010

A quiet shift in GOP stance on gay marriage

The GOP, in large part, isn't displaying its usual anti-gay election-year demagoguery, and not just in the "pledge." As recently as 1995, a Republican-controlled Congress was holding hearings investigating "homosexual recruitment" and the "promotion" of homosexuality. During the George W. Bush administration, the party used its fervent opposition to marriage for gay and lesbian couples as a get-o...

LA Times • Oct 14, 2010

Local Assembly candidate Andy Pugno isn't your everyday conservative

Outside a Chinese restaurant in downtown Sacramento, members of the California Nurses Association and Planned Parenthood have crashed a fundraiser for Assembly candidate Andrew Pugno, who hails from Folsom. Amid chants of "Andy Pugno, hear our voice! It's our body, it's our choice!" protesters argue that Pugno is just too extreme for Sacramento--even for a conservative. But you would never know P...

Sacramento News and Review • Oct 14, 2010

Brown debate comment could help Prop. 8 sponsors

In defending his refusal to appeal a judge's order overturning California's ban on same-sex marriage, Attorney General Jerry Brown said the sponsors of the ballot measure can appeal it themselves - a statement that might aid their efforts to preserve the ban in court. Brown, the Democratic candidate for governor, made the comment in Tuesday's debate after Republican Meg Whitman criticized his no...

SF Gate • Oct 14, 2010

Anti-gay activist could help Newsom's bid for state office

Newsom's main opponent in the race, incumbent Abel Maldonado, a Republican, supported Proposition 8, California's same-sex marriage ban that voters passed in 2008. However, Karen England, executive director of the anti-gay Capitol Resource Institute, recently launched a write-in campaign for lieutenant governor that could bleed votes from Maldonado in the close race. England's move followed Maldo...

Bay Area Reporter • Oct 13, 2010

How Many More Kids will Mormons Kill? This Week in Prop 8 for October 11, 2010

It's just been one big terrible wave of suicide lately, with so many young LGBT kids killing themselves it's hard to keep track. Who's to blame? That's hard to say, but surely some culpability lies with Mormon leaders like Elder Packer, who earlier this month called gays immoral and unnatural. He h...

Stop8.org • Oct 12, 2010

Prop 8 Defender Flees Television Discussion

Allowing those who would deprive others of their rights to act in secrecy allows them to act free of any accountability. While the histories and tolls of racism and homophobia are not the same, banning efforts to oppress others without accountability is the reason why there are laws that prohibit members of the KKK from engaging in their activities in hoods. Such concealment is not part of our Ame...

LGBT POV • Oct 10, 2010

Let cameras in courts, chief appeals judge says

It's time to allow television cameras into the nation's courtrooms "to give the public a full and fair picture of what goes on," says the chief judge of the federal appeals court in San Francisco - with a swipe at the U.S. Supreme Court for blocking video coverage of the Proposition 8 trial. Televising court proceedings would increase public respect for the justice system and might also improve t...

SF Gate • Oct 8, 2010

Anti-Gay Donor Writes Check to Meg Whitman

As if she did not have enough money; well after the controversial giving of $125,000 to pass Prop. 8, San Diego businessman Doug Manchester is now supporting Meg Whitman's bid for governor. He's not alone. The National Organization for (Straight-Only) Marriage has pledged $200,000 to defeat Barbara Boxer and elect Carly Fiorina to the U.S. Senate. Both Whitman and Fiorina oppose equality....

Lez Get Real • Oct 8, 2010

Pew Research: for first time, majority of Americans do not oppose same-sex marraige

The Pew Research Center has released its annual report on public opinions on same-sex marriage. And while Pew does show support levels for marriage equality that have been observed in other polls, they are reporting the same sort of uptick in support that others have shown. According to Pew, marriage is now supported by 42% and opposed by 48%, the first time that they have observed less than half ...

Box Turtle Bulletin • Oct 8, 2010

Gov vetoes Leno's clergy bill

Schwarzenegger said in his September 30 veto message that he "strongly" supports marriage equality but the bill would create a "distinct type of marriage" within the state's family code by changing the term "marriage" to "civil marriage." In the years leading up to the 2008 Prop 8 battle, the governor had twice vetoed bills from then-Assemblyman Leno to legalize same-sex marriage. "I am disappoin...

Bay Area Reporter • Oct 7, 2010

How Should Mormons Respond to Leader's Anti-Gay Comments?

Unfortunately, there are lots of people who are interpreting President Packer's message to be: Homosexuality is an unnatural addiction/temptation from which God will free you if you work hard enough. While that may be a comforting message to people who don't like their orientation, and while it may give strength to the few who've "recovered" (whatever that means) from being gay, I personally have...

Religion Dispatches • Oct 7, 2010

More amicus, more animus

Those who oppose civil equality simply can't restrain themselves from supporting the Proponents of Proposition 8. Although history is going to be rather unkind to them (and we will both document and remember), there is almost a sense of desperation to the compulsion to go on record as favoring inequality, supporting supremacist attitudes and expressing dismay that their views may be held up to ins...

Box Turtle Bulletin • Oct 6, 2010

LDS Church leader: Homosexuality not 'inborn'

An LDS Church leader said Sunday that homosexuality is not "inborn." "Why would our heavenly father do that to anyone?" asked Elder Boyd K. Packer. "Remember, he is our father." Packer, a member of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, spoke forcefully during the church's general conference about having the ability to choose one's way....

• Oct 5, 2010

Apologies and Retirement: This Week in Prop 8 for October 4, 2010

What's this, a Mormon official apologizing for the pain caused by Prop 8? Well, so far it's just one man, but it's a start. Jaws dropped this week when Elder Marlin K. Jensen told a group of LGBT leaders in Oakland, "I am sorry." He'd been invited to listen to local Mormon families talk about how Prop ...

Stop8.org • Oct 4, 2010

Conservative Christians Tackle Divorce, The 'Other' Marriage Crisis

"We cannot very well argue for the sanctity of marriage as a crucial social institution while we blithely go about divorcing and approving of remarriage at a rate that destabilizes marriage," Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today, the flagship evangelical magazine, wrote in August after the court ruling invalidating Proposition 8, the California ballot measure banning gay marri...

Politics Daily • Oct 4, 2010