tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50177373337718730842024-03-14T06:31:35.137-07:00herdandsceneDuncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-48169465666448124712011-07-20T09:11:00.000-07:002011-07-20T09:11:53.584-07:00Town Clerks Resigning Not a Trend<div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">There are 932 towns in New York each with a town clerk, according to the New York State Town Clerks Association.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Two clerks have resigned rather than sign marriage licenses for gay and lesbian couples. A third who officiates at weddings in addition to her clerk duties has said she will no longer officiate, but will sign the forms. </div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">So, two divided by 932 gives .002 percent. That’s not a trend, it’s a hiccup.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">On a related subject. There's a New York State Town Clerks Association?</div>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-76418156469451097182011-06-15T17:34:00.000-07:002011-06-15T17:49:48.255-07:00My Day at City Hall<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwqMKWLYQOA6Mhh-xuFMHY4k1z8qXGP9caNHbEIR5kbDSvHQNK3AteRYALMjtPBJJ2x7f2A8Vs5dYLxz0XTOQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Harry Jackson at City Hall on June 14</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">David Tyree is the former wide receiver who is best known for the late fourth quarter catch in Super Bowl XLII that set up the Giants’ game-winning touchdown. But when Tyree appeared at a <a href="http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2011/06/15/gay_city_news/news/doc4df7de4b959ca458404920.txt">June 14 rally</a> opposing same sex marriage on the steps of the Big Apple’s City Hall, he was silent. All the trash talking was done by the civic and religious leaders who organized the event.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">The Rev. Joseph Mattera, the senior pastor at Brooklyn’s Resurrection Church and the leader of a coalition of evangelical churches in the New York City area, quarterbacked this rally, but the star was Bishop Harry Jackson, the senior pastor at Hope Christian Church in Maryland. Jackson is the leading African-American voice opposing gay marriage.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Jackson’s argument is that esbian and and gay couples have no legitimate claim on marriage and that those couples are a threat to the broader American society. </div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">“What we have today is a group of people trying to hitch hike on or highjack or take the legacy of the real civil rights movement and make it their own,” Jackson told the crowd of roughly 50 after first describing his father’s experience with racist violence. “Most African-Americans are incensed by this thus we find in every state a huge majority of African-American voters have voted against same sex marriage.”</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">The bishop’s compelling story about his father notwithstanding he does not own the rhetoric, principles and practices that were used in the civil rights movement. </div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">A variation on that theme was picked up by Chuck Stetson, a founder and managing director at PEI Funds, an investment firm, and a longtime opponent of gay marriage. In his view, allowing a subset, lesbian and gay couples, of an already small group, the broader community, to wed privileges them and somehow punishes everyone else in America.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">“What are we doing this for?” Stetson asked rhetorically. “We’re doing this for three percent of the population and we are disadvantaging 97 percent.”</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Married heterosexual couples, of course, enjoy some extraordinary federal tax advantages and other benefits that are not currently provided even to gay and lesbian couples who married in the five states and the District of Columbia where such unions are legal. Stetson’s analysis turned reality on its head. Nor does the US Constitution limit the rights contained in that document to groups of a certain size. No doubt the Mormon Church is grateful for that.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">The madness began after the formal Q&A ended. Mind you, my bright yellow press pass was hanging around my neck. That I was asking questions, always respectfully, and taking pictures throughout the event was apparent to the participants. They knew I was a reporter.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Rev. Duane R. Motley, a senior lobbyist at New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, the conservative group that is leading the opposition to same sex marriage in New York, eventually asked what media outlet I was from. I said “Gay City News” and he quickly responded “We’re not against homosexuals. I have a lot of friends who are homosexuals.”</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">I never know what to make of that. Perhaps I should I say “Your wife’s hairdresser isn’t your friend.” Many on the right have taken to using that line, but no homosexuals have stepped forward to claim these conservatives as their BFFs. Perhaps I should insist on meeting these friends. Or maybe it is better to not know.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Once I had identified myself as a reporter from Gay City News, two very nice, but stern women hauled a third woman named Gretchen in front of me. I seems that Gretchen, 43, was raised by her mother and her mother’s female partner.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">“My mother, she did the best job she could do, but the truth of it really was I was confused,” Gretchen said. “In my heart, I was confused...I was rejected from my father. My father wasn’t around.”</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Gretchen reported having been sexually molested by two older girls when she was four or five and having lesbian relationships. It was not until Gretchen “found the love of my soul,” or Jesus Christ, that she was healed though not entirely. Gretchen allowed that she is still a “hot mess.” How is her relationship with her mother today?</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">“I speak to her all the time,” Gretchen said. Her mother found God 26 or 27 years ago when Gretchen was a teenager and her mother has been married to the same man since then. Gretchen was not there for the wedding because she had run away from home.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">I did not want to delve deeply into Gretchen’s psyche, but it looked like this home was generally unstable. I took a shot. Would she attribute her hot messiness to her mother having been a lesbian or would she say there were multiple influences?</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">“I would say there were multiple,” Gretchen said. The two nice, but stern ladies who brought Gretchen to me stood by listening to the interview. They did not look happy with the answers. Gretchen was done, but I was not.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">I began to leave the plaza in front of City Hall when my path was blocked by a tall well-dressed man who was carrying a Bible. I did not ask for his name or affiliation. He began to talk to me about genitalia, “fecal material,” prison rape, and how all of this was terribly confusing to young men. What confused me was that I was there to try and glean how the conservatives saw the expected gay marriage vote in Albany playing out. I told this man twice that that was my purpose. He was not interested. He kept on about genitalia, “fecal material,” prison rape, and confusion until he asked what media outlet I was from.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">“Gay City News,” I said. The man shook my hand and bolted. Sometimes being from the gay press gets you in a jam and sometimes it gets you right out.</div>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-24945411127002994332011-06-14T19:29:00.000-07:002011-06-14T19:30:34.528-07:00Can Someone Please Explain?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwyKcghP7GAejN8IYodiagHThohr-8UK9imEn3G_aI4UIVXj7qPfriVBsdETLBUsXwMR6rwaPDrgUdO7ZhsZw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;">Queers Against Israeli Apartheid in Brooklyn Pride </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Queers Against Israeli Apartheid marched without incident in the Brooklyn Pride Parade on June 11. As the clip above shows, the group received the same cheers that every other group marching in the parade received because that is how onlookers behave at pride marches -- they cheer loudly and for everything.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">I saw one man grimacing and he appeared to give a quiet “Boo” as Queers Against Israeli Apartheid went marching by, but he looked as if he was not enjoying any part of the parade so I cannot say he disapproved of any specific group. I was struck by one thing.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Michael Lucas, the owner of Lucas Entertainment, a gay porn studio, has aggressively and successfully, <a href="http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2011/06/14/gay_city_news/news/doc4df02915ceed4873797868.txt">sort of</a>, kept Queers Against Israeli Apartheid from meeting in Manhattan’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center and previously he got the Siegebusters Working Group, another organization that opposes Israeli government policy towards Palestinians, tossed out of the Center.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">The working group held regular meetings at the Center beginning in August 2010, but when it planned a March 5 party to mark the end of Israeli Apartheid Week, Lucas threatened a donor boycott. The Center barred the party and banned Siegebusters from any further meetings there.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">On May 25, the Center allowed Queers Against Israeli Apartheid to rent space for three meetings and the group met at the West 13th Street building for the first time on May 26. Threatened with another donor boycott, the Center pulled that approval on June 2 and announced an “indefinite moratorium” on renting to groups that “organize around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">I was struck by one thing on June 11. Lucas and the folks who joined him in pressuring the Center to give these two groups the boot prevented them, or tried to, from meeting and talking among themselves. When I asked Lucas if he had any plans to challenge the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid in the gay pride marches in Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, he said “I don’t care. They can do whatever the hell they want.”</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">So it is beyond the pale for these groups to meet quietly, but perfectly acceptable for them to carry their message to what will have been hundreds of thousands of people by the time they are done marching in the June 26 pride march on Fifth Avenue? So the objection is what? I remain confused.</div>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-90220634483038291032011-05-25T12:56:00.000-07:002011-06-14T13:25:06.215-07:00Remembering Rudy<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEginpsjwUg62LhbBaMdp3jcGuC5i-70pYozWiiHimTLF0qMD7g5gZwwrBdZhtXIRrKHMfisbXYr4IN4pMeTQIC6ka9imERPPDe9mNewsX47N3Tx0QPh1J24I8NDD05V3EbkAoT6GR2ISTg/s1600/3.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5610745688328060578" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEginpsjwUg62LhbBaMdp3jcGuC5i-70pYozWiiHimTLF0qMD7g5gZwwrBdZhtXIRrKHMfisbXYr4IN4pMeTQIC6ka9imERPPDe9mNewsX47N3Tx0QPh1J24I8NDD05V3EbkAoT6GR2ISTg/s320/3.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 214px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Police and marchers struggle at 1999 pride march.</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"> </span></div></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkWW_k5Gs63gZFReOyhmA3yOmaqvc-o1uHMm3AsmIDxLSY_Lq8eKdSiobCqXLjQLu0SWXobqu1mEdKMGJ2OhudRpd_zlvIzfdMT7aK97rGa1hHKcFAiYlQyq5DSK5HUCW6m3xkzvwJajs/s1600/2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5610745346556720002" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkWW_k5Gs63gZFReOyhmA3yOmaqvc-o1uHMm3AsmIDxLSY_Lq8eKdSiobCqXLjQLu0SWXobqu1mEdKMGJ2OhudRpd_zlvIzfdMT7aK97rGa1hHKcFAiYlQyq5DSK5HUCW6m3xkzvwJajs/s320/2.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 212px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Police arrest at 1999 pride march.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZqOld3KvR8QcMpBuf2dhtYyYB7kNGb7q-IVwdLZzSG8Xyu11dUW212wyrrRox25C3-FWDwuz8cTT483rA8audH83f_y2WUDsC-T7RMFpoxgkfmFOGzeXERviR2VFTpVjsyKA8M2ADDyk/s1600/1.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5610745094290241314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZqOld3KvR8QcMpBuf2dhtYyYB7kNGb7q-IVwdLZzSG8Xyu11dUW212wyrrRox25C3-FWDwuz8cTT483rA8audH83f_y2WUDsC-T7RMFpoxgkfmFOGzeXERviR2VFTpVjsyKA8M2ADDyk/s320/1.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 206px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">A protester at the 1999 pride march.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">“New York City will again be the capital of the world,” Rudy Giuliani promised in his first mayoral inaugural address that was delivered in January 1994. In his second such address in 1998, he said “We are the undisputed capital of the World.” </div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Of course, that made him the world’s mayor. That hubris was classic Giuliani. He had the dumb luck to be elected New York City’s mayor just before the national economy began to grow dramatically and crime across the nation began to fall precipitously.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">With regular press conferences touting the drop in crime in the city or boasting of job growth, Giuliani never failed to associate himself with these trends despite having nothing to do with the former and very little do to with the latter.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">“Here’s the reason why you should vote for me,” Giuliani said at a 1996 press conference held at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, with members of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. “You shouldn’t vote for me because you are gay and lesbian...You should vote for me because I’ve reduced crime in this city more than any other mayor in history and made New York City the safest large city in America. You should vote for me because since I’ve been mayor of New York City you’ve had 102,000 more jobs in New York City.”</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Giuliani was gearing up for a second mayoral run in 1997. As he appears to be considering yet another run at the White House, following his failed effort in 2008, it is worth recalling his eight years in office and what he did and did not achieve. </div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">When Giuliani spoke at that first inaugural, the national unemployment rate was at 6.7 percent. Four years later, it was at 4.7 and fell to 4.3 percent by December of that year. Nationally, unemployment was at 4.2 percent when Giuliani left office and had ranged from 3.9 percent to 4.1 percent since October of 1999.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">New York did not do as well. The state rate was 7.1 percent in January of 1994 and fell to 5.4 percent by the end of that year. By January of 1998, unemployment was 8.5 percent in New York City and it fell to 5.1 percent by January of 2001 when Giuliani left office. </div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Still, the economy did improve. What did Giuliani do? As with everything else in his tenure he squandered the opportunity to reduce the size of city government when the economy was good and New Yorkers could find jobs in the private sector. </div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">In a classic Republican move, Giuliani cut taxes instead and went on a borrowing binge. The city-funded debt grew at an average annual rate of 6.6 percent during the 90s, according to a report from the state comptroller. By 2002, the city’s debt burden was more than twice “the average of the nation’s 56 largest cities,” that report said. Giuliani also pandered to the city unions by growing the size of the city work force to the largest it has ever been.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">While the decline in crime in New York City was impressive and sustained, it began under David Dinkins, who held City Hall right before Giuliani, and it was seen across the nation which puts the lie to Giuliani’s endless promoting of the idea that he was uniquely responsible for that reduction. Those low crime rates have continued under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and we have not been subjected to quarterly press conferences with Bloomberg preening before some graph that illustrates the fall. </div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">With crime falling and the economy growing came a chance for greater comity in New York City. Not, apparently, when it was Giuliani time. The mayor effectively unleashed the police department on the city and on New Yorkers of color in particular. There were 61 police shootings in 1994, a number that was down from the highs of the 70s and 80s. Those numbers began to decline late in Giuliani’s first term and continued down in his second term to 19 in his last year in office. </div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">In the more notorious instances of police brutality, the killings of Patrick Dorismond and Amadou Diallo and the assault on Abner Louima, Giuliani could not bring himself to be decent and always managed to pour more fuel on what were already incendiary situations. His relations with New York City’s gay community were little better.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Giuliani angered some in the gay and lesbian community by launching a crusade against the sex clubs, bathhouses, and porn shops that were favored venues for sex among gay and bisexual men. (I had a whole lot to do with that, but I will let others rage on that topic.) He later successfully pursued a city law that limited where porn shops could operate. </div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">His efforts to dismantle what is now called the HIV/AIDS Services Administration, the city agency that enrolls people with AIDS in food stamp, Medicaid, housing, and other entitlement programs, resulted in Housing Works, an AIDS group, successfully suing City Hall to stop the cuts. The City Council also enacted local laws that imposed a number of mandates on HASA operations. Giuliani also opposed efforts to teach effective AIDS education in city schools and his response to anti-gay violence was seen as insufficient.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">In his 1997 mayoral race, 56 percent of self-identified lesbian and gay voters favored Democrat Ruth Messinger, who was certain to lose, over Giuliani though only 40 percent of the white gay voters backed Messinger.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">So it was that in 1998 Giuliani was briefly run out of the city’s annual gay pride march by a group of demonstrators who blocked his path on Fifth Avenue. Police made 20 arrests for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. The demonstrators wore tee-shirts with slogans reading “Rudy Get Out Of Our Parade,” “Kids Need AIDS Ed Now” and “Stop Lying About Queer Bashing.” The group chanted “Quality of life is a lie, you don’t care if people die” and “Giuliani, you’re a mess, you’re a bigot in a dress.”</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">The next year, Giuliani responded as only he would. In the 1999 gay pride march, Giuliani was guarded by uniformed police officers who marched along the sides of Fifth Avenue and roughly two dozen plainclothes officers, identified by the yellow sweat bands on their wrists, who kept pace with the mayor on the sidewalks. The large police presence further inflamed passions.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">“I find it ridiculous that on a day that is supposed to be a celebration...that we would be threatened with arrest,” Joo-Hyun Kang, then the executive director of the Audre Lorde Project, told me then. Kang said she had been threatened with arrest three times. As I spoke with her on Fifth Avenue, Allan Hoehl, then the police department’s chief of the Manhattan South division, instructed her to move along. When Kang asked that he not touch her, Hoehl warned that the next time he touched her she would be under arrest.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Giuliani was marching with the Log Cabin Republicans that year and they made the mistake of stepping into the middle of the parade’s People of Color contingent. As groups in that contingent tried to pass Giuliani, police jostled with them on the sidewalks and on the avenue. At West 37th Street, police arrested one marcher on the sidewalk as she tried to join friends marching in front of Giuliani. As the woman was being rushed by police down 37th Street, a friend of hers was arrested as she tried to intervene. Both women were charged with disorderly conduct.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">As he moved into the 30s and 20s, the anti-Giuliani sentiment seemed to grow stronger. Boos, profanity, and cries of “Rudy Get Out” came more frequently. When he was introduced at the 23rd Street reviewing stand any cheers could not be heard above the booing.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">The protests continued during a later press conference as roughly one dozen members of Fed Up Queers chanted “Rudy Get Out” as the mayor spoke.</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">“The man has attacked us during his entire term,” Brownie Johnson, a Fed Up Queer, told me. “He does not belong here. He does not belong in our parade.”</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 16.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12.0px Geneva; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">He does not belong in the White House either.</div></div></span>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-70351746914491436962011-05-16T07:42:00.000-07:002011-05-16T08:00:47.947-07:00If This is Love Then Who is the Pervert?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifJo1MUR5wzmcfBNCk2ZG8iDh_kp5gjxUmQlcD-G0I0ebfhe2bXDmc0GxVTQbEykfsPGyxzxhp_5kETSoKN9usqNC9AGFCsYne8yNRXN3C6sAtDXqNmifoyUQxLG2HCXUm11Xp3UHLqN8/s1600/diaz.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifJo1MUR5wzmcfBNCk2ZG8iDh_kp5gjxUmQlcD-G0I0ebfhe2bXDmc0GxVTQbEykfsPGyxzxhp_5kETSoKN9usqNC9AGFCsYne8yNRXN3C6sAtDXqNmifoyUQxLG2HCXUm11Xp3UHLqN8/s320/diaz.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5607325019509611778" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Rev. Ruben Diaz (in white hat) at May 15 rally</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">As he spoke to a crowd of roughly 2,000 at an anti-gay marriage rally held outside of the Bronx Borough Hall building, Rev. Ruben Diaz took a moment to address the small group of counter demonstrators who gathered in a park directly across from building. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“We all respect you,” Diaz said on May 15. “We respect you and we love you...So you guys over there, listen. There’s no hatred in my heart.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">This is the kinder and gentler rhetoric employed by conservatives who know that Americans are fed up with the insults and slurs that right wingers aim at the lesbian and gay community. Like so many of his peers, Diaz, a Democratic state senator who represents part of the Bronx, has a record that belies his comments. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In 1994, Diaz wrote an editorial in Impacto, a Spanish-language newspaper, that said that athletes coming to New York City to participate in the Gay Games that year would spread HIV.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Some of the gay and lesbian athletes are likely to be already infected with AIDS or can return home with the virus,” he wrote. Diaz objected to the Clinton administration waiving the ban on HIV positive travelers entering the US. He appeared at a City Hall press conference with other conservatives to condemn the Gay Games.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“These Gay Games will teach our young adults and children that homosexuality is okay,” the UPI quoted Diaz saying at the press conference. “There is nothing more obscene. This kind of behavior is biologically dangerous. Homosexuality is a sin against God's laws and therefore is not acceptable.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Diaz was joined at that press conference by Mary Cummins, a Queens conservative who led a 1992 attack against the Children of the Rainbow curriculum because three pages in that 430-page teacher’s guide referred to positive representations of gay men and lesbians. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In 2003, Diaz sued to halt city funding of the Harvey Milk School in the West Village. That school serves lesbian, transgender, bisexual, and gay youth who have been subjected to violence and harassment in other schools. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“My goal is to let the mayor of the city of New York, the chancellor, and the school system know that it is wrong what they are doing,” Diaz said at a 2003 press conference held outside of Manhattan Supreme Court. “It is segregation. They are showing preference and they are leaving my children, my Spanish children, my black children behind.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Then, as now, 75 percent of the students at the Harvey Milk School are African-American and Latino. Diaz was joined by Rena Lindevaldsen, an attorney with the Florida-based Liberty Counsel, a group that defends “traditional families, sanctity of life and religious liberty,” she said.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“I think you can sum it all up by saying that in New York City the Department of Education is literally taking from the poor, those who are in the poor, failing schools and giving $4.0 million to those who are going to be in a newly renovated, expanded and fully equipped school,” Lindevaldsen said. “They are taking from the poor and giving to the rich.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">At that time, the majority of students at the school were poor and 10 percent were in foster care. The school also complied with all local, state, and federal anti-discrimination laws. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The Liberty Counsel opposed overturning the Texas sodomy law in Lawrence v. Texas, a US Supreme Court case that overturned state sodomy laws, it fought recognition of civil unions in Georgia and Connecticut, and the group opposed adoption by gay men and lesbians in Florida.</p></span></div>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-251639416192243792011-05-15T14:20:00.000-07:002011-05-16T08:01:45.563-07:00Gay Marriage Opponents Rally in the Bronx<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ2x4KNsvuJA65HLVIpgQ_Q9vZpw7O-J8KxV9Ix4UO_HFlEb4l4IHtRqPmh2OGUeGh8lgtw342GWJQ3MQSyZFy812ZEwA4OYAeDfhZUrsw2lsna5TwT68WWkz-Jqt4oDpYITd_JNl5sJM/s1600/rally+VI.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ2x4KNsvuJA65HLVIpgQ_Q9vZpw7O-J8KxV9Ix4UO_HFlEb4l4IHtRqPmh2OGUeGh8lgtw342GWJQ3MQSyZFy812ZEwA4OYAeDfhZUrsw2lsna5TwT68WWkz-Jqt4oDpYITd_JNl5sJM/s320/rally+VI.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5607057405639477362" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The rally</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq6sBRQ8FLSBTTp2iCri4m53PmmXYtcTGXarYi0nT0m-cUS8jKM4i2YRnyU5uOVyoqQKBIMGGlxkW1Pu5tukZxg4QONw-Vz2JOAoBvkbTZtuvb__CdAdKUAathutkvw5kvnallOi860kI/s1600/march+VIII.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq6sBRQ8FLSBTTp2iCri4m53PmmXYtcTGXarYi0nT0m-cUS8jKM4i2YRnyU5uOVyoqQKBIMGGlxkW1Pu5tukZxg4QONw-Vz2JOAoBvkbTZtuvb__CdAdKUAathutkvw5kvnallOi860kI/s320/march+VIII.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5607056664217862530" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The march </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtgIF86HAky3SUr4MYjtZS25uxKH0i0FsedlHrPccnOsLAvxdLGZg7L_9uMy-QXBUDb4hz2whsVUtNP5U88HOwtrU81tovpjGQxbsLbRKnuYkUYkMO5ErxR9KtPGgUb6-aBo7Y7naHuDA/s1600/brown%253Adiaz.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtgIF86HAky3SUr4MYjtZS25uxKH0i0FsedlHrPccnOsLAvxdLGZg7L_9uMy-QXBUDb4hz2whsVUtNP5U88HOwtrU81tovpjGQxbsLbRKnuYkUYkMO5ErxR9KtPGgUb6-aBo7Y7naHuDA/s320/brown%253Adiaz.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5607056111986320322" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Rev. Ruben Diaz (l, in white) and Brian S. Brown (r)</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Roughly 2,000 people turned out for a Bronx anti-gay marriage rally that was sponsored by Rev. Ruben Diaz, a Democratic state senator who represents part of the Bronx, and two Spanish-language Christian radio stations.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“The message of today is even more powerful because you have come out in the rain,” Diaz told the crowd that gathered outside the Bronx Borough Hall building. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">About 1,500 people marched from 149th Street and 3rd Avenue in the Bronx to the rally site where another 500 were waiting. The march was led by a band from the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, a lay Roman Catholic group. Joining Diaz at the front of the march was Brian S. Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Diaz called for a referendum on marriage in New York noting that Americans have consistently voted against the lesbian and gay community on such ballot initiatives.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“In every state, including California, the people have rejected marriage between a man and a man and a woman and a woman,” he said at the May 15 event. “Let us vote. Let the people decide.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">A consistent theme that ran through the march and rally was that the participants do not hate gay men and lesbians.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“We all respect you,” Diaz said as he pointed to the small group of counter demonstrators who were standing in a park across from the building. “We respect you and we love you...So you guys over there, listen. There’s no hatred in my heart.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">His granddaughter was among the counter demonstrators and she joined Diaz as he spoke.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“My granddaughter loves me and I love her,” Diaz said as he hugged and kissed her.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Brown told the crowd that they were defending not only marriage, but their religious freedom.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“They have shut down Christian adoption agencies,” Brown said referring to two Roman Catholic adoption agencies that closed rather than place children with gay and lesbian parents. “This is a question of civil rights. It’s a question of our civil rights...I ask you today to stand up for your civil rights.” </p></div></span>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-74733778062414002732011-05-14T14:44:00.000-07:002011-05-14T14:55:51.592-07:00His Excellency Tells a Little Lie<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgancpUPg-Zvc0CNT0ZRa9wcoKYI9MrbAVHY6MEodMoPJvX9cKrd6gaPNnRXRpCn_4ueTd7UOGZz10pxhJAsfvA-Mk5JzXxgPym9c23e01e2A0m0OOproz2_6b5mr3y0jTNmIJBj6yaAnE/s1600/ArchbishopDolanPhoto.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgancpUPg-Zvc0CNT0ZRa9wcoKYI9MrbAVHY6MEodMoPJvX9cKrd6gaPNnRXRpCn_4ueTd7UOGZz10pxhJAsfvA-Mk5JzXxgPym9c23e01e2A0m0OOproz2_6b5mr3y0jTNmIJBj6yaAnE/s320/ArchbishopDolanPhoto.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5606690961985727922" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><div style="text-align: center;">Archbishop Timothy Dolan</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; ">In a <a href="http://blog.archny.org/?p=1187">May 13 post</a> on his blog, Archbishop Timothy Dolan was less than honest with the thousands of adherents who live in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. As New Yorkers, and plenty of folks who live outside the state, are contesting an effort to enact same sex marriage here, Dolan weighed in. He recalled encountering a protest when he was the archbishop in Milwaukee. </p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; min-height: 16px; "><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; ">“This frenzied group, taunting the people as they left Mass, were rabid in criticizing the Catholic Church, especially her bishops, for our teaching that homosexuals deserve dignity and respect,” Dolan wrote. “They waved placards explicitly quoting and condemning #2358 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which affirms the dignity of those with same-sex attraction, and warns against any form of prejudice, hatred, or unjust discrimination against them, and insists that homosexual acts, not persons, are not in conformity with God’s design.”</p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; min-height: 16px; "><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; ">This tale was meant to present Dolan and the Roman Catholic Church as respecting and defending homosexuals. Unfortunately for Dolan, #2358 does not say what he claims it says. Here is the catechism in its entirety.</p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; min-height: 16px; "><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; ">“The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.”</p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; min-height: 16px; "><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; ">The observation that homosexuality is “objectively disordered” refers to the 1986 “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,” a document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Vatican office that was headed at that time by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. That document said that homosexuality was “a more or less strong tendency toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.”</p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; min-height: 16px; "><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; ">Ratzinger did write that violence against “homosexual persons” is “deplorable,” but he was just as clear about who was ultimately responsible for that violence -- gay men and lesbians.</p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; min-height: 16px; "><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; ">“But the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered,” Ratzinger wrote. “When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase.” </p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; min-height: 16px; "><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; ">The Ratzinger letter cited the 1975 “Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics,” which described homosexuality as “intrinsically disordered.”</p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; min-height: 16px; "><br /></p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; ">The Roman Catholic Church, like many on the right, has found that <a href="http://herdandscene.blogspot.com/2011/04/25-years-later-still-hating-but-less.html">the harsh rhetoric its leadership once used</a> when discussing the lesbian and gay community is deemed objectionable by much of the public. Dolan is necessarily forced to spin, but in his church what the Vatican orders is the law. Dolan cannot believe what he wrote on May 13.</p></div></span>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-60970536379850289802011-05-13T09:37:00.000-07:002011-05-13T09:43:24.334-07:00Pastor Platt’s Exposition of The Views of Baptists, Relative to the Homosexual Population of the United States<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEislpYeMzDNNxVxNuiaTmbLoOqv4TKBIgaKD_227u9oFx-GWIeTbXW7tXD98jiCsfn272yR72ALOs4yizDdKURFL4m01AYeqSFF8ayb48neG1suw0c0F36eCLWPJwyD5bMeTfkcviv5jyE/s1600/david-platt.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 241px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEislpYeMzDNNxVxNuiaTmbLoOqv4TKBIgaKD_227u9oFx-GWIeTbXW7tXD98jiCsfn272yR72ALOs4yizDdKURFL4m01AYeqSFF8ayb48neG1suw0c0F36eCLWPJwyD5bMeTfkcviv5jyE/s320/david-platt.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5606241539857083858" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pastor David Platt</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">When David Platt, the pastor at The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama, cited the Bible and argued that homosexuality is wrong, he opted for an old rhetorical device. He applied the reasoning used by “those in the homosexual movement to describe or justify homosexual desires or actions” to “pedophilia, more specifically homosexual pedophilia,” Platt said in a 2008 sermon.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“After all, the pedophile argues, we both enjoy this, how can it be wrong?” he said. “Jesus never spoke against. He welcomed children to himself...I am part of a persecuted minority and as a result I am all the more deserving of civil rights.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Platt asked his audience “Are you convinced? You say ‘Of course not. It’s against the law.’” Then, after pausing for dramatic effect, Platt said “Ladies and gentlemen so was same sex marriage two months ago in California.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The 32-year-old Southern Baptist pastor never explained the point he was making other than to say “Please hear me, I am not equating these two things completely together, but I am showing us in scripture and practically in our lives that causation does not imply justification.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The transgender, bisexual, lesbian, and gay community has never said that causation implies justification, but that is the advantage of a sermon. The pastor states all the facts and reaches the conclusion without presenting alternative views or opposing voices.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Platt still has problems. The first is that he apparently cannot distinguish between sex between consenting adults and sex between an adult and someone who is younger than any state’s age of consent. The gay, transgender, lesbian, and bisexual community sees a difference in those relationships.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The North American Man Boy Love Association, or NAMBLA, was founded in 1978. That political and social group had support within the broader community, but it also met with resistance that grew louder and more strident with the passing of time. Today, NAMBLA, which never had more than 1,200 members and a few thousand dollars in the bank at any given time, is a shadow of its former self and its members do not even try to associate with queer community groups. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Platt’s bigger challenge is his Furman problem as in the Rev. Dr. Richard Furman. In 1814, at the first Triennial Convention of the American Baptists, Furman was elected president of that denomination. He was also the first president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention and served in that office from 1821 to 1825. In 1845, a schism, largely over the morality of slavery, led southerners among the American Baptists to form the Southern Baptist Convention, the denomination that Platt belongs to.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In 1822, Denmark Vesey, a former slave, was accused of organizing a slave rebellion in South Carolina. Authorities in that state arrested, tortured, and tried Vesey and roughly 100 co-conspirators. Thirty-five, including Vesey, were hanged and 40 were shipped out of the US. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Historians debate whether Vesey ever planned a rebellion. It was common across America in the 19th and early 20th centuries for authorities or mobs to manufacture charges of insurrection or rape of a white woman by a African-American man as a pretext for responding with lynchings or other forms of violence.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In 1822, John L. Wilson, then the governor of South Carolina, asked Furman if he would recommend that the state establish a “Day of Public Humiliation and Thanksgiving” to commemorate its having avoided this rebellion. Furman responded affirmatively and offered a fullthroated defense of slavery. His source for that defense was the Bible.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“The result of this inquiry and reasoning, on the subject of slavery, brings us, sir, if I mistake not, very regularly to the following conclusion -- That the holding of slaves is justifiable by the doctrine and example contained in Holy writ; and is, therefore consistent with Christian uprightness, both in sentiment and conduct,” Furman wrote.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“That it is also the positive duty of servants to reverence their master, to be obedient, industrious, faithful to him, and careful of his interests; and without being so, they can neither be the faithful servants of God, nor be held as regular members of the Christian Church,” Furman wrote later in the 19-page treatise titled “Rev. Dr. Richard Furman’s Exposition of The Views of Baptists, Relative to the Colored Population of the United States.” </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Does Platt believe that Furman was correct? Furman’s authority was the Bible, the same good book that Platt cited in his attack on homosexuality. If Platt does agree, he has endorsed slavery and he has no moral authority to preach on any topic. If he does not, then he must concede that the Bible can be used by vile people to serve immoral ends. Having conceded that, he must explain how his congregation can distinguish between right Biblical teaching and wrong Biblical teaching. He must also concede that there is a very real possibility that his teaching on homosexuality was as wrong as Furman’s on slavery.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Platt is not a minor player in the denomination. He will nominate Brian Wright, the current president of the Southern Baptist Convention, to his second term when that group meets in June in Phoenix and he was selected to deliver this year’s convention sermon.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Platt’s Furman problem is shared by every member of the Southern Baptist Convention. That denomination defended slavery and segregation for over 100 years. It remained silent in the face of the brutal violence that was visited upon African-Americans. Its muted 1995 apology for that has done little to heal the wounds caused by that history. It remains a predominantly white denomination. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In contrast, the bisexual, transgender, lesbian, and gay community has thoroughly and completely repudiated NAMBLA and yet Platt employs the device of the homosexual as pedophile to argue against gay marriage. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">It is no surprise then that it is always galling to be the subject of a lecture on morality and sin from a member of the Southern Baptist Convention.</p>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-47819253483805061062011-05-08T12:21:00.000-07:002011-05-08T12:33:12.582-07:00Conservative Pastors Admit to Gay Slurs, Don't Expect An Apology<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The standard position among evangelicals has been that they hate the sin of homosexuality, but love homosexuals. James MacDonald, the pastor at Chicago’s Harvest Bible Chapel, has ended that posturing by admitting to what every person in the transgender, lesbian, gay, and bisexual community has known for years.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“I grew up in a culture, high school, college, certainly, certainly in college, even young men in ministry where there was a lot of joking about homosexuality,” <a href="http://jamesmacdonald.com/blog/?p=6222">MacDonald said </a>to five other pastors during a discussion. “Oh you fag, oh you this, oh that, gay jokes all the time between the brothers.” </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">MacDonald brought these conservative and influential mega-church pastors to Chicago for The Elephant Room, a day-long, live discussion among them that was simulcast to 18 locations across North America on March 31. Turning to Steven Furtick, the pastor of the Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, MacDonald asked “What do you think about that Steven?”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Furtick said “I don’t think it’s helpful, I don’t think it’s constructive. I think I’ve been guilty of taking shots for the sake of humor, for the sake of, for the sake of crowd reaction, and it’s done nothing, but harm my ministry because then at times when I want to seriously address that issue I’m already working at a deficit.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Perry Noble, the pastor at New Spring Church in Anderson, South Carolina, also admitted to attacking gay men and lesbians.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“I’ve not done as well in that area as I should,” Noble said. “That’s something that I’ve tried to clean up really hard over the past year because we’ve got a lot of people really wrestling with that in our churches.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">As recently as March 6, Noble said in a sermon on greed that if Christians gave more to churches they could convert more gay men and lesbians. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Maybe there would be less homosexuality in the world today if there were less greedy Christians who actually cared enough to tithe and spread the gospel,” Noble said in that sermon which was posted on iTunes.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">MacDonald said he had sworn off gay slurs several years ago.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“I’m just not going to joke about something that grieves the heart of God, holds people in bondage, causes so much woundedness,” he said.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and gay community should not get too excited by these confessions. These pastors do not regret their insults and jibes because of any damage they have done to us. It is their own credibility that they are concerned with.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Based on the amount of intense feeling that there is in our culture right now it’s something we’re going to have to address very seriously so I really don’t have shots to be wasting in terms of making jokes about it if I’m going to effectively be a part of change,” Furtick said. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">David Platt, the pastor at The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama, had a similar view.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“When we joke about homosexuality we’re contributing to the idea that homosexuality is a preference not just sin,” Platt said. “I think we need to be wary about joking about anything that is a sin issue.”</p>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-59859444602404625932011-04-01T10:23:00.000-07:002011-04-01T10:30:47.569-07:0025 Years Later, Still Hating, But Less Hateful<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvSHpHJ4osvEPLknXd_Ox7SkoAbJrsOm0uoxYsBOkNq0QPodm3bgjemblewiLiOjHbSvL2ZXE1cQQdbGwRSjRffFtVc4pgn1QMK6HJdMANAlW2OOKIvwDWCCJdLg4FyRmCUrnq1oc1kVU/s1600/rights_poster.gif" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 175px; height: 227px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvSHpHJ4osvEPLknXd_Ox7SkoAbJrsOm0uoxYsBOkNq0QPodm3bgjemblewiLiOjHbSvL2ZXE1cQQdbGwRSjRffFtVc4pgn1QMK6HJdMANAlW2OOKIvwDWCCJdLg4FyRmCUrnq1oc1kVU/s320/rights_poster.gif" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5590667090407953842" /></a><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In an interview with 60 Minutes that was broadcast on March 20, Archbishop Timothy Dolan was asked about his opposition to gay marriage. He said of gay and lesbian couples “We will stand up for other rights with you, we will treat you with love and reverence, but we cannot ever tamper with the necessary attributes of what we consider to be one of the pillars of society, namely the very definition of marriage.” </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Dolan leads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York that is comprised of Manhattan, Staten Island, and the Bronx as well as seven upstate counties and he is the leading American Roman Catholic voice so his conciliatory comments were notable. His tone notwithstanding, Dolan’s comments met with derision on gay blogs such as <a href="http://www.queerty.com/ny-archbishop-timothy-dolan-gays-shouldnt-marry-1-because-theyre-not-qualified-2-i-cant-marry-my-mom-20110321/">queerty.com</a>, <a href="http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2011/03/archbishop-timothy-dolan-i-have-no.html">joemygod.blogspot.com</a>, and <a href="http://www.towleroad.com/2011/03/dolan.html">towleroad.com</a>. Those posters should have been in New York City on March 19, 1986 if they wanted to hear hate speech.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Members of the same sex not only should not make love because it is immoral, they cannot make love because it is impossible,” said Bishop Patrick V. Ahern at a rally that was held that day outside New York City’s City Hall. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The City Council was scheduled to vote the next day on Intro. 2, a bill that added sexual orientation to the city’s anti-discrimination law. Intro. 2 was first proposed in 1971, but was repeatedly stalled. The community would finally prevail with the March 20 vote. Attendees at the rally knew that and they were angry. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Sodomy is both hygienically and morally repulsive and it’s because nature has made it that way,” said Ahern who died on March 24 of this year. “To place the homosexual lifestyle on the same plane as the heterosexual lifestyle is to make homosexual marriage equal in dignity to heterosexual marriage and this is subversive of the society that we belong to, whose basic unit is the family”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Monsignor Vincent D. Breen was, like Ahern, a senior player in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. Breen, who died in 2003, told the crowd “We believe that all people in New York City are protected from discrimination by existing federal and state statutes. We further believe that the Intro. 2 legislation...would establish the homosexual, lesbian and bisexual lifestyles as equal to and as authentic as the heterosexual lifestyle. Intro. 2 is an assault on the traditional family values of both Christian and Judaic society.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Their comments were captured by filmmaker Phil Zwickler who, with Jane Lippman, produced “Rights and Reactions: Lesbian and Gay Rights on Trial,” a 1987 film that documented that 1986 debate. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The podium at that rally was packed with Roman Catholic priests, Orthodox Jews, Salvation Army staffers, politicians, and taxpayers. Members of <span style="color: #222222">The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, a group of lay Catholics, also attended. </span>Robert W. Peters, the founder of Morality in Media, a conservative media watchdog group, is seen chanting “A moral wrong cannot be a civil right” while holding a sign that says the same thing. Zwickler filmed one anonymous man employing an argument that is still used by the right today.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“I as a parent will have to be able to accept that they want to teach homosexuality to my children as an alternate lifestyle,” the man said. “That is totally unacceptable to me and I am willing to go to jail so that my children will not have those values, immoral values, forced upon them.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The language inside City Hall during the debate over Intro. 2 was just as ugly. Andy Humm, a longtime gay activist and then a member of the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights, quoted the Bible chapter Leviticus saying “If a man lie with a man as with a woman both of them have committed an abomination they shall be put to death.” </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">That drew cheers and applause from some of the Intro. 2 opponents and Humm stood at a podium gesturing to those who were cheering while saying sarcastically “Nice, nice, nice.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Twenty-five years later, the opponents of advances sought by the lesbian, transgender, gay, and bisexual community have clearly decided that the sort of rhetoric they used in 1986 no longer works and might even harm their efforts. There are exceptions, of course. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In 2008, during the fight over California’s Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that overturned same sex marriage in that state, proponents avoided attacking the gay community and even pointed out in some ads that gay and lesbian couples could enter into domestic partnerships that had the same rights as marriage. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In a 2008 story, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/us/politics/15marriage.html?scp=2&sq=marriage&st=nyt">New York Times</a> cited a yes side training document that read “It is not our goal in this campaign to attack the homosexual lifestyle or to convince gays and lesbians that their behavior is wrong -- the less we refer to homosexuality, the better...We are pro-marriage, not anti-gay.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">It is not evident that this changed language reflects a change of heart and clearly most, if not all, people in the bisexual, gay, transgender, and lesbian community do not believe that it does. It may reflect changed demographics. Many of the people who used that harsher language have died or retired from politics. Their children grew up seeing gays on TV, having gay friends, and regularly hearing about the community so they would be less likely to be shrill. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px">“To a large extent, we’re not talking to those people anymore,” said Steve Ashkinazy, a longtime gay activist, at a March 31 screening of the Zwickler documentary held at New York City’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center. “We’re talking to their children who grew up in a world that we created.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Allen Roskoff, also a longtime gay activist, saw the community’s increasing strength over time as a factor in the right toning down its attacks.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“It’s my belief that a lot of it has to do with the power of the community,” Roskoff said at the screening, which was sponsored by the Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City, a gay political group.</p>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-11727285231749464052010-11-08T17:25:00.000-08:002010-11-08T17:55:21.385-08:00Cancel Trial Continues; Manhattan DA Makes an Appearance<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhF7rqD1GlIpq5meQajuoqGRvypGMoz_IAC9TtBVFnYnx2VxNl_-1wyqTv8JwSf8YZQnwrvaEVcx0bLA8Mt5xYcTsfIRFnwUmV-efgawi8R4ds8zvpV6hUzD2yeRh1GsI5WVAN8c2uO6k/s1600/pravia.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 188px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhF7rqD1GlIpq5meQajuoqGRvypGMoz_IAC9TtBVFnYnx2VxNl_-1wyqTv8JwSf8YZQnwrvaEVcx0bLA8Mt5xYcTsfIRFnwUmV-efgawi8R4ds8zvpV6hUzD2yeRh1GsI5WVAN8c2uO6k/s320/pravia.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5537355161063176338" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Kevin Pravia in an undated photo</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The prosecution in the Jeromie Cancel murder trial ended a day of testimony by playing a video that was ostensibly a crime scene recording of the apartment where Cancel allegedly murdered Kevin Pravia, but included shots that lingered on photos of Pravia and cards sent to him by friends and family that he used to decorate his Chelsea home.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Jurors, attorneys, and observers sat in Manhattan Supreme Court on November 8 as the silent 11-minute video played. The only sound was <a href="http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2010/11/04/gay_city_news/news/doc4cd344a89f366127515898.txt">Paula Pravia</a>, Kevin’s mother, quietly weeping. She testified on November 4, the trial’s first day, and several jurors turned and briefly watched her as the video played. Paula has been carrying a small quilt that friends made for her from Kevin’s clothes and she had that with her when she testified.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Cancel, now 24, faces one second degree murder count in the killing. Allegedly, he strangled the 19-year-old Pravia after the two met near Union Square early in the morning on August 30, 2008. The prosecution is also presenting evidence that Cancel robbed the gay college student after the murder, but Cancel is not charged with robbery.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In what may be an indication of how seriously the Manhattan prosecutor’s office is taking this case, District Attorney Cyrus Vance came to the trial on November 8 and sat alone at the rear of the courtroom for roughly 45 minutes. Vance won the district attorney’s office last year. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Steven Nuzzi, the prosecutor on the case, has been slowly, but deliberately piecing together his evidence. On November 8, jurors heard from the Queens police officer who Cancel first told about the murder.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Cancel was arrested on September 2, 2008 outside his father’s Queens home for an earlier theft from his father. Once at the 104th Precinct, he blurted out that he had killed Kevin and supplied details that only the killer would know. Police were skeptical despite Cancel’s lengthy admission.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“We deal with that a lot,” said the officer who first spoke with Cancel. “Kids from the street try to make themselves out to be more important than they are.” </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Police appear to have quickly decided that Cancel was Kevin’s killer and contacted detectives in Chelsea’s 10th Precinct. Cancel was arrested on the larceny charge at 12:30 am on September 2 and by 1:20 am that morning 10th Precinct detectives were in a car to pick up Cancel, Rocco Russo, the detective who ran the investigation testified on November 8.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">That timeline has been a major sticking point for the defense which argued that Cancel should have been read his Miranda rights as soon as he admitted to the killing. The defense has suggested that cops in Queens did not just listen to Cancel reveal details of the killing, but questioned him.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The judge in the case, Daniel P. Fitzgerald, threw out the statements Cancel made to two Queens detectives because he had not been read his rights though Fitzgerald allowed the statements to the police officer to come in. That was a Pyhrric victory for the defense because Cancel made eight other statements, including one written and two videotaped statements, that the jury will hear. Cancel waived his Miranda rights at the 10th Precinct at 2:30 am, according to Russo. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">More of Cancel’s statements, including his written statement, were introduced through Russo’s testimony and his videotaped statements are expected to be introduced on November 9. At one point, Cancel grew tired of discussing the killing. When Russo asked him to be in a line up, Cancel responded “Why do I have to do this? I murdered him. I strangled him. I’ve been telling you that all day.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Josephine Madonna, Kevin’s friend and roommate at the time, also testified on November 8 saying she came home from an out of town visit to find the apartment ransacked, two jewelry boxes she owned open with one empty, and Kevin lying dead on his bed.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“I saw his foot was sticking out,” she said. “I pulled the quilt off the bed and he was there...After I saw him I went and I grabbed my phone and I went out into the hallway and I called 911.”</p></span></div>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-48322998309821770542010-10-19T18:37:00.000-07:002010-10-19T19:02:20.983-07:00Defense Gets Boost At Katehis Trial, But So Does Prosecution<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZYMmNRHACpoNPCX-Z54YanxB9_tR3bP6HcsR9lxB0EyOlb9NGAerFh9MJd3F-sheaC1qG3HmWbNlytSRlO-MWQThXLXE0KvfrBb3dLNkgR9TTrexjYxpihzBhMPu4ex6zGzsp4P49Qdk/s1600/katehis.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 259px; height: 194px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZYMmNRHACpoNPCX-Z54YanxB9_tR3bP6HcsR9lxB0EyOlb9NGAerFh9MJd3F-sheaC1qG3HmWbNlytSRlO-MWQThXLXE0KvfrBb3dLNkgR9TTrexjYxpihzBhMPu4ex6zGzsp4P49Qdk/s320/katehis.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5529936431758286082" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">John Katehis in one of two photos introduced at his murder trial </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The defense argument that John Katehis participated in an unwanted sex act with George Weber that led him to kill the 47-year-old gay journalist got some help on October 19 when a criminalist from New York City’s medical examiner’s office said that Weber’s semen was found on his penis.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Sarah Philipps, who has works in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, told a Brooklyn jury that her office tested multiple blood and fluid samples from Weber’s Carroll Gardens apartment, the steps in front of his home, and even a nearby subway station.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Swabs of Weber’s penis showed that he had ejaculated, but there was no semen found on his underwear. When he was found dead, his underwear and pants had been pulled down. That suggests that he engaged in a sex act, perhaps with the now 18-year-old Katehis, prior to his March 2009 death.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Jeffery T. Schwartz, Katehis’ attorney, asked Philipps if that showed that Weber’s pants and underwear were down when he had an orgasm. “It would be more likely, but I cannot say yes or no,” she said.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Schwartz has argued that Weber was a sexual predator and that Katehis, who was 16 when he met Weber, was his victim. In his statements to police and the district attorney, Katehis said Weber gave him a beer and cocaine and tried to get him to participate in a sex act that made him uncomfortable. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In New York, a person who is over 21 who has sex with someone under 17 can be charged with third degree rape, an E felony, the lowest level felony. Schwartz has said that the younger man was defending himself from a sexual assault when he stabbed Weber more than 50 times.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Katehis is charged with second degree murder in the case and could get as much as 25-years-to-life if found guilty.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Schwartz also pressed the attack that police and the district attorney had railroaded his client by noting that the medical examiner had received many biological samples, but had tested only a small number of them. Schwartz said that senior officials from the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, the police department, and the medical examiner’s office met to discuss that testing before it was done. Philipps said that the testing choices were influenced by information from the police.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“The narrative information you get is a police officer’s narrative, is that correct?” Schwartz asked and Philipps agreed.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The Brooklyn district attorney is presenting Katehis as a calculating killer and a liar whose statements are filled with self-serving details. That case got some help on October 19.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">While media reports had it that Weber placed the craigslist ad that brought the two men together, in fact, it was Katehis who ran that ad on March 18, 2009. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">With the subject line “I blow for cash M4M,” Katehis wrote “I’m bi white uncut, but I’m only into oral play. I will blow a guy of any age, but only for cash.” Katehis sought $60 for the service. Weber responded to the ad less than 30 minutes after it was placed seeking to be smothered. The two men conducted a negotiation via email over what they would do and at what price before meeting two days later.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi, the prosecutor in the case, introduced some content from Katehis’ myspace page in which he wrote “I enjoy...drinking.” That may cast doubt on the younger man’s assertion that a beer impaired his thinking. She earlier asserted that tests on blood taken from Katehis within hours of the killing showed he had no cocaine in his system. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Nicolazzi introduced two pictures from myspace that showed Katehis posing with knives that resemble the weapon used to kill Weber. The actual murder weapon was never found. Katehis had a knife collection and was carrying a knife, which was put in evidence on October 19, when he was arrested.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The October 19 session also showcased the continuing tensions between Schwartz and Neil J. Firetog, the trial judge. On several occasions Schwartz’s questioning of prosecution witnesses drew objections from Nicolazzi that were sustained by Firetog. Schwartz would continue with that questioning. Firetog told Schwartz that he could recall those witnesses if he put on a defense case and put those questions to them then.</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">With the jury out of the courtroom, Schwartz told Firetog that that instruction was “burden shifting” and suggested to the jurors that Katehis was required to prove something to them. He asked for a curative instruction which Firetog said he would do, but Schwartz never said what that instruction should be. As their argument ended, Schwartz said “It’s good to be the king.” Firetog was exiting the courtroom at that point, but paused and appeared to be considering engaging with Schwartz again, but left.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">On October 13, Firetog twice threatened to fine Schwartz and hold him in contempt if he continued certain lines of questioning with witnesses after being told by Firetog to stop. On October 14, Schwartz asked Firetog to recuse himself.</p></span></div>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-29649300813974228482010-10-15T13:01:00.000-07:002010-10-15T13:05:22.528-07:00Katehis Trial to Start in Brooklyn; Defense Will Put Victim on Trial<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH2YR5YskX2WGURAzCWb3xyduvAodPn7g86bkkCUZvMtetoE8Ks6NEEF8aLfM7P6xHT3wpUH34e4DINm1k_-4nOtRnSk2WYGhTGBGetiY3Br67ZPgj_NP8Dw8PgKPS_HIH5Rb-wExAJLk/s1600/weber.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 256px; height: 192px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH2YR5YskX2WGURAzCWb3xyduvAodPn7g86bkkCUZvMtetoE8Ks6NEEF8aLfM7P6xHT3wpUH34e4DINm1k_-4nOtRnSk2WYGhTGBGetiY3Br67ZPgj_NP8Dw8PgKPS_HIH5Rb-wExAJLk/s320/weber.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5528365592504002338" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">George Weber in an undated photo</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">With the trial of John Katehis, the accused killer of George Weber, slated to start on October 18, it appears that the defense will try to make Katehis the victim in the 2009 homicide and Weber a sexual predator who brought his death upon himself.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Do you think the person who gets the worst of a situation is automatically the victim?” Jeffery T. Schwartz, Katehis’ attorney, asked prospective jurors on October 14 in Brooklyn Supreme Court. He had posited a circumstance in which a person initiates a fight and ends up losing badly.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In his statements to police and the Brooklyn district attorney, Katehis, who was 16 at the time of the killing, said he responded to an internet ad placed by Weber seeking sexual services for pay in March of 2009. Once at Weber’s Carroll Gardens apartment, Katehis, now 18, said the 47-year-old gay journalist gave him cocaine and beer and asked Katehis to smother him. Katehis bound Weber’s feet with duct tape. When Weber showed him a knife, he panicked and the two men struggled over the knife. Katehis said he recalled only a single cut to Weber’s throat that was made when both men were holding the knife. Weber was stabbed nearly 50 times. The defense has argued that Weber asked Katehis to participate in an activity that made him uncomfortable.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Schwartz asked jurors if they thought that alcohol and drugs could explain the behavior of a 16-year-old and would the fact that the 16-year-old was given alcohol and drugs by “an elder person” influence their thinking.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Would you agree with me that a child might react differently if he was frightened or startled?” Schwartz asked. “Would you agree with me that people behave differently when they have alcohol in their system?”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Schwartz has consistently represented his client as the victim of an older man who was trying to force a younger man to have an unwanted sexual encounter. During October 12 and 13 pre-trial hearings, however, new facts emerged that may present problems for the defense at trial.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">On October 12, Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi, the prosecutor in the case, disclosed that it was Katehis who placed the internet ad and that the two men negotiated what they would do, when they would do it, and what it would cost via email over a period of several days. Nicolazzi has referred to witnesses being flown in from California. They may be from craigslist, the site where the ad ran. Additionally, Nicolazzi said blood drawn from Katehis hours after the killing did not test positive for drugs. In his statements, Katehis said he had a single beer.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In her juror questioning, Nicolazzi asked jurors if the age difference between the two men and the smothering would keep them from following the law or being fair.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“There’s a sexual component, whether there was any sex or not, just by the nature of fetishes,” she told jurors. Katehis gave his age in his internet ad.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Is it fair to say that when you hear that you say yuck?” Nicolazzi asked prospective jurors. She also prepared jurors to hear Katehis’ statements and signaled that she would be asking them to believe parts and disregard others.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Ever been in a situation where someone tells you something and part of it is true, part of it’s not maybe to help themselves?” she asked jurors.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Also on October 14, Schwartz asked Neil J. Firetog, the judge in the case, to recuse himself saying the judge had a longstanding bias against him and that it was damaging to his client. Observers said the exchange grew heated at points. Firetog refused to quit the case.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">On October 13, Firetog twice warned Schwartz that he would hold him in contempt and fine him if he did not abide by the judge’s rulings when questioning witnesses during the trial.</p></span></div>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-70364738167997783472010-08-30T06:51:00.001-07:002010-09-04T06:06:08.009-07:00AFER Supporter Gave Thousands to Anti-Gay Virginia Candidates<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOqQXLWjeZ589iFHjESy7vYjSIXz7EagoENCvg4S0KmbZC4wJoIYG6vUGscrOd1SCZT_u7oYa26cij67eKo2BPtcl7oo9UVJ5aMeid2u9N4SfByElBXEks05VFTurl0s68sRdA5t-awBs/s1600/610x.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 208px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOqQXLWjeZ589iFHjESy7vYjSIXz7EagoENCvg4S0KmbZC4wJoIYG6vUGscrOd1SCZT_u7oYa26cij67eKo2BPtcl7oo9UVJ5aMeid2u9N4SfByElBXEks05VFTurl0s68sRdA5t-awBs/s320/610x.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5511200353405579218" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Paul Singer</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The wealthy hedge fund manager who will host a September 22 fundraiser in his Manhattan home for the pro-gay marriage American Foundation for Equal Rights gave $125,000 to the 2009 campaigns of Bob McDonnell and Ken Cuccinelli, two Virginia social conservatives who have made controversial anti-gay moves in their first few months in office. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Paul Singer, the chief of Elliott Management, a multi-billion hedge fund, gave $100,000 to McDonnell, currently Virginia’s governor, between April of 2009 and September of that year and $25,000 to Cuccinelli, Virginia’s attorney general, in August of 2009. McDonnell and Cuccinelli are Republicans and Singer has a <a href="http://herdandscene.blogspot.com/2010/08/afer-fundraiser-check-your-history-at.html">long history</a> of making substantial donations to that party’s state and federal organizations and candidates as well as to right wing think tanks and policy groups. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">After saying during his 2009 campaign that he was “completely supportive of policies of non-discrimination,” McDonnell issued a 2010 executive order banning discrimination in state government jobs that omitted sexual orientation as a protected class.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">McDonnell’s predecessor, Democrat Tim Kaine, included that class in a 2006 executive order that banned such discrimination. Following a national outcry, McDonnell issued an executive directive, which does not carry the force of law, that said it was the policy of his administration to “prohibit discrimination for any reason.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In March of this year, McDonnell told WRVA, a Richmond radio station, that laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation may be unnecessary. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“I don't know that we need it based on the numbers that I’ve seen,” he said. “There really isn’t any rampant discrimination on any basis in Virginia. If you're going to have a law, it needs to actually address a real problem.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">When in Virginia’s legislature, McDonnell voted to exclude sexual orientation from a state hate crimes law, opposed same sex marriages, and backed an amendment to Virginia’s state constitution that barred any state recognition of same sex partnerships, either marriages or civil unions. The amendment’s language was so sweeping that some Virginia legislators thought it might bar unmarried couples, straight or gay, from entering into any type of contract. In 2006, when he was Virginia’s attorney general, McDonnell issued an opinion saying that the amendment “will not affect current legal rights and obligations of unmarried persons.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">McDonnell’s anti-gay views are longstanding. During the 2009 campaign, the Washington Post reported on August 30 that McDonnell’s master’s thesis from Regent University included harsh, anti-gay language.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“However, man’s basic nature is inclined towards evil, and when the exercise of liberty takes the shape of pornography, drug abuse, or homosexuality, the government must restrain, punish, and deter,” McDonnell wrote in the 1989 document. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Later in the thesis, McDonnell wrote “[E]very level of government should statutorily and procedurally prefer married couples over cohabitators, homosexuals, and fornicators. The cost of sin should fall on the sinner not the taxpayer.” </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Cuccinelli sparked controversy early in his tenure when he wrote to Virginia’s state colleges telling them that since the state legislature had not barred discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity their policies should not ban such discrimination. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“It is my advice that the law and public policy of the Commonwealth of Virginia prohibit a college or university from including ‘sexual orientation,’ ‘gender identity,’ ‘gender expression,’ or like classification as a protected class within its non-discrimination policy absent specific authorization from the General Assembly,’’ Cuccinelli wrote in the March 2010 letter.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Like McDonnell, Cuccinelli has long opposed gay, transgender, lesbian, and bisexual community goals. In 2009, Singer also gave $10,000 to Jill Holtzman Vogel and $25,000 to Barbara Comstock, both are Republicans and social conservatives who won seats in Virginia’s legislature last year.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Singer has supported gay causes giving $100,000 to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network in 2003 and at least $100,000 to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, also in 2003. Singer gave $200,000 to oppose a 2009 Maine ballot initiative that successfully overturned a legislative enactment of same sex marriages there.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The New York Times reported on August 27 that Singer has given “$4.2 million to groups supporting gay rights and same-sex marriage.” Singer did not respond to an email seeking comment and further details on his pro-gay philanthropy.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The foundation hired lawyers David Boies and Ted Olson to sue to overturn Prop. 8, the 2008 ballot initiative that banned same sex marriage in California.</p></span></div>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-72504917831061400492010-08-29T04:57:00.001-07:002010-08-29T16:12:52.916-07:00AFER Fundraiser: Check Your History at the Door<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgGtUF3mMg6QS4lTZwGTITLHyj_o9uUd7xvrr5Y5PAz9nLlk2aF35fM4eCr-0jFilC8vzeHC9WKV1XqVyBgnnylIhBm0dDyjoDMLKEZfcTabFPt3ALJJY9MjT02PGU-TRDpJpba-eu7nE/s1600/6a00d8341c730253ef0133f35340c2970b-800wi.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 255px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgGtUF3mMg6QS4lTZwGTITLHyj_o9uUd7xvrr5Y5PAz9nLlk2aF35fM4eCr-0jFilC8vzeHC9WKV1XqVyBgnnylIhBm0dDyjoDMLKEZfcTabFPt3ALJJY9MjT02PGU-TRDpJpba-eu7nE/s320/6a00d8341c730253ef0133f35340c2970b-800wi.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5510800383266213746" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The invitation to the Sept. 22 fundraiser via <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">towleroad</span>.com</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><br /></span></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The gay and lesbian community awoke on August 27 to read an odd assertion in a New York Times story. Paul Singer, who runs a multi-billion dollar hedge fund, has secretly donated to gay causes.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“With no public disclosure, Mr. Singer has given more than $4.2 million to groups supporting gay rights and same-sex marriage, like the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund, associates said,” Eric <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Lichtblau</span>, the Times reporter, wrote in the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/us/politics/28singer.html?_r=1&sq=Paul%20Singer&st=cse&adxnnl=1&scp=1&adxnnlx=1283083437-zsN1D4fNoeFyzphKVF+Uxg">story</a> that presented Singer as a defender of Wall Street and representing a trend of finance industry campaign donations flowing to Republicans and away from Democrats.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Singer is hosting a September 22 fundraiser in his Manhattan home for the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the California group that hired lawyers David <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Boies</span> and Ted Olson to sue to overturn Prop. 8, the 2008 voter initiative that banned same sex marriage in that state. A copy of the invitation was posted on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">towleroad</span>.com.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Singer’s co-hosts are Ken <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Mehlman</span>, the newly out gay man who helped the Bush White House organize anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives in 11 states in 2004 as part of a strategy to turn out conservative voters, and Peter <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Thiel</span>, the former chief executive officer of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">PayPal</span>, the web payment service, and now the chairman of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Clarium</span> Capital, another hedge fund. Reportedly, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Thiel</span> is gay.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">When <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Mehlman</span> came out in an August 25 story in The Atlantic it was clearly timed to coincide with the fundraiser so as an organizer of the 2004 campaigns it would seem that he was doing penance for those earlier anti-gay efforts. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Singer</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Thiel</span> bring plenty of their own right wing baggage to this fundraiser. Call me cynical, but the same people who helped <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Mehlman</span> spin his coming out may be helping Singer.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">For years, Singer has been a reliable and generous donor to many state and federal Republican political organizations, candidates, and office holders including some of the most anti-gay members of that party, such as Rick <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Santorum</span> and Bill <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">McCollum</span>, who lost a bid to become the Republican nominee for Florida’s governor’s office on August 24. Singer has also supported moderate Republicans and has donated to Senator Chuck <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Schumer</span>, a Democrat. In New York, he has donated to Democrats and Republicans, but his largest donations have gone to the state Republican and Conservative parties.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In 2008, the Paul Singer Family Foundation gave $275,000 to the Manhattan Institute, a right wing group that has Singer as the chair of its board. Plenty of the experts at the institute have opposed gay marriage and other gay causes. The foundation gave the institute $30,000 in 2007. Also in 2008, the foundation gave $50,000 to the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Witherspoon</span> Institute.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">On its web site, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Witherspoon</span> describes itself as “an independent research center that works to enhance public understanding of the moral foundations of free and democratic societies.” </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Its fellows include <a href="http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2010/07/21/gay_city_news/news/doc4c473856b4496999058843.txt">Robert George</a>, a Princeton University professor and a leading opponent of same sex marriage, and W. Bradford Wilcox, a professor at the University of Virginia who says he is less opposed to same sex marriage and more of a proponent of traditional marriage. Wilcox’s work is frequently cited by gay marriage opponents. Other <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Witherspoon</span> fellows have been active in opposing the gay community. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In 2002, George, the chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, co-authored a friend-of-the-court brief for the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, two conservative groups, in Lawrence v. Texas, a US Supreme Court case, that urged the court to uphold the Texas sodomy law. The court struck down the nation’s remaining sodomy laws in that case. In 2006, George was a co-founder of a religious coalition that supported an amendment to the US Constitution to ban same sex marriage.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">George is the director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton and Singer is one of the program’s <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">advisors</span>. The program is affiliated with the James Madison Society which includes many conservative professors, with some noted opponents of the gay community, among its members. Wilcox is a member of that society.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In 2007, Wilcox received a “multi-year grant” from the Institute for American Values, a New York City group headed by David <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Blankenhorn</span> who testified for the pro-Prop. 8 side at the trial. While he has been vilified in the gay community and in some of the mainstream press, his testimony was ultimately more helpful in striking down the initiative.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In research that may be aimed at same sex parenting, the Institute for American Values grant to Wilcox will fund research into “the ways in which parenting is gendered -- in both positive and negative ways,” how gender differences in parents are “related to child well-being,” and if gender differences “contribute to conflict between parents.” <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Blankenhorn</span>’s institute also funded Dr. Kathleen <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Kovner</span> Kline to do similar research in Denver. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The only donations by Singer to gay groups that I could find came in 2003 when the foundation gave $100,000 to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network and at least $100,000 to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. And, no, I am not taking the word of anonymous “associates” or the New York Times that Singer handed out over $4 million to gay causes.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Similarly, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Thiel</span>, the other co-host, has supported a mix of Republican candidates, office holders, and organizations with some of his cash going to moderates and other checks paid to anti-gay Republicans.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In 2008, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Thiel</span> gave $250,000 Federalist Society, a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers who support a reordering of “priorities within the legal system to place a premium on individual liberty, traditional values, and the rule of law” and $100,000 to the Hoover Institution, a conservative policy group at Stanford University. He have $75,000 to the Institute on Religion and Public Life in 2006. While claiming to be non-partisan, that institute was the creation and primary voice of Richard John <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Neuhaus</span>, a neoconservative Roman Catholic priest.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">This fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights looks increasingly bizarre. When donors to a gay group must hire publicists to plant stories about the alleged secret philanthropy of one to gay causes or another’s struggle with his gay feelings as he attacked the gay and lesbian community it seems to me that the message is that they have doubts about their commitment. Or they think the rest of us will question their motives. The solution would have been to approach <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Mehlman</span>’s coming out with some humility, but I doubt he knows what that is.</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">UPDATE: A poster on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">Queerty</span>.com noted that Singer donated to the campaign to defeat Question 1, a 2009 ballot initiative that overturned Maine's legislative enactment of same sex marriage. He did indeed give $200,000 to that effort in three separate donations. I will say this. What Singer gives with one check he takes away with many others. A Republican majority in Congress or any state legislature is a near guarantee that the bisexual, transgender, lesbian, and gay community will see no progress on our issues. It is clear to me that he wants Republicans in office. Additionally, he is supporting the think tanks and academics that vigorously oppose our community. </p>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-20061480964445068222010-08-23T14:49:00.000-07:002010-08-23T14:52:52.667-07:00Target's Politics: The Exception or the Rule?<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Appearing on Michelangelo Signorile’s radio show, Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, defended the group’s Corporate Equality Index saying that it gave bisexual, transgender, gay, and lesbian job seekers a way to assess a prospective employer’s policies.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The index asks, among several items, if employers have anti-discrimination policies that include protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity or do they grant employee benefits to the unmarried partners of their employees. With a possible maximum score of 100, employers can lose 15 points if they engage in “activity that would undermine LGBT equality.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Sainz told Signorile on August 18 that the index helps people in “understanding the difference between a company being a very solid employer for LGBT people and, in fact, having progressive policies that all Americans don’t enjoy under federal law and understanding perhaps their more holistic persona when factoring in political contributions.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Doubts about the index arose after Target, the Minneapolis-based retailer, gave $150,000 to MN Forward, a right wing 527 group, that used the cash to pay for television ads supporting Tom Emmer, a candidate for governor in Minnesota and a conservative who holds anti-gay positions. The Human Rights Campaign gave Target perfect 100s in the 2009 and 2010 indexes. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Signorile raised a question about the index -- how could a company that supports political views that are fundamentally at odds with the central goals of the transgender, lesbian, bisexual, and gay community score a perfect 100 on the index and why was it still listed after the disclosure of the MN Forward donation? The Human Rights Campaign ultimately delisted Target, but the gay rights lobbying group is missing a larger point. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Some quick and admittedly cursory searching at opensecrets.org, the web site operated by the Committee for Responsive Politics, shows that corporations that scored a 100 on the 2010 index have employees and directors who donated to pro-gay senators and representatives as well as the most anti-gay members of Congress. Companies with a perfect score that have their own political action committees were just as likely to have supported our friends as our opponents.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Notwithstanding their willingness to put in place a few pro-gay policies, corporations are generally agnostic or oppose the community on our political issues. This was evident in 2007 during lobbying for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a federal law that then barred discrimination in employment based on sexual orientation.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva"><a href="http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2008/08/21/gay_city_news_archives/top%20news%20stories/20084605.txt">Back then</a>, only nine companies and the University of Michigan lobbied in favor of the act. Some major business lobbies -- the American Benefits Council, the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the Retail Industry Leaders Association -- were neutral on the bill. The Business Roundtable, an association of chief executives of U.S. companies, never disclosed its position. That neutrality should not be dismissed because it contributed to the employment act passing the House. It came at a very high price.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Using the definition of married in the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which says marriage is only between a man and a woman, the employment act said an employer cannot be required “to treat a couple who are not married in the same manner as the covered entity treats a married couple for purposes of employee benefits.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In other words, a gay or lesbian couple who married in the six jurisdictions where such unions are legal are not recognized as legal spouses under the employment act and employers need not give the same employee benefits or any benefits at all to the spouses of their married gay and lesbian employees.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">What makes this concession to these business interests particularly noxious is that back in the 80s and 90s, when the gay and lesbian community sought domestic partner benefits from employers, we demonstrated definitively that the cost of such benefits to employers was minimal. There is no reason to believe that the cost would differ when they are paid to the legal spouse of a gay or lesbian employee. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">What we saw in 2007 was corporate America’s real view of the lesbian, transgender, bisexual, and gay community. Companies want our money and they will make pitches for it. They will give a few benefits, but when it comes to the important matters, health insurance for instance, companies are unwilling to spend serious cash though obviously there are exceptions to this. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The larger problem with the Corporate Equality Index is that it gives the impression that corporate America has our back. It does not. As we saw in 2007, when the interests of the transgender, lesbian, gay, and bisexual community are in conflict with what business wants, we lose. </p>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-68788239607121407582010-07-28T10:51:00.000-07:002010-07-28T15:49:46.527-07:00Does NOM Chair Endorse Anti-Gay, Anti-Abortion Violence?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcyXTeW7y3Xo0domO6lCkvk6d8S820QCE1JTucrLTIUeJi7bvU7srfidxNqb0_BzkVgmC_d0TP4uDspWN5BZ0FNYyPaeQUHDBonHPjFWVkehd1MC_I8Xcm9JJ-hSRTyzvGGZed2_4EncM/s1600/doc4c473856b44969990588431.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcyXTeW7y3Xo0domO6lCkvk6d8S820QCE1JTucrLTIUeJi7bvU7srfidxNqb0_BzkVgmC_d0TP4uDspWN5BZ0FNYyPaeQUHDBonHPjFWVkehd1MC_I8Xcm9JJ-hSRTyzvGGZed2_4EncM/s320/doc4c473856b44969990588431.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499016223668384562" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><div style="text-align: center;">NOM Chairman Robert George</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Publishing in the Yale Law Journal in 1997, Robert P. George, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, explored the conflicts over some social issues and asked the question “Is it possible for people who sharply disagree about important questions of morality, including those pertaining to abortion and homosexuality, to constitute a stable political society whose basic constitutional principles can be affirmed as just by all reasonable parties?”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The Princeton professor and an influential conservative opinion maker spent nearly 17,000 words exploring the answer then summed up in a section titled “Civility, Reciprocity, and the Conflict of ‘Comprehensive Views.’”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">It is possible, George concluded, “for citizens who differ fundamentally over certain basic moral questions to share a ‘deliberative’ conception of democracy that includes the mutually recognized obligations of citizens to treat those with whom they disagree with civility and respect.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">He cited “Democracy and Disagreement,” a 1996 book by Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, as an example of those on the left who proposed a framework for tackling seemingly intractable issues. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"> </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Their claim, rather, is that ‘reciprocity,’ which they consider to be deliberative democracy’s ‘first principle,’ demands that people recognize that others who come down on what they judge to be the wrong side of a disputed moral question may nevertheless be reasonable and honest people who deserve, therefore, to be reasoned with and treated with respect,” he wrote. But George equivocated.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Yet reasoning with people and treating them with respect does not entail tolerating what one judges to be grave injustices so as not to offend those who judge otherwise,” he wrote. “Nor does it mean that one ought not to oppose injustices resolutely and forcefully in one's advocacy and action. Nor does it mean that one may not protest against injustices or even practice civil disobedience to prevent them. It does mean, however, that one has certain obligations to one's opponents, obligations that are not mere matters of politeness.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">That mildly ominous line had an endnote that read “For a succinct and, in my view, sound treatment of the morality of civil disobedience, see Finnis et al., supra note 46, at 354-57. On the vexed question of when violence may be used to combat injustices, see id. at 308-18.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">So it is a difficult question, but, in George’s view, apparently, violence can be used to fight injustices. But when?</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The endnote referred to “Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism,” a 1987 book by John Finnis, Joseph M. Boyle, Jr., and Germain Grisez. Like George, the authors are proponents of natural law theory, a 13th century philosophy that argues that moral truths can be discerned through reason and by observing man and the natural world. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">As the title suggests the book is concerned with the moral questions that are raised by a central feature of nuclear war -- the idea of destructive weapons as implements that prevent violence. The pages that George cited wrestle with the inevitable killing of non-combatants, or “innocents,” that would result from a nuclear strike. Then there are some broader arguments.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Justified social use of force is not limited to cases where those challenging just order are already attacking the lives of others,” Finnis and his co-authors wrote. “Also, as explained above, nothing in our moral theory limits the justifiable use of lethal force to cases in which human life is threatened. And so, just as a woman about to be raped can be justified in using lethal force against her assailant, so a society whose just order is about to be attacked by wrongdoers can be justified in using lethal force to defend itself.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">So when the “just order” of a society is threatened, that society can use force, even “lethal force,” to defend itself. In George’s world view, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people are not part of the “just order.” On the contrary, we threaten it. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">George is a vocal opponent of same sex marriage. He has argued for criminalizing homosexuality. In 2002, he co-authored a friend-of-the-court brief for the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, two conservative groups, in Lawrence v. Texas, a US Supreme Court case, that urged the court to uphold a Texas sodomy law. The court struck down the nation’s remaining sodomy laws in that case. George aided Colorado in its defense of Amendment 2, a 1992 law passed by voters in that state that barred any government entity there from enacting a regulation or law that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. The US Supreme Court struck down Amendment 2 in 1996. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The American right wing has been saying for some time that they are subjected to discrimination, harassment, and even violence for expressing their views. In fact, it is lesbian, transgender, bisexual and gay Americans who endure violence, but that has not stopped conservatives from complaining publicly and in federal court cases that they are victims. Finnis and his co-authors have a comment on such a circumstance.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Moreover, those who are mounting a serious challenge to just order and backing that challenge with the threat of force, even if they are not already threatening the lives of others, are almost certainly ready and willing to escalate their challenge to the point of killing,” they wrote. “Hence, if authorities reasonably judge that a particular challenge to just order cannot be met without using lethal force, its use will almost always be in defence of life as well as of other values included in and protected by just order.” </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">George did not respond to an email seeking an explanation. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Robert George responds:</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;font-size:130%;color:#1F497D;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;font-size:130%;color:#1F497D;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;">In my opinion, there are no circumstances under which violence could be justified in any cause connected to sexual morality and marriage. It would be profoundly morally wrong for anyone on either side, or any side, to resort to violence (or the threat of violence or intimidation). Both sides, or all sides, are strictly morally obligated to use nonviolent means.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;">In a constitutional democratic polity such as ours, the currency of politics is reasoned argument. We all have the moral right to participate in the process and attempt to persuade our fellow citizens of the soundness or our views and the unsoundness of our opponents’ positions. Where people disagree about the requirements of justice and the common good, they should treat each other with respect even as they strongly argue for the positions they regard as true. I have no problem with the rough and tumble of democratic politics. Elections are not philosophy seminars. But I have a big problem with violence in any cause or for any political reason. I don’t mind politicians or political groups on all sides running aggressive and even negative ads or engaging in peaceful and respectful protests. That’s free speech, and it is protected by our Constitution. But violence and intimidation are different matters altogether, and have no legitimate place in our politics.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;">You asked when I believe violence can be justified to fight injustices. My answer is in line with traditional just war theory, except that I reject punitive war (which many traditional defenders of just war regarded as legitimate). (So I believe that war must be declared or launched by legitimate authority, be for defensive purposes, respect non-combatant immunity, etc.) I argued in a piece in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago that pre-emptive attacks against unjust aggressors who were themselves in the course of planning murderous attacks on others could legitimately be classified as defensive, and were therefore potentially justifiable. (I say “potentially” because any particular pre-emptive attack might be unjustified for other reasons. My point is only that one cannot infer from the fact that an attack is pre-emptive that it is something other than defensive. A pre-emptive attack might very well fail to qualify as defensive. But if such an attack fails to qualify as defensive, it is not necessarily because it is pre-emptive.) I realize that this position is controversial among just war theorists. Many believe that pre-emptive attacks by definition fail to qualify as defensive.</span></p></span><p></p><p></p></div></span>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-36109098656306325792010-07-15T10:00:00.001-07:002010-07-15T10:33:53.452-07:00Anti-Gay Policies Made Sense in '97: More Socarides Memos<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZNffXyNvIBxUL1a4OGBcjz4LjB4EOUcQ3ooHawngWlJE7_HaG6AQ4wM5YMLVTPv01kXBN5DWo7Waf6W0DJP6WALyn0QWkpyyDi8KubZvvfib4uQB2_MRXcmmrWNVg2Flg2k6lqpKkFxs/s1600/doc4c2bd290f071f160742399.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 234px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZNffXyNvIBxUL1a4OGBcjz4LjB4EOUcQ3ooHawngWlJE7_HaG6AQ4wM5YMLVTPv01kXBN5DWo7Waf6W0DJP6WALyn0QWkpyyDi8KubZvvfib4uQB2_MRXcmmrWNVg2Flg2k6lqpKkFxs/s320/doc4c2bd290f071f160742399.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494179219773957410" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Former Clinton Advisor Richard Socarides</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">As a lawsuit brought by the Log Cabin Republicans that challenges the military’s Don’t Ask, Don't Tell policy opened on July 13 in a federal court in San Diego, Richard Socarides, a former advisor on gay issues in the Clinton White House, told the Associated Press that the defense of the policy by the Obama administration was nonsensical. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“On the one hand, [President Barack Obama] has said he's working hard to stop these discharges,” Socarides said. “And on the other hand, the Justice Department is spending taxpayer dollars defending their ongoing right to kick people out.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; color: #666666; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">What must also be nonsensical then is that, as <a href="http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2010/06/30/gay_city_news/news/doc4c2bd290f071f160742399.txt">Gay City News</a> reported, Socarides aided the Clinton administration in deflecting criticism of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by drafting presidential debate talking points in 1996 that advised President Clinton to dodge the issue. Socarides continued to aid the White House on that issue into 1997. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In February of that year, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a group that assists lesbian and gay servicemembers, was preparing to release a report showing that discharges under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell had increased by 42 percent since the policy was implemented. White House staff contacted the Pentagon to head off “any combative language” and Socarides told people at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue what to say. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“The policy was intended to provide an opportunity for continued service to those willing to abide by the new policy,” Socarides wrote in a February 25, 1997 memo titled “Draft Talking Points: SLDN Report on Gays in the Military” that was downloaded from the Clinton Library. “While we have not had an opportunity to review the report, the allegation that the policy is not being implemented fairly, if true, is quite troubling.” </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Socarides noted that then Defense Secretary William Cohen had “instructed his staff to investigate the allegations and any other relevant information to determine what is happening” and that “Secretary Cohen has indicated that violations of either the letter or the spirit of the policy will not be tolerated and the President, of course, concurs in this judgment.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">With appearances on cable TV, quotes in the mainstream press, and a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal, Socarides is a leading critic of the Obama administration who whips the current White House for failing to undo the policies that Socarides’ former boss put in place.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">This nonsensical posture does not end there. Just as Socarides drafted 1996 talking points that defended Clinton’s support for the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 legislation that barred the federal government from recognizing same sex marriages and allowed state governments to do the same, he aided Clinton in responding to a 1997 announcement from the Democratic National Committee that it would begin providing health benefits to the domestic partners of its employees. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In a May 14, 1997 memo titled, “Talking Points: DNC/Domestic Partner (Health Care) Benefits for Same Sex Partners,” Socarides wrote that businesses and non-profit organizations had the option of providing such benefits. What the DNC did was its business.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Decisions relating to employee benefits are made by the Chairman and senior DNC management,” Socarides wrote. “The White House was made aware of the policy change at a staff level.” </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">And the president’s position on such benefits? </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“The President is aware that many communities and institutions are considering whether basic benefits can be provided outside the context of traditional marriage,” Socarides wrote. “The challenge in addressing these issues is to remain sensitive to the values of our communities while preserving the fundamental right to live free from unjustified discrimination.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Roughly two months later, Socarides issued another set of talking points on domestic partner benefits that recommended neutrality. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“While I'm sympathetic to many of the concerns raised, I think we will have to moniter (sic) for a time how these policies work in practice and take a hard look at what's happening in the private sector and in communities which have instituted such policies,” Socarides wrote in a July 21, 1997 memo titled “Domestic Partner Proposed Talking Points.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Nonsensical indeed.</p></span></div>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-13696557101332641002010-07-12T15:32:00.000-07:002010-07-12T15:42:15.948-07:00Using Faggot Isn't Anti-Gay, Judge Asserted<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEWoYD-F1tBhFh2jRr-syRZNHJofnQwEL_ZTdbp7HeOzi8nQSdIJDsqBKgr6WNGADJNmLSl7GWYhfAEq0JFct2Yn8sWMCRvy7F4AJ7N5RoQML-I5fTwYOTbQO1fO1M5XETBqOb5GElpUE/s1600/doc4c3630da353fb013404187.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEWoYD-F1tBhFh2jRr-syRZNHJofnQwEL_ZTdbp7HeOzi8nQSdIJDsqBKgr6WNGADJNmLSl7GWYhfAEq0JFct2Yn8sWMCRvy7F4AJ7N5RoQML-I5fTwYOTbQO1fO1M5XETBqOb5GElpUE/s320/doc4c3630da353fb013404187.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5493152359189795922" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Joseph Holladay on July 1, 2009, three days after the assault</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; "> </span></div></span><div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Before he laid out his reasons for dismissing the hate crime charges against Driton Nicaj, a now 20-year-old who was indicted on two counts of third degree assault as a hate crime in the 2009 attack on Joseph Holladay, Judge Ronald A. Zweibel turned to his copy of the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, which was published in 1982, for a definition of the word “faggot,” the slur Nicaj used during the assault. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“[T]he Oxford Dictionary makes no reference to faggot meaning a male homosexual, which is not surprising given that it is not a common slang usage in the United Kingdom,” Zweibel wrote in the December 10, 2009 decision dismissing the charges. “The origin of the term faggot to derogatorily refer to a homosexual male is obscure and subject to much urban legend.” </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The gay men, like Holladay, who have heard that word before, during and after an attack know all too well that it comes from prejudice and violence. Its meaning is as clear as the blow from a fist, the wound from a knife or bullet, or the pain that lingers long after the cuts, bruises, and broken bones have healed.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In his 12-page decision, Zweibel spent a page-and-a-half pondering the word “faggot.” When it seemed he would assert that Nicaj’s meaning was unclear, Zweibel concluded that in the United States “a person of ordinary intelligence would take it as a derogatory term for a male homosexual and no reasonable person would infer that respondent was calling the alleged victim a bunch of twigs.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Nicaj’s assault left Holladay unconscious and put him in the hospital. Roughly 24 hours later, Nicaj attacked two others, also gay men if 2009 press reports are to be believed, with the attacks taking place 30 minutes apart. One of those men had a broken nose and three skull fractures requiring six hours of surgery to insert a metal plate in his head. It is beyond offensive for Zweibel to muse at length on the meaning of “faggot” given what these men endured.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In a deal with the Manhattan district attorney, Nicaj pleaded guilty to the assaults and was sentenced to 45 days in jail and three years on probation. He began his sentence on May 20 and was released on June 9 after accounting for time served and good behavior.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Zweibel also looked like a fool. It did not occur to him that consulting a 28-year-old dictionary is a mistake when one is trying to look clever. “Faggot,” the anti-gay slur, has been among the definitions of that word in the Oxford English Dictionary since 1989 and the 2005 edition of the Oxford American Dictionary has the slur as the first definition of the word.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Just as offensive was Zweibel’s tortured reasoning on what was shown by Nicaj’s use of “faggot” as he committed the assault. Zweibel called it “just typical trash-talking” in his decision. It was not evidence of Nicaj’s motivation or state of mind.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“First, there is no evidence that the alleged victim is a homosexual,” Zweibel wrote. The New York state hate crime statute does not require that the victim be a member of the law’s protected classes, which include sexual orientation. The defendant need only believe that the victim belongs to those classes. How would we know what Nicaj believed? According to Zweibel, what he said during the assault is not evidence of what he was thinking at the time. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Second, there is no evidence that defendant believed that the alleged victim was a homosexual -- except for the fact that he called him one,” Zweibel wrote.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Saying that this could lead to bizarre cases, Zweibel went on to list fictional cases in which “calling a Jew a wop” or “calling a black person a white Aryan bastard” or “calling an atheist or agnostic a Christian or Islamic fascist” could lead to a prosecutor charging a hate crime. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“The law does not countenance absurd results such as this,” Zweibel wrote.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The problem with American hate crime laws has never been that they lead to “absurd results.” The problem has always been that they are not used by law enforcement and prosecutors. Clearly, we have a problem with some of our more benighted judges as well.</p></div>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-12924861765327918632010-07-08T10:00:00.001-07:002010-07-08T10:03:41.680-07:00City Discloses Wider Porn Shop Arrest Effort<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9v-ViR6KUsmyXZgk56Oi1X2X6UVcsxksuw7E-WRoei8l-51A0Qwb2VFAwO21poW6AHO3xH0lX9Do_bTbgbSrvOjJetHlLSqd-Q4bwcpg5Ge7thPbL3kVFmFSUwz0aZ17PyeZnqkce6CQ/s1600/IMG_0080.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9v-ViR6KUsmyXZgk56Oi1X2X6UVcsxksuw7E-WRoei8l-51A0Qwb2VFAwO21poW6AHO3xH0lX9Do_bTbgbSrvOjJetHlLSqd-Q4bwcpg5Ge7thPbL3kVFmFSUwz0aZ17PyeZnqkce6CQ/s320/IMG_0080.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491581738501014610" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; ">Blue Door Video on First Avenue</span></div></span><div><br /><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Speaking at a hearing on four federal civil rights lawsuits brought by five men who charge they were falsely arrested for prostitution in porn shops and a spa by New York City vice cops, an attorney for the city said police made such arrests in 10 businesses from January 2007 to the end of 2009.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Attorneys for the five men have argued that the city made the arrests so it could later cite them in nuisance abatement lawsuits it brought to try and shut the businesses down. Tonya Jenerette, a senior counsel in the city’s Law Department, said that the city’s data did not support that.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In the three-year period, 75 lawsuits brought against businesses by the police department’s legal unit cited prostitution arrests, but just eight of the 75 cited arrests of men, Jenerette said. Two of 24 lawsuits that cited prostitution arrests brought during that time by the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement cited arrests of men.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Their theory of the case is just nonsense,” Jenerette said at the July 7 hearing before Judge Shira A. Scheindlin. Jenerette did not say how many men were arrested altogether and she declined to comment following the hearing.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Reporting for Gay City News, I previously identified six porn shops and two spas in which men were arrested for prostitution by officers in the Manhattan South Vice Enforcement Squad in 2008. Among the six porn shops, only five were sued by the city so it is possible that there are additional businesses where such arrests were made, but they are not included in Jenerette’s data because those businesses were never sued. At least 30 men were busted in the six porn shops. Eleven men and one woman were busted in the two spas.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Attorney Michael L. Spiegel is representing three men who were busted in Unicorn DVD on Eighth Avenue and one man who was arrested in a 34th Street spa. James I. Meyerson is representing Robert Pinter, a gay man who was arrested in Blue Door Video on First Avenue and blew the whistle on the city in late 2008. It appears that the police department largely stopped making these arrests after Pinter went public. A man who was arrested in an East 37th Street spa is suing the city in state court.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">While interesting, Jenerette’s data does not disprove the plaintiff’s theory. It may supply more information to bolster that theory. Then the plaintiffs never claimed that they were the only population targeted by the police.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">What Jenerette’s data clearly does not explain is the improbable nature of these arrests. In Blue Door Video, eight of the 12 men arrested were between 42 and 54.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">These arrests were made by the same crew of undercover officers who were identified only by their badge numbers in criminal and civil court records. Just two officers -- 3371 and 31107 -- made most of the porn shop arrests. Undercover 3371 is known to have busted at least 16 men. Four were 27 or younger, six ranged in age from 32 to 38, and another six were 41 to 49. Four of the seven men that 31107 arrested ranged from 34 to 37 and two were 43 and 44. The oldest, Pinter, was 52.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In a December 3, 2008 email to me, Paul J. Browne, the police department’s chief spokesman, wrote that “So far in 2008, 31 out of 179 men who were arrested for prostitution-related offenses in Manhattan South were above the age of 40. In other words, 82.7 percent were younger, often in their 20s.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Or, in other words, male prostitutes arrested in Manhattan South, which ranges from 59th Street to the bottom of the island, were overwhelmingly younger men. So how does one explain this concentration of older male prostitutes arrested in Blue Door Video and other porn shops?</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">What Pinter and other men who were arrested said was they were first approached by a young, attractive man who flirted aggressively with them. After they agreed to consensual sex, with the young man insisting that the sex take place in his nearby apartment or car, the young man then said he would pay them for the sex. The offer of money usually came right before the arrest.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">It certainly looks like the city was less interested in addressing prostitution and more interested in racking up arrests to be used in closing porn shops, an industry that the city has been attacking for decades. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In 2008, police arrested 151 men, 329 women, and 32 people whose gender was “unknown” for prostitution in Manhattan, according to statistics from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services. In 2009, police arrested 57 men, 247 women, and 28 people of “unknown” gender for prostitution in Manhattan. Inexplicably, prostitution arrests in Manhattan fell by 35 percent in 2009 over 2008. In the other four boroughs, prostitution arrests were stable or increased in 2009 over 2008.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">I know from reviewing roughly 35 nuisance abatement lawsuits brought by the city in 2008 that the undercover officers who arrested men in porn shops and spas also frequently worked together arresting women for prostitution and unlicensed massage in other businesses. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">What the state data suggests is that when the gay community objected in late 2008 to the police tactics used in these arrests, the bosses at One Police Plaza flipped a switch and Manhattan prostitution arrests plummeted in 2009. That may be due to the city not caring so much about prostitution and caring more about shuttering porn shops, spas, and massage parlors. Of course, that also means that Jenerette is wrong.</p></div>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-32602974649498795692010-07-06T15:33:00.000-07:002010-07-06T15:38:51.062-07:00Adventures in Transparency or What a Difference a Federal Subpoena Makes<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjts40Nx3iSPGJogrzOXDNIUuyzRdiA20eroJEjZ7RG0W9P_8Mr89Q_6wl2pNHSOycdtuXxbtd0h7BzRx6cCtLX3W3IK7a9KQnyn2dkLUy1f4X25IsOs0154taVi861Eno7bg8k5GF8e0/s1600/687.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 199px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjts40Nx3iSPGJogrzOXDNIUuyzRdiA20eroJEjZ7RG0W9P_8Mr89Q_6wl2pNHSOycdtuXxbtd0h7BzRx6cCtLX3W3IK7a9KQnyn2dkLUy1f4X25IsOs0154taVi861Eno7bg8k5GF8e0/s320/687.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5490925149632329298" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;">Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance</span></div></span><div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">I have watched with some envy, perhaps a lot of envy, as attorney Michael L. Spiegel has battled with the Manhattan district attorney over access to records he subpoenaed as part of three federal civil rights lawsuits he brought in 2009 on behalf of four men who were busted by vice cops for prostitution in a porn shop and a spa.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Spiegel’s theory, as described by Judge Shira A. Scheindlin in a June 22 order, is that “their arrests were not only baseless, but were part of an unconstitutional program by New York City to pursue nuisance abatement lawsuits against businesses by making false arrests for prostitution at the business sites, then using the facts of those arrests to bolster the City’s efforts to close those businesses.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">To show such a program, Spiegel needs more than just his clients’ arrest records so he sought documents from two investigations into the arrests done by the district attorney -- one by the Official Corruption Unit and the second by attorneys in the Trial Division. The district attorney objected. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">On June 22, Scheindlin largely gave Spiegel everything he sought allowing limited redactions to the records. Given my experience with Freedom of Information requests sent to the district attorney, it was refreshing to see that one branch of government takes transparency seriously.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Before Scheindlin issued her order, I made a Freedom of Information request to the district attorney seeking some of the same records that Spiegel sought. I was not at all surprised when I was granted access to just three pages of records out of the dozens I sought.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In 2008, when Gay City News first reported that at least 30 men had been busted on prostitution charges in at least six Manhattan porn shops, I made a Freedom of Information request to the district attorney seeking all criminal complaints alleging prostitution by men in Manhattan in 2008. The district attorney’s office, then under Robert Morgenthau, denied me access to every single complaint saying in 2009 that they were the subject of a “pending DANY investigation.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">What I knew then was that at least 179 men had been arrested for prostitution in the police department’s Manhattan South unit, which ranges from 59th Street to the bottom of the island. I assumed, with some doubts, that every one of the 179 arrests was being scrutinized. As Spiegel tussled over his subpoena, the district attorney made filings this year in federal court that described the scope of the two investigations. Together, they reviewed, at most, 37 arrests and the real number is probably closer to 20 with the two investigations weighing at least some, perhaps all, of the same arrests. While 20 percent, at best, of the prostitution complaints against men were being investigated, the district attorney used the pretext of the investigation to deny me access to all those records. Did the district attorney’s office lie to me? Perhaps. There may have been another reason for this subterfuge. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">When Assistant District Attorney Sarah Hines first responded to my 2008 request, she wrote that she was trying to find a “practical and feasible way” to fulfill my request. In other words, she had to figure out how to separate the hundreds of complaints alleging prostitution by women from the far smaller number charging men with that crime without reading every complaint. The district attorney was being lazy. But that’s not all.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">I have from time to time sent Freedom of Information requests to the city’s five district attorneys seeking criminal complaints alleging public lewdness against men. I do this to assess the extent to which the New York City police department is targeting gay and bisexual men for arrest in cruising spots. Alone among the city’s five district attorneys, the Manhattan district attorney has consistently denied me access to pending cases and blacked out the names of the men arrested to prevent me from speaking to them. The consistent figure in these denials has been Patricia J. Bailey, chief of the Special Litigation Bureau, the same unit that handled Spiegel’s subpoena.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">It is apparent that Bailey possesses the mindset that sees New York’s Freedom of Information Law as a threat to the bureaucracy that has nurtured her career since 1986. Knowing this, and given that Manhattan had a new district attorney in Cyrus Vance, I decided to try an end run around her.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">When my Freedom of Information request for some of the records that Spiegel had subpoenaed was denied, as I fully expected it would be, I sent an appeal to Bailey with a copy to Vance. At his home.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">I laid out the recent history with Hines and the longer, more troubling history with Bailey. In closing, I told Vance that it was “past time that your agency obeyed the provisions of the Freedom of Information Law.” Apparently, he disagrees. On June 11, my appeal was denied in its entirety. I have heard nothing from Vance.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">I had hoped that with Vance’s 2009 election that there would be more sunshine coming from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, but it appears that will not be the case.</p></div>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-14544718108085549642010-06-25T03:21:00.000-07:002010-06-25T03:29:48.532-07:00Bloomberg Backs Down on HASA Cuts<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Threatened with a court battle by Housing Works, a leading AIDS service organization, the Bloomberg administration abandoned plans to cut 248 of the current 850 case manager positions at New York City’s HIV/AIDS Services Administration.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“We will not be attritting out or redeploying any of the HASA case managers,” said Roy A. Esnard, the general counsel at the city’s Human Resources Administration, at a June 24 hearing in federal court before Magistrate Judge Cheryl Pollak. “That leaves in place the 248 case managers.” </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Facing a shortfall of $4.9 billion in the city’s $63 billion budget for the 2011 fiscal year, which begins on July 1, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg proposed eliminating the case managers to save $4.2 million in the $8.8 billion HRA budget. The AIDS agency is part of HRA. On June 22, Housing Works went into federal court seeking a restraining order to bar the city from making the cut.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">On behalf of several HASA clients, Housing Works sued the city in 1995 over a number of issues related to the agency’s operations including the ratio of case managers to clients. In 1997, the City Council enacted a law requiring the AIDS agency to maintain a ratio of one case manager for 34 clients. That ratio was litigated in the lawsuit and Housing Works won a 2001 ruling requiring the city to follow the 1997 law. The latest motion asked the court to enforce the earlier ruling.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“I think that the order in this case couldn’t be clearer,” said Armen Merjian, a senior staff attorney at Housing Works, following the June 24 hearing. “The proposed cuts are clearly illegal.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Settling the issue is complicated because the Bloomberg administration has already submitted the 2011 budget to the City Council which is expected to vote on it within days. The city and Housing Works agreed that they would sign a stipulation by the end of the day on June 25 to memorialize the deal.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Pollak also made clear that she was ready to rule, at least temporarily, for Housing Works.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Frankly, the temporary restraining order is ready to go,” she said though she added that her preferred solution was a stipulation.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The case managers enroll people with AIDS in food stamp, Medicaid, housing, and other programs. While private AIDS groups offer many services to their clients, only the city case managers can link people with AIDS to government benefits. Currently, HASA serves roughly 45,000 people with AIDS and their dependents.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“We are delighted that the city has decided to withdraw a series of cuts...cuts that would have destroyed HASA,” Merjian said. “Forty-five thousand people with AIDS will breath a sigh of relief today.” </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">During his eight years in office, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani repeatedly tried to gut or close the AIDS agency. Until this year, Bloomberg has not attempted that. In prior years, the City Council has usually restored such cuts. This year some members objected to the cuts, but it was not clear that they would vote against the budget if it contained the proposed cuts, in part, because they knew Housing Works was likely to sue Bloomberg.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Joining Housing Works in seeking the federal court ruling were the law firm Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff & Abady, the HIV Law Project, and attorney Virginia Shubert. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The city’s Law Department and an attorney representing state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo joined HRA in first opposing then acceding to Housing Works.</p>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-26825615237558070972010-06-24T14:14:00.000-07:002010-06-24T14:22:51.678-07:00Testimony Ends in Sucuzhanay Trial<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Ending testimony in the second trial of Keith Phoenix, the accused killer of Jose Sucuzhanay, the defense sought to dampen the impact of the hate crime charges in the case by calling Phoenix’s mother to the stand and eliciting testimony from her that the defendant’s father was Latino.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“Dominican and Puerto Rican,” said Marietta Phoenix on June 24 when Philip J. Smallman, Keith’s attorney, asked about the ethnic heritage of Rollin Grant, Keith’s father.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The Brooklyn district attorney said that Phoenix, 30, and Hakim Scott, 27, assaulted Jose and his brother Romel after mistaking them for a gay couple as they were walking home early in the morning on December 7, 2008 in Brooklyn’s Bushwick section. The two Ecuadorian immigrants were huddled close together to stay warm. Romel said an anti-Latino slur was used. Two witnesses heard an anti-gay slur.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Smallman wanted to ask Marietta about Keith’s gay relatives and how he conducted himself in their company, but Patricia M. Di Mango, the judge in the case, barred that. The theory behind the questioning is that if Keith is shown to be related to or have friends who are gay or Latino he is less likely to have been motivated by bias. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Phoenix faces multiple second degree murder, manslaughter, assault, and attempted assault charges with some charged as hate crimes. His first trial ended in a mistrial on May 11 after 11 jurors wanted a murder conviction and one held out for a manslaughter conviction. The jury did not believe the attack was a hate crime.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The defense argued that this was an alcohol-fueled dispute that turned vicious and that Phoenix, believing Jose was armed, was defending himself when he beat Jose with a bat. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Scott was convicted on manslaughter and attempted assault charges on May 6 though not as hate crimes. The two men were tried together, but with separate juries. The jury’s rejection of the hate crime element was condemned by <a href="http://gaycitynews.com/articles/2010/06/18/gay_city_news/news/doc4be8af089f341354341986.txt">gay and Latino community leaders</a>.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">During voir dire, Josh Hanshaft and Patricia M. McNeill, the assistant district attorneys who are trying the case, placed a greater emphasis on the hate crime aspect of the case and they have done that during the trial as well.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Defense attorneys see the hate crime label as tending to inflame juries though that did not happen with the Scott jury or Phoenix’s first jury. The label clearly does have political and symbolic meaning for some activists and community leaders.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Before Marietta took the stand, the prosecution ended its case with grim testimony from the city’s medical examiner. Dr. Michael Greenberg, the pathologist who oversaw Jose’s 2008 autopsy, said there were four fractures to Jose’s skull that were spread across a six-by-three inch area.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“I would have to say that a significant amount of force would be required to cause these injuries,” Greenberg said. Jose was admitted to a Queens hospital early in the morning on December 7 and declared “dead by neurological criteria,” or brain dead in the common parlance, on December 8, Greenberg said.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Following Greenberg’s testimony the prosecution played a videotape that showed Phoenix laughing and smiling as he drove his car through a toll plaza on the Triborough Bridge roughly 20 minutes after the attack. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Closing arguments in the case are expected on June 28. Di Mango will then charge the jury and their deliberations could begin late in the day on June 28.</p>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-69001285851189928652010-06-23T14:14:00.000-07:002010-06-23T14:46:24.549-07:00Testimony Nears An End in Sucuzhanay Trial<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The fifth and final eyewitness to the attack that left Jose Sucuzhanay dead told a Brooklyn jury that he heard the driver of a red SUV direct an anti-gay slur at Jose and his brother Romel then watched as that driver and another man attacked the brothers.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“The driver in the front was talking to the two Hispanic males,” said Kuson Nelson on June 23 then he quoted the driver saying “Look at those two little faggot motherfuckers right there.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Nelson was testifying in the second trial of Keith Phoenix, 30, who faces multiple second degree murder, manslaughter, assault, and attempted assault charges with some charged as hate crimes. His first trial ended in a mistrial on May 11 after 11 jurors wanted a murder conviction and one held out for a manslaughter conviction. The jury did not believe the attack was a hate crime.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The Brooklyn district attorney said that Phoenix and Hakim Scott, 27, assaulted the brothers after mistaking them for a gay couple as they were walking home early in the morning on December 7, 2008 in Brooklyn’s Bushwick section. The two Ecuadorian immigrants were huddled close together to stay warm. Romel said an anti-Latino slur was also used.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The defense argued that this was an alcohol-fueled dispute that turned vicious and that Phoenix, believing Jose was armed, was defending himself. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Scott was convicted on manslaughter and attempted assault charges on May 6 though not as hate crimes. The two men were tried together, but with separate juries.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Nelson was returning to his home on Bushwick Avenue the night of the incident and saw “two Hispanic males” walking on the sidewalk headed towards Kossuth Place.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“One had his arm around each other, joking, playing around,” Nelson said. After hearing the slur, Nelson saw one man, not the driver, exit the vehicle holding a beer bottle.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“He had a beer bottle, he raised his hand,” Nelson said. “I heard a crash.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The allegation is that Scott first struck Jose on the head with the beer bottle then Phoenix beat him with a bat. Nelson saw the driver wielding a bat, but he could not see what he was hitting.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“I heard metal hitting concrete,” he said. “I seen the bat in motion, but I couldn’t tell who was being hit or what.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">On cross examination, Philip J. Smallman, Phoenix’s attorney, emphasized where Nelson’s testimony was inconsistent with testimony from other witnesses. Nelson said the first man out of the SUV was in the front passenger seat while other evidence, including Phoenix’s statements and testimony from the third man in the car, have him sitting in the rear. Despite saying he lived on Bushwick for 10 years, Nelson kept referring to Stanhope Street, which is directly across from his apartment building, as Stockholm Street.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The five eyewitnesses generally agreed with each other though there were some differences in their testimony. The bigger problem for the defense is that Phoenix admitted to beating Jose in his oral, written and videotaped statements. By June 23, the jury had heard all of those statements.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">No witness has supported Phoenix’s assertion that Jose was armed nor were any weapons found on or near Jose. Most of the witnesses say the brothers were not fighting. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Testimony in the case is expected to end on June 24 and closing arguments will likely be made on June 28.</p>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5017737333771873084.post-88589000235681506822010-06-23T05:09:00.000-07:002010-06-23T05:14:18.955-07:00In Statement, Phoenix Claims Self Defense in Sucuzhanay Killing<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In a videotaped statement that was played for the jury at the second trial of Keith Phoenix, the accused killer of Jose Sucuzhanay, Phoenix said he thought Sucuzhanay had a gun and so he beat him twice with a bat.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“I see him going like this reaching for a gun,” Phoenix said as he moved his hand towards the waistband of his pants in a 19-minute statement that was shown to the jury on June 22. “I hit him four times with the bat. I hit him like in the midsection and then the face.”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The Brooklyn district attorney said that Phoenix, 30, and Hakim Scott, 27, attacked Jose and his brother, Romel, after mistaking them for a gay couple as they were walking home early in the morning on December 7, 2008 in Brooklyn’s Bushwick section. The two Ecuadorian immigrants were huddled close together to stay warm. Witnesses said anti-gay and anti-Latino slurs were used. The defense argued that this was an alcohol-fueled dispute that turned vicious. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Phoenix faces multiple second degree murder, manslaughter, assault, and attempted assault charges with some charged as hate crimes. His first trial ended in a mistrial on May 11 after 11 jurors wanted a murder conviction and one held out for a manslaughter conviction. The jury did not believe the attack was a hate crime.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Scott was convicted on manslaughter and attempted assault charges on May 6 though not as hate crimes. The two men were tried together, but with separate juries.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"> </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">In his statement, Phoenix said that he, Scott, and Demetrius Nathaniel, Phoenix’s cousin, were returning to the Bronx in Phoenix’s car after attending a party in Brooklyn. As they came to the intersection of Kossuth Place and Bushwick Avenue, Phoenix said he saw two people in the path of his car.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“I seen two people in the street so I blew the horn twice,” he said. One of the two men kicked his car and he stopped to look for damage. As he stepped out of the car, Scott had already exited and was battling with the brothers, Phoenix said.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">“By the time I hopped out they was already fighting,” he said. Phoenix said he delivered two sets of blows to Jose, four strikes to his body and two to his head. That is generally consistent with statements from the five eyewitnesses to the attack. The jury in Phoenix’s first trial clearly did not believe that he was acting in self-defense when he beat Jose.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">When questioning Romel on June 21, the prosecution elicited testimony that he and Jose had been at a club for a drink moments before the attack and that they were searched before entering the club. No weapons were recovered.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Daniel Ludemann, the first police officer on the scene, testified on June 15 that no weapons were found on or near Jose. In his statement, Phoenix said he put the bat back in his car after the attack and discarded it the next day at a Bronx park. The bat was never found.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">Also on June 22, William Gonzalez, a detective with a New York City police department warrant squad, testified that when Phoenix was arrested in a Yonkers apartment on February 27, 2009 he said “I killed someone. Does that make me a bad person?”</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Geneva">The trial will continue on June 23.</p>Duncan Osbornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15494801424141276129noreply@blogger.com0