25 Years Later, Still Hating, But Less Hateful

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.”

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 queerty.com, joemygod.blogspot.com, and towleroad.com. Those posters should have been in New York City on March 19, 1986 if they wanted to hear hate speech.

“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.

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.

“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”

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.”

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.

The podium at that rally was packed with Roman Catholic priests, Orthodox Jews, Salvation Army staffers, politicians, and taxpayers. Members of The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, a group of lay Catholics, also attended. 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.

“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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

In a 2008 story, the New York Times 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.”

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.

“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.”

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.

“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.

Cancel Trial Continues; Manhattan DA Makes an Appearance

Kevin Pravia in an undated photo

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.

Jurors, attorneys, and observers sat in Manhattan Supreme Court on November 8 as the silent 11-minute video played. The only sound was Paula Pravia, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

“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.”

Defense Gets Boost At Katehis Trial, But So Does Prosecution

John Katehis in one of two photos introduced at his murder trial

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Katehis is charged with second degree murder in the case and could get as much as 25-years-to-life if found guilty.

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.

“The narrative information you get is a police officer’s narrative, is that correct?” Schwartz asked and Philipps agreed.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Katehis Trial to Start in Brooklyn; Defense Will Put Victim on Trial

George Weber in an undated photo

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.

“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.

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.

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.

“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?”

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.

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.

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.

“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.

“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.

“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.

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.

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.

AFER Supporter Gave Thousands to Anti-Gay Virginia Candidates

Paul Singer

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.

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 long history 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.

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.

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.”

In March of this year, McDonnell told WRVA, a Richmond radio station, that laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation may be unnecessary.

“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.”

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.”

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.

“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.

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.”

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

AFER Fundraiser: Check Your History at the Door

The invitation to the Sept. 22 fundraiser via towleroad.com

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.

“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 Lichtblau, the Times reporter, wrote in the story 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.

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 Boies 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 towleroad.com.

Singer’s co-hosts are Ken Mehlman, 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 Thiel, the former chief executive officer of PayPal, the web payment service, and now the chairman of Clarium Capital, another hedge fund. Reportedly, Thiel is gay.

When Mehlman 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. Singer and Thiel bring plenty of their own right wing baggage to this fundraiser. Call me cynical, but the same people who helped Mehlman spin his coming out may be helping Singer.

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 Santorum and Bill McCollum, 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 Schumer, 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.

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 Witherspoon Institute.

On its web site, Witherspoon describes itself as “an independent research center that works to enhance public understanding of the moral foundations of free and democratic societies.”

Its fellows include Robert George, 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 Witherspoon fellows have been active in opposing the gay community.

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.

George is the director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton and Singer is one of the program’s advisors. 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.

In 2007, Wilcox received a “multi-year grant” from the Institute for American Values, a New York City group headed by David Blankenhorn 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.

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.” Blankenhorn’s institute also funded Dr. Kathleen Kovner Kline to do similar research in Denver.

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.

Similarly, Thiel, 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.

In 2008, Thiel 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 Neuhaus, a neoconservative Roman Catholic priest.

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 Mehlman’s coming out with some humility, but I doubt he knows what that is.

UPDATE: A poster on Queerty.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.

Target's Politics: The Exception or the Rule?

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.

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

Back then, 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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.