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BREAKING: Senate confirms first out gay male to federal bench

Oetken approved by vote of 80-13

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J. Paul Oetken (Blade file photo by Michael Key)

The U.S. Senate made history on Monday by confirming for the first time ever an openly gay male to serve as a federal judge.

By a vote of 80-13, the Senate confirmed J. Paul Oetken, whom President Obama nominated in January to sit on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. A simple majority was required to confirm Oetken.

Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, praised the Senate for what he said was a “historic vote” in confirming an openly gay male to the federal bench.

“Confirmation of Paul Oetken serves as a role model for all LGBT people interested in serving on the judiciary and shows LGBT youth that hard work pays off,” Solmonese said.

Shin Inouye, a White House spokesperson, also commended the Senate for confirming Obama’s nomination in a statement, although he made no mention of the nominee’s sexual orientation.

“The president welcomes the confirmation of Mr. Oetken and is confident that he will serve the American people with distinction from the district court bench,” Inouye said.

Denis Dison, spokesperson for the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, said the LGBT community still has “a lot of ‘firsts’ to achieve” and the Oetken confirmation is “great news.” The Victory Fund has been advocating for LGBT appointments in the Obama administration through its Presidential Appointments Project.

ā€œIt wasnā€™t even two decades ago that openly LGBT people had a hard time even being considered for a presidential appointment, and some who got nominated faced fierce opposition in the Senate,” Dison said. “Today, more than 200 LGBT Americans have been appointed by President Obama, and more than 25 of those were nominated for Senate-confirmable positions.ā€

No Democrat voted against the Oetken nomination. The Republican votes against the nomination were Sens. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), John Boozman (R-Ark.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Jerry Moran (R-Ky.) James Risch (R-Idaho), Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) as well as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Senators who didn’t vote on the nomination were Sens. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and David Vitter (R-La.).

Oetken is first openly gay male to be confirmed to the federal bench, but not the first openly LGBT person. U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts, an out lesbian who currently sits on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is considered the first openly LGBT person to sit on a federal court. She was appointed during the Clinton Administration.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who ruled against California’s ban on same-sex marriage Proposition 8 last year, has also come out as gay. However, he only told reporters about his sexual orientation after he retired from the bench.

With only two openly gay people confirmed by the Senate to the federal bench, Solmonese said greater representation of LGBT people is still needed on the judiciary.

ā€œThe federal bench is greatly lacking LGBT diversity and with thousands of qualified LGBT attorneys in the [United States], there is no reason why the federal bench should not better reflect the composition of our country,” Solmonese said.

The Senate confirmed Oetken to the position after 30 minutes of debate in which senators from both sides of the aisle praised Oetken and encouraged senators to vote for his nomination.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who recommended the nomination to Obama, praised Oetken on the Senate floor for his excellence in legal work and the moderation of his views, but also made special note of his sexual orientation.

“As the first openly gay man to be confirmed as a federal judge and to serve on the federal bench, he will be a symbol of how much we have achieved as a country in just the last few decades,” Schumer said. “And importantly, he will give hope to many talented young lawyers who, until now, thought their paths might be limited because of their sexual orientation. When Paul becomes Judge Oetken, he will be living proof to all those young lawyers that it really does get better.”

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which approved Oetken unanimously by voice vote in April, also extolled how the confirmation of Oetken and said people should be proud of President Obama “for taking this critical step to break down another barrier and increase diversity in the federal judiciary.”

“All of us in the Senate can also be proud that Mr. Oetken was reported with the support of every member of the Judiciary Committee ā€” Democratic and Republican ā€” and will be confirmed by what I believe will be an overwhelming vote in the Senate,” Leahy said. “It is a sign that, as a nation, we have taken a new and welcome step on the path of ensuring that our Federal judiciary better reflects all Americans.”

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking Republican of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also spoke favorably of Oetken on the Senate floor ā€” calling the nominee “qualified” and noting the nominee hails from his home state of Iowa ā€” while encouraging other senators to vote for the nomination. However, Grassley didn’t mention Oetken’s sexual orientation on the floor of the Senate.

“I support this nomination and congratulate him on his professional accomplishments,” Grassley said.

Oetken has practiced law at Debevoise and Plimpton, and since 2004, served as associate general counsel at Cablevision. From 1999 to 2001, Oetken was associate counsel to President Clinton and specialized in First Amendment issues, presidential appointments, ethics, civil rights, and legal policy.

Additionally, Oetken served in various capacities as an LGBT advocate. The nominee has been involved with Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union. Oetken also co-authored a U.S. Supreme Court friend-of-the-court brief in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down sodomy laws throughout the country.

Oetken isn’t the only openly gay judicial nominee that the Senate has advanced closer to a position on the federal bench. Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved by a vote of 14-4 the nomination of Alison Nathan, an out lesbian whom Obama also selected to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Another openly gay judicial nominee, Edward DuMont, has been nominated for a position on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The Senate Judiciary Committee has yet to take up his nomination.

UPDATE: In a statement provided to the Washington Blade, Hagan, one of the senators who didn’t vote on the Oetken nomination, praised the Senate confirmation of the appointee.

ā€œI applaud the overwhelming bipartisan support for the nomination of Paul Oetken to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York,” Hagan said. “A great day for the LGBT community and the nation.ā€

Sadie Weiner, a Hagan spokesperson, said the North Carolina Democrat didn’t vote on the Oetken nomination because the senator was delayed while traveling by aircraft.

“On Monday, Senator Hagan was in Charlotte to speak to a camp for high-school aged young women interested in pursuing studies and careers in high technology industries,” Weiner said. “Her scheduled flight from Charlotte back to Washington was delayed several times causing her to miss the Senate vote on Judge Oetkenā€™s nomination.”

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U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court declines to hear case over drag show at Texas university

Students argue First Amendment protects performance

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The U.S. Supreme Court justices on June 30, 2022. ((Photo by Fred Schilling of the U.S. Supreme Court)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday declined to hear a First Amendment case over a public university president’s refusal to allow an LGBTQ student group to host a drag show on campus.

The group’s application was denied without the justices providing their reasoning or issuing dissenting opinions, as is custom for such requests for emergency review.

When plaintiffs sought to organize the drag performance to raise money for suicide prevention in March 2023, West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler cancelled the event, citing the Bible and other religious texts.

The students sued, arguing the move constituted prior restraint and viewpoint-based discrimination, in violation of the First Amendment. Wendler had called drag shows ā€œderisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny,” adding that “a harmless drag show” was “not possible.”

The notoriously conservative Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who former President Donald Trump appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, ruled against the plaintiffs in September, writing that ā€œit is not clearly established that all drag shows are inherently expressive.”

Kacsmaryk further argued that the High Court’s precedent-setting opinions protecting stage performances and establishing that “speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend” was inconsistent with constitutional interpretation based on ā€œtext, history and tradition.”

Plaintiffs appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is by far the most conservative of the nation’s 12 appellate circuit courts. They sought emergency review by the Supreme Court because the 5th Circuit refused to fast-track their case, so arguments were scheduled to begin after the date of their drag show.

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Federal Government

EXCLUSIVE: USAID LGBTQ coordinator visits Uganda

Jay Gilliam met with activists, community members from Feb. 19-27

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U.S. Agency for International Development Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator Jay Gilliam (Photo courtesy of USAID)

U.S. Agency for International Development Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator Jay Gilliam last month traveled to Uganda.

Gilliam was in the country from Feb. 19-27. He visited Kampala, the Ugandan capital, and the nearby city of Jinja.

Gilliam met with LGBTQ activists who discussed the impact of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, a law with a death penalty provision for “aggravated homosexuality” that President Yoweri Museveni signed last May. Gilliam also sat down with USAID staffers.

Gilliam on Wednesday during an exclusive interview with the Washington Blade did not identify the specific activists and organizations with whom he met “out of protection.” 

“I really wanted to meet with community members and understand the impacts on them,” he said.

Consensual same-sex sexual relations in Uganda were already criminalized before Museveni signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act. Gilliam told the Blade he spoke with a person who said authorities arrested them at a community meeting for mental health and psychosocial support “under false pretenses of engaging in same-sex relations and caught in a video that purportedly showed him.” 

The person, according to Gilliam, said authorities outed them and drove them around the town in which they were arrested in order to humiliate them. Gilliam told the Blade that prisoners and guards beat them, subjected them to so-called anal exams and denied them access to antiretroviral drugs.

“They were told that you are not even a human being. From here on you are no longer living, just dead,” recalled Gilliam.

“I just can’t imagine how difficult it is for someone to be able to live through something like that and being released and having ongoing needs for personal security, having to be relocated and getting support for that and lots of other personal issues and trauma,” added Gilliam.

Gilliam said activists shared stories of landlords and hotel owners evicting LGBTQ people and advocacy groups from their properties. Gilliam told the Blade they “purport that they don’t want to run afoul of” the Anti-Homosexuality Act.

“These evictions really exacerbate the needs from the community in terms of relocation and temporary shelter and just the trauma of being kicked out of your home, being kicked out of your village and having to find a place to stay at a moment’s notice, knowing that you’re also trying to escape harm and harassment from neighbors and community members,” he said.

Gilliam also noted the Anti-Homosexuality Act has impacted community members in different ways.

Reported cases of violence and eviction, for example, are higher among gay men and transgender women. Gilliam noted lesbian, bisexual and queer women and trans men face intimate partner violence, are forced into marriages, endure corrective rape and lose custody of their children when they are outed. He said these community members are also unable to inherit land, cannot control their own finances and face employment discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.Ā Ā 

US sanctioned Ugandan officials over Anti-Homosexuality Act

The U.SĀ imposed visa restrictionsĀ on Ugandan officials shortly after Museveni signed the law. The World Bank Group later announcedĀ the suspension of new loansĀ to Uganda.

The Biden-Harris administration last October issued a business advisory that said the Anti-Homosexuality Act ā€œfurther increases restrictions on human rights, to include restrictions on freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly and exacerbates issues regarding the respect for leases and employment contracts.ā€ The White House has also removed Uganda from a program that allows sub-Saharan African countries to trade duty-free with the U.S. and has issued a business advisory for the country over the Anti-Homosexuality Act. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Dec. 4, 2023, announced sanctions against current and former Ugandan officials who committed human rights abuses against LGBTQ people and other groups. Media reports this week indicate the U.S. denied MP Sarah Achieng Opendi a visa that would have allowed her to travel to New York in order to attend the annual U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.

Museveni, for his part, has criticized the U.S. and other Western countries’ response to the Anti-Homosexuality Act. 

Gilliam noted authorities have arrested and charged Ugandans under the law.Ā 

Two men on motorcycles on Jan. 3 stabbed Steven Kabuye, co-executive director of Coloured Voice Truth to LGBTQ Uganda, outside his home while he was going to work. The incident took place months after Museveni attended Uganda’s National Prayer Breakfast at which U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) spoke and defended the Anti-Homosexuality Act.

The State Department condemned the attack that Kabuye blamed on politicians and religious leaders who are stoking anti-LGBTQ sentiments in Uganda. Gilliam did not meet with Ugandan government officials while he was in the country.

“We in the U.S. government have already made it clear our stance with government officials on how we feel about the AHA, as well as broader human rights concerns in country,” said Gilliam. “That’s been communicated from the very highest levels.”

The Uganda’s Constitutional Court last Dec. 18 heard arguments in a lawsuit that challenges the Anti-Homosexuality Act. It is unclear when a ruling in the case will take place, but Gilliam said LGBTQ Ugandans with whom he met described the law “as just one moment.” 

“Obviously there is lots of work that has been done, that continues to be done to respond to this moment,” he told the Blade. “They know that there’s going to be a lot of work that needs to continue to really address a lot of the root causes and to really back humanity to the community.” 

Gilliam further noted it will “take some years to recover from the damage of 2023 and the AHA (Anti-Homosexuality Act) there.” He added activists are “already laying down the groundwork for what that work looks like” in terms of finding MPs, religious leaders, human rights activists and family members who may become allies.

“Those types of allyships are going to be key to building back the community and to continue the resiliency of the movement,” said Gilliam.

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Texas

Pornhub blocks Texas accessing site over age verification law

Court battle forced statute to take effect

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Washingtonporn Blade graphic

Aylo (formerly MindGeek) the largest global adult online entertainment conglomerate, owned by Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners, has restricted access to its platforms including its flagship Pornhub in Texas after a court battle forces the state’s age verification law to take effect.

Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton had appealed a U.S. District Court decision that enjoined him from enforcing House Bill 1181. Paxton and others argued that purveyors of obscene materials online needed to institute reasonable age-verification measures to safeguard children from pornography.Ā 

A week ago the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals partially vacated the original injunction, ruling that the age verification requirements are constitutional.Ā 

ā€œApplying rational-basis review, the age-verification requirement is rationally related to the governmentā€™s legitimate interest in preventing minorsā€™ access to pornography,ā€ the three judge panel of the 5th Circuit explained. ā€œTherefore, the age-verification requirement does not violate the First Amendment.ā€

While the court vacated the injunction against the age-verification requirement of the statute, it upheld the lower courtā€™s injunction against a separate section of the law that would require pornography websites to display a health warning on their landing page and all advertisements. 

Texas users are greeted with this notice.

The Houston Chronicle reported people who go to the site are now greeted with a long message from the company railing against the legal change as ā€œineffective, haphazard, and dangerous.ā€ The company calls for age verification by the makers of devices that let people on the internet, instead of individual websites.

Age verification legislation was enacted in several states in 2023 in addition to Texas, including North Carolina, Montana, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Utah and Virginia.

The new laws require users to provide digital confirmation via a certified approved third party vendor like London-based digital identity company Yoti. The other possibility would be a state approved digital ID such as the California DMVā€™s Wallet app, which contains a mobile driverā€™s license.

Users accessing Pornhub from within Louisiana are presented with a different webpage that directs them to verify their age with the stateā€™s digital ID system, known as LA Wallet. The law passed in 2022 subjects adult websites to damage lawsuits and state civil penalties as high as $5,000 a day if they fail to verify that users are at least 18 years old by requiring the use of digitized, state-issued driverā€™s licenses or other methods.

The Associated Press reported this past October that an adult entertainment groupā€™s lawsuit against a Louisiana law requiring sexually explicit websites to verify the ages of their viewers was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan in New Orleans.

Texas users are greeted with this notice.

Potential or existing Pornhub users in North Carolina and Montana are directed to a video that features adult film star Cherie DeVille, who recites a message also written under the video.

ā€œAs you may know, your elected officials in your state are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.ā€

ā€œMandating age verification without proper enforcement gives platforms the opportunity to choose whether or not to comply,ā€ the statement continues. ā€œAs weā€™ve seen in other states, this just drives traffic to sites with far fewer safety measures in place.ā€

ā€œUntil a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in [the aforementioned locales]ā€ the message ends with.

The company previously blocked Utah on May 7, 2023. CNN reported at the time:

Affected users are shown a message expressing opposition toĀ Senate Bill 287, the Utah law signed by Gov. Spencer Cox in March that creates liability for porn sites that make their content available to people below the age of 18.

ā€œAs you may know, your elected officials in Utah are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website,ā€ the message said. ā€œWhile safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.ā€

Courthouse News reportedĀ that after Virginiaā€™s bill was passed in June, state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, a Democrat, criticized the state for not creating a system for age verification, and instead leaving it up to websites to manage the process, citing security risks.Ā Ā 

ā€œWe passed a bill during this session to protect children from online porn. However the executive branch had an obligation to create a system for age verification,ā€Ā Lucas saidĀ on X, formerly Twitter. ā€œWe will continue our work to keep pornography out of the hands of minors ā€¦ but we will also work to ensure that this Governorā€™s error does not put the privacy of Virginians at further risk.ā€

Beyond the U.S. in the European Union, Pornhub and two more of the worldā€™s biggest porn websites face new requirements in the European Union that include verifying the ages of users, under the EUā€™s Digital Services Act.

According to a December 20 report from the Associated Press, Pornhub, XVideos and Stripchat have now been classed as ā€œvery large online platformsā€ subject to more stringent controls under the Digital Services Act because they each have 45 million average monthly users, according to the European Commission, the EUā€™s executive branch.

They are the first porn sites to be targeted by the sweeping Digital Services Act, which imposes tough obligations to keep users safe from illegal content and dodgy products, the Associated Press reported last month.

In addition to the adult entertainment websites, any violations are punishable by fines of up to 6% of global revenue or even a ban on operating in the EU. Some 19 online platforms and search engines have already been identified for stricter scrutiny under the DSA, including TikTok, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Google and more.

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