National
McKeon threatens to kill defense bill over same-sex weddings
Republican doesn’t want military chaplains to officiate over same-sex marriages
The leading House Republican on defense issues has threatened to kill passage of annual defense policy legislation if it lacks language blocking military chaplains from performing same-sex weddings.
House Armed Services Committee Chair Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) said Friday in a taped interview on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” that he’d rather see no version of the fiscal year 2012 defense authorization bill passed at all rather one that doesn’t prevent chaplains from marrying gay couples,Ā according to the The Hill newspaper.
āThis was one of the concerns that we had ā that we were rushing this, to eliminate this, before we had fully prepared things, and DOMA is the law of the land,āĀ McKeon said, referencing the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law prohibiting federal recognition of same-sex marriage.
Last week, the Pentagon issued guidance allowing chaplains to perform same-sex weddings, if they so choose, and allowing the use of base facilities for these ceremonies.
The House in May approved a version of the defense bill that would rollback the Pentagon guidance by prohibiting chaplains or base facilities from being involved in same-sex weddings. The provision was adopted in committee as an amendment by Rep. W. Todd Akin (R-Mo.)
The measure also contains language reaffirming the Defense Department must abide by DOMA. The language was also adopted in committee as an amendment by Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.)
The Senate Armed Services Committee in JuneĀ left out these provisions in its version of the defense bill, but the full measure has yet to reach the Senate floor.
McKeon also reportedly said he’d rather see Congress fail to pass a defense measure for the first time in a half-century if he had to give in on a provision in the Senate bill effectively banning many terrorism suspects from obtaining trials in civilian court.
McKeon reportedly said he hopes the Senate will come to the side of the House on the marriage and detainee issues.
Specifically on marriage, McKeon reportedly said, āIām hopeful that the Senate will look at those votes and will understand our feelings on this issue.”
Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, chastised McKeon for saying he’d put the Pentagon budget at risk over the ability of chaplains to perform same-sex marriages.
āItās nothing short of shameful that the Chair of the House Armed Services Committee, charged with protecting and authorizing funding for our nationās service members at war, would be willing to put at risk the equipment and supplies they need in orderĀ to advance his own narrow, social agenda,” Sarvis said.
If the full Senate passes the measure as approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee, the marriage issues would have to be hammered out between the House and Senate in conference committee.
In a news conference last month, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin (D-Mich.) pledged to work against the anti-gay provisions from being part of the defense bill when asked about the issue by The Advocate.
“We will fight against those amendments and do everything we can to make sure that they donāt appear either in the Senate bill or on the floor,ā as well as in conference committee for the bill, Levin said.
The Pentagon guidance allowing chaplains to officiate over same-sex weddings has become a rallying cry for social conservatives seeking unseat President Obama during the 2012 election.
During the 2011 Value Voters Summit, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum mischaracterized the guidance by saying the Obama administration “instructed” chaplains to perform these same-sex weddings when in fact they have option to do so.
Santorum added this decision from Obama is “worse than” his decision to abandon defense of DOMA in court.
“He has instructed his military chaplains to marry people, in direct contravention ā marry gays and lesbians in direct contravention to the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage in federal law as between a man and a woman,” Santorum said. “So not only did the president not defend the law, he has now instructed people in the military to break the law.
LGBT advocates have said allowing military chaplains to marry same-sex couples is consistent with DOMA because the anti-gay law makes no mention of couples that chaplains are able to marry.
Former Army Lt. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, who came under fire last year for speaking out against open service and asking people to call on Congress to reject “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal, also decried the guidance during the summit.
“What kind of position is this to put chaplains in to have to make that kind of decision inside this unit?” Mixon said. “It is unfair to our service members to put them in that kind of position whether it would be a violation of their religious beliefs of their moral conscience. We owe our service members more than that, and we need to work to provide that guidance and oversight to each and every one of our service members.”
The White House
Karine Jean-Pierre becomes Biden’s fourth openly LGBTQ senior adviser
Press secretary’s promotion was reported on Monday
Following White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s promotion to a top role on Monday, four of the 10 officials serving as senior advisers to President Joe Biden are openly LGBTQ.
The other LGBTQ members of the president’s innermost circle are White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt, senior adviser to first lady Jill Biden Anthony Bernal, and White House Director of Political Strategy and Outreach Emmy Ruiz.
Jean-Pierre became the first Black and the first LGBTQ White House press secretary in May 2022. She spoke with the Washington Blade for an exclusive interview last spring, shortly before the two-year anniversary of her appointment to that position.
“Jill and I have known and respected Karine a long time and she will be a strong voice speaking for me and this Administration,” Biden said in 2022 when announcing her as press secretary.
Breaking the news of Jean-Pierre’s promotion on Monday, ABC noted the power and influence of the White House communications and press office, given that LaBolt was appointed in August to succeed Anita Dunn when she left her role as senior adviser to the president.
As press secretary, Jean-Pierre has consistently advocated for the LGBTQ community ā pushing back forcefully on anti-LGBTQ legislation and reaffirming the president and vice president’s commitments to expanding rights and protections.
U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court begins fall term with major gender affirming care case on the docket
Justices rule against Biden admin over emergency abortion question
The U.S. Supreme Court’s fall term began on Monday with major cases on the docket including U.S. v Skrmetti, which could decide the fate of 24 state laws banning the use of puberty blockers and hormone treatments for transgender minors.
First, however, the justices dealt another blow to the Biden-Harris administration and reproductive rights advocates by leaving in place a lower court order that blocked efforts by the federal government to allow hospitals to terminate pregnancies in medical emergencies.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had issued a guidance instructing healthcare providers to offer abortions in such circumstances, per the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which kicked off litigation over whether the law overrides state abortion restrictions.
The U.S. Court of appeals for the 5th Circuit had upheld a decision blocking the federal government from enforcing the law via the HHS guidance, and the U.S. Department of Justice subsequently asked the Supreme Court to intervene.
The justices also declined to hear a free speech case in which parents challenged a DOJ memo instructing officials to look into threats against public school officials, which sparked false claims that parents were being labeled “domestic terrorists” for raising objections at school board meetings over, especially, COVID policies and curricula and educational materials addressing matters of race, sexuality, and gender.
Looking to the cases ahead, U.S. v. Skrmetti is “obviously the blockbuster case of the term,” a Supreme Court practitioner and lecturer at the Harvard law school litigation clinic told NPR.
The attorney, Deepak Gupta, said the litigation “presents fundamental questions about the scope of state power to regulate medical care for minors, and the rights of parents to make medical decisions for your children.”
The ACLU, which represents parties in the case, argues that Tennessee’s gender affirming care ban violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment by allowing puberty blockers and hormone treatments for cisgender patients younger than 18 while prohibiting these interventions for their transgender counterparts.
The organization notes that “leading medical experts and organizations ā such as the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics ā oppose these restrictions, which have already forced thousands of families across the country to travel to maintain access to medical care or watch their child suffer without it.”
When passing their bans on gender affirming care, conservative states have cited the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), which overturned constitutional protections for abortion that were in place since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.
The ACLU notes “U.S. v. Skrmetti will be a major test of how far the court is willing to stretch Dobbs to allow states to ban other health care” including other types of reproductive care like IVF and birth control.
Also on the docket in the months ahead are cases that will decide core questions about the government’s ability to regulate “ghost guns,” firearms that are made with build-it-yourself kits available online, and the constitutionality of a Texas law requiring age verification to access pornography.
The latter case drew opposition from liberal and conservative groups that argue it will have a chilling effect on adults who, as NPR wrote, “would realistically fear extortion, identity theft and even tracking of their habits by the government and others.”
National
Lesbian software developer seeks to preserve lost LGBTQ history
Up until the early 2010s, if you searched āBabe Ruthā in the Baseball Hall of Fame, nothing would pop up. To find information on the greatest baseball player of all time, you would have to search āRuth, George Herman.ā
That is the way online archival systems were set up and there was a clear problem with it. Kristen Gwinn-Becker was uniquely able to solve it. āI’m a super tech geek, history geek,ā she says, āI love any opportunity to create this aha moment with people through history.ā
Gwinn-Becker is the founder and CEO of HistoryIT, a company that helps organizations create digital archives that are genuinely accessible. āI believe history is incredibly important, but I also think it’s in danger,ā she says. āLess than 2% of our historical materials are digital and even less of that is truly accessible.ā
Gwinn-Beckerās love for history is personal. As a lesbian, growing up, she sought out evidence of herself across time. āI was interested in stories, interested in people whose lives mirrored mine to help me understand who I was.ā
ā[My identity] influences my love of history and my strong belief in history is important,ā she says.
Despite always loving history, Gwinn-Becker found herself living and working in San Francisco during the early dot com boom and bust in the ā90s. āIt was an exciting time,ā she recounts, āif you were intellectually curious, you could just jump right in.ā
Being there was almost happenstance, Gwinn-Becker explained: āI was 20 years old and wanted to live in San Francisco.ā Quickly, she fell in love with āall of the incredible new tools.ā She was working with non-profits that encouraged her to take classes and apply the new skills. āI was really into software, web, and database development.ā
But history eventually pulled her back. āTech was fun, but I didn’t want to be a developer,ā she says. Something was missing. When the opportunity to get a Ph.D. in history from George Washington University presented itself, āI got to work on the Eleanor Roosevelt papers, who I was and remain quite passionate about.ā
Gwinn-Beckerās research on Eleanor Roosevelt planted the seeds of digital preservation. āEleanor Roosevelt doesn’t have a single archive. FDR has lots but the first ladies donāt,ā she says. Gwinn-Becker wondered what else was missing from the archive ā and what would be missing from the archive if we didnāt start preserving it now.
Those questions eventually led Gwinn-Becker to found HistoryIT in 2011. Since then, the company has created digital archives for organizations ranging from museums and universities to sororities, fraternities, and community organizations.
This process is not easy. āDigital preservation is more than scanning,ā says Gwinn-Becker. āMost commercial scannersā intent is to create a digital copy, not an exact replica.ā
To digitally preserve something, Gwinn-Beckerās team must take a photo with overhead cameras. āThere is an international standard,ā she says, āyou create an archival TIFF.ā
āItās the biggest possible file we can create now. Thatās how you future-proof.ā
Despite the common belief that the internet is forever, JPEGs saved to social media or websites are a poor archive. āItās more expensive for us to do projects in the 2000 to 2016 period than to do 19th-century projects,ā explains Gwinn-Becker, since finding adequate files for preservation can be tricky. āThe images themselves are deteriorated because they’re compressed so much,ā she says.
Her clients are finding that having a strong digital archive is useful outside of the noble goal of protecting history. āIt’s a unique trove of content,ā says Gwinn-Becker. One client saw a 790% increase in donations after incorporating the digital archive into fundraising efforts. āItās important to have content quickly and easily,ā says Gwinn-Becker, whose team also works with clients on digital strategy for their archive.
One of Gwinn-Beckerās favorite parts of her job is finding what she calls āhidden histories.ā
āWe [LGBTQ people] are represented everywhere. We’re represented in sports, in religious history, in every kind of movement, not only our movement. I’m passionate about bringing those stories out.ā
Sometimes queer stories are found in unexpected places, says Gwinn-Becker. āWe work with sororities and fraternities. There are a hell of a lot of our stories there.ā
Part of digital preservation is also making sure that history being created in the moment is not lost to future generations. HistoryIT works with NFL teams, for example. One of their clients is the Panthers, who hired Justine Lindsay, the first transgender cheerleader in the NFL. Gwinn-Becker was excited to be able to preserve information about Lindsay in the digital record. āItās making history in the process of preserving it,ā says Gwinn-Becker.
Preserving queer history, either through āhidden historiesā or LGBTQ-specific archives, is vital says Gwinn-Becker. āThink about whose history gets marginalized, whose history gets moved to the sidelines, whose history gets just erased,ā she prompts. āIn a time of fake news, we need to point to evidence in the past. Queer people have existed since there were humans, but their stories are hidden,ā Gwinn-Becker says.
Meanwhile, Gwinn-Becker accidentally finds herself as part of queer history too. Listed as one of Inc. Magazineās Top 250 Female Founders of 2024, she is surrounded by names like Christina Aguilera, Selena Gomez, and Natalie Portman.
One name stuck out. āNever in my life did I think I’d be on the same list ā other than the obvious one ā with Billie Jean King. That’s pretty exciting,ā she said.
But she canāt focus on the win for too long. āWhen I go to sleep at night, I think āthere’s so much history, and we have to transfer it to the digital,āā she says, āWe have a very small period in which to do that in a meaningful way.ā
(This story is part of the Digital Equity Local Voices Fellowship lab through News is Out. The lab initiative is made possible with support from Comcast NBCUniversal.)
-
World5 days ago
Out in the World: LGBTQ news from Asia, Europe, and Canada
-
Middle East4 days ago
‘I don’t want a genocide to be done on queer people’s behalf’
-
District of Columbia2 days ago
Gay Episcopal minister to be reinstated 40 years after being defrocked
-
Israel2 days ago
Hundreds attend gay IDF soldier’s memorial service