News
White House silent on judicial nominee with anti-gay record
Boggs voted against marriage equality as Georgia state legislator
White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest has no comment on a judicial nominee with an anti-gay record. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest had no comment on Thursday regarding a controversial judicial nominee with an anti-gay record — despite calls from progressive groups on President Obama to take back the selection.
Under questioning from The Huffington Post’s Jennifer Bendery, Earnest professed to have no knowledge of calls to remove Michael Boggs, whom President Obama tapped in December for a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
“I haven’t seen the statements from the groups that you mentioned,” Earnest said. “I’ll see if we can collect some more information and get back to you with a specific reaction.”
Earnest declined comment during the briefing after the White House for more than a week hasn’t responded to the Washington Blade’s request to comment on calls to remove Boggs.
Progressive groups say they’re troubled by Boggs because of his record as a state legislator in Georgia. Among his votes were against removing the Confederate emblem from Georgia’s state flag; in favor of a “Choose Life” license plate that helped fund anti-abortion groups; and in favor of strengthening parental consent laws to require a photo ID and for parents to accompany daughters under the age of 18 to abortion clinics — with no exception for rape or incest.
More relevant to the LGBT rights movement, Boggs in 2004 voted for legislation authorizing the referendum on the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in Georgia. It’s unclear whether he still holds that position, or, like many other lawmakers, he has since evolved to support marriage equality.
On Thursday, a group of 27 progressive groups — including a trio of LGBT groups, the Human Rights Campaign, GetEQUAL Action, and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force — wrote to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to urge them to reject Boggs.
“We believe that Boggs’s record on reproductive rights, civil rights, and LGBT rights is especially troubling in a nominee to the federal bench,” the letter states. “Litigants in Georgia, and the nation as a whole, deserve a judge whose commitment to equal justice is clear.”
A Senate aide said the committee doesn’t have all of the paperwork in for Boggs and hasn’t yet scheduled a confirmation hearing.
Boggs, who received his law degree in 1990 from Mercer University’s Walter F. George School of Law, has since 2012 served as a judge on the Georgia Court of Appeals.
In 2000, Boggs was elected as a Democrat to the Georgia State House, where he held office until 2004. From 2004 to 2012, he was a Superior Court Judge of the Waycross Judicial Circuit of the First Judicial Administrative District of Georgia of the Georgia Superior Court, where he established and presided over the court’s felony drug court program.
Although the Task Force has already called on Obama to recall the nomination, the presence of HRC on the letter is notable because the organization had previously said it was awaiting Boggs’ hearing before making a judgment on the nominee.
Fred Sainz, vice president of communications for the Human Rights Campaign, said he had no comment Thursday on the White House’s continued silence and deferred questions about HRC’s change in position to the letter.
According to The Huffington Post, Obama’s choice of Boggs is part of a package deal struck between the president and Georgia’s two Republican senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson. Four of the six nominees are GOP picks, and just one is black, but the trade-off is that other Georgia nominees in the package will now move forward after years of going nowhere.
Obama faces requests to remove Boggs as he met with black civil rights leaders on Tuesday to discuss issues including criminal justice reform and income inequality.
Asked whether Boggs came up during these discussions, Earnest referred to a White House blog posting on the event without mentioning in the controversial judicial nominee.
“I think there’s a blog post available at whitehouse.gov about the conversations that the president had with those leaders,” Earnest said. “They talked about the Affordable Care Act, and work in communicating to the American public, and particularly to individuals in the African-American community, the potential benefits that are available to them at healthcare.gov, and some of the protections that were put in place for consumers because of the Affordable Care Act. I know they had conversations about some of the ideas to criminal justice reform that the president and the attorney general both discussed. In terms of specifics, I can’t go beyond that, in terms of whether or not a specific judicial nominee came up.”
Hungary
New Hungarian government to scrap anti-LGBTQ adoption law
Prime Minister Peter Maygar ousted Viktor Orbán in April
Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Maygar has said his government will amend a law that essentially bans same-sex couples from adopting children.
Lawmakers approved the effective adoption ban in 2020, when then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government was in power. Maygar announced plans to amend the law on Saturday when he was speaking to supporters in Budapest, the Hungarian capital.
Orbán and his government faced widespread criticism over its anti-LGBTQ crackdown that also included laws banning Pride events.
Maygar in April ousted Orbán in Hungary’s elections.
Baltimore
Transgender woman killed in Barclay community mourned by friends, advocates
Sophie Lee shot to death on Friday morning
By DARREONNA DAVIS | Denise Johnson imagined spending Sunday with her daughter, Sophie Lee, eating crabs at the park. Instead, she stood on a Barclay street corner Sunday evening surrounded by nearly 100 people who came to remember her daughter, a transgender woman who was fatally shot there Friday.
The 27-year-old woman was found in the 2400 block of North Calvert Street around 1:15 a.m. Friday, Baltimore Police said in a news release.
Lindsey Eldridge, a police department spokesperson, said it’s unclear if her identity had anything to do with her death and the investigation is ongoing.
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
Turkey
Dozens detained after Turkish authorities raid LGBTQ groups, businesses
Raids targeted gay bars, activists’ homes
Authorities in Turkey over the weekend detained dozens of people during raids they carried out against gay bars and LGBTQ activists’ homes across the country.
The BBC reported the raids were part of the government’s “My Family is Safe” campaign.
A statement from a group of Turkish advocacy groups the Washington Blade received on Sunday noted Justice Minister Akın Gürlek said the operation included “162 individuals, nine associations, and 13 businesses across 15 provinces.” Prosecutors in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Aydın, and Mersin are coordinating the campaign.
Kaos GL, one of the country’s largest advocacy groups, was among the targets.
“The authorities have referred to allegations including ‘obscenity,’ ‘facilitating prostitution or providing premises for prostitution,’ exposure of children to allegedly obscene content, drug-related offenses, and other morality-related offenses,” reads the press release the Blade received. “Information from the field indicates that additional allegations, including forming a criminal organization, may appear in some investigation files.”
“The reported inclusion of the offense of “establishing an organization for the purpose of committing crimes” under Article 220 of the Turkish Criminal Code is particularly alarming and, if confirmed, would mark a significant escalation in the criminalization of LGBTI+ human rights activism,” it added. “While LGBTI+ activists and organizations have recently faced and continue to face investigations and prosecutions on grounds such as ‘obscenity’ and alleged violations of the Law on Associations, the use of an organized-crime allegation represents a qualitatively more serious threshold, both in terms of the gravity of the accusation and the potential penalties involved.”
Turkish authorities under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government over the last decade have cracked down on LGBTQ and intersex activists in the country.
Police in 2015 used tear gas and water cannons against people who were about to participate in an Istanbul Pride march. Authorities in 2017 arrested nearly two dozen people who defied a ban on Pride events in the city.
Police in Ankara, the Turkish capital, in 2019, arrested 18 students and an academic who participated in a Pride march at the Middle East Technical University. They faced up to three years in prison, but a court in 2021 acquitted them. Police in 2022 violently broke up a Pride parade at the same Ankara university.
Turkish authorities in July refused to allow a gay cruise ship — the Scarlet Lady, a Virgin Voyage vessel that Atlantis Events chartered — to dock in Kusadasi, a resort town on the Aegean Sea.
Kusadasi is in Aydın Province, one of the provinces in which authorities conducted the raids. Turkish officials also refused to allow the Scarlet Lady to dock in Istanbul.
A Turkish source on Sunday told the Blade the “My Family is Safe” operation began on the 46th anniversary of a military coup that toppled the country’s government in 1980.
“The fact that this operation began on the night of Sept. 12 — the 46th anniversary of the 1980 coup — is highly significant in terms of the foundations of the prohibitive and repressive mindset directed at the LGBTI+ community,” they said. “Moreover, many LGBTI+ organizations had been subject to official inspections last week.”
“Conducting this operation on a Saturday night shortly thereafter also serves the purpose of heightening fear and anxiety within the community,” added the source.
The source asked the Blade not to reveal their identity.
ILGA-Europe in a statement described the raids as “the systematic dismantling of LGBTI civil society.” Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire is among the European officials who have publicly condemned them.
The Blade will update this story with additional details as they become available.
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