Connect with us

homepage news

Gay Air Force lieutenant faces sexual assault charges

Lawyer says Seefried is unfair target of military crackdown on abuse

Published

on

Joshua Seefried, gay news, Washington Blade
Joshua Seefried, gay news, Washington Blade

Gay Air Force Lt. Joshua Seefried faces a court-martial next month. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

Gay Air Force Lt. Joshua Seefried, a prominent advocate for the rights of gays in the military, is tentatively scheduled to go on trial in a court-martial next month on sexual assault charges at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

In a development that until now has gone unreported in the media, Seefried was charged in April with wrongful sexual contact and forcible sodomy. In October, his commanding officer at Fort Meade in Maryland, where heā€™s currently stationed, added an additional charge of abusive sexual contact.

Statements made by military prosecutors at a pre-trial motions hearing at Andrews on Monday revealed that the three charges stem from an accusation by U.S. Marine Lt. Edgar Luna, whoā€™s gay, that Seefried allegedly performed sexual acts on him in a hotel room in New York City in May 2012 at a time when Luna says he was intoxicated and unable to give consent.

Sources familiar with the case point to a report prepared by a highly regarded investigating officer knowledgeable in military law that questions the credibility of the charges. The officer, Air Force Col. Robert Preston, presided over an Article 32 hearing on the case in September. Article 32 hearings in the military are similar to civilian grand jury proceedings.

At the conclusion of the hearing Preston recommended in his report that the case against Seefried should not proceed to trial by court-martial because there was insufficient evidence to obtain a conviction and that Seefried would most likely be acquitted.

Most of the arguments at the eight-and-a-half hour hearing on Monday centered on a controversial decision in October by Major General Darryl Burke, commander of the Air Force District of Washington, to override Prestonā€™s recommendation and order that Seefriedā€™s case proceed to a full court-martial, which is scheduled to begin on Jan. 26.

Seefriedā€™s defense team was further startled when Seefriedā€™s commanding officer at Fort Meade, Lt. Col. Michael Goodwin, followed Burkeā€™s action by adding the additional charge of abusive sexual contact against Seefried.

At the sometimes contentious hearing on Monday, Seefriedā€™s civilian lawyer, Richard Stevens, fired questions at Burke and Goodwin, whom he called as witnesses, asking whether their respective decisions to bring the case to a court-martial and to add the additional charge were based on fear of outside political repercussions rather than the merits of the case.

He pursued that line of questioning in support of a motion he introduced calling on the judge presiding over the hearing, Col. Ira Perkins, to dismiss the case against Seefried on grounds of unlawful command influence, an action considered a serious breach in the military justice system.

Stevens noted that two Air Force generalsā€™ careers have ended recently over widely publicized reports that they put a stop to the prosecution of separate sexual assault cases under their command at a time when members of Congress and President Obama have criticized the military justice systemā€™s handling of sex crimes.

He asked Burke if he feared that his own career could be in jeopardy for being viewed as being too lenient on a sexual assault case if he accepted Col. Prestonā€™s recommendation to drop the charges against Seefried.

ā€œI base my decisions on the evidence,ā€ Burke said when asked by one of the prosecutors in the case whether his decision on the Seefried case was based on facts or external influences.

The lead prosecutor, Maj. Mark Rosenow, disputed Stevensā€™ line of questioning, saying the defense failed to provide substantiation that Burke or Goodwin were in any way influenced by political considerations in their decisions to bring the case to a court-martial and add the additional charge.

In response to questions by Stevens, Burke testified that he based his decision to bring Seefriedā€™s case to a court-martial on recommendations by his military law advisers. Goodwin cited a similar recommendation by his advisers from his baseā€™s Judge Advocate Generalā€™s office, which serves as the militaryā€™s legal arm.

In a separate motion, Stevens called on the judge to reopen the Article 32 hearing for Seefried, among other things, on grounds that the defense was denied the right to cross examine a key witness in the first Article 32 hearing that could have provided the defense with further evidence to challenge the allegations against Seefried by his accuser, Lt. Luna.

Col. Perkins, the presiding judge, said he would deliberate over the Article 32 motion and the motion for dismissal of the case and issue a ruling on the two motions sometime this week.

Seefried and attorney Stevens declined a request by the Washington Blade for comment, saying it would be inappropriate for them to discuss the case at a time when a military judge was deliberating over the two defense motions filed on Monday, according to D.C. gay activist Lane Hudson, a friend of Seefriedā€™s who attended Mondayā€™s hearing and who spoke to Stevens and Seefried during breaks in the hearing.

Friends of Seefried, including Hudson, say Seefried is hopeful that his name will be cleared by a dismissal of the charges or a subsequent acquittal if the case goes to trial in a court-martial.

Among those called by the defense to testify at the hearing on Monday were Luna and U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Commander John Fiorentine, who was also charged with sexually assaulting Luna at the hotel in New York before authorities dismissed the case against him at the recommendation of an Article 32 investigating officer.

Among the questions Stevens asked Luna was whether he had seen the Article 32 report in Seefriedā€™s case, which Stevens said may have been leaked and circulated on a listserv or Facebook page.

Luna said he thought he may have seen an article or a discussion about the Article 32 report on a listserv but said he didnā€™t see the report.

Stevens told the judge that reading the Article 32 report, which discussed inconsistencies in Lunaā€™s earlier statements accusing Seefried of sexually assaulting him, would give him an opportunity to craft his testimony at a court-martial for Seefried where he could minimize inconsistencies.

Sources familiar with the Seefried case said the sexual assault allegations swirling over his head emerged from a weekend gathering in New York City in May 2012 of seven junior gay military officers from across the country and a straight female friend who participated in Fleet Week, an annual event in which Navy and sometimes Coast Guard ships dock in a major U.S. city, including New York.

The gay officers, who were from all branches of the military, were also celebrating the repeal a few months earlier of the ā€œDonā€™t Ask, Donā€™t Tellā€ law and the behind-the-scenes effort by several of them, including Seefried, to push for the repeal, those familiar with the gay officers said.

Seefried in 2010 founded OutServe, a group of gay and lesbian active duty service members who anonymously lobbied for repeal of ā€œDonā€™t Ask, Donā€™t Tell.ā€ Seefried reportedly knew most of the gay officers who gathered in New York, including Luna, through OutServe.

According to sources familiar with the case, the gay officers met at a Manhattan restaurant for brunch on the afternoon of May 26, and all of them, including Luna, consumed several alcoholic beverages. After spending a good part of the afternoon at the restaurant, several of them accepted Seefriedā€™s invitation to join him at the spa in the hotel in which he was staying, which was located about a mile from the restaurant.

All of them, including Luna, walked from the restaurant to the hotel, which took about 20 minutes, sources familiar with the case said. Upon arrival at the hotel several of the people accompanying Seefried to the spa changed into bathing suits or gym shorts and entered a communal hot tub. Several of those in the group reportedly saw Luna and Seefried ā€œmaking outā€ in the hot tub in what they believed to be a mutually consenting display of affection.

But the Article 32 report cites a statement taken from Luna after he returned to his military base in Florida in which he said he became ā€œextremely intoxicatedā€ at the restaurant and could not remember anything from the time he was in the restaurant until about midnight, when he said he woke up disoriented and naked in a hotel room with Seefried and Fiorentine, the Coast Guard officer.

The Article 32 report ā€“ and discussion by the defense and prosecution at Mondayā€™s hearing at Andrews Air Force Base ā€“ mentioned Luna telling investigators that he talked to several people he had been with that night who gave him various accounts of what he had been doing and how he got to the hotel. In at least one statement he reportedly said Seefried told him he saw Luna and Fiorentine engaging in sex in the hotel room.

Sources familiar with the case say Luna initially accused Fiorentine of sexually assaulting him in the hotel room while he was impaired by alcohol. Fiorentine was subsequently charged and brought before his own Article 32 hearing earlier this year in which the investigating officer found that there was insufficient evidence to bring his case to a court-martial, resulting in his case being dropped.

People who know Seefried say that in June 2012, about a month after the alleged sexual assault took place in New York, Luna appeared to be on friendly terms with Seefried, exchanging text messages with him and accepting an invitation by Seefried to join him and others at a White House LGBT Pride month reception, which President Obama attended.

The friends have expressed surprise that Luna shortly after the White House reception chose to implicate Seefried in the sexual assault.

People who know Luna identify him as an openly gay advocate for gays in the military and an early member of OutServe. Luna appeared in a broadcast interview by CNN and was quoted in Huffington Post in September 2011 shortly after Congressā€™s repeal of ā€œDonā€™t Ask, Donā€™t Tellā€ went into effect.

ā€˜Josh Seefried is a leader in the LGBT community and played a key role in the repeal of ā€˜Donā€™t Ask, Donā€™t Tell,ā€™ā€™ said Lane Hudson, a friend of Seefriedā€™s.

ā€˜Josh Seefried is a leader in the LGBT community and played a key role in the repeal of ā€˜Donā€™t Ask, Donā€™t Tell,ā€™ā€™ said Lane Hudson, a friend of Seefriedā€™s.

Hudson said he is troubled over the decision by General Burke to ā€œignoreā€ the Article 32 investigating officerā€™s recommendation against proceeding with a court-martial for Seefried.

ā€œJosh Seefried is a leader in the LGBT community and played a key role in the repeal of the discriminatory law known as ā€˜Donā€™t Ask, Donā€™t Tell,ā€ Hudson said.

Hudson said that Seefried ironically would have benefited from a bill stalled in the U.S. Senate that calls for removing military commanders such as General Burke from the decision-making process in sexual assault cases.

The bill, the Military Justice Improvement Act introduced by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), is aimed at preventing military commanders from blocking sexual assault charges from advancing to a court-martial when the facts in such cases warrant a court-martial, a statement released by Gillibrand says.

But Hudson and others who know about Seefriedā€™s case have said the legislation would also prevent a military commander from unfairly advancing a case to court-martial when the evidence shows that it should not advance to a court-martial.

Advertisement
FUND LGBTQ JOURNALISM
SIGN UP FOR E-BLAST

homepage news

Honoring the legacy of New Orleansā€™ 1973 UpStairs Lounge fire

Why the arson attack that killed 32 gay men still resonates 50 years later

Published

on

Fifty years ago this week, 32 gay men were killed in an arson attack on the UpStairs Lounge in New Orleans. (Photo by G.E. Arnold/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

On June 23 of last year, I held the microphone as a gay man in the New Orleans City Council Chamber and related a lost piece of queer history to the seven council members. I told this story to disabuse all New Orleanians of the notion that silence and accommodation, in the face of institutional and official failures, are a path to healing.  

The story I related to them began on a typical Sunday night at a second-story bar on the fringe of New Orleansā€™ French Quarter in 1973, where working-class men would gather around a white baby grand piano and belt out the lyrics to a song that was the anthem of their hidden community, ā€œUnited We Standā€ by the Brotherhood of Man. 

ā€œUnited we stand,ā€ the men would sing together, ā€œdivided we fallā€ ā€” the words epitomizing the ethos of their beloved UpStairs Lounge bar, an egalitarian free space that served as a forerunner to todayā€™s queer safe havens. 

Around that piano in the 1970s Deep South, gays and lesbians, white and Black queens, Christians and non-Christians, and even early gender minorities could cast aside the racism, sexism, and homophobia of the times to find acceptance and companionship for a moment. 

For regulars, the UpStairs Lounge was a miracle, a small pocket of acceptance in a broader world where their very identities were illegal. 

On the Sunday night of June 24, 1973, their voices were silenced in a murderous act of arson that claimed 32 lives and still stands as the deadliest fire in New Orleans history ā€” and the worst mass killing of gays in 20th century America. 

As 13 fire companies struggled to douse the inferno, police refused to question the chief suspect, even though gay witnesses identified and brought the soot-covered man to officers idly standing by. This suspect, an internally conflicted gay-for-pay sex worker named Rodger Dale Nunez, had been ejected from the UpStairs Lounge screaming the word “burn” minutes before, but New Orleans police rebuffed the testimony of fire survivors on the street and allowed Nunez to disappear.

As the fire raged, police denigrated the deceased to reporters on the street: ā€œSome thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar.ā€ 

For days afterward, the carnage met with official silence. With no local gay political leaders willing to step forward, national Gay Liberation-era figures like Rev. Troy Perry of the Metropolitan Community Church flew in to ā€œhelp our bereaved brothers and sistersā€ ā€” and shatter officialdomā€™s code of silence. 

Perry broke local taboos by holding a press conference as an openly gay man. ā€œItā€™s high time that you people, in New Orleans, Louisiana, got the message and joined the rest of the Union,ā€ Perry said. 

Two days later, on June 26, 1973, as families hesitated to step forward to identify their kin in the morgue, UpStairs Lounge owner Phil Esteve stood in his badly charred bar, the air still foul with death. He rebuffed attempts by Perry to turn the fire into a call for visibility and progress for homosexuals. 

ā€œThis fire had very little to do with the gay movement or with anything gay,ā€ Esteve told a reporter from The Philadelphia Inquirer. ā€œI do not want my bar or this tragedy to be used to further any of their causes.ā€ 

Conspicuously, no photos of Esteve appeared in coverage of the UpStairs Lounge fire or its aftermath ā€” and the bar owner also remained silent as he witnessed police looting the ashes of his business. 

ā€œPhil said the cash register, juke box, cigarette machine and some wallets had money removed,ā€ recounted Esteveā€™s friend Bob McAnear, a former U.S. Customs officer. ā€œPhil wouldnā€™t report it because, if he did, police would never allow him to operate a bar in New Orleans again.ā€ 

The next day, gay bar owners, incensed at declining gay bar traffic amid an atmosphere of anxiety, confronted Perry at a clandestine meeting. ā€œHow dare you hold your damn news conferences!ā€ one business owner shouted. 

Ignoring calls for gay self-censorship, Perry held a 250-person memorial for the fire victims the following Sunday, July 1, culminating in mourners defiantly marching out the front door of a French Quarter church into waiting news cameras. ā€œReverend Troy Perry awoke several sleeping giants, me being one of them,ā€ recalled Charlene Schneider, a lesbian activist who walked out of that front door with Perry.

(Photo by G.E. Arnold/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

Esteve doubted the UpStairs Lounge storyā€™s capacity to rouse gay political fervor. As the coroner buried four of his former patrons anonymously on the edge of town, Esteve quietly collected at least $25,000 in fire insurance proceeds. Less than a year later, he used the money to open another gay bar called the Post Office, where patrons of the UpStairs Lounge ā€” some with visible burn scars ā€” gathered but were discouraged from singing ā€œUnited We Stand.ā€ 

New Orleans cops neglected to question the chief arson suspect and closed the investigation without answers in late August 1973. Gay elites in the cityā€™s power structure began gaslighting the mourners who marched with Perry into the news cameras, casting suspicion on their memories and re-characterizing their moment of liberation as a stunt. 

When a local gay journalist asked in April 1977, ā€œWhere are the gay activists in New Orleans?,ā€ Esteve responded that there were none, because none were needed. ā€œWe donā€™t feel weā€™re discriminated against,ā€ Esteve said. ā€œNew Orleans gays are different from gays anywhere elseā€¦ Perhaps there is some correlation between the amount of gay activism in other cities and the degree of police harassment.ā€ 

(Photo by H.J. Patterson/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

An attitude of nihilism and disavowal descended upon the memory of the UpStairs Lounge victims, goaded by Esteve and fellow gay entrepreneurs who earned their keep via gay patrons drowning their sorrows each night instead of protesting the injustices that kept them drinking. 

Into the 1980s, the story of the UpStairs Lounge all but vanished from conversation ā€” with the exception of a few sanctuaries for gay political debate such as the local lesbian bar Charleneā€™s, run by the activist Charlene Schneider. 

By 1988, the 15th anniversary of the fire, the UpStairs Lounge narrative comprised little more than a call for better fire codes and indoor sprinklers. UpStairs Lounge survivor Stewart Butler summed it up: ā€œA tragedy that, as far as I know, no good came of.ā€ 

Finally, in 1991, at Stewart Butler and Charlene Schneiderā€™s nudging, the UpStairs Lounge story became aligned with the crusade of liberated gays and lesbians seeking equal rights in Louisiana. The halls of power responded with intermittent progress. The New Orleans City Council, horrified by the story but not yet ready to take its look in the mirror, enacted an anti-discrimination ordinance protecting gays and lesbians in housing, employment, and public accommodations that Dec. 12 ā€” more than 18 years after the fire. 

ā€œI believe the fire was the catalyst for the anger to bring us all to the table,ā€ Schneider told The Times-Picayune, a tacit rebuke to Esteveā€™s strategy of silent accommodation. Even Esteve seemed to change his stance with time, granting a full interview with the first UpStairs Lounge scholar Johnny Townsend sometime around 1989. 

Most of the figures in this historic tale are now deceased. Whatā€™s left is an enduring story that refused to go gently. The story now echoes around the world ā€” a musical about the UpStairs Lounge fire recently played in Tokyo, translating the gay underworld of the 1973 French Quarter for Japanese audiences.

When I finished my presentation to the City Council last June, I looked up to see the seven council members in tears. Unanimously, they approved a resolution acknowledging the historic failures of city leaders in the wake of the UpStairs Lounge fire. 

Council members personally apologized to UpStairs Lounge families and survivors seated in the chamber in a symbolic act that, though it could not bring back those who died, still mattered greatly to those whose pain had been denied, leaving them to grieve alone. At long last, official silence and indifference gave way to heartfelt words of healing. 

The way Americans remember the past is an active, ongoing process. Our collective memory is malleable, but it matters because it speaks volumes about our maturity as a people, how we acknowledge the pastā€™s influence in our lives, and how it shapes the examples we set for our youth. Do we grapple with difficult truths, or do we duck accountability by defaulting to nostalgia and bluster? Or worse, do we simply ignore the past until it fades into a black hole of ignorance and indifference? 

I believe that a factual retelling of the UpStairs Lounge tragedy ā€” and how, 50 years onward, it became known internationally ā€” resonates beyond our current divides. It reminds queer and non-queer Americans that ignoring the past holds back the present, and that silence is no cure for what ails a participatory nation. 

Silence isolates. Silence gaslights and shrouds. It preserves the power structures that scapegoat the disempowered. 

Solidarity, on the other hand, unites. Solidarity illuminates a path forward together. Above all, solidarity transforms the downtrodden into a resounding chorus of citizens ā€” in the spirit of voices who once gathered ā€˜round a white baby grand piano and sang, joyfully and loudly, ā€œUnited We Stand.ā€ 

(Photo by Philip Ames/Times-Picayune; reprinted with permission)

Robert W. Fieseler is a New Orleans-based journalist and the author of ā€œTinderbox: the Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation.ā€

Continue Reading

homepage news

New Supreme Court term includes critical LGBTQ case with ‘terrifying’ consequences

Business owner seeks to decline services for same-sex weddings

Published

on

The U.S. Supreme Court is to set consider the case of 303 Creative, which seeks to refuse design services for same-sex weddings. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)

The U.S. Supreme Court, after a decision overturning Roe v. Wade that still leaves many reeling, is starting a new term with justices slated to revisit the issue of LGBTQ rights.

In 303 Creative v. Elenis, the court will return to the issue of whether or not providers of custom-made goods can refuse service to LGBTQ customers on First Amendment grounds. In this case, the business owner is Lorie Smith, a website designer in Colorado who wants to opt out of providing her graphic design services for same-sex weddings despite the civil rights law in her state.

Jennifer Pizer, acting chief legal officer of Lambda Legal, said in an interview with the Blade, “it’s not too much to say an immeasurably huge amount is at stake” for LGBTQ people depending on the outcome of the case.

“This contrived idea that making custom goods, or offering a custom service, somehow tacitly conveys an endorsement of the person ā€” if that were to be accepted, that would be a profound change in the law,” Pizer said. “And the stakes are very high because there are no practical, obvious, principled ways to limit that kind of an exception, and if the law isn’t clear in this regard, then the people who are at risk of experiencing discrimination have no security, no effective protection by having a non-discrimination laws, because at any moment, as one makes their way through the commercial marketplace, you don’t know whether a particular business person is going to refuse to serve you.”

The upcoming arguments and decision in the 303 Creative case mark a return to LGBTQ rights for the Supreme Court, which had no lawsuit to directly address the issue in its previous term, although many argued the Dobbs decision put LGBTQ rights in peril and threatened access to abortion for LGBTQ people.

And yet, the 303 Creative case is similar to other cases the Supreme Court has previously heard on the providers of services seeking the right to deny services based on First Amendment grounds, such as Masterpiece Cakeshop and Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. In both of those cases, however, the court issued narrow rulings on the facts of litigation, declining to issue sweeping rulings either upholding non-discrimination principles or First Amendment exemptions.

Pizer, who signed one of the friend-of-the-court briefs in opposition to 303 Creative, said the case is “similar in the goals” of the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation on the basis they both seek exemptions to the same non-discrimination law that governs their business, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, or CADA, and seek “to further the social and political argument that they should be free to refuse same-sex couples or LGBTQ people in particular.”

“So there’s the legal goal, and it connects to the social and political goals and in that sense, it’s the same as Masterpiece,” Pizer said. “And so there are multiple problems with it again, as a legal matter, but also as a social matter, because as with the religion argument, it flows from the idea that having something to do with us is endorsing us.”

One difference: the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation stemmed from an act of refusal of service after owner, Jack Phillips, declined to make a custom-made wedding cake for a same-sex couple for their upcoming wedding. No act of discrimination in the past, however, is present in the 303 Creative case. The owner seeks to put on her website a disclaimer she won’t provide services for same-sex weddings, signaling an intent to discriminate against same-sex couples rather than having done so.

As such, expect issues of standing ā€” whether or not either party is personally aggrieved and able bring to a lawsuit ā€” to be hashed out in arguments as well as whether the litigation is ripe for review as justices consider the case. It’s not hard to see U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, who has sought to lead the court to reach less sweeping decisions (sometimes successfully, and sometimes in the Dobbs case not successfully) to push for a decision along these lines.

Another key difference: The 303 Creative case hinges on the argument of freedom of speech as opposed to the two-fold argument of freedom of speech and freedom of religious exercise in the Masterpiece Cakeshop litigation. Although 303 Creative requested in its petition to the Supreme Court review of both issues of speech and religion, justices elected only to take up the issue of free speech in granting a writ of certiorari (or agreement to take up a case). Justices also declined to accept another question in the petition request of review of the 1990 precedent in Smith v. Employment Division, which concluded states can enforce neutral generally applicable laws on citizens with religious objections without violating the First Amendment.

Representing 303 Creative in the lawsuit is Alliance Defending Freedom, a law firm that has sought to undermine civil rights laws for LGBTQ people with litigation seeking exemptions based on the First Amendment, such as the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.

Kristen Waggoner, president of Alliance Defending Freedom, wrote in a Sept. 12 legal brief signed by her and other attorneys that a decision in favor of 303 Creative boils down to a clear-cut violation of the First Amendment.

“Colorado and the United States still contend that CADA only regulates sales transactions,” the brief says. “But their cases do not apply because they involve non-expressive activities: selling BBQ, firing employees, restricting school attendance, limiting club memberships, and providing room access. Coloradoā€™s own cases agree that the government may not use public-accommodation laws to affect a commercial actorā€™s speech.”

Pizer, however, pushed back strongly on the idea a decision in favor of 303 Creative would be as focused as Alliance Defending Freedom purports it would be, arguing it could open the door to widespread discrimination against LGBTQ people.

“One way to put it is art tends to be in the eye of the beholder,” Pizer said. “Is something of a craft, or is it art? I feel like I’m channeling Lily Tomlin. Remember ‘soup and art’? We have had an understanding that whether something is beautiful or not is not the determining factor about whether something is protected as artistic expression. There’s a legal test that recognizes if this is speech, whose speech is it, whose message is it? Would anyone who was hearing the speech or seeing the message understand it to be the message of the customer or of the merchants or craftsmen or business person?”

Despite the implications in the case for LGBTQ rights, 303 Creative may have supporters among LGBTQ people who consider themselves proponents of free speech.

One joint friend-of-the-court brief before the Supreme Court, written by Dale Carpenter, a law professor at Southern Methodist University who’s written in favor of LGBTQ rights, and Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment legal scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, argues the case is an opportunity to affirm the First Amendment applies to goods and services that are uniquely expressive.

“Distinguishing expressive from non-expressive products in some contexts might be hard, but the Tenth Circuit agreed that Smithā€™s product does not present a hard case,” the brief says. “Yet that court (and Colorado) declined to recognize any exemption for products constituting speech. The Tenth Circuit has effectively recognized a state interest in subjecting the creation of speech itself to antidiscrimination laws.”

Oral arguments in the case aren’t yet set, but may be announced soon. Set to defend the state of Colorado and enforcement of its non-discrimination law in the case is Colorado Solicitor General Eric Reuel Olson. Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would grant the request to the U.S. solicitor general to present arguments before the justices on behalf of the Biden administration.

With a 6-3 conservative majority on the court that has recently scrapped the super-precedent guaranteeing the right to abortion, supporters of LGBTQ rights may think the outcome of the case is all but lost, especially amid widespread fears same-sex marriage would be next on the chopping block. After the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against 303 Creative in the lawsuit, the simple action by the Supreme Court to grant review in the lawsuit suggests they are primed to issue a reversal and rule in favor of the company.

Pizer, acknowledging the call to action issued by LGBTQ groups in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, conceded the current Supreme Court issuing the ruling in this case is “a terrifying prospect,” but cautioned the issue isn’t so much the makeup of the court but whether or not justices will continue down the path of abolishing case law.

“I think the question that we’re facing with respect to all of the cases or at least many of the cases that are in front of the court right now, is whether this court is going to continue on this radical sort of wrecking ball to the edifice of settled law and seemingly a goal of setting up whole new structures of what our basic legal principles are going to be. Are we going to have another term of that?” Pizer said. “And if so, that’s terrifying.”

Continue Reading

homepage news

Kelley Robinson, a Black, queer woman, named president of Human Rights Campaign

Progressive activist a veteran of Planned Parenthood Action Fund

Published

on

Kelley Robinson (Screen capture via HRC YouTube)

Kelley Robinson, a Black, queer woman and veteran of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, is to become the next president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s leading LGBTQ group announced on Tuesday.

Robinson is set to become the ninth president of the Human Rights Campaign after having served as executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Fund and more than 12 years of experience as a leader in the progressive movement. She’ll be the first Black, queer woman to serve in that role.

ā€œIā€™m honored and ready to lead HRC ā€” and our more than three million member-advocates ā€” as we continue working to achieve equality and liberation for all Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer people,ā€ Robinson said. ā€œThis is a pivotal moment in our movement for equality for LGBTQ+ people. We, particularly our trans and BIPOC communities, are quite literally in the fight for our lives and facing unprecedented threats that seek to destroy us.”

Kelley Robinson IS NAMED as The next human rights Campaign president

The next Human Rights Campaign president is named as Democrats are performing well in polls in the mid-term elections after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving an opening for the LGBTQ group to play a key role amid fears LGBTQ rights are next on the chopping block.

“The overturning of Roe v. Wade reminds us we are just one Supreme Court decision away from losing fundamental freedoms including the freedom to marry, voting rights, and privacy,” Robinson said. “We are facing a generational opportunity to rise to these challenges and create real, sustainable change. I believe that working together this change is possible right now. This next chapter of the Human Rights Campaign is about getting to freedom and liberation without any exceptions ā€” and today I am making a promise and commitment to carry this work forward.ā€

The Human Rights Campaign announces its next president after a nearly year-long search process after the board of directors terminated its former president Alphonso David when he was ensnared in the sexual misconduct scandal that led former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign. David has denied wrongdoing and filed a lawsuit against the LGBTQ group alleging racial discrimination.

Kelley Robinson, Planned Parenthood, Cathy Chu, SMYAL, Supporting and Mentoring Youth Advocates and Leaders, Amy Nelson, Whitman-Walker Health, Sheroes of the Movement, Mayor's office of GLBT Affairs, gay news, Washington Blade
Kelley Robinson, seen here with Cathy Chu of SMYAL and Amy Nelson of Whitman-Walker Health, is the next Human Rights Campaign president. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Continue Reading
Advertisement
Advertisement

Sign Up for Weekly E-Blast

Follow Us @washblade

Advertisement

Popular