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In Dem primary, HIV criminalization remains an orphan issue

Clinton, Sanders silent, despite calls from Iowa advocates

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Hillary Clinton, Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders, gay news, Washington Blade

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders have remained silent on HIV criminalization laws. (Washington Blade photo of Clinton by Damien Salas; Blade photo of Sanders by Michael Key)

DES MOINES, Iowa ā€” As the Democratic primary heats up, Hillary Clinton and Bernard Sanders are seeking to gain traction by expressing support for LGBT rights ā€” and to some extent by vowing to combat HIV/AIDS. But one related issue that remains untouched by either candidate is HIV criminalization laws.

In 32 states, there are laws criminalizing perceived exposure to HIV, regardless of the actual risk of transmission, andĀ 13 states have laws criminalizing certain acts ā€” like spitting ā€” by people with HIV/AIDS, even though they can’t transmit the disease through saliva. These laws have resulted in lengthy jail sentences for people with HIV, and in some cases forced those convicted ontoĀ the sex offender registry.

The silence of the presidential candidates on HIV decriminalization was particularly salient during the first primary contest in Iowa, where state LGBT and HIV advocates just recently succeeded in reforming one of the more draconian laws in the country.

In 2014, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, signed into law a reformation of the state’s HIV criminalization law after both chambers of the state legislature ā€” one controlled by Democrats, the other by Republicans ā€” approvedĀ the measure by unanimous votes.

Tami Haught, an Iowa-based HIV advocate who’s been living with the disease for 22 years, was instrumentalĀ in pushing for reform in the five years leading up to the signing of the law.

“You have to believe that they thought that these laws would prevent the spread of HIV and were good policy,” Haught said. “Since then, we have found out they are not and it just further stigmatizes and discriminates HIV. You might think it’s statewide discrimination against people living HIV.”

Under the old law, enacted in 1998 and known as 709c, any nondisclosure of being HIV positive before sex was punishable with up to 25 years in prison and designation on the sex offender registry – even if the person with HIV practiced safe sex, was undetectable and didn’t transmit the disease.

The new law, known in legislative form as Senate File 2297, replaced that with a four-tiered sentencing system taking into account intent and transmission. The first-tier is intent to transmit and success in transmission; the second-tier is transmission with reckless disregard; the third-tier is intent without transmission; and the fourth tier is non-transmission with reckless disregard. Additionally, the new law also eliminates designation on the sex offender registry. It also is no longer HIV-specific and includes tuberculosis and Hepatitis C.

Donna Red Wing, executive director the LGBT group One Iowa, recalled Branstad was compelled to sign the legislation because it passed on a bipartisan basis, but noted he looked uncomfortable at the signing ceremony.

“We had every Republican in the House and Senate signed on,” Red Wing said. “He had to [sign it]. It was bulletproof. So were we surprised? No. We were there. He didn’t look happy. He was surrounded by queers and people with HIV and had to sign it.”

The old system resulted in a number of harrowing stories out of Iowa. One woman in Sioux City with HIV, Leslie Flaggs, was in an abusive relationship with a man who committed domestic violence against her and threatened to inform authorities about her status if she ever contacted the police.

She never called the police when he was beating her up, but one day in 2007 the neighbors did. After he was arrested, two weeks later she was charged under 709c with failing to disclose her status, even though the couple had been together for three years and he was aware she was HIV positive. Flaggs received a 25-year suspended sentence, four years probation and a decade on the sex offender registry.

Haught said Flaggs was removed from sex offender list in Iowa because the reform law was retroactive, but she remains on the list in South Dakota, where she has worked. They’re still looking for an attorney to take her case to remove her from the South Dakota registry.

Although the HIV criminalization law in Iowa is now relaxed, HIV advocates in the state continue on their path to eliminate criminalization entirely.

Haught said many people feel there shouldn’t be a law on the books in Iowa at all, but the bill that was agreed to was the best that could happen given the political realities.

“I don’t know how to get that point and if we’ll ever get there,” Haught said. “HIV should not be treated differently than sexually transmitted and communicable diseases. It would be nice. But I don’t know if we’ll see it in my lifetime.”

Keenan Crow, deputy director of One Iowa, said a “light push” is underway to repeal the law entirely, but admitted it’s “taking a back seat” to other efforts.

“I think kind of everyone’s goal in this coalition is just complete repeal, and we ended up having to compromise in order to get that unanimous vote and finally get this through, but it’s a vast, vast improvement over what we had before,” Crow said. “People had their lives back, people were able to get their jobs back in many instances because they were retroactively removed from the sex offender registry, which they have had to be on for the rest of their lives had this not passed.”

In the aftermath of reform of the law in Iowa, advocates in that state have taken their efforts to the national level. As the presidential candidates came to Iowa, they’ve encouraged the 2016 hopefuls to express support for reversing HIV criminalization in other states.

So far, the only candidate who expressed a position on the issue is one that has now dropped out of the race: Martin O’Malley. The former Maryland governor included a call for repeal of HIV criminalization laws in an October speech at the Iowa Spirit Awards.

O’Malley called for “pushing states to repeal laws that criminalize people with HIV ā€” because these laws are inconsistent with science, and they are harmful to public safety and public health.”

Haught said O’Malley included that line in his speech after her staff met with him in Iowa to inform him about the nature of HIV criminalization statutes.

“So he was able to look into it more and that was when he at that conference was the first toĀ call for these [laws] to be repealed,” Haught said.

Meanwhile, Clinton and Sanders haven’t explicitly articulated a position on the issue of HIV criminalization laws. In her proposed LGBT policy platform, Clinton vows to secure affordable treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS by calling on governors to expand Medicaid, capping out-of-pocket drug expenses to $250 a month and expanding use of HIV prevention medication, but she makes no mention of criminalization laws.

The Clinton and Sanders campaigns didn’t respond to numerous requests from the Washington Blade over the course of this week to comment on their candidates’ positions on HIV criminalization laws.

Haught said HIV advocates have tried through Twitter and other means to get Sanders and Clinton to comment on the issue, but thus far to no avail.

“They haven’t announced a plan of policy yet, but we are still working on it,” Haught said. “We hope to get both of them to call for the repeal or modernization of these HIV criminalization laws.”

Based on the hesitation he encountered in Iowa ā€” even within the LGBT community ā€” over reforming the HIV criminalization law, Crow understands why presidential candidates wouldn’t want to articulate a position on this issue.

“I don’t think that lends itself to a national campaign strategy so much because it’s not something you can condense into a single sentence and make it sound really sexy,” Crow said.

To counter the idea HIV criminalization laws have justification, Crow said they stigmatize HIV, which no longer carries a death sentence, by treating it differently than other diseases and in a way that doesn’t reflect science. Crow also said the laws have the effect of discouraging people from getting tested for HIV.

“In our opinion, as far as protection goes, people are responsible for themselves,” Crow said. “It’s the other person’s responsibility to protect themselves. The government does not need to be in there.”

Sean Strub, an Iowa native and director of the Sero Project, which combats HIV stigmatization, said he wants to “hear from the Clinton and Sanders campaigns on the topic,” but thinks there’s a greater problem about misunderstanding about the laws.

“I don’t think the centrality of criminalization reform to HIV prevention is understood,” Strub said. “As an issue, it tends to get more lip service, rather than substantive action and resources, from many key HIV prevention policy players in the epidemic.”

Although these laws are at the state level, efforts are underway at the federal level to challenge them. Legislation introduced in both houses of Congress known as the REPEAL HIV Discrimination Act would require an interagency review of federal and state laws that criminalize certain actions by people living with HIV.

In the House, the bill is H.R. 1586 and was introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), co-chair of the Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus. In the Senate, the bill is S.2336 and is being led by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.).

Lee said in a statement to the Washington Blade she would like to hear all candidates running for president to call for an end ofĀ laws criminalizing HIV.

ā€œHIV criminalization laws continue to discriminate against thousands of Americans,” Lee said. “I hope that as the 2016 campaign continues, all of the candidates will publicly support our work to repeal these discriminatory laws that only serve to create stigma.”

The New York-based Gay Men’s Health Crisis made public last month a wide-ranging questionnaire on HIV/AIDS and LGBT issues, saying only three Democratic candidates in the race at that time chose to respond. No question on the survey was on HIV criminalization (O’Malley volunteered his position in response to a question on the ban on gay blood donations).

Anthony Hayes, a Gay Men’s Health Crisis spokesperson, said the questionnaire was focused on the National HIV Strategy and won’t be the last inquiry from the organization to the candidates. A question on HIV criminalization might be part of a later effort, Hayes said.

If the Democratic candidates were to express support for HIV decriminalization, Haught said those words wouldĀ have a significant impact at both state and federal efforts to reform the laws.

“Any time we can get anyone with prominence in the news cycle to call for [repeal of these laws, it helps a little bit so that, hopefully, we’ll make other legislators look at it,” Haught said.

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

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

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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€

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

Business owner seeks to decline services for same-sex weddings

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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.”

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

Progressive activist a veteran of Planned Parenthood Action Fund

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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)
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