homepage news
Pride protest ignites stormy debate in D.C.’s LGBT community
Accounts differ wildly in assessment of No Justice No Pride actions
The actions of protest group No Justice No Pride, members of whom formed a blockade Saturday evening that required the Capital Pride Parade to be rerouted and delayed by more than an hour, have inspired a wide range of strong reaction from parade participants, long-time D.C.-area LGBT activists, Capital Pride officials, observers and others.
Social media was ablaze Saturday and throughout the weekend with some saying the group, a self-described ad-hoc coalition of activists that “seeks to end the LGBT movement’s complicity in systems of oppression that harm LGBTQ2S (i.e. queer/two-spirit) communities,” ended up doing little more than angering and alienating people who should be their allies while others said the loudest denunciations seemed to come from cis, white, gay men who were mad because their party got delayed.
“I think their parade interruption was ill advised,” said Lane Hudson, a longtime, D.C.-based gay activist. “From what I know about Capital Pride, they are very open minded and welcoming. To suggest otherwise is simply not true. If there is a lack of LGBT, queer and two-spirit involvement, it’s because of a choice (by those folks) not to get involved in Capital Pride. … It’s about who shows up.”
SaVanna Wanzer, a Capital Pride board member, trans woman of color and founder of Transgender Pride (an official Capital Pride event), agrees.
“When we have our (Trans Pride) organizational meetings, it’s the same six people who show up every year along with the executive producer and producer of Capital Pride,” Wanzer said. “I don’t know if any of the protestors have any desire to volunteer with Capital Pride or not, but we’d love to have more trans people of color on the board.”
On Saturday, June 10 about 3:30 p.m., a couple hundred No Justice No Pride protesters held a march of their own on the Capital Pride Parade route walking together while pop songs blasted from a loudspeaker and participants chanted anti-corporate slogans. Later another group joined hands with a chain-like material on P Street between 15th and 16th streets, N.W. in the planned route of the parade. Ten protesters formed a chain, chanting slogans and clashing vehemently with bystanders. Eyewitnesses said they saw no violence erupt though some No Justice protesters say they were kicked and spit on.
The parade was significantly delayed and eventually was rerouted. There was a strong presence of D.C. Metro Police at the site of the protest. No arrests were made.
No Justice No Pride members distributed pink sheets in which they demanded that Capital Pride add more trans women of color to leadership positions, more stringently vet which corporate sponsors are allowed to give money to Capital Pride, prevent uniformed police officers and military personnel from participating in the parade because of fraught histories with these groups and LGBT people and many other issues. A full list of their demands can be found at nojusticenopride.org.
The group found supporters among the D.C.-area LGBT establishment.
“It does seem to be predominantly the cisgender, white gay men who are the most upset these people weren’t dragged away and arrested,” said one long-time local black lesbian activist who is not allowed to speak on the record because of her job. “But D.C. has a long history of allowing protesters to exercise their First Amendment rights. We’re not going to drag people from the street so you can continue to party. That’s ridiculous. This is a backlash against the white gay men from Logan Circle. Did they want this to turn into the next Ferguson? Think a little bit about the pros and cons and check your privilege at the door.”
Others, though, say the No Justice protesters had no interest in having their concerns addressed in a reasonable way and refused to back down. A pre-Pride meeting at National City Christian Church on May 8 was heated on both sides. No Justice No Pride plans a “debrief and forum” on Friday, June 23. Look for the group on Facebook for details.
“There are people out there who are never going to be satisfied, 100 percent no matter what you do,” Wanzer said. “They’re always going to have a complaint, they’re always going to have something to say. They say they’re protesting for the rights of trans people of color, but not all the local trans people of color are on the same page with them. We don’t need them to protest or speak out on our behalf. What they did was inappropriate because it took away from the enjoyment and the feel of Pride. If anything it backfired in a way because it made those of us in Capital Pride more unified.”
Others say the protesters have several good points but did themselves more harm than good with their tactics.
“It remains to be seen if tactics like disrupting Pride parades engage or alienate the community and allies,” said Dave Kolesar, a local white gay man. “And with regard to corporate sponsorships of Pride, there was a time not that long ago when finding corporations to sponsor events was nearly impossible as a conservative backlash would inevitably follow. So while it is always a legitimate concern to be able to strike the right balance between corporate and grassroots involvement, I would be cautious about pushing corporations away.”
Hudson agrees.
“Most of the corporations they are targeting have 100 percent ratings on the (Human Rights Campaign) Corporate Equality Index. While intersectionality is much needed, it cannot always require purity. Life, including activism, is a set of choices. Progress isn’t always perfect and it can always be built upon.”
Others say the No Justice No Pride protesters don’t understand the long and tangled history the D.C. LGBT community has with some of the groups they targeted. Cathy Renna, a longtime activist who spoke on behalf of Capital Pride this week, says she knows of trans folks who worked for defense contractors Northrop Grumman, one of the groups No Justice said was not an appropriate Pride sponsor, when they couldn’t continue their military service with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” still in effect.
And to tell military and police they weren’t welcome at the parade, Renna says, was unrealistic.
“I think there was a good faith effort during and after the community forum to try and address some of these concerns, particularly with the police contingent but Capital Pride was not going to exclude them because they did not want to exclude any groups,” Renna said. “Most people understand the Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit has a long history working with our local community and anytime you have a crowd of any size like that in D.C., there’s going to be a sizable police presence.”
“I have a lot of mixed feelings,” said Ruby Corado, a long-time D.C.-based trans activist who runs Casa Ruby, a local LGBT community center. “While I acknowledge that some of their issues are valid and I think there’s value to what the group is saying, I struggle with how they’re doing things. … I really do think shutting down the parade for three hours was a little bit too much, I really do, because there were a lot of people there, lots of trans and queer people of color, who’d worked really hard and were there to celebrate. Yes, sure, do hold Capital Pride accountable, but everyone needs to be held accountable, not just Capital Pride.”
Yet accounts of exactly what happened, how the protest was handled and who exactly was behind it differ based on whom you ask. Several local trans residents declined Blade requests for comment for fear of angering No Justice protesters.
Renna spotted a group of about 50-75 people carrying a tri-colored banner that said “No Justice No Pride — Queer & Trans Resistance” on Friday on 14th Street, N.W. and said it appeared to be a significantly different group than those who protested at the parade. Emmelia Talarico, a No Justice No Pride senior organizer said she had no knowledge of who that group was.
“As far as I know, that didn’t happen,” Talarico, a trans woman, said. “If some folks did that, they did not meet with us as representatives of No Justice No Pride.”
Talarico also denied other rumors circulating this week that some of the protesters at the Saturday parade were paid. She said the reality was quite the opposite.
“That’s not at all true,” she said. “We did pay for about six or seven people, black trans women, to perform at the healing space we had but that was because we felt that they deserved to be paid for their work like anyone else would be. No one who was in the blockades who took action in the street were paid. Some of us even emptied our bank accounts to make this happen.”
She also said assertions by some that the No Justice folks were far-left radicals who are out to destroy Pride in D.C. and in other cities is wildly inaccurate.
“We don’t want to destroy Pride, we want to make it better,” Talarico said. “It’s not about destroying Pride, it’s about making it into something that’s more representative of all of us and honors those of us who are struggling at the margins. A lot of this is coming from fissures that have been boiling beneath the surface for decades. The reason people are reacting so strongly is because we’re forcing them to see it for the first time in a long time.”
Accounts also vary as to how much dialogue happened in previous years about some of these issues and whether concerns were brushed aside and if Capital Pride was given a reasonable amount of time to address their concerns this year.
“I can honestly say that we as a team, and I’m speaking as a board member of Capital Pride, we are working as a team to better all or at least most of the issues they’re protesting,” Wanzer said. “But it can’t be done overnight. It’s an ongoing effort and we are taking steps and working on it.”
Wanzer said she finds it interesting that No Justice seemed to have no issue with Transgender Pride this year.
“The fact that there even is a Transgender Pride doesn’t fit their narrative, so they just ignored that,” she said.
Sgt. Brett Parson of D.C. Metro Police, a long-time spokesperson for the department, said no arrests were made because “it was a peaceful event,” he wrote in an e-mail to the Blade.
“As long as a First Amendment assembly is peaceful, MPD makes every effort to facilitate that expression of rights while also ensuring the safety and security of the community,” he said.
Talarico said that’s not true.
“I was not surprised but I was very disappointed at the way several folks, mostly cis, white gay men, were treating the activists,” she said. “We had bottles chucked at us, trash dumped on us, I got punched, shoved, kicked and spit at. We brought our own de-escalators. We came peacefully and with people trained to make sure this would be a non-violent protest.”
In a post-parade official statement, Capital Pride organizers said they were “troubled by reports that some onlookers responded to the protesters with verbal and physical harassment.”
There’s also confusion as to the degree to which GetEQUAL, an advocacy group that fights for LGBT issues “through confrontational but non-violent direct action” is intertwined with No Justice No Pride. GetEQUAL Director Angela Peoples has been active with No Justice. Talarico said the two groups have been working together.
“We really respect them and love working with them,” Talarico said. “I definitely commend them for all the help they gave us. I would say they are a very good group.”
But as to rumors GetEQUAL may be behind similar protests in other cities, Talarico said she had no knowledge of such actions. Peoples did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We are aware of actions that have happened in Tel Aviv, in Boston, Pittsburgh and we know that there are actions being planned in Philadelphia, New York, somewhere in Washington and in San Francisco. Some of those folks have been reaching out to us asking for tips, advice and support.”
Talarico said she is unaware of any single group spearheading the efforts, though.
“Some of the narrative we’ve been pushing seems to be resonating with people across the country on their own issues and I think a lot of the grievances are shared,” she said. “A lot of these Prides have a lot of corporations that are trying to exploit trans and queer youth and a lot of those grievances are shared. I would like to see a lot of these cities work tightly with their local communities that are under attack and address their own grievances.”
Another recurring theme in some of the No Justice criticism is that the group has lost sight of who the real enemy is. Renna, a longtime activist who formerly worked with GLAAD and was around during the ACT UP AIDS protests in the ‘80s, says she’s never seen the LGBT community at this level of internal conflict before.
“We’ve certainly had disagreement in terms of tactics, but it’s just a bit heartbreaking to feel like people are now attacking other people personally and that has not happened in the past. There’s been such a complete lack of any benefit of the doubt or any sense of community negotiation that both sides understand in terms of the bigger picture and trying to do things realistically. Some of these demands are so overreaching and just not true.”
Deacon Maccubbin, who started Capital Pride in D.C. in 1975, said No Justice’s actions show ignorance of Pride history and are a disservice to the trans and LGBT people of color who enjoy the parade annually.
“There were so many disappointed people at the parade,” he wrote in an online post to a GetEQUAL social media comment that he gave the Blade permission to reprint. “There were kids of all colors and gender expressions who practiced for weeks to make their contingents, their dance routines, their signs and placards be something they could be proud of. Shame on you. There were huge numbers of people of color, joy visible on their faces, their voices strong and proud. … You stomped on their day of celebration. You had no consideration for what they may have gone through to be there and what sacrifices they may have made just to survive until 2017. … Today’s action was a total fail. There was nothing to be proud of in it.”
Capital Pride organizers said they will continue to “encourage a robust, civil and healthy conversation within the community about all of the issues that impact us … in the days, weeks and months ahead.”
The Blade’s Michael Key and Lou Chibbaro Jr. contributed to this report.
homepage news
Honoring the legacy of New Orleans’ 1973 UpStairs Lounge fire
Why the arson attack that killed 32 gay men still resonates 50 years later
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 Orleans’ 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, “United We Stand” by the Brotherhood of Man.
“United we stand,” the men would sing together, “divided we fall” — the words epitomizing the ethos of their beloved UpStairs Lounge bar, an egalitarian free space that served as a forerunner to today’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 — 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: “Some thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar.”
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 “help our bereaved brothers and sisters” — and shatter officialdom’s code of silence.
Perry broke local taboos by holding a press conference as an openly gay man. “It’s high time that you people, in New Orleans, Louisiana, got the message and joined the rest of the Union,” 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.
“This fire had very little to do with the gay movement or with anything gay,” Esteve told a reporter from The Philadelphia Inquirer. “I do not want my bar or this tragedy to be used to further any of their causes.”
Conspicuously, no photos of Esteve appeared in coverage of the UpStairs Lounge fire or its aftermath — and the bar owner also remained silent as he witnessed police looting the ashes of his business.
“Phil said the cash register, juke box, cigarette machine and some wallets had money removed,” recounted Esteve’s friend Bob McAnear, a former U.S. Customs officer. “Phil wouldn’t report it because, if he did, police would never allow him to operate a bar in New Orleans again.”
The next day, gay bar owners, incensed at declining gay bar traffic amid an atmosphere of anxiety, confronted Perry at a clandestine meeting. “How dare you hold your damn news conferences!” 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. “Reverend Troy Perry awoke several sleeping giants, me being one of them,” recalled Charlene Schneider, a lesbian activist who walked out of that front door with Perry.
Esteve doubted the UpStairs Lounge story’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 — some with visible burn scars — gathered but were discouraged from singing “United We Stand.”
New Orleans cops neglected to question the chief arson suspect and closed the investigation without answers in late August 1973. Gay elites in the city’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, “Where are the gay activists in New Orleans?,” Esteve responded that there were none, because none were needed. “We don’t feel we’re discriminated against,” Esteve said. “New Orleans gays are different from gays anywhere else… Perhaps there is some correlation between the amount of gay activism in other cities and the degree of police harassment.”
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 — with the exception of a few sanctuaries for gay political debate such as the local lesbian bar Charlene’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: “A tragedy that, as far as I know, no good came of.”
Finally, in 1991, at Stewart Butler and Charlene Schneider’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 — more than 18 years after the fire.
“I believe the fire was the catalyst for the anger to bring us all to the table,” Schneider told The Times-Picayune, a tacit rebuke to Esteve’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. What’s left is an enduring story that refused to go gently. The story now echoes around the world — 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 past’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 — and how, 50 years onward, it became known internationally — 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 — in the spirit of voices who once gathered ‘round a white baby grand piano and sang, joyfully and loudly, “United We Stand.”
Robert W. Fieseler is a New Orleans-based journalist and the author of “Tinderbox: the Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation.”
homepage news
New Supreme Court term includes critical LGBTQ case with ‘terrifying’ consequences
Business owner seeks to decline services for same-sex weddings
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 — 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 — whether or not either party is personally aggrieved and able bring to a lawsuit — 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. Colorado’s own cases agree that the government may not use public-accommodation laws to affect a commercial actor’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 Smith’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.”
homepage news
Kelley Robinson, a Black, queer woman, named president of Human Rights Campaign
Progressive activist a veteran of Planned Parenthood Action Fund
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.
“I’m honored and ready to lead HRC — and our more than three million member-advocates — as we continue working to achieve equality and liberation for all Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer people,” Robinson said. “This 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.”
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 — and today I am making a promise and commitment to carry this work forward.”
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.
-
a&e features5 days ago
Full-spectrum funny: an interview with Randy Rainbow
-
The White House5 days ago
Karine Jean-Pierre becomes Biden’s fourth openly LGBTQ senior adviser
-
Nigeria3 days ago
Gay couple beaten, paraded in public in Nigeria
-
Israel4 days ago
Murdered Israeli hostage’s cousin describes family’s pain