Q-Seattle Events: Tacky Tourist Clubs

Since we don't often get comments here [sob], we can't be sure what readers want, but we figured we'd reintroduce something that we tried before, but with a more exclusive Northwest focus. These are items we wrangle from the web and post first to our Squidoo Gay Seattle page.

It seemed like it might be worth it as a test to occasionally post them here as well.

Ex-state senator, gay rights foe dies
Wouldn't talk to his lesbian daughter, but loved hunters, bridges, and -- of course -- the bible.
Mystery novel features Capitol Hill gay couple in a paranormal Seattle
What you might get into if you yearn for an old mansion.
Reality show star charged in Seattle assault
Keeps his tabloid career alive for another five minutes with anti-gay and racial slurs.
Oregon teens 'Free to Be' at alternative LGBT prom
Coming out on the town in the Portland suburbs.
Opponents aim to put Oregon gay rights to vote
It will -- at least -- probably delay the January implementation of domestic partnerships.
Outsider aces local candidates in election of Episcopal bishop
New bishop at St. Mark's will have to deal with local fallout of the anti-gay Anglican schism.

Labels: news bites, oregon, Washington

Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongkoski appeared delighted Wednesday (see video below) as he signed into law a bill that protects LGBT citizens of that state from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.

An analysis by the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force shows that 52% of the US population will be protected by state anti-bias laws when the Oregon measure and similar bills in three other states take effect.

Since Jan. 1, 2007, the legislatures in four states -- an all-time high -- have passed nondiscrimination laws. Three of those states -- Iowa, Oregon and Colorado -- moved to extend protections to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and the Vermont Legislature passed a bill amending its existing nondiscrimination laws to include transgender people. As a result, the percentage of the U.S. population living in jurisdictions protecting lesbian, gay and bisexual people from discrimination will rise to 52 percent, crossing the halfway mark for the first time. The laws of Iowa, Oregon and Vermont prohibit discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations, among other categories; Colorado?s law covers employment only.

Kulongoski had a special reason to be pleased with the measure he signed this week because he had co-sponsored a bill in the 1975 legislature that would have added sexual orientation to Oregon's civil-rights law. As happened here in Washington where a similar anti-discrimination bill passed in 2006, the anti-bias bill rattled around in the Oregon legislature for decades before its final passage.

When the anti-bias law takes effect there in January, 2008 Oregon will join Washington and California in granting broad protections from discrimination. In a story that offers further analysis of the NGLTF date, the Ohio gay paper Gay People's Chronicle points out that the anti-bias laws fall into clusters

State laws group in four geographical areas: the Northeast including all of New England with New York, New Jersey and Maryland; the three West Coast states plus Nevada and Hawaii; a Midwest cluster with Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa; and pair of mountain neighbors, Colorado and New Mexico.

Oregonian video via QPDX blog.

Labels: equal rights, LGBTQ, oregon

The Oregon Legislature passed a civil unions domestic partnership law this week that would grant to same-sex couples in the state virtually all of the state-granted benefits of marriage. The name was a subject of some controversy in the state (more on that later), but passage of the bill was greeted with warm fuzzies at the statehouse in Salem.

Advocates on the Senate floor cast HB 2007 in grand terms. Sen. Vicki Walker, D-Eugene, called the bill's passage "of historic significance as we make a giant leap forward for fairness."

Sen. Frank Morse of Albany, one of two Republicans to back the bill, said the day's vote would "define the heart of Oregon." Sen. Ben Westlund, D-Bend, said the Legislature's willingness to extend domestic partnership benefits represented a measure of its political will and courage. [Register-Guard]

Aisling Coghlan, interim executive director of Basic Rights Oregon (BRO) -- the activist group that served as primary lobbyist for the legislation, called the final legislative vote "a moral call that both the Senate and House have strongly answered and the Governor has pledged to meet."

Oregonians know too well the value of being able to protect our families--and this bill directly reflects that deeply held pro-family belief. Basic Rights Oregon applauds the Senators who voted in favor of basic fairness for all Oregon families, a value very much in step with the majority of Oregonians.

Oregon's law appears to deserve the strong words because, whatever its name, it appears to be indistinguishable from what are called civil unions in Vermont, other New England states, and New Jersey. It comes closer than either Washington's or California's limited domestic partnership laws to granting same-sex couples the full state-granted rights and obligations of marriage. (Like every other such law and even like marriages in Massachusetts, it cannot grant the many federal benefits of marriage to same-sex couples.)

The Oregonian explained the bill in a Q&A sidebar:

Q: What's a domestic partnership?
A: Domestic partnership, under the new Oregon law, is a legal contract recognizing the union of gay and lesbian couples. It grants them any "privilege, immunity, right or benefit" given to married couples in Oregon.
Q: How does a domestic partnership differ from a civil union?
A: There's no legal difference. Some states have chosen to call the same-sex contract a civil union; others, a domestic partnership.

Oregon couples would apply for a partnership certificate at a county clerk's office -- the same place marriage licenses are dispensed. (In contrast, Washington's DP certificates will be dispensed through the secretary of state's office and not through county courthouses.)

Adopting the name "domestic partnership" rather than "civil union" was controversial. A editorial in one of Portland's weeklies designated BRO and the bill's prime sponsor "Rogue of the Week" for accepting the change of terminology.

Five weeks ago, HB 2007 was a civil unions bill. But last week Kotek amended the bill to use the more poll-proven domestic partnership, borrowing a phrase from our neighbors to the south (California) and north (Washington passed it last week). New Jersey, Connecticut and Vermont call their same-sex couples civil unions.

"No matter what we call it, the reality is that we are getting a package of rights we've never had before,'' says Aisling Coghlan, BRO's interim executive director. "It's a historic victory that will change the lives of thousands of Oregon families."

Rebekah Orr, communications director for the House Democratic Majority, strongly agrees that the name change doesn't matter since the bill's effect remains the same and that name-change critics totally miss the point. At the same time, Orr, a former communications director for BRO, and others insist HB 2007 would have passed the Legislature if it carried the original civil-unions label.

Many took exception to the "Rogue" designation since its something Willamette Week usually reserves for people and groups that the paper's readers more clearly identify as scoundrels, but the name change still disappointed some.

The Oregonian Q&A offered one of the official explanations:

Q: The original Oregon bill called for civil unions. Why the shift in wording to domestic partnership in the legislation that passed?
A: Proponents opted for West Coast consistency (Washington and California have domestic partnership laws). They also decided that the term "domestic partnership," which is older, would be more familiar to Oregonians and more likely to win political support.

[For our part, we're all for "West Coast consistency". After all, most of us can pronounce the r's in "partner" which could be more of a problem in New England.]

The framers of the bill also omitted from the measure permission for religious folk to solemnize a partnership. With the changes, one major right-wing group in Oregon was willing to accept the law without promising an immediate ballot referendum to repeal it:

Nick Graham, spokesman for the conservative religious group the Oregon Family Council, said, "We have no plans at this point to run a referendum on HB 2007."

The group successfully pushed the 2004 gay marriage ban and lobbied against the 2005 civil unions bill.

Graham said his organization remained opposed to the bill, but wasn't planning to petition for a statewide vote because lawmakers provided opponents an opportunity to speak out against it and it differed from the 2005 version enough to soften some concerns. For instance, a minister cannot solemnize a domestic partnership, which was allowed under the civil unions bill. [Register-Guard]

Now, let's hope California's Supremes give Schwarzenegger cover to sign the same-sex marriage bill there and then we could really get to work on some West Coast consistency.

Labels: marriage equality, oregon, politics

Crosscut, David Brewster's new online newspaper for the Northwest run largely by Seattle Weekly alumni, has -- and this is remarkable -- used the word "gay" in a headline today, "Young gay-rights opponents get vocal in Oregon". That's news in itself, but more interesting is the story under the headline.

Those young gay-rights opponents were mostly from Russian-language (Russophone) churches in Oregon. They provide a link that helps explain the reasons for the recent visits to Riga, Latvia by Redmond's Ken Hutcherson and Oregon haulocaust revisionist Scott Lively. [See our previous posts on the visit and Latvia.]

The Oregonian reported on the Russophone anti-gay rally:

Twice in the past two weeks, hundreds of Russian-speaking Christians from Portland and Salem flocked to the state Capitol to protest efforts to bolster gay rights. They arrived by the busload, jamming hearing rooms, singing hymns under the rotunda and providing testimony.

The protests were organized in only a few days by Russian-speakers calling themselves The Voice of Oregon Youth. They pulled it off by using laptops, e-mail and phone calls to the tight network of Russian and Ukrainian churches in the area. Legislators estimated about 1,000 people showed up for a public hearing April 9, with 662 signing up to testify.

"We just went for it, no stopping," said Anna Zaichenko, 19, of Salem, a rally organizer. "I saw how passionate a lot of people became."

In February, months before the protests in Salem, Lively celebrated the activism of the Russophone youth, according to Willamette Week:

In front of about 30 people gathered recently in a Salem church sanctuary to celebrate the reunion of the Oregon Citizens Alliance, Scott Lively found cause for optimism about the rebirth of the anti-gay group.

Lively's reason to believe the OCA could return from dormancy to its glory days of the early 1990s, when it claimed to have more than 3,400 members and earned national notice for getting anti-gay measures on the state ballot, are immigrants from the former Soviet Union who haven't yet been indoctrinated by American culture.

[WWeek traced OCA history in 1998.]

While they were in Latvia, Lively and Hutcherson were guests of Alexei Ledyaev, a Russophone preacher in Riga. Lively showed a video at the February OCA-revival meeting that featured Ledyaev, according to Willamette Week:

The 45-minute video, which repeatedly refers to homosexuals as "terrorists," shows how conservative Latvians successfully stopped gays from marching [*] in their capital, Riga. (European news reports show anti-gay demonstrators throwing feces on the gays.)

The video also features Alexei Ledyaev -- a Kazakhstan-born Baptist pastor and leader of the New Generation Church, whose satellite broadcasts claim an audience of more than 200 million people -- leading large crowds in chants of "In the name of Jesus Christ, we curse the name of homosexuality!"

As OCA members cheered the video and chanted, "Amen," I tried not to laugh out loud at the one-sided images, which portrayed gay men as leather-clad deviants, whipping and licking one another in public.

Lively told the OCA-revival crowd in February, "There is a fairly sizable Russian population in Portland who is not poisoned to the OCA. That's a good place to start. They weren't poisoned by the sexual revolution."

Hutcherson had already started to draw Russophone churches in the Seattle area into his orbit, appealing for their help with his pro-discrimination Initiative 963.

Crosscut links to an LA Times story that focuses on the large and largely anti-gay Russophone emigre population in Sacramento.

Many credit the Slavic Christian immigrant community with filling a void left by the traditional American church and providing reinforcements in the ongoing culture wars over what should define family, acceptable sexual relationships and marriage.

"Russian Christians bring a fresh faith and uncorrupted family values to this country. They are a shining model for the rest of us in terms of faith, family, work ethic, patriotism and community," said Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families.

Gay civil rights activists, meanwhile, accuse the demonstrators of hateful and aggressive tactics that they say sometimes lean dangerously toward violence.

There are plenty of preachers and other discrimination activists out there who hope to tie their own agendas to the energy of the young emigres. Hutcherson and Lively helped endear themselves by making sure that discrimination is a two-way street through their visits to Latvia.

* [A Latvian court recently ruled that it was illegal for the Riga city council to deny a parade permit in 2006 to the organizers of a gay pride event.]

Labels: I-963, ken hutcherson, latvia, oregon, politics, religion, Washington

Hey, now, this is a great way for an activist group to use new technology.

Basic Rights Oregon (BRO), which is roughly comparable to ERW here (but has a much better acronym) is currently live-blogging from the statehouse in Salem on the debate on two gay rights measures. HB2007 would establish domestic partnerships in Oregon. It has passed the House and now heads to the Senate. SB2 is a non-discrimination bill similar to the one passed last year by the Washington legislature. Like the anti-bias bill here, SB 2 has a long history of being introduced in the Oregon legislature.

Having TVW around to broadcast and web-stream legislative debates makes that kind of live-bloggin a bit redundant. But still, it's good to see an LGBT activist group that recognizes that there are tools out there beyond email lists.

[via QPDX blog.]

[Update:] And the result:

(Salem, Oregon) Two bills that would extend gay rights Oregon have been passed by the House.

One bill would allow same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples unable to marry to form legally recognized partnerships. The second would include gays in Oregon's nondiscrimination law.

The Family Fairness Act carefully avoids using the term civil unions to quell criticism from socially conservative groups that the wording was too close to gay marriage - something already banned by a constitutional amendment in the state.

The bill passed on a 34 - 26 vote with three Republicans voting with the majority.
It now heads to the Senate.

The Oregon Equality Act would amend the state's non-discrimination laws to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in housing, employment, public accommodation, education and public services statewide.

The bill passed 35 - 25.

It contains a provision that exempts churches but not private businesses they might run, such as hospitals. It was amended to cover all faith-based organizations, even if they are not aligned to a specific church.

Rep. Brad Witt (D-Clatskanie) told that house that it is unbelievable "that we are still debating elements of civil rights".

"Rational human beings do not choose lifetimes of intolerance and discrimination," he said.

Labels: activism, oregon