by Peter DelVecchio

Mixed marriage-equality bag for Freedom to Marry Week

Events nationwide marked the 11th annual “Freedom to Marry Week,” Feb. 10-16, including new efforts to put anti-gay measures on the November ballot.

The Freedom to Marry coalition is a “gay and non-gay partnership working to win marriage equality nationwide.” Freedom to Marry Week was created as an annual opportunity around President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday and Valentine’s Day to give gay and non-gay people the opportunity to talk about LGBT lives, loves and families, and celebrate “victories from the year before and continue the fight for the freedom to marry.”

This year, Freedom to Marry held events in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont and Washington.

In a “marriage counter” event on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, same-sex couples requested marriage licenses at marriage counters in more than 20 California cities, according to Marriage Equality USA, “to raise awareness of the harms and impact the inability to marry causes on their families.”

Additionally, the first legal challenge to Colorado’s constitutional same-sex marriage ban went to court Feb. 13. The case arose out of trespassing charges filed against a lesbian couple who staged a sit-in last September in the Denver Clerk and Recorder’s Office after having been denied a marriage license. The couple contends that the state bar violates the federal constitution.

Nationwide, the marriage equality situation is at best a mixed bag. Only one state, Massachusetts, recognizes full-fledged same-sex marriage. California, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon and Vermont recognize civil unions, which generally provide the same state law rights as marriage. Domestic partnership laws in the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine and Washington afford same-sex couples some of the rights of marriage. Federal law, however, affords no recognition to same-sex relationships, which greatly limits the effect of state provisions. Same-sex married couples, for example, may not file joint federal tax returns, wherever they live.

Twenty-six states have adopted constitutional amendments restricting marriage to one man and one woman. Nineteen more have statutes to the same effect. According to the Human Rights Campaign, as of Oct. 30, 2007, “hostile amendments [were] being considered by legislatures in 10 states: Alaska, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Washington and West Virginia.”

In 2006, Arizona voters rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have banned gay marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships. But state Senate President Tim Bee launched a drive Feb. 11 to place a narrower amendment on the 2008 ballot.

Marriage cases are pending before the supreme courts of California, Connecticut and Iowa.

For more information, visit www.freedomtomarry.org.

Tennessee elects first transgendered woman

On Feb. 5, Marisa Richmond became the first openly transgendered person to win elective office in the history of Tennessee, Out and About, a Tennessee LGBT newspaper, reported on Feb. 8.

Richmond won 99.7 percent of the vote to become the Davidson County Democratic Committeewoman. (A write-in received six votes.) Richmond may also be a delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

“The 2004 Democratic National Convention had several out GLBT delegates, seven of whom were transgendered. I want to see Tennessee be part of an even larger GLBT, and especially transgendered, caucus in 2008 in Denver,” Richmond said.

Haggard bails early from “restoration” process

Former pastor Ted Haggard has prematurely left a “spiritual restoration” process, The Associated Press reported Feb. 8. New Life Church fired Haggard and he resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals in November 2006, after a male prostitute alleged Haggard had paid him for sex and that Haggard had bought and used crystal meth. Haggard confessed to “sexual immorality” and to buying (but not using) meth. Haggard agreed to the restoration process, which was expected to last five years or longer, after being fired, but New Life said the process would not lead to his reinstatement.

Openly gay Episcopal bishop keynotes Creating Change Conference

Openly gay New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson was a keynote speaker at the Creating Change 2008 conference held in Detroit Feb. 6-12, reports the Detroit Free Press.

Robinson’s election in 2003 as the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop opened a rift over issues of homosexuality in the worldwide Anglican Communion, pitting the relatively liberal Episcopal Church, the American Anglican body, against more traditionalist Anglican churches overseas, and also creating discord within the Episcopal Church itself. Several dioceses, including San Joaquin, Calif., have taken the first steps toward seceding from the national church.

The conference was organized by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a national LGBT grassroots advocacy group. In his speech, Robinson recounted how he and his partner had worn bulletproof vests under their clothes at his 2004 consecration because of death threats. He expressed disappointment that, four years later, the fight over his appointment continues, and calls for his resignation have not abated.

“It’s as if they think this would all go away if I was gone,” he said. Nonetheless, Robinson said he is proud of changes in the church, for example, the increasing numbers of gay and lesbian ministers.

New gene therapy technique prevents HIV reproduction

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Virxsys, a biotechnology company, have developed a new gene therapy technique that prevents HIV from reproducing, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Feb. 7. The technique was detailed in a study presented Feb. 6 at the 15th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston.

The technique involves the insertion of a gene that prevents the virus from reproducing into T cells removed from HIV-positive patients. A patented University of Pennsylvania technology is used to make 100 copies of each altered cell; the cells are then reinserted into the patients. The added gene renders the virus unable to reproduce or infect new cells by preventing it from containing itself in a shell.

According to the study, viruses put back into the patients self-destructed. Nine randomly chosen patients who had undergone the treatment all had high HIV viral loads afterwards, but the study found that most of the viruses had become harmless. A clinical trial involving 54 HIV-positive patients is being conducted to evaluate safety and proper dosages. To date, there have been no serious side effects reported among the trial subjects, and many have experienced lowered HIV viral loads and increased T cell counts.

FDA approval of the technique as a treatment is likely several years away, but it has raised hopes within the research community as a new potential means of controlling the virus for those living with HIV/AIDS.

Virxsys CEO Riku Rautsola said the company sees the treatment as a new “frontline therapy [that] would clearly be better in terms of quality of life for people living with HIV/AIDS.” Rautsola estimated the possible cost of one series of infusions using the new technique at $130,000, as compared with the approximately $700,000 lifetime cost of antiretroviral drug treatment.

Numbers as of 11 p.m., Feb. 13

American Deaths in Iraq: 3,960 • www.icasualties.org

American Wounded in Iraq: 29,092 • www.antiwar.com/casualties

Iraqi Dead since 2003: 81,064-88,511 • www.iraqbodycount.org

Cost of War: $494,061,000,000+ • www.costofwar.com

National Debt: $9,248,884,928,369.95 • www.brillig.com/debt_clock

U.S. Trade Deficit: $84,921,000,000+
www.americaneconomicalert.org/ticker_home.asp

Quote - Unqoute

“I hope I broke the mold for my gay people.”
—Lesbian actress, author and hip-hop artist Felicia “Snoop” Pearson on her role as the killer “Snoop” on HBO’s The Wire.

“I think everybody knows I only do things in a big way.”
—Cher, upon inking a three-year deal to perform at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

“I’m 74 years old and I’m still getting a dressing room. What’s better than that?”
—Joan Rivers on her new autobiographical play, Life in Progress, which opened at the Geffen Playhouse the week of Feb. 10.

“Come straight people, if you let us marry each other, we will stop marrying you.”
—Actor and comedian Jason Stuart in his stand-up routine