Editorial Of The Day

From the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times:

It's unusual when the winners of a case ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal of their victory. But that is exactly the plea being made by lawyers for same-sex couples who successfully challenged bans on such unions in Virginia, Oklahoma and Utah. And for good reasons. Although some same-sex couples have been able to enjoy the protections of marriage because of lower-court decisions, others are unable to marry because rulings in their favor have been stayed pending the outcome of appeals. The country wouldn't be in this position if the Supreme Court had issued a straightforward ruling last year holding that bans on same-sex marriage violate the Constitution's guarantees of due process and equal protection of the laws. But the court sidestepped that issue when it ruled that proponents of California's Proposition 8 lacked standing to appeal a lower-court ruling striking it down. The Supreme Court often will allow a constitutional issue to percolate for some time and step in only when federal appeals courts disagree. So far that hasn't happened with the issue of same-sex marriage, but the justices should move quickly anyway. The legal issues have been amply developed and debated. It's now time for the nation's highest court to rule unambiguously that gay couples are equal under the law.

The Los Angeles Times Reports On The Response For The Ali Forney Center

As Hurricane Sandy unfolded, numerous unfounded rumors and some outright deliberate lies swirled across Twitter, ultimately costing one GOP operative his job. But in their cataloging of the abuses on Twitter, today the Los Angeles Times finds one shining light. And that light, my tender kittens, is YOU.

But as the floodwaters receded along with the furor over @ComfortablySmug, another -- arguably more important -- social media story was developing in Chelsea, half a block from the Hudson River. That story would in lesser degrees repeat itself over Manhattan, Staten Island and the Rockaways in the coming days of recovery, where information repeatedly won out over worries of ongoing, anonymous hysteria.

The story was this: The Ali Forney Drop-In Center filled up with four feet of water.  A lot of places in Manhattan got hit pretty hard, but there was reason to be especially concerned about this 1,200-square-foot office: It served New York’s homeless LGBT teenage population – the fringe of the fringe, kids turned out from home for being gay, kids who had to sleep on subways and sometimes turn to prostitution when they didn’t have a place to stay at night.  The drop-in center was ruined, its floors buckled, its electrical outlets filled with sea salt. So Ali Forney founder Carl Siciliano put out a call for help on Facebook.

Then a popular gay blogger named Joe My God picked up the message and ran with it.

And then Twitter – specifically, the people on it -- ran with it.

Pam Grier tweeted the news to hundreds of thousands of followers, Joseph Gordon-Levitt tweeted it to hundreds of thousands more, and in less than 24 hours, the Ali Forney Center had received more than 900 donations totaling $100,000, Siciliano said in an interview Sunday evening. “We’ve never had a day where $100,000 came in online before,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “That’s actually kind of phenomenal. And it shows the power of social media to do good.”

Although LGBT youth had historically been marginalized by traditional, mainstream institutions, Siciliano said, now the community could rally around those needing help the most. And social media helped make it happen, allowing people to help each other without waiting for someone else to tell them what to do.

I'm so very proud of the JMG community. You guys rock.

DONATE: The AFC is continuing to take your donations.  If you'd like to kick in a few bucks via PayPal, use this email address there: mramos@aliforneycenter.org.

NOTE: We'll be doing one more fundraiser here in Manhattan this weekend in Hell's Kitchen.  I think that will be a fantastic excuse for a long overdue JMG meetup in NYC.  Details to come later today.

REPORT: Boy Scouts Shielded Pedophiles

According to a report published yesterday by the Los Angeles Times, the Boy Scouts have shielded hundreds of child molesters from prosecution.

A Los Angeles Times review of 1,600 confidential files dating from 1970 to 1991 has found that Scouting officials frequently urged admitted offenders to quietly resign — and helped many cover their tracks. Volunteers and employees suspected of abuse were allowed to leave citing bogus reasons such as business demands, "chronic brain dysfunction" and duties at a Shakespeare festival. [snip] In the majority of cases, the Scouts learned of alleged abuse after it had been reported to authorities. But in more than 500 instances, the Scouts learned about it from boys, parents, staff members or anonymous tips. In about 400 of those cases — 80% — there is no record of Scouting officials reporting the allegations to police. In more than 100 of the cases, officials actively sought to conceal the alleged abuse or allowed the suspects to hide it, The Times found.

Read the full article. (Tipped by JMG reader Robert)

LA Times Marriage Map

Los Angeles Times Announces Paywall

Paid daily physical circulation is down 200,000 in the last five years. The New York Times made a similar move last year.

Editorial Of The Day

From the Los Angeles Times:

That a particular social change may be inevitable, given certain background conditions, does not mean that opponents will cease fighting it. White Southerners continued to massively resist Brown long after most of them came to believe that school desegregation was inevitable. Similarly, those who believe that gay marriage contravenes God's will are not likely to stop fighting it simply because their prospects of success are diminishing. Moreover, because religious conservatives are both intensely opposed to gay marriage and highly mobilized politically, they are likely for the next several years to continue exerting significant influence over Republican politicians who need their support to win primary elections. Although the ultimate outcome of the contest over gay marriage no longer seems in doubt, plenty of fighting remains until that battle is over.

Read the full article.

LA Times Headline Writer FTW

(Via - Mother Jones)

Los Angeles Times on Gay Heroes

Today an editorial in the Los Angeles Times compares Arizona shooting hero Daniel Hernandez with Oliver Sipple, the semi-closeted gay man who in 1975 wrestled a gun away from Manson family member Sara Jane Moore, saving the life of President Gerald Ford. Sipple's outing as a gay hero, to his mind, ruined his life. Thankfully, it's a different world for Daniel Hernandez.

Sipple was known to San Francisco’s gay community, where he had taken part in some events, but he was not "out" to his family or to the larger world. News reports, including some in this paper, discussed his sexuality -- perhaps disclosed, some speculated, with a nudge from gay activist and future San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk (who would himself be assassinated in 1978).

Milk also opined that Sipple’s sexuality got him only a letter of thanks from Ford, rather than an invitation to the White House. The Times quoted Milk in 1989 about Sipple’s actions: "For once, we can show that gays do heroic things, not just all that ca-ca about molesting children and hanging out in bathrooms." Sipple sued the San Francisco Chronicle’s Herb Caen and several newspapers for invasion of privacy, but his case was dismissed. By taking the action he did, the courts found, Sipple, and thus his sexual orientation, had become news. Sipple’s mother never spoke to him again, and Sipple died in 1989.

Daniel Hernandez wasn’t even born when Oliver Sipple died. His heroism, too, is incontestable -- and this time, his sexuality is apparently uncontroversial, which may be one of the few hopeful things to come out of these murders and attempted murders. At least we won’t add character assassination to the actual ones.

While Hernandez' sexuality is indeed "uncontroversial" in 2011, to my mind it's important that we keep his gayness as an integral part of the story.

Los Angeles Times: President Obama, Enough Agonizing Over Gay Marriage

From an editorial in today's Los Angeles Times:

We can't peer into President Obama's soul, but his statement last week that he is "struggling" with whether to endorse same-sex marriage is open to an unedifying interpretation. Given the president's support of gay rights in other contexts, his opposition to marriage equality raises the question of whether the struggle Obama referred to is between politics and principle. If so, we hope principle will prevail. [snip] When he ran for the presidency in 2008, it was the conventional wisdom that supporting gay marriage would be politically fatal. With shifts in public attitudes, that probably will not be the case in 2012. According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 42% of adults now favor same-sex marriage, compared to 37% in 2009. The trend seems clear. We'd prefer to think that such considerations wouldn't be uppermost in Obama's mind. What should determine his position is logic and the fact that same-sex couples across America, not just those in his circle, yearn for recognition of their relationships. Enough agonizing, Mr. President. Support marriage equality.

LA Times: Family Research Council Rightfully Labeled A Hate Group

From an op-ed piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten.

Exhortations against "race mixing" were commonplace pulpit messages short decades ago, though we now recognize them as hate speech. It's past time to do the same with rhetoric that denigrates gays and lesbians.

So long as even the most objectionable religious dogma stays under the church roof, it's a constitutionally protected view. People's religious beliefs — even when noxious — are a private matter. Our churches are free to order their internal affairs as they will — to set the terms of sacramental marriage as they see fit, to discriminate in the selection of their clergy, to racially segregate their membership or to separate the sexes in their schools or places of worship.

However, when a group sets out to impose its views on the rest of society by lobbying for public policies or laws, it can no longer claim special protections or an exemption from the norms of civil discourse simply because its views are formed by religious beliefs. This is precisely the dodge the Family Research Council has been running.

Los Angeles Times Condemns The Manhattan Declaration

In an editorial published yesterday, the Los Angeles Times strongly condemned the anti-gay Manhattan Declaration, calling it "irresponsible and dangerous" and warning that the document may embolden anti-abortion terrorists.

The impression left is that the legal environment in which churches must operate is reminiscent of the Roman Empire that threw Christians to the lions. Never mind that advocates of same-sex civil marriage and legal abortion have made significant concessions to believers or that religious groups have recourse to courts, which have aggressively protected the free exercise of religion guaranteed by the 1st Amendment. In 1993, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, exempting believers in some cases from having to comply with applicable laws.

This apocalyptic argument for lawbreaking is disingenuous, but it is also dangerous. Did the Roman Catholic bishops who signed the manifesto consider how their endorsement of lawbreaking in a higher cause might embolden the antiabortion terrorists they claim to condemn? Did they stop to think that, by reserving the right to resist laws they don't like, they forfeit the authority to intervene in the enactment of those laws, as they have done in the congressional debate over healthcare reform? They need to be reminded that this is a nation of laws, not of men -- even holy men.

Meanwhile Bill O'Reilly complains on Townhall that the "secular media" has given the Manhattan Declaration little attention and wonders "are people of faith as upset as some of their leadership with the secularism of America?"

LA Times: Wait Until 2012 On Prop 8

Last week Equality California announced their decision to wait until 2012 to pursue a repeal of Proposition 8. Other groups such as the Courage Campaign have not signed on, saying they are still studying the issue, having raised $135K to "invest in research, polling and focus groups." Yesterday the Los Angeles Times published an editorial advising the Courage Campaign to wait too.

Both Equality California and some major donors who tried to defeat Proposition 8 have indicated that a 2010 campaign cannot expect their active support. Though this page will back same-sex marriage no matter what the year, we hope the Courage Campaign will rethink its timing. Gay-rights activists must recognize that their lackluster campaign did little to sway the public, especially considering the misleading ads by gay-marriage opponents. So far, the Courage Campaign has not articulated a sophisticated strategy for changing this. Without other gay-rights groups by its side, its low chances are further weakened. It's not as though waiting three years means idly letting injustice prevail. There is plenty to do between now and 2012 -- forging alliances with minority groups, lining up financial support and vetting the best campaign managers. Advocates of same-sex marriage already have a just cause; coupled with campaign smarts and money, they also will have voter support.