transdada

poetics, time, body disruption and marginally queer solutions

Monday, April 12, 2004

now if this isn't hate///- gb blss amrika... tthe land of big money and big-ots...

Public Advocate to Call for IRS Action Against Gay Marriage Tax Filers
To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor
Contact: Jesse Binnall of Public Advocate of the United States, 703-582-7924; Web: http://www.publicadvocateusa.org
News Advisory:
Public Advocate of the United States will release a letter that is being hand delivered to the Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday, April 13 at 2 p.m. The letter asks the IRS to investigate same-sex couples who file any tax form as "married - filing jointly" as part of a fraudulent same-sex marriage, such as those that have been performed by the thousands in San Francisco, Calif. between homosexual couples.



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Advocates lobby Miami Beach officials for transgender protection
By Noaki Schwartz
It took time to learn how to handle the tiny makeup brushes. Poised clumsily between her thick thumb and index finger, she spent hours painting her face, softening those hard lines to feel more like a woman.

Then, one night at a Miami gas station two men pounded all that painstaking effort out of her. They split her lip, gave her two black eyes, and left her crumpled and bloodied in her car. It had taken Raj Narinesingh years of practice to look like a woman instead of the man that she was born to be. At that moment, all she could think was, "My face is destroyed. I'm going to die here."
Now, two years later, Narinesingh and SAVE Dade, a leading South Florida gay rights group, want to eventually end such violence. By urging the Miami Beach City Commission to expand its human rights law, they hope people will simply acknowledge the humanity of Narinesingh and other transgender people. Narinesingh sees it as a first step toward one day feeling safe in her community.



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Ky. House OKs Amendment on Gay Marriages
By Associated Press
FRANKFORT, Ky. -- The Kentucky House passed a proposed constitutional amendment late Monday that would ban same-sex marriages and deny legal recognition to civil unions.
The proposal, passed 85-11, now heads to the Senate for a final vote that would place the issue on the November ballot.
Kentucky law already prohibits same-sex marriages. But supporters of the proposed amendment insist it is needed to cement the prohibition against gay marriage.
Similar measures are pending in many state legislatures across the country.



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NGLTF launches night of marriage equality on May 16

On May 16--the night before same-sex couples in Massachusetts will become eligible to apply for marriage licenses--more than 100 households across the country will host parties in support of the marriage equality work of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The parties will be linked to each other via a national conference call to listen to a "state of the unions" address from Task Force executive director Matt Foreman as well as calls to action from other special guests.
For information on attending or hosting a party, contact Charles Robbins at crobbins@TheTaskForce.org or call (323) 857-8746.



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Union Pacific Accused Of Funneling Money To Anti-Gay Groups
by Paul Johnson
365Gay.com Newscenter
(Washington, D.C.) Using the Freedom of Information Act and IRS filings a public interest group has discovered that Union Pacific, the largest railroad in America is funneling large sums of money to extreme rightwing political organizations.

The Center for Political Accountability, a watchdog group based in Washington, D.C.,  says that the company does not make public its political contributions or tell shareholders how it decides on donations made with corporate assets. It intends to raise the issue at the company's annual meeting on April 16 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Center says that it has been able to determine that Union Pacific made $1,032,022 in corporate contributions in the 2002 election cycle. The company gave to conduits that, in turn, contributed to controversial groups like Texans for a Republican Majority (TRM), an organization that played a key part in underwriting the change in control of the Texas House of Representatives in 2002, and to extremist groups such as the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC).

Led by the Rev. Louis Sheldon, the TVC bills itself as the largest church lobby in the United States. It pushes a strong socially conservative agenda that includes opposition to gay and lesbian rights, a woman's right to choose, and the teaching of evolution in public schools.

The TVC is one of the leading forces in the fight against same-sex marriage.



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Hate Hits Home
by Sgt Judy Nosworthy

There have been a series of hate-motivated crimes in my neighborhood over the past few weeks. These crimes fall under the umbrella of what we have learned to call anti-Semitism. Swastikas have been spray-painted on the front doors of households believed to be Jewish, and a number of tombstones in a Jewish cemetery around the corner from my house have been pushed over. It has been all over the news, and the police officers who caught the 3 people-two 15-year-olds and a 17-year-old-will probably get Police Officer of the Month awards or something like that. And so they should.

The magnitude of such crimes really hit home for me when I was trying to explain to my son, Boy Wonder, what anti-Semitism was.

I took the Big Picture approach and talked about Hate Crime in general and how, through objectification, one individual or group of individuals is able to develop a hate not for one individual, but for a whole grouping of people. This hate can manifest itself in that individual or group of individual doing really nasty things to the identified group. I told my son that this wasn’t a crime against ‘The Jews’--it was a crime against his friend Ethan, and my friends, Jeff and Phyllis. I told him that these spineless cowards weren’t pushing over grave markers-they could be pushing over Ethan’s gramma’s tombstone or, if we were Jewish, Grampa’s tombstone. I explained that these mutts displayed the same sort of Closet Courage that allowed one group of people to enslave another. Or that allows a nation to deny a group of people the right to have a wedding.



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Anti-gay senator denies change of heart
Christopher Curtis, Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network
The office of California state Sen. William "Pete" Knight, R-Palmdale, is discounting reports that the senator, who championed California's law to prevent recognizing same-sex marriages, has changed his mind on extending rights to gay and lesbian couples.

On Thursday the Sacramento News and Review reported Sen. Knight, who authored the voter-approved Proposition 22, met with lobbyist Steve Hansen of Equality California, a GLBT rights group. During their March 24 meeting, the two discussed the proposed same-sex marriage bill (AB 1967) as well as AB 205, which will grant domestic partners most of the same rights as married couples when it goes into effect next year.

The weekly paper quoted Sen. Knight as saying he would compromise on same-sex marriage. "We might be able to come up with some system that would allow, for example, domestic partners to be registered, and they would have certain rights associated with that," he said.


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