TV case tests Russian gay rights

A former reality show celebrity has become the first person in Russia to go to court over claims that he is gay.

Vasily Pechen has embarked on a test case for Russia

Vasily Pechen, who appeared on Russian reality shows Big Brother and Dom 2, made Russian legal history by bringing the case to a Moscow court this week.

He says that publications in a tabloid newspaper and gay news website, which also claimed he regularly frequented gay clubs and even received money in return for sex, caused irreparable damage to his TV career.

Mr Pechen also said the publications, which were accompanied by revealing pictures of the Z-list celebrity, even contributed to his mother's death due to the stress caused by the claims.

In total, he is seeking up to four million roubles (£76,000) by way of compensation: the sum he claims his career would be worth if not for false claims about his sexual orientation.

Second attempt at fame?

However, legal expert and Moscow gay pride organiser Nikolai Alexeyev said that the case would be baseless if the claims only concerned Mr Pechen's orientation.

Perhaps he just wants to remind the world of his existence
Russian TV company TNT

"Being gay in Russia is no longer a criminal offence and no longer considered a mental illness," Mr Alexeyev told the BBC Russian Service.

"If he tries to take someone to court because they said he was gay, he probably will not get very far.

"The second part of the claim concerning the publication of indecent photos of the claimant and accusations that he worked as a prostitute have a better chance of success."

However, when approached for further information about the reality show participant, Russian TV company TNT said they could barely remember who he was.

"Perhaps he just wants to remind the world of his existence," said the company's press office.

Changing attitudes?

Attitudes towards gay people in Russia remain generally negative, which might explain Mr Pechen's desire to refute the claims over his sexuality so robustly and so publicly.
Nikolai Alexeyev
Mr Alexeyev said the lawsuit would fail if based on sexual orientation

However, human rights activist Edward Murzin - who tried to apply for a same-sex partnership in Russia in 2005, although not gay himself - says reality shows like Big Brother and Dom 2 have gone a long way to break down taboos in Russian society, especially among youngsters.

The website GayRussia.ru, which is also run by Mr Alexeyev, carried out a survey in 2005 with the Levada Center into public attitudes towards sexual minorities in Russia.

The poll showed that the majority of Russians still oppose gay marriage and the idea of a gay president, but support a ban on sexual orientation discrimination.

Although larger Russian cities do have active gay communities and gay scenes, and attitudes towards gay people are slowly changing, few people in Russia are openly gay and discrimination remains widespread and virtually unchallenged.

All applications for organising a gay pride march in Moscow have been blocked by the Russian authorities, and any attempts to hold the event without permission have ended in violence, with demonstrators being arrested and beaten by the security forces.

Homosexuality was decriminalised in Russia in 1993 and was removed from the official list of mental illnesses in 1999.

However, there is equally no legislation protecting people from discrimination or harassment on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

There is also no formal recognition of same-sex relationships.source from:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8197735.stm

TV case tests Russian gay rights

A former reality show celebrity has become the first person in Russia to go to court over claims that he is gay.

Vasily Pechen has embarked on a test case for Russia

Vasily Pechen, who appeared on Russian reality shows Big Brother and Dom 2, made Russian legal history by bringing the case to a Moscow court this week.

He says that publications in a tabloid newspaper and gay news website, which also claimed he regularly frequented gay clubs and even received money in return for sex, caused irreparable damage to his TV career.

Mr Pechen also said the publications, which were accompanied by revealing pictures of the Z-list celebrity, even contributed to his mother's death due to the stress caused by the claims.

In total, he is seeking up to four million roubles (£76,000) by way of compensation: the sum he claims his career would be worth if not for false claims about his sexual orientation.

Second attempt at fame?

However, legal expert and Moscow gay pride organiser Nikolai Alexeyev said that the case would be baseless if the claims only concerned Mr Pechen's orientation.

Perhaps he just wants to remind the world of his existence
Russian TV company TNT

"Being gay in Russia is no longer a criminal offence and no longer considered a mental illness," Mr Alexeyev told the BBC Russian Service.

"If he tries to take someone to court because they said he was gay, he probably will not get very far.

"The second part of the claim concerning the publication of indecent photos of the claimant and accusations that he worked as a prostitute have a better chance of success."

However, when approached for further information about the reality show participant, Russian TV company TNT said they could barely remember who he was.

"Perhaps he just wants to remind the world of his existence," said the company's press office.

Changing attitudes?

Attitudes towards gay people in Russia remain generally negative, which might explain Mr Pechen's desire to refute the claims over his sexuality so robustly and so publicly.
Nikolai Alexeyev
Mr Alexeyev said the lawsuit would fail if based on sexual orientation

However, human rights activist Edward Murzin - who tried to apply for a same-sex partnership in Russia in 2005, although not gay himself - says reality shows like Big Brother and Dom 2 have gone a long way to break down taboos in Russian society, especially among youngsters.

The website GayRussia.ru, which is also run by Mr Alexeyev, carried out a survey in 2005 with the Levada Center into public attitudes towards sexual minorities in Russia.

The poll showed that the majority of Russians still oppose gay marriage and the idea of a gay president, but support a ban on sexual orientation discrimination.

Although larger Russian cities do have active gay communities and gay scenes, and attitudes towards gay people are slowly changing, few people in Russia are openly gay and discrimination remains widespread and virtually unchallenged.

All applications for organising a gay pride march in Moscow have been blocked by the Russian authorities, and any attempts to hold the event without permission have ended in violence, with demonstrators being arrested and beaten by the security forces.

Homosexuality was decriminalised in Russia in 1993 and was removed from the official list of mental illnesses in 1999.

However, there is equally no legislation protecting people from discrimination or harassment on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

There is also no formal recognition of same-sex relationships.source from:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8197735.stm

TV case tests Russian gay rights

A former reality show celebrity has become the first person in Russia to go to court over claims that he is gay.

Vasily Pechen has embarked on a test case for Russia

Vasily Pechen, who appeared on Russian reality shows Big Brother and Dom 2, made Russian legal history by bringing the case to a Moscow court this week.

He says that publications in a tabloid newspaper and gay news website, which also claimed he regularly frequented gay clubs and even received money in return for sex, caused irreparable damage to his TV career.

Mr Pechen also said the publications, which were accompanied by revealing pictures of the Z-list celebrity, even contributed to his mother's death due to the stress caused by the claims.

In total, he is seeking up to four million roubles (£76,000) by way of compensation: the sum he claims his career would be worth if not for false claims about his sexual orientation.

Second attempt at fame?

However, legal expert and Moscow gay pride organiser Nikolai Alexeyev said that the case would be baseless if the claims only concerned Mr Pechen's orientation.

Perhaps he just wants to remind the world of his existence
Russian TV company TNT

"Being gay in Russia is no longer a criminal offence and no longer considered a mental illness," Mr Alexeyev told the BBC Russian Service.

"If he tries to take someone to court because they said he was gay, he probably will not get very far.

"The second part of the claim concerning the publication of indecent photos of the claimant and accusations that he worked as a prostitute have a better chance of success."

However, when approached for further information about the reality show participant, Russian TV company TNT said they could barely remember who he was.

"Perhaps he just wants to remind the world of his existence," said the company's press office.

Changing attitudes?

Attitudes towards gay people in Russia remain generally negative, which might explain Mr Pechen's desire to refute the claims over his sexuality so robustly and so publicly.
Nikolai Alexeyev
Mr Alexeyev said the lawsuit would fail if based on sexual orientation

However, human rights activist Edward Murzin - who tried to apply for a same-sex partnership in Russia in 2005, although not gay himself - says reality shows like Big Brother and Dom 2 have gone a long way to break down taboos in Russian society, especially among youngsters.

The website GayRussia.ru, which is also run by Mr Alexeyev, carried out a survey in 2005 with the Levada Center into public attitudes towards sexual minorities in Russia.

The poll showed that the majority of Russians still oppose gay marriage and the idea of a gay president, but support a ban on sexual orientation discrimination.

Although larger Russian cities do have active gay communities and gay scenes, and attitudes towards gay people are slowly changing, few people in Russia are openly gay and discrimination remains widespread and virtually unchallenged.

All applications for organising a gay pride march in Moscow have been blocked by the Russian authorities, and any attempts to hold the event without permission have ended in violence, with demonstrators being arrested and beaten by the security forces.

Homosexuality was decriminalised in Russia in 1993 and was removed from the official list of mental illnesses in 1999.

However, there is equally no legislation protecting people from discrimination or harassment on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

There is also no formal recognition of same-sex relationships.source from:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8197735.stm

Daily gay News: Gay Tourism Culture and Context

About the Book
The gay tourism industry—a progressive social force or a pull towards an oppressive status quo?

The pink tourism dollar is now recognized as a highly profitable niche of the tourism market. Gay Tourism: Culture and Context critically investigates the emergence of a commercial gay tourism industry for male clients, the way it is organized, and how the tourism industry promotes cities, resorts, and nations as ’gay’ destinations. This careful examination critically questions the social, political, and cultural implications regarding relationships between gay tourism, Western gay male culture, the erotic, sexual politics, and sexual diversity.

Gay Tourism: Culture and Context begins by detailing how travel often enabled the expression of Western same-sex male desire in the nineteenth century and then charts the
emergence of a Western gay tourism industry in the late twentieth century. A critical analysis is given of gay guidebooks and erotic videos that help to establish and maintain destinations as seemingly gay utopias, including Hawaii and the Greek island Mykonos. Carefull consideration
as to debates about how the gay tourism industry operates in the context of questions regarding the globalization of sexuality, sexual citizenship and place-marketing of (homo)sexualised cities. The text includes an extensive bibliography plus several photographs, charts, and figures to
clearly present concepts and ideas.

Topics in Gay Tourism: Culture and Context include:

* the history of gay travel and tourism
* the effect of HIV/AIDS on gay tourist destinations
* gay travel writing sustaining same-sex fantasies about popular gay tourist destinations
* analysis of the socio-political ramifications of gay tourism
* the sexual politics of a heterosexual nation
* gay tourists as an “invading force” of corruption
* the economic rationale for the (homo)sexualized city
* the concept of “gay villages”
* the role of special events and festivals in gay tourism
* and many more!

Gay Tourism: Culture and Context is enlightening reading for tourism policymakers, tourism planners, tourism managers, and teachers and students in the fields of tourism studies, gay studies, social and cultural geography, and sociology. source from: http://www.routledge.com/books/Gay-Tourism-isbn9780789016034

Daily gay News: Gay Tourism Culture and Context

About the Book
The gay tourism industry—a progressive social force or a pull towards an oppressive status quo?

The pink tourism dollar is now recognized as a highly profitable niche of the tourism market. Gay Tourism: Culture and Context critically investigates the emergence of a commercial gay tourism industry for male clients, the way it is organized, and how the tourism industry promotes cities, resorts, and nations as ’gay’ destinations. This careful examination critically questions the social, political, and cultural implications regarding relationships between gay tourism, Western gay male culture, the erotic, sexual politics, and sexual diversity.

Gay Tourism: Culture and Context begins by detailing how travel often enabled the expression of Western same-sex male desire in the nineteenth century and then charts the
emergence of a Western gay tourism industry in the late twentieth century. A critical analysis is given of gay guidebooks and erotic videos that help to establish and maintain destinations as seemingly gay utopias, including Hawaii and the Greek island Mykonos. Carefull consideration
as to debates about how the gay tourism industry operates in the context of questions regarding the globalization of sexuality, sexual citizenship and place-marketing of (homo)sexualised cities. The text includes an extensive bibliography plus several photographs, charts, and figures to
clearly present concepts and ideas.

Topics in Gay Tourism: Culture and Context include:

* the history of gay travel and tourism
* the effect of HIV/AIDS on gay tourist destinations
* gay travel writing sustaining same-sex fantasies about popular gay tourist destinations
* analysis of the socio-political ramifications of gay tourism
* the sexual politics of a heterosexual nation
* gay tourists as an “invading force” of corruption
* the economic rationale for the (homo)sexualized city
* the concept of “gay villages”
* the role of special events and festivals in gay tourism
* and many more!

Gay Tourism: Culture and Context is enlightening reading for tourism policymakers, tourism planners, tourism managers, and teachers and students in the fields of tourism studies, gay studies, social and cultural geography, and sociology. source from: http://www.routledge.com/books/Gay-Tourism-isbn9780789016034

Daily gay News: Gay Tourism Culture and Context

About the Book
The gay tourism industry—a progressive social force or a pull towards an oppressive status quo?

The pink tourism dollar is now recognized as a highly profitable niche of the tourism market. Gay Tourism: Culture and Context critically investigates the emergence of a commercial gay tourism industry for male clients, the way it is organized, and how the tourism industry promotes cities, resorts, and nations as ’gay’ destinations. This careful examination critically questions the social, political, and cultural implications regarding relationships between gay tourism, Western gay male culture, the erotic, sexual politics, and sexual diversity.

Gay Tourism: Culture and Context begins by detailing how travel often enabled the expression of Western same-sex male desire in the nineteenth century and then charts the
emergence of a Western gay tourism industry in the late twentieth century. A critical analysis is given of gay guidebooks and erotic videos that help to establish and maintain destinations as seemingly gay utopias, including Hawaii and the Greek island Mykonos. Carefull consideration
as to debates about how the gay tourism industry operates in the context of questions regarding the globalization of sexuality, sexual citizenship and place-marketing of (homo)sexualised cities. The text includes an extensive bibliography plus several photographs, charts, and figures to
clearly present concepts and ideas.

Topics in Gay Tourism: Culture and Context include:

* the history of gay travel and tourism
* the effect of HIV/AIDS on gay tourist destinations
* gay travel writing sustaining same-sex fantasies about popular gay tourist destinations
* analysis of the socio-political ramifications of gay tourism
* the sexual politics of a heterosexual nation
* gay tourists as an “invading force” of corruption
* the economic rationale for the (homo)sexualized city
* the concept of “gay villages”
* the role of special events and festivals in gay tourism
* and many more!

Gay Tourism: Culture and Context is enlightening reading for tourism policymakers, tourism planners, tourism managers, and teachers and students in the fields of tourism studies, gay studies, social and cultural geography, and sociology. source from: http://www.routledge.com/books/Gay-Tourism-isbn9780789016034

Business "booming" as gay travel moves into Brighton

The Uk’s leading gay travel agent known as Mantrav international Group has released there plans to open a new office in the UK’s Gay capital Brighton, With the business booming and the opening of the new, New York Office on 42nd street there are plans to broaden the horizons of the business in the very popular UK sea side resort of Brighton.

The company, which was founded in California in 1990, but has been based in the UK since 2001, Mantrav international is the leading gay travel agent in the UK which have over 20 years experience in the Gay travel market with all its employees having a good knowledge in gay destinations and travel all over the world.

The group’s Club Mancha resort in Gran Canaria has been running at a 92% capacity all through the current year despite the economy turn down. Mykonos appears to have been this year’s top destination in short haul and Thailand as long haul.

There is an agreement to merge with London and Brighton’s top Gay magazine 3Sixty by opening a shop together on 4 Steine Street just off Marine Parade located in Brighton’s Gay area.

The new owners of the magazine Graeme Austin & Tony Vassallo have become directors of the Mantrav International Group and are looking to expand the companies together With Malcolm and his team.

Malcolm Hardy the director of Mantrav International Group says “With the company going from strength to strength I am now going to be motivating my employees to provide the best service possible and create good value for our customers, the merge with 3Sixty and the opening of the shop has given us the chance to make these promises happen, providing complete customer satisfaction is now my next goal".

The team Including Ben Frankling (Sales and Marketing) and Matthew Cary (Business Development manager) have said that they are extremely excited about the merge and think the new shop opening will give Mantrav the chance to provide are customers with the service they deserve and give the company a more friendly face to face approach.

The 3sixty team are also excited about the merge and think it will expand the magazine; they are all very keen to build a bigger and better company with Mantrav and expand their team.

Plans are set to produce the first gay travel loyalty card for all the customers that have helped make their recent Growth materialise and try to re-pay their frequent travellers.http://www.traveldailynews.com/pages/show_page/32876-Business-%22booming%22-as-gay-travel-moves-into-Brighton

Business "booming" as gay travel moves into Brighton

The Uk’s leading gay travel agent known as Mantrav international Group has released there plans to open a new office in the UK’s Gay capital Brighton, With the business booming and the opening of the new, New York Office on 42nd street there are plans to broaden the horizons of the business in the very popular UK sea side resort of Brighton.

The company, which was founded in California in 1990, but has been based in the UK since 2001, Mantrav international is the leading gay travel agent in the UK which have over 20 years experience in the Gay travel market with all its employees having a good knowledge in gay destinations and travel all over the world.

The group’s Club Mancha resort in Gran Canaria has been running at a 92% capacity all through the current year despite the economy turn down. Mykonos appears to have been this year’s top destination in short haul and Thailand as long haul.

There is an agreement to merge with London and Brighton’s top Gay magazine 3Sixty by opening a shop together on 4 Steine Street just off Marine Parade located in Brighton’s Gay area.

The new owners of the magazine Graeme Austin & Tony Vassallo have become directors of the Mantrav International Group and are looking to expand the companies together With Malcolm and his team.

Malcolm Hardy the director of Mantrav International Group says “With the company going from strength to strength I am now going to be motivating my employees to provide the best service possible and create good value for our customers, the merge with 3Sixty and the opening of the shop has given us the chance to make these promises happen, providing complete customer satisfaction is now my next goal".

The team Including Ben Frankling (Sales and Marketing) and Matthew Cary (Business Development manager) have said that they are extremely excited about the merge and think the new shop opening will give Mantrav the chance to provide are customers with the service they deserve and give the company a more friendly face to face approach.

The 3sixty team are also excited about the merge and think it will expand the magazine; they are all very keen to build a bigger and better company with Mantrav and expand their team.

Plans are set to produce the first gay travel loyalty card for all the customers that have helped make their recent Growth materialise and try to re-pay their frequent travellers.http://www.traveldailynews.com/pages/show_page/32876-Business-%22booming%22-as-gay-travel-moves-into-Brighton

Business "booming" as gay travel moves into Brighton

The Uk’s leading gay travel agent known as Mantrav international Group has released there plans to open a new office in the UK’s Gay capital Brighton, With the business booming and the opening of the new, New York Office on 42nd street there are plans to broaden the horizons of the business in the very popular UK sea side resort of Brighton.

The company, which was founded in California in 1990, but has been based in the UK since 2001, Mantrav international is the leading gay travel agent in the UK which have over 20 years experience in the Gay travel market with all its employees having a good knowledge in gay destinations and travel all over the world.

The group’s Club Mancha resort in Gran Canaria has been running at a 92% capacity all through the current year despite the economy turn down. Mykonos appears to have been this year’s top destination in short haul and Thailand as long haul.

There is an agreement to merge with London and Brighton’s top Gay magazine 3Sixty by opening a shop together on 4 Steine Street just off Marine Parade located in Brighton’s Gay area.

The new owners of the magazine Graeme Austin & Tony Vassallo have become directors of the Mantrav International Group and are looking to expand the companies together With Malcolm and his team.

Malcolm Hardy the director of Mantrav International Group says “With the company going from strength to strength I am now going to be motivating my employees to provide the best service possible and create good value for our customers, the merge with 3Sixty and the opening of the shop has given us the chance to make these promises happen, providing complete customer satisfaction is now my next goal".

The team Including Ben Frankling (Sales and Marketing) and Matthew Cary (Business Development manager) have said that they are extremely excited about the merge and think the new shop opening will give Mantrav the chance to provide are customers with the service they deserve and give the company a more friendly face to face approach.

The 3sixty team are also excited about the merge and think it will expand the magazine; they are all very keen to build a bigger and better company with Mantrav and expand their team.

Plans are set to produce the first gay travel loyalty card for all the customers that have helped make their recent Growth materialise and try to re-pay their frequent travellers.http://www.traveldailynews.com/pages/show_page/32876-Business-%22booming%22-as-gay-travel-moves-into-Brighton

Daily gay News: Dissenting Gay Marriage

LA Daily News: Dissenting Gay Marriage
Jurist is a Lesbian
Until my friend Peter Cashman in Southern California tipped me off to this opinion column in yesterday's LA Daily News, I had no inkling that one of the state Supreme Court justices who dissented in the ruling two weeks allowing gay marriages to begin, Carol Corrigan, is a lesbian.

From the column written by Ann Bradley:
Certainly the first line of Associate Justice Carol Corrigan's obituary will be that, as a lesbian, she wrote one of the two dissenting opinions in the landmark California Supreme Court case to ensure her own community's right to marry. Or to be clear, to use the word "marry." Make no mistake, this case is about that word: "marriage."
In her dissent in re Marriage Cases, self-proclaimed centrist Corrigan writes, "Californians should allow our gay and lesbian neighbors to call their unions marriages. But I, and this court, must acknowledge that a majority of Californians hold a different view, and have explicitly said so by their vote. This court can overrule a vote of the people only if the Constitution compels us to do so. Here, the Constitution does not. Therefore, I must dissent."

Hmmm, "as a lesbian" in relation to Justice Corrigan got my Googling juices flowing and, lo and behold, there's plenty out there on the web about her sexual orientation, or, at least plenty of speculation on the matter.

Let's start with an article from the January 5, 2006, edition of the Gay & Lesbian Times of San Diego:

The California Supreme Court will rule this year that the California constitutional guarantee of equal protection requires that the state allow gay and lesbian marriages. Here are my reasons:

Just before the holidays, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Carole Corrigan to the California Supreme Court. While completely ignored by the GLBT media, Corrigan is (perhaps) the first lesbian appointed to the California Supreme Court. As the Los Angeles Times reported, she lives in Oakland with her live-in girlfriend. (You do the math.)

That LA Times story was also referenced in December 2005 by a Sacramento Bee political blogger, because of Corrigan's claim she's moderate in judicial temperament, but note what he says about locating the story that got the lesbian allegation going:

UPDATE: An emailer sends along an LA Times story from Oct. 21, which I can't find a link to online, where Corrigan describes herself as a "centrist" in the mold of Sandra Day O'Connor.

Sure enough, the LA Times profile on Corrigan does not turn up either on the paper's web site or through Googling. However, the American Chronicle blog gave more details about the profile and what it actually said about her house-mate:

Carol Corrigan, as the Los Angeles Times, so coyly informs us in a sentence fragment at the end of a biographical sidebar about the soon-to-be Justice of the California Supreme Court, "[i]s unmarried and shares a house in Oakland with a female friend."

Over at the hard-right's Free Republic site, more text from the profile is posted, along with a link to the LA Times piece, but clicking on the link leads to a dead-end.

And the people behind the NNDB.com site, described as "an intelligence aggregator that tracks the activities of people we have determined to be noteworthy, both living and dead," state in sexual orientation line of Corrigan's profile that she's a lesbian. The source? An October 2006 American Family Association newsletter.

Gay activist Peter Cashman in an email to me touches upon how conservatives were all over Corrigan's lesbian orientation, while mainstream gay leaders remained silent on the subject:

She was first outed (that I am aware of) when Arnie nominated for the Supreme Court.

In particular the anti-gay marriage folks and other right-wingers mentioned it widely in opposing her nomination.

In our own community there seems to have been some weird silence in the glowing endorsements from all the usual suspects like EQCA. Was this a conspiracy of silence that we had so often seen before? In so far as prominent queer folks seeking or nominated to public office 'get a pass' to stay in the closet on the basis they will 'do the right thing'.

Jackie Goldberg is an outstanding example of this. In 1994 she ran for LA City Council in the closet until she was 'outed' by the LA Times prior to election day. A group of us had already decided that the days of supporting closet cases was over. We already had a closeted gay man on Council - Joel Wachs. The voters had a right to know.

Gay media and community silence on Corrigan had a notable exception when the Gay & Lesbian Times ran its 2006 article.

Thanks, Peter, for sharing the LA Daily News column with me. It will go a long way toward raising a public discussion on the sexual orientation of Associate Justice Corrigan.source from : http://mpetrelis.blogspot.com/2008/05/la-daily-news-dissenting-gay-marriage.html

Daily gay News: Dissenting Gay Marriage

LA Daily News: Dissenting Gay Marriage
Jurist is a Lesbian
Until my friend Peter Cashman in Southern California tipped me off to this opinion column in yesterday's LA Daily News, I had no inkling that one of the state Supreme Court justices who dissented in the ruling two weeks allowing gay marriages to begin, Carol Corrigan, is a lesbian.

From the column written by Ann Bradley:
Certainly the first line of Associate Justice Carol Corrigan's obituary will be that, as a lesbian, she wrote one of the two dissenting opinions in the landmark California Supreme Court case to ensure her own community's right to marry. Or to be clear, to use the word "marry." Make no mistake, this case is about that word: "marriage."
In her dissent in re Marriage Cases, self-proclaimed centrist Corrigan writes, "Californians should allow our gay and lesbian neighbors to call their unions marriages. But I, and this court, must acknowledge that a majority of Californians hold a different view, and have explicitly said so by their vote. This court can overrule a vote of the people only if the Constitution compels us to do so. Here, the Constitution does not. Therefore, I must dissent."

Hmmm, "as a lesbian" in relation to Justice Corrigan got my Googling juices flowing and, lo and behold, there's plenty out there on the web about her sexual orientation, or, at least plenty of speculation on the matter.

Let's start with an article from the January 5, 2006, edition of the Gay & Lesbian Times of San Diego:

The California Supreme Court will rule this year that the California constitutional guarantee of equal protection requires that the state allow gay and lesbian marriages. Here are my reasons:

Just before the holidays, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Carole Corrigan to the California Supreme Court. While completely ignored by the GLBT media, Corrigan is (perhaps) the first lesbian appointed to the California Supreme Court. As the Los Angeles Times reported, she lives in Oakland with her live-in girlfriend. (You do the math.)

That LA Times story was also referenced in December 2005 by a Sacramento Bee political blogger, because of Corrigan's claim she's moderate in judicial temperament, but note what he says about locating the story that got the lesbian allegation going:

UPDATE: An emailer sends along an LA Times story from Oct. 21, which I can't find a link to online, where Corrigan describes herself as a "centrist" in the mold of Sandra Day O'Connor.

Sure enough, the LA Times profile on Corrigan does not turn up either on the paper's web site or through Googling. However, the American Chronicle blog gave more details about the profile and what it actually said about her house-mate:

Carol Corrigan, as the Los Angeles Times, so coyly informs us in a sentence fragment at the end of a biographical sidebar about the soon-to-be Justice of the California Supreme Court, "[i]s unmarried and shares a house in Oakland with a female friend."

Over at the hard-right's Free Republic site, more text from the profile is posted, along with a link to the LA Times piece, but clicking on the link leads to a dead-end.

And the people behind the NNDB.com site, described as "an intelligence aggregator that tracks the activities of people we have determined to be noteworthy, both living and dead," state in sexual orientation line of Corrigan's profile that she's a lesbian. The source? An October 2006 American Family Association newsletter.

Gay activist Peter Cashman in an email to me touches upon how conservatives were all over Corrigan's lesbian orientation, while mainstream gay leaders remained silent on the subject:

She was first outed (that I am aware of) when Arnie nominated for the Supreme Court.

In particular the anti-gay marriage folks and other right-wingers mentioned it widely in opposing her nomination.

In our own community there seems to have been some weird silence in the glowing endorsements from all the usual suspects like EQCA. Was this a conspiracy of silence that we had so often seen before? In so far as prominent queer folks seeking or nominated to public office 'get a pass' to stay in the closet on the basis they will 'do the right thing'.

Jackie Goldberg is an outstanding example of this. In 1994 she ran for LA City Council in the closet until she was 'outed' by the LA Times prior to election day. A group of us had already decided that the days of supporting closet cases was over. We already had a closeted gay man on Council - Joel Wachs. The voters had a right to know.

Gay media and community silence on Corrigan had a notable exception when the Gay & Lesbian Times ran its 2006 article.

Thanks, Peter, for sharing the LA Daily News column with me. It will go a long way toward raising a public discussion on the sexual orientation of Associate Justice Corrigan.source from : http://mpetrelis.blogspot.com/2008/05/la-daily-news-dissenting-gay-marriage.html

Daily gay News: Dissenting Gay Marriage

LA Daily News: Dissenting Gay Marriage
Jurist is a Lesbian
Until my friend Peter Cashman in Southern California tipped me off to this opinion column in yesterday's LA Daily News, I had no inkling that one of the state Supreme Court justices who dissented in the ruling two weeks allowing gay marriages to begin, Carol Corrigan, is a lesbian.

From the column written by Ann Bradley:
Certainly the first line of Associate Justice Carol Corrigan's obituary will be that, as a lesbian, she wrote one of the two dissenting opinions in the landmark California Supreme Court case to ensure her own community's right to marry. Or to be clear, to use the word "marry." Make no mistake, this case is about that word: "marriage."
In her dissent in re Marriage Cases, self-proclaimed centrist Corrigan writes, "Californians should allow our gay and lesbian neighbors to call their unions marriages. But I, and this court, must acknowledge that a majority of Californians hold a different view, and have explicitly said so by their vote. This court can overrule a vote of the people only if the Constitution compels us to do so. Here, the Constitution does not. Therefore, I must dissent."

Hmmm, "as a lesbian" in relation to Justice Corrigan got my Googling juices flowing and, lo and behold, there's plenty out there on the web about her sexual orientation, or, at least plenty of speculation on the matter.

Let's start with an article from the January 5, 2006, edition of the Gay & Lesbian Times of San Diego:

The California Supreme Court will rule this year that the California constitutional guarantee of equal protection requires that the state allow gay and lesbian marriages. Here are my reasons:

Just before the holidays, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Carole Corrigan to the California Supreme Court. While completely ignored by the GLBT media, Corrigan is (perhaps) the first lesbian appointed to the California Supreme Court. As the Los Angeles Times reported, she lives in Oakland with her live-in girlfriend. (You do the math.)

That LA Times story was also referenced in December 2005 by a Sacramento Bee political blogger, because of Corrigan's claim she's moderate in judicial temperament, but note what he says about locating the story that got the lesbian allegation going:

UPDATE: An emailer sends along an LA Times story from Oct. 21, which I can't find a link to online, where Corrigan describes herself as a "centrist" in the mold of Sandra Day O'Connor.

Sure enough, the LA Times profile on Corrigan does not turn up either on the paper's web site or through Googling. However, the American Chronicle blog gave more details about the profile and what it actually said about her house-mate:

Carol Corrigan, as the Los Angeles Times, so coyly informs us in a sentence fragment at the end of a biographical sidebar about the soon-to-be Justice of the California Supreme Court, "[i]s unmarried and shares a house in Oakland with a female friend."

Over at the hard-right's Free Republic site, more text from the profile is posted, along with a link to the LA Times piece, but clicking on the link leads to a dead-end.

And the people behind the NNDB.com site, described as "an intelligence aggregator that tracks the activities of people we have determined to be noteworthy, both living and dead," state in sexual orientation line of Corrigan's profile that she's a lesbian. The source? An October 2006 American Family Association newsletter.

Gay activist Peter Cashman in an email to me touches upon how conservatives were all over Corrigan's lesbian orientation, while mainstream gay leaders remained silent on the subject:

She was first outed (that I am aware of) when Arnie nominated for the Supreme Court.

In particular the anti-gay marriage folks and other right-wingers mentioned it widely in opposing her nomination.

In our own community there seems to have been some weird silence in the glowing endorsements from all the usual suspects like EQCA. Was this a conspiracy of silence that we had so often seen before? In so far as prominent queer folks seeking or nominated to public office 'get a pass' to stay in the closet on the basis they will 'do the right thing'.

Jackie Goldberg is an outstanding example of this. In 1994 she ran for LA City Council in the closet until she was 'outed' by the LA Times prior to election day. A group of us had already decided that the days of supporting closet cases was over. We already had a closeted gay man on Council - Joel Wachs. The voters had a right to know.

Gay media and community silence on Corrigan had a notable exception when the Gay & Lesbian Times ran its 2006 article.

Thanks, Peter, for sharing the LA Daily News column with me. It will go a long way toward raising a public discussion on the sexual orientation of Associate Justice Corrigan.source from : http://mpetrelis.blogspot.com/2008/05/la-daily-news-dissenting-gay-marriage.html

Internal education on gay liberation

Lavender & red, part 80

By Leslie Feinberg
Published Dec 3, 2006 8:02 PM

Workers World Party’s youth group, Youth Against War & Fascism (YAWF), formed an internal Gay Caucus in 1971—which soon after became the Lesbian and Gay Caucus. Bob McCubbin, who played a key role in its political and organizational formation and development, recalls what led up to and followed the establishment of the caucus.

McCubbin writes that he had been doing gay liberation work and Workers World Party (WWP) organizing on the West Coast. He had told leading members of the Buffalo branch he was gay when he moved to San Francisco, where there was no branch, six months after the Stonewall Rebellion.

And he remembered that one of the founders of the party, Vince Copeland, “had actually used the presence in New York of a large gay community as one of his incentives to get me to move to New York City” to work in the party center.

However, not until 1971 did McCubbin ever take the floor at a party meeting to speak from the political perspective of a gay man. “In the late summer of 1971, I left San Francisco for New York City and a few weeks later, at a party meeting, I took the floor to defend the party during a minor factional struggle. One of the charges being leveled was that the party had no position on the gay liberation movement.”

McCubbin stood up and said, “Well, I’m gay, and I’ve always understood that the party supports the struggles of all oppressed people.” There were a few seconds of absolute silence and then strong applause, recalls McCubbin.

McCubbin explains, “What followed the branch meeting where I came out were several months of preliminary discussions with leading comrades in New York, in particular with Vince and Dottie [Dorothy Ballan, a founder of WWP], and with a few lesbian and gay comrades in party branches.

“At the end of 1971 or the beginning of 1972, the party held a winter conference, and I asked Deirdre [Griswold] if an announcement could be read at the Saturday plenum to the effect that a meeting of lesbian and gay comrades and friends would be held in the evening. Deirdre assured me that would be no problem.

“Well, about 50 people showed up!” Not all of them were LGBT, McCubbin recalls. “It was a wonderful expression of solidarity on the part of many heterosexually oriented comrades, but the 12 or 15 of us who were lesbian and gay had to schedule a further meeting the following morning to get some work done after the evening meeting full of praise for us and solidarity statements.

“This conference,” McCubbin concludes, “marked the beginning of a party-wide effort to educate ourselves and our class on this issue.”

Sam Marcy vs. gay oppression

Workers World Party founder Sam Marcy made a tremendous contribution to the development of the party as a revolutionary communist organization, and to the historic struggle for sexual liberation, when he oriented the party about the gay struggle politically, theoretically and historically in a significant part of a 1972 internal document he wrote as orientation for the party conference.

Marcy said of the oppression of nationalities, women, youth and gay people: “The degeneration of monopoly capitalism into state monopoly capitalism carries to an extreme all the forms of oppression which the capitalist system, in the previous epoch, had engendered and developed. As the crisis of the social system becomes more and more apparent, the need of the ruling class to unload its burden on the most oppressed sections of society becomes more evident. Only by dividing, only by fragmenting and continually pitting different elements of the oppressed masses against each other, can the capitalist establishment maintain its sway over all society, and hope to survive.”

This same sharpening of the persecution and oppression, however, creates the impetus for a genuinely progressive militancy and resurgence of Black and Latin@ peoples, women, youth and gay people.

Marcy characterized the lack of widespread support for the gay struggle in the progressive movement at that time as a legacy of the deep-seated prejudice that emanated from the religious bigotry of the Middle Ages and its reinforcement throughout the entire course of capitalist development.

“It is particularly significant,” he wrote, “that the public change in attitude—such as it is—comes on the heels of a very formidable wave of struggle by gay people, a veritable ‘coming out’ in a most demonstrative way. Gay Pride took a cue from Black Pride. ...

“Without the struggle launched by gay people,” Marcy stressed, “the prejudices which have been ground into the consciousness of the masses by indoctrination would not even have been challenged, let alone shaken to their foundations.

“All this shows how intimate is the connection between the ideas of a particular time—even progressive ideas—and the conditions of the time, in this case, the state of the struggle.”

‘Influence of October Revolution’

Marcy continued, “An important influence in the progressive movement insofar as the gay struggle is concerned, dates back to the victory of the October Revolution in Russia. In early 1917, the Soviet government annulled all laws which restricted the rights of homosexuals. It also, of course, annulled all the reactionary laws pertaining to divorce as well as the feudal-bourgeois family relations.

“What is important about this,” he emphasized, “is that for the first time in history, a workers’ government established equality in law—and to a measurable degree also in fact—between men and women, for heterosexuals and homosexuals.”

Marcy noted that, “Unfortunately this period of very progressive development was short-lived, and was succeeded by a period of reaction with the rise of Stalin to power.” The 1934 move by the bureaucratic grouping at the helm of the workers’ state to reinstate laws against homosexuality, Marcy explained, had a profoundly negative ideological impact on communist parties around the world that looked to the Soviet Union for political leadership.

“Our party,” Marcy stated, “which bases itself on Marxism-Leninism, looks to the early model of the Soviet Union as the embodiment of what our own political position should be in relation to the struggle of gay people.

“Our first, most elementary and fundamental duty as well as objective on this question is to completely eliminate and abolish all forms of persecution and oppression of gay people. It must also fight against all ideological, political and social manifestations of gay oppression which may be reflected in our own ranks.”

Marcy wrote that the demand to end all sexual oppression and persecution “is really an elementary democratic demand which a bourgeois democracy should be able to grant along with all other democratic demands. But imperialist democracy tends to restrict the elementary rights of all people—not only gay, women, youth, Brown and Black. It is only the struggle that can wrest concessions. In the long run, only the abolition of the capitalist system can produce a lasting, free and equal treatment of all peoples.”

Marcy concluded that although regression in the Soviet Union had bequeathed a backward ideological legacy on the question of homosexuality, “The socialist revolution is a permanent revolution, one of continuous change. Along with many other changes that need to be made in the socialist countries, the gay question is surely one of them.

“In the meantime, we ought to concentrate on preparing our own revolution, of which the struggle for the liberation of all oppressed people, including gay people, is an indispensable condition for victory of the revolution.”

Next: Historic WWP contribution: Publication of “The Gay Question” by Bob McCubbin
source from : http://www.workers.org/2006/us/lavender-red-80/

Internal education on gay liberation

Lavender & red, part 80

By Leslie Feinberg
Published Dec 3, 2006 8:02 PM

Workers World Party’s youth group, Youth Against War & Fascism (YAWF), formed an internal Gay Caucus in 1971—which soon after became the Lesbian and Gay Caucus. Bob McCubbin, who played a key role in its political and organizational formation and development, recalls what led up to and followed the establishment of the caucus.

McCubbin writes that he had been doing gay liberation work and Workers World Party (WWP) organizing on the West Coast. He had told leading members of the Buffalo branch he was gay when he moved to San Francisco, where there was no branch, six months after the Stonewall Rebellion.

And he remembered that one of the founders of the party, Vince Copeland, “had actually used the presence in New York of a large gay community as one of his incentives to get me to move to New York City” to work in the party center.

However, not until 1971 did McCubbin ever take the floor at a party meeting to speak from the political perspective of a gay man. “In the late summer of 1971, I left San Francisco for New York City and a few weeks later, at a party meeting, I took the floor to defend the party during a minor factional struggle. One of the charges being leveled was that the party had no position on the gay liberation movement.”

McCubbin stood up and said, “Well, I’m gay, and I’ve always understood that the party supports the struggles of all oppressed people.” There were a few seconds of absolute silence and then strong applause, recalls McCubbin.

McCubbin explains, “What followed the branch meeting where I came out were several months of preliminary discussions with leading comrades in New York, in particular with Vince and Dottie [Dorothy Ballan, a founder of WWP], and with a few lesbian and gay comrades in party branches.

“At the end of 1971 or the beginning of 1972, the party held a winter conference, and I asked Deirdre [Griswold] if an announcement could be read at the Saturday plenum to the effect that a meeting of lesbian and gay comrades and friends would be held in the evening. Deirdre assured me that would be no problem.

“Well, about 50 people showed up!” Not all of them were LGBT, McCubbin recalls. “It was a wonderful expression of solidarity on the part of many heterosexually oriented comrades, but the 12 or 15 of us who were lesbian and gay had to schedule a further meeting the following morning to get some work done after the evening meeting full of praise for us and solidarity statements.

“This conference,” McCubbin concludes, “marked the beginning of a party-wide effort to educate ourselves and our class on this issue.”

Sam Marcy vs. gay oppression

Workers World Party founder Sam Marcy made a tremendous contribution to the development of the party as a revolutionary communist organization, and to the historic struggle for sexual liberation, when he oriented the party about the gay struggle politically, theoretically and historically in a significant part of a 1972 internal document he wrote as orientation for the party conference.

Marcy said of the oppression of nationalities, women, youth and gay people: “The degeneration of monopoly capitalism into state monopoly capitalism carries to an extreme all the forms of oppression which the capitalist system, in the previous epoch, had engendered and developed. As the crisis of the social system becomes more and more apparent, the need of the ruling class to unload its burden on the most oppressed sections of society becomes more evident. Only by dividing, only by fragmenting and continually pitting different elements of the oppressed masses against each other, can the capitalist establishment maintain its sway over all society, and hope to survive.”

This same sharpening of the persecution and oppression, however, creates the impetus for a genuinely progressive militancy and resurgence of Black and Latin@ peoples, women, youth and gay people.

Marcy characterized the lack of widespread support for the gay struggle in the progressive movement at that time as a legacy of the deep-seated prejudice that emanated from the religious bigotry of the Middle Ages and its reinforcement throughout the entire course of capitalist development.

“It is particularly significant,” he wrote, “that the public change in attitude—such as it is—comes on the heels of a very formidable wave of struggle by gay people, a veritable ‘coming out’ in a most demonstrative way. Gay Pride took a cue from Black Pride. ...

“Without the struggle launched by gay people,” Marcy stressed, “the prejudices which have been ground into the consciousness of the masses by indoctrination would not even have been challenged, let alone shaken to their foundations.

“All this shows how intimate is the connection between the ideas of a particular time—even progressive ideas—and the conditions of the time, in this case, the state of the struggle.”

‘Influence of October Revolution’

Marcy continued, “An important influence in the progressive movement insofar as the gay struggle is concerned, dates back to the victory of the October Revolution in Russia. In early 1917, the Soviet government annulled all laws which restricted the rights of homosexuals. It also, of course, annulled all the reactionary laws pertaining to divorce as well as the feudal-bourgeois family relations.

“What is important about this,” he emphasized, “is that for the first time in history, a workers’ government established equality in law—and to a measurable degree also in fact—between men and women, for heterosexuals and homosexuals.”

Marcy noted that, “Unfortunately this period of very progressive development was short-lived, and was succeeded by a period of reaction with the rise of Stalin to power.” The 1934 move by the bureaucratic grouping at the helm of the workers’ state to reinstate laws against homosexuality, Marcy explained, had a profoundly negative ideological impact on communist parties around the world that looked to the Soviet Union for political leadership.

“Our party,” Marcy stated, “which bases itself on Marxism-Leninism, looks to the early model of the Soviet Union as the embodiment of what our own political position should be in relation to the struggle of gay people.

“Our first, most elementary and fundamental duty as well as objective on this question is to completely eliminate and abolish all forms of persecution and oppression of gay people. It must also fight against all ideological, political and social manifestations of gay oppression which may be reflected in our own ranks.”

Marcy wrote that the demand to end all sexual oppression and persecution “is really an elementary democratic demand which a bourgeois democracy should be able to grant along with all other democratic demands. But imperialist democracy tends to restrict the elementary rights of all people—not only gay, women, youth, Brown and Black. It is only the struggle that can wrest concessions. In the long run, only the abolition of the capitalist system can produce a lasting, free and equal treatment of all peoples.”

Marcy concluded that although regression in the Soviet Union had bequeathed a backward ideological legacy on the question of homosexuality, “The socialist revolution is a permanent revolution, one of continuous change. Along with many other changes that need to be made in the socialist countries, the gay question is surely one of them.

“In the meantime, we ought to concentrate on preparing our own revolution, of which the struggle for the liberation of all oppressed people, including gay people, is an indispensable condition for victory of the revolution.”

Next: Historic WWP contribution: Publication of “The Gay Question” by Bob McCubbin
source from : http://www.workers.org/2006/us/lavender-red-80/

Internal education on gay liberation

Lavender & red, part 80

By Leslie Feinberg
Published Dec 3, 2006 8:02 PM

Workers World Party’s youth group, Youth Against War & Fascism (YAWF), formed an internal Gay Caucus in 1971—which soon after became the Lesbian and Gay Caucus. Bob McCubbin, who played a key role in its political and organizational formation and development, recalls what led up to and followed the establishment of the caucus.

McCubbin writes that he had been doing gay liberation work and Workers World Party (WWP) organizing on the West Coast. He had told leading members of the Buffalo branch he was gay when he moved to San Francisco, where there was no branch, six months after the Stonewall Rebellion.

And he remembered that one of the founders of the party, Vince Copeland, “had actually used the presence in New York of a large gay community as one of his incentives to get me to move to New York City” to work in the party center.

However, not until 1971 did McCubbin ever take the floor at a party meeting to speak from the political perspective of a gay man. “In the late summer of 1971, I left San Francisco for New York City and a few weeks later, at a party meeting, I took the floor to defend the party during a minor factional struggle. One of the charges being leveled was that the party had no position on the gay liberation movement.”

McCubbin stood up and said, “Well, I’m gay, and I’ve always understood that the party supports the struggles of all oppressed people.” There were a few seconds of absolute silence and then strong applause, recalls McCubbin.

McCubbin explains, “What followed the branch meeting where I came out were several months of preliminary discussions with leading comrades in New York, in particular with Vince and Dottie [Dorothy Ballan, a founder of WWP], and with a few lesbian and gay comrades in party branches.

“At the end of 1971 or the beginning of 1972, the party held a winter conference, and I asked Deirdre [Griswold] if an announcement could be read at the Saturday plenum to the effect that a meeting of lesbian and gay comrades and friends would be held in the evening. Deirdre assured me that would be no problem.

“Well, about 50 people showed up!” Not all of them were LGBT, McCubbin recalls. “It was a wonderful expression of solidarity on the part of many heterosexually oriented comrades, but the 12 or 15 of us who were lesbian and gay had to schedule a further meeting the following morning to get some work done after the evening meeting full of praise for us and solidarity statements.

“This conference,” McCubbin concludes, “marked the beginning of a party-wide effort to educate ourselves and our class on this issue.”

Sam Marcy vs. gay oppression

Workers World Party founder Sam Marcy made a tremendous contribution to the development of the party as a revolutionary communist organization, and to the historic struggle for sexual liberation, when he oriented the party about the gay struggle politically, theoretically and historically in a significant part of a 1972 internal document he wrote as orientation for the party conference.

Marcy said of the oppression of nationalities, women, youth and gay people: “The degeneration of monopoly capitalism into state monopoly capitalism carries to an extreme all the forms of oppression which the capitalist system, in the previous epoch, had engendered and developed. As the crisis of the social system becomes more and more apparent, the need of the ruling class to unload its burden on the most oppressed sections of society becomes more evident. Only by dividing, only by fragmenting and continually pitting different elements of the oppressed masses against each other, can the capitalist establishment maintain its sway over all society, and hope to survive.”

This same sharpening of the persecution and oppression, however, creates the impetus for a genuinely progressive militancy and resurgence of Black and Latin@ peoples, women, youth and gay people.

Marcy characterized the lack of widespread support for the gay struggle in the progressive movement at that time as a legacy of the deep-seated prejudice that emanated from the religious bigotry of the Middle Ages and its reinforcement throughout the entire course of capitalist development.

“It is particularly significant,” he wrote, “that the public change in attitude—such as it is—comes on the heels of a very formidable wave of struggle by gay people, a veritable ‘coming out’ in a most demonstrative way. Gay Pride took a cue from Black Pride. ...

“Without the struggle launched by gay people,” Marcy stressed, “the prejudices which have been ground into the consciousness of the masses by indoctrination would not even have been challenged, let alone shaken to their foundations.

“All this shows how intimate is the connection between the ideas of a particular time—even progressive ideas—and the conditions of the time, in this case, the state of the struggle.”

‘Influence of October Revolution’

Marcy continued, “An important influence in the progressive movement insofar as the gay struggle is concerned, dates back to the victory of the October Revolution in Russia. In early 1917, the Soviet government annulled all laws which restricted the rights of homosexuals. It also, of course, annulled all the reactionary laws pertaining to divorce as well as the feudal-bourgeois family relations.

“What is important about this,” he emphasized, “is that for the first time in history, a workers’ government established equality in law—and to a measurable degree also in fact—between men and women, for heterosexuals and homosexuals.”

Marcy noted that, “Unfortunately this period of very progressive development was short-lived, and was succeeded by a period of reaction with the rise of Stalin to power.” The 1934 move by the bureaucratic grouping at the helm of the workers’ state to reinstate laws against homosexuality, Marcy explained, had a profoundly negative ideological impact on communist parties around the world that looked to the Soviet Union for political leadership.

“Our party,” Marcy stated, “which bases itself on Marxism-Leninism, looks to the early model of the Soviet Union as the embodiment of what our own political position should be in relation to the struggle of gay people.

“Our first, most elementary and fundamental duty as well as objective on this question is to completely eliminate and abolish all forms of persecution and oppression of gay people. It must also fight against all ideological, political and social manifestations of gay oppression which may be reflected in our own ranks.”

Marcy wrote that the demand to end all sexual oppression and persecution “is really an elementary democratic demand which a bourgeois democracy should be able to grant along with all other democratic demands. But imperialist democracy tends to restrict the elementary rights of all people—not only gay, women, youth, Brown and Black. It is only the struggle that can wrest concessions. In the long run, only the abolition of the capitalist system can produce a lasting, free and equal treatment of all peoples.”

Marcy concluded that although regression in the Soviet Union had bequeathed a backward ideological legacy on the question of homosexuality, “The socialist revolution is a permanent revolution, one of continuous change. Along with many other changes that need to be made in the socialist countries, the gay question is surely one of them.

“In the meantime, we ought to concentrate on preparing our own revolution, of which the struggle for the liberation of all oppressed people, including gay people, is an indispensable condition for victory of the revolution.”

Next: Historic WWP contribution: Publication of “The Gay Question” by Bob McCubbin
source from : http://www.workers.org/2006/us/lavender-red-80/

Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is a national organization comprising lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and allied individuals who wish to put an end to discrimination, harassment, and bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression in K-12 schools in the United States. There are nearly 40 chapters of the organization around the United States.

The organization supports Gay-Straight Alliances along with sponsoring the annual National Day of Silence and No Name-Calling Week and providing resources for teachers on how to support LGBT students. It also sponsors and participates in a host of other "Days of Action," including TransAction!, Ally Week and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Organizing Weekend.
Mission

The organization's mission statement reads,
“ The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network strives to assure that each member of every school community is valued and respected regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. We believe that such an atmosphere engenders a positive sense of self, which is the basis of educational achievement and personal growth. Since homophobia and heterosexism undermine a healthy school climate, we work to educate teachers, students and the public at large about the damaging effects these forces have on youth and adults alike. We recognize that forces such as racism and sexism have similarly adverse impacts on communities and we support schools in seeking to redress all such inequities. GLSEN seeks to develop school climates where difference is valued for the positive contribution it makes in creating a more vibrant and diverse community. We welcome as members any and all individuals, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity/expression or occupation, who are committed to seeing this philosophy realized in K-12 schools.
History
Founded as the Gay and Lesbian Independent School Teachers Network (GLSTN) in 1990, the organization began as a local volunteer group of 70 gay and lesbian educators. At that time, there were two Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) in the nation, only one state with policy in place to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students, and a general lack of awareness of the needs of LGBT students. LGBT youth did not have a voice in the education community or in the LGBT movement. There were few, if any, resources available for teachers to discuss LGBT issues.

However, groups of concerned individuals began to establish chapters across the country, advocating locally and regionally for safe schools for students who were, or were perceived to be, LGBT.

In 1995 GLSTN became a national organization and hired its first full time staff person, GLSEN’s founder and Executive Director Kevin Jennings, (who is now Assistant Deputy heading the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education). In 1997, GLSTN staged its first national conference in Salt Lake City, UT, in order to respond to the legislature’s move to ban all student groups in an effort to prevent the formation of GSAs in the state. It is also this year that GLSTN changed its name to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, or GLSEN, in order to attract new members to the struggle for safe schools for all students, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression.

Currently, more than 3,600 GSAs have registered with GLSEN, which has approximately 40 full time staff, a governing board of 20 members and two advisory committees at the national level. In addition, nearly 40 Chapters are affiliated with GLSEN on local levels. At this point, GLSEN has successfully hosted more than 8 national conferences to bring together student leaders, educators, chapter leaders and activists. GLSEN also sponsors the National Day of Silence, in which hundreds of thousands of students participate each year. Students from more than 5,000 middle and high schools registered with GLSEN as 2007 Day of Silence participants.
more source from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay,_Lesbian_and_Straight_Education_Network

Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is a national organization comprising lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and allied individuals who wish to put an end to discrimination, harassment, and bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression in K-12 schools in the United States. There are nearly 40 chapters of the organization around the United States.

The organization supports Gay-Straight Alliances along with sponsoring the annual National Day of Silence and No Name-Calling Week and providing resources for teachers on how to support LGBT students. It also sponsors and participates in a host of other "Days of Action," including TransAction!, Ally Week and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Organizing Weekend.
Mission

The organization's mission statement reads,
“ The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network strives to assure that each member of every school community is valued and respected regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. We believe that such an atmosphere engenders a positive sense of self, which is the basis of educational achievement and personal growth. Since homophobia and heterosexism undermine a healthy school climate, we work to educate teachers, students and the public at large about the damaging effects these forces have on youth and adults alike. We recognize that forces such as racism and sexism have similarly adverse impacts on communities and we support schools in seeking to redress all such inequities. GLSEN seeks to develop school climates where difference is valued for the positive contribution it makes in creating a more vibrant and diverse community. We welcome as members any and all individuals, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity/expression or occupation, who are committed to seeing this philosophy realized in K-12 schools.
History
Founded as the Gay and Lesbian Independent School Teachers Network (GLSTN) in 1990, the organization began as a local volunteer group of 70 gay and lesbian educators. At that time, there were two Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) in the nation, only one state with policy in place to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students, and a general lack of awareness of the needs of LGBT students. LGBT youth did not have a voice in the education community or in the LGBT movement. There were few, if any, resources available for teachers to discuss LGBT issues.

However, groups of concerned individuals began to establish chapters across the country, advocating locally and regionally for safe schools for students who were, or were perceived to be, LGBT.

In 1995 GLSTN became a national organization and hired its first full time staff person, GLSEN’s founder and Executive Director Kevin Jennings, (who is now Assistant Deputy heading the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education). In 1997, GLSTN staged its first national conference in Salt Lake City, UT, in order to respond to the legislature’s move to ban all student groups in an effort to prevent the formation of GSAs in the state. It is also this year that GLSTN changed its name to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, or GLSEN, in order to attract new members to the struggle for safe schools for all students, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression.

Currently, more than 3,600 GSAs have registered with GLSEN, which has approximately 40 full time staff, a governing board of 20 members and two advisory committees at the national level. In addition, nearly 40 Chapters are affiliated with GLSEN on local levels. At this point, GLSEN has successfully hosted more than 8 national conferences to bring together student leaders, educators, chapter leaders and activists. GLSEN also sponsors the National Day of Silence, in which hundreds of thousands of students participate each year. Students from more than 5,000 middle and high schools registered with GLSEN as 2007 Day of Silence participants.
more source from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay,_Lesbian_and_Straight_Education_Network

Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is a national organization comprising lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and allied individuals who wish to put an end to discrimination, harassment, and bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression in K-12 schools in the United States. There are nearly 40 chapters of the organization around the United States.

The organization supports Gay-Straight Alliances along with sponsoring the annual National Day of Silence and No Name-Calling Week and providing resources for teachers on how to support LGBT students. It also sponsors and participates in a host of other "Days of Action," including TransAction!, Ally Week and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Organizing Weekend.
Mission

The organization's mission statement reads,
“ The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network strives to assure that each member of every school community is valued and respected regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. We believe that such an atmosphere engenders a positive sense of self, which is the basis of educational achievement and personal growth. Since homophobia and heterosexism undermine a healthy school climate, we work to educate teachers, students and the public at large about the damaging effects these forces have on youth and adults alike. We recognize that forces such as racism and sexism have similarly adverse impacts on communities and we support schools in seeking to redress all such inequities. GLSEN seeks to develop school climates where difference is valued for the positive contribution it makes in creating a more vibrant and diverse community. We welcome as members any and all individuals, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity/expression or occupation, who are committed to seeing this philosophy realized in K-12 schools.
History
Founded as the Gay and Lesbian Independent School Teachers Network (GLSTN) in 1990, the organization began as a local volunteer group of 70 gay and lesbian educators. At that time, there were two Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) in the nation, only one state with policy in place to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students, and a general lack of awareness of the needs of LGBT students. LGBT youth did not have a voice in the education community or in the LGBT movement. There were few, if any, resources available for teachers to discuss LGBT issues.

However, groups of concerned individuals began to establish chapters across the country, advocating locally and regionally for safe schools for students who were, or were perceived to be, LGBT.

In 1995 GLSTN became a national organization and hired its first full time staff person, GLSEN’s founder and Executive Director Kevin Jennings, (who is now Assistant Deputy heading the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education). In 1997, GLSTN staged its first national conference in Salt Lake City, UT, in order to respond to the legislature’s move to ban all student groups in an effort to prevent the formation of GSAs in the state. It is also this year that GLSTN changed its name to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, or GLSEN, in order to attract new members to the struggle for safe schools for all students, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression.

Currently, more than 3,600 GSAs have registered with GLSEN, which has approximately 40 full time staff, a governing board of 20 members and two advisory committees at the national level. In addition, nearly 40 Chapters are affiliated with GLSEN on local levels. At this point, GLSEN has successfully hosted more than 8 national conferences to bring together student leaders, educators, chapter leaders and activists. GLSEN also sponsors the National Day of Silence, in which hundreds of thousands of students participate each year. Students from more than 5,000 middle and high schools registered with GLSEN as 2007 Day of Silence participants.
more source from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay,_Lesbian_and_Straight_Education_Network

Sex education before safe sex education for gay men.

Maguire B; International Conference on AIDS.


ISSUE: Sex plays a major role for gay men who are just becoming sexually aware or active, in gaining peer approval and developing a place in the gay community. It is not enough to know about safe sex in order to avoid HIV or AIDS--skills are needed. Most gay men are too embarrassed to actively seek out gay sex information. Strategies in HIV prevention encouraging safer non-penetrative alternatives mistakenly assume that gay men automatically have the skills and techniques to perform these activities comfortably. De-stigmatisation of gay love-making and increased community discourse about gay sex can serve to counter a lack of access to gay sex information. PROJECT: Nitty Gritties is a free five session course offered to gay men of all ages. The course covers anatomy; physiology; self examination and sexual maintenance; sexual negotiation; safe sex; HIV, STD and opportunistic infection avoidance; unsafe sex and risk assessment, sexual techniques and other issues participants may wish to discuss. RESULTS: Men who have the sexual confidence to successfully negotiate sex itself find less difficulty in negotiating safe sex. Sexual risk assessment often involves sophisticated cognitive processes, which may be ill-informed, HIV-phobic or inconsistent. Gay male knowledge of anatomy, physiology and sex technique is very poor. CONCLUSION: Participants report increased skills and comfort in all stated course objectives.
Publication Types:

* Meeting Abstracts

Keywords:

* Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
* HIV Infections
* HIV Seropositivity
* Homosexuality
* Homosexuality, Male
* Humans
* Interpersonal Relations
* Male
* Patient Education as Topic
* Peer Group
* Safe Sex
* Sex Education
* Social Behavior

Other ID:

* 98399212

UI: 102230393

From Meeting Abstracts
more detail from : http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/MeetingAbstracts/ma?f=102230393.html

Sex education before safe sex education for gay men.

Maguire B; International Conference on AIDS.


ISSUE: Sex plays a major role for gay men who are just becoming sexually aware or active, in gaining peer approval and developing a place in the gay community. It is not enough to know about safe sex in order to avoid HIV or AIDS--skills are needed. Most gay men are too embarrassed to actively seek out gay sex information. Strategies in HIV prevention encouraging safer non-penetrative alternatives mistakenly assume that gay men automatically have the skills and techniques to perform these activities comfortably. De-stigmatisation of gay love-making and increased community discourse about gay sex can serve to counter a lack of access to gay sex information. PROJECT: Nitty Gritties is a free five session course offered to gay men of all ages. The course covers anatomy; physiology; self examination and sexual maintenance; sexual negotiation; safe sex; HIV, STD and opportunistic infection avoidance; unsafe sex and risk assessment, sexual techniques and other issues participants may wish to discuss. RESULTS: Men who have the sexual confidence to successfully negotiate sex itself find less difficulty in negotiating safe sex. Sexual risk assessment often involves sophisticated cognitive processes, which may be ill-informed, HIV-phobic or inconsistent. Gay male knowledge of anatomy, physiology and sex technique is very poor. CONCLUSION: Participants report increased skills and comfort in all stated course objectives.
Publication Types:

* Meeting Abstracts

Keywords:

* Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
* HIV Infections
* HIV Seropositivity
* Homosexuality
* Homosexuality, Male
* Humans
* Interpersonal Relations
* Male
* Patient Education as Topic
* Peer Group
* Safe Sex
* Sex Education
* Social Behavior

Other ID:

* 98399212

UI: 102230393

From Meeting Abstracts
more detail from : http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/MeetingAbstracts/ma?f=102230393.html

Sex education before safe sex education for gay men.

Maguire B; International Conference on AIDS.


ISSUE: Sex plays a major role for gay men who are just becoming sexually aware or active, in gaining peer approval and developing a place in the gay community. It is not enough to know about safe sex in order to avoid HIV or AIDS--skills are needed. Most gay men are too embarrassed to actively seek out gay sex information. Strategies in HIV prevention encouraging safer non-penetrative alternatives mistakenly assume that gay men automatically have the skills and techniques to perform these activities comfortably. De-stigmatisation of gay love-making and increased community discourse about gay sex can serve to counter a lack of access to gay sex information. PROJECT: Nitty Gritties is a free five session course offered to gay men of all ages. The course covers anatomy; physiology; self examination and sexual maintenance; sexual negotiation; safe sex; HIV, STD and opportunistic infection avoidance; unsafe sex and risk assessment, sexual techniques and other issues participants may wish to discuss. RESULTS: Men who have the sexual confidence to successfully negotiate sex itself find less difficulty in negotiating safe sex. Sexual risk assessment often involves sophisticated cognitive processes, which may be ill-informed, HIV-phobic or inconsistent. Gay male knowledge of anatomy, physiology and sex technique is very poor. CONCLUSION: Participants report increased skills and comfort in all stated course objectives.
Publication Types:

* Meeting Abstracts

Keywords:

* Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
* HIV Infections
* HIV Seropositivity
* Homosexuality
* Homosexuality, Male
* Humans
* Interpersonal Relations
* Male
* Patient Education as Topic
* Peer Group
* Safe Sex
* Sex Education
* Social Behavior

Other ID:

* 98399212

UI: 102230393

From Meeting Abstracts
more detail from : http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/MeetingAbstracts/ma?f=102230393.html

How Abstinence Education Leaves Out Gay Teens

What is Abstinence-Only Education

Abstinence education is a federally funded program that runs in schools around the country. In addition to ignoring information about condoms, birth control and sexual expression, it excludes gay teens and teaches that the only place to have sex is in a heterosexual marriage.
The History of Abstinence Education

Sometimes called abstinence-only education, abstinence education was introduced 10 years ago under the Clinton administration.

When George Bush came into office a few years later, he dramatically increased the funding for the program.

In the first few years of the program, only California rejected the funding. However, by 2005 two other states had also decided to turn it down. By 2008 fewer than half the states were still accepting it!

But that still means that plenty of teens are getting some pretty skewed information.
What Does Abstinence Education Teach?

Federally funded abstinence programs require schools to follow a very rigid curriculum which:

* has as its exclusive purpose, teaching the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity;
* teaches abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the expected standard for all school-age children;
* teaches that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and other associated health problems;
* teaches that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity
* teaches that sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects; teaches that bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents and society.

How Abstinence Education Excludes Gay Teens

The last time I checked, same sex marriage was only legal in Massachusetts, Iowa, Maine, Vermont and Connecticut. So teaching that sex outside of marriage is unacceptable is basically telling gay teens that unless they happen to live in those five states, they should never, in their lives, have sex!

Additionally, any of the programs have been found to perpetuate negative stereotypes about the GLBT community.For example, in 2004, California senator, Henry Waxman found abstinence education programs were teaching that half of all gay teens in America had AIDS!

In many programs, teachers are not allowed to discuss GLBT issues or sexual orientation at all.
What Gay Teens Can Do in an Abstinence Education Class
If you find yourself stuck in an abstinence education class you have a few options. You can educate yourself using reliable sources. If you are feeling brave, you can challenge some of what you are learning. But you can also think about taking action towards getting comprehensive sex education implemented in your school. This is a style of sex education which teaches about everything from sexual orientation, to condoms, sexual expression and the decision not to have sex.

Here are three resources that can help you do that:

* Planned Parenthood Federation of America: R.E.A.L. Kit
* SIECUS: Community Action Kit
* The ACLU: Take Issue, Take Charge

Being a GLBT teen can be hard enough. The last thing you need is a sex ed class that not only deprives you of life saving information, but which also ignores your existence or acts as if there is something wrong with you!
more detail from : http://gayteens.about.com/od/school/qt/abstinence.htm

How Abstinence Education Leaves Out Gay Teens

What is Abstinence-Only Education

Abstinence education is a federally funded program that runs in schools around the country. In addition to ignoring information about condoms, birth control and sexual expression, it excludes gay teens and teaches that the only place to have sex is in a heterosexual marriage.
The History of Abstinence Education

Sometimes called abstinence-only education, abstinence education was introduced 10 years ago under the Clinton administration.

When George Bush came into office a few years later, he dramatically increased the funding for the program.

In the first few years of the program, only California rejected the funding. However, by 2005 two other states had also decided to turn it down. By 2008 fewer than half the states were still accepting it!

But that still means that plenty of teens are getting some pretty skewed information.
What Does Abstinence Education Teach?

Federally funded abstinence programs require schools to follow a very rigid curriculum which:

* has as its exclusive purpose, teaching the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity;
* teaches abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the expected standard for all school-age children;
* teaches that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and other associated health problems;
* teaches that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity
* teaches that sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects; teaches that bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents and society.

How Abstinence Education Excludes Gay Teens

The last time I checked, same sex marriage was only legal in Massachusetts, Iowa, Maine, Vermont and Connecticut. So teaching that sex outside of marriage is unacceptable is basically telling gay teens that unless they happen to live in those five states, they should never, in their lives, have sex!

Additionally, any of the programs have been found to perpetuate negative stereotypes about the GLBT community.For example, in 2004, California senator, Henry Waxman found abstinence education programs were teaching that half of all gay teens in America had AIDS!

In many programs, teachers are not allowed to discuss GLBT issues or sexual orientation at all.
What Gay Teens Can Do in an Abstinence Education Class
If you find yourself stuck in an abstinence education class you have a few options. You can educate yourself using reliable sources. If you are feeling brave, you can challenge some of what you are learning. But you can also think about taking action towards getting comprehensive sex education implemented in your school. This is a style of sex education which teaches about everything from sexual orientation, to condoms, sexual expression and the decision not to have sex.

Here are three resources that can help you do that:

* Planned Parenthood Federation of America: R.E.A.L. Kit
* SIECUS: Community Action Kit
* The ACLU: Take Issue, Take Charge

Being a GLBT teen can be hard enough. The last thing you need is a sex ed class that not only deprives you of life saving information, but which also ignores your existence or acts as if there is something wrong with you!
more detail from : http://gayteens.about.com/od/school/qt/abstinence.htm

How Abstinence Education Leaves Out Gay Teens

What is Abstinence-Only Education

Abstinence education is a federally funded program that runs in schools around the country. In addition to ignoring information about condoms, birth control and sexual expression, it excludes gay teens and teaches that the only place to have sex is in a heterosexual marriage.
The History of Abstinence Education

Sometimes called abstinence-only education, abstinence education was introduced 10 years ago under the Clinton administration.

When George Bush came into office a few years later, he dramatically increased the funding for the program.

In the first few years of the program, only California rejected the funding. However, by 2005 two other states had also decided to turn it down. By 2008 fewer than half the states were still accepting it!

But that still means that plenty of teens are getting some pretty skewed information.
What Does Abstinence Education Teach?

Federally funded abstinence programs require schools to follow a very rigid curriculum which:

* has as its exclusive purpose, teaching the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity;
* teaches abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the expected standard for all school-age children;
* teaches that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and other associated health problems;
* teaches that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity
* teaches that sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects; teaches that bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents and society.

How Abstinence Education Excludes Gay Teens

The last time I checked, same sex marriage was only legal in Massachusetts, Iowa, Maine, Vermont and Connecticut. So teaching that sex outside of marriage is unacceptable is basically telling gay teens that unless they happen to live in those five states, they should never, in their lives, have sex!

Additionally, any of the programs have been found to perpetuate negative stereotypes about the GLBT community.For example, in 2004, California senator, Henry Waxman found abstinence education programs were teaching that half of all gay teens in America had AIDS!

In many programs, teachers are not allowed to discuss GLBT issues or sexual orientation at all.
What Gay Teens Can Do in an Abstinence Education Class
If you find yourself stuck in an abstinence education class you have a few options. You can educate yourself using reliable sources. If you are feeling brave, you can challenge some of what you are learning. But you can also think about taking action towards getting comprehensive sex education implemented in your school. This is a style of sex education which teaches about everything from sexual orientation, to condoms, sexual expression and the decision not to have sex.

Here are three resources that can help you do that:

* Planned Parenthood Federation of America: R.E.A.L. Kit
* SIECUS: Community Action Kit
* The ACLU: Take Issue, Take Charge

Being a GLBT teen can be hard enough. The last thing you need is a sex ed class that not only deprives you of life saving information, but which also ignores your existence or acts as if there is something wrong with you!
more detail from : http://gayteens.about.com/od/school/qt/abstinence.htm