Less than 90 minutes after the California Supreme Court released its ruling on Proposition 8, both sides had already e-mailed supporters soliciting funds anticipating a new ballot measure on gay marriage that could reach voters in 2010.
Ron Prentice, chairman of ProtectMarriage.com, waited until a little after 11 a.m. to hit up his supporters, writing: “We must turn our attention to protecting this victory . . . and must raise several million dollars to get our message out. . . . Please click here to make a contribution.”
In addition to buying advertising on TV, both sides are also hiring community organizers who will help supporters reach out to sway individual voters.
On Tuesday, he said he felt “pleased that they upheld the will of the people, especially in the increasingly lax moral climate that we’re in.” But he added that it would be “foolish to think this will be the end of the battle.
“I don’t have any desire to get in a violent war with anyone over this, but we won’t back down,” he said.
On the other side, gay rights activists, who had widely expected to lose, indicated after the ruling that next time they intend to be far more inclusive in their quest to sway Californians. During the last election, the No on 8 campaign was sharply criticized for not reaching out enough to black and Latino voters.
Accordingly, gay activists summoned the media to the Lucy Florence Cultural Center in Leimert Park in the heart of Los Angeles’ black community for a news conference chaired by Ron Buckmire, an African American mathematics professor who is also president of the Barbara Jordan/Bayard Rustin Coalition, a black gay rights group in Los Angeles.
Then they made sure that Southern California’s first post-decision protest rally was held in East Los Angeles, in the region’s historic center of Latino culture.
At that event, more than 100 people gathered outside the L.A. County office building on Cesar Chavez Avenue chanting slogans such as “Gay, Straight, Black, White, Marriage is a Civil Right.” Three gay couples then occupied the marriage license office, saying they would not leave without a license to wed. County officials refused to give licenses out — but also refused to take the demonstrators into custody. About 3:45, the demonstrators left.
In the evening, same-sex marriage supporters took over a swath of West Hollywood, spreading across Santa Monica and San Vicente boulevards. The general mood was disappointment, although many said they’d expected the court to rule as it did.
In San Francisco, meanwhile, police arrested more than 150 people after pro-gay-marriage demonstrators marched to Van Ness Avenue and Grove Street and sat down, blocking one of the city’s main arteries. They were cited and released.
“It’s about raising awareness and keeping the struggle going,” said Aubra Fletcher, 33, of Berkeley, as she sat, smiling and waiting to be arrested.
Other rallies were planned for more than 100 California cities, including Eureka, San Diego and Palm Springs.
Across the state, gay marriage supporters emphasized the same message.
“Tonight, we take to the streets. But tomorrow, we must continue the hard work,” said Lorri L. Jean, head of the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center.
But even as they pushed forward, many gay activists said they felt unexpected grief over the reality of a decision they had been expecting for months.
“I’ve just been told that I have less equal rights than my colleagues,” said West Hollywood Councilman John Duran, who is gay.
By Laurel J. Sweet
Tuesday, February 3, 2009 -
The Jamaica Plain lesbians whose passionate love led to the groundbreaking legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts have called it quits and filed for divorce, the Herald has learned.
But one-time international gay icons Hillary and Julie Goodridge, who share custody of their 12-year-old daughter, Annie, are less eager to be poster partners for gay divorce. Their case, filed Thursday in Suffolk Probate and Family Court, is impounded.
“I wish I could talk them into staying together, but I don’t see how. They had a great thing going. I love Julie, and I always will,” said Hillary’s mom, Ann Kiernan Smith, 82, of Florida, who believed the couple would outlast their critics.
“I guess because Julie and Hillary made headlines, people will pick on it,” Smith lamented of the breakup. “I don’t think sex has anything to do with it. If (marriage) is what Hillary wanted, I was proud of her.”
The Goodridges’ landmark lawsuit famously persuaded the state Supreme Judicial Court in 2003 to make Massachusetts the first state to recognize same-sex marriage. Last week, they became one of 168 couples to file for divorce in Suffolk County in January.
Neither Hillary Goodridge, 52, director of the Unitarian Universalist Funding Program, nor Julie Goodridge, 51, an investment adviser, responded to requests for comment yesterday. The couple wed in May 2004 after nearly two decades together.
A source close to both women said Hillary enjoyed the limelight of being a pioneering gay activist and was always interested in trying new things, while Julie was more reserved.
Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, a conservative public policy group that fought to repeal gay marriage, pounced on news of the Goodridges’ split.
“Divorce is a very painful issue, but I also can’t help but reflect on the pain this couple has caused on the commonwealth and the nation to redefine marriage. And now they’re getting divorced? It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Mineau said.
“Obviously, they don’t hold the institution in very high esteem.”
High-profile Boston divorce attorney Gerald Nissenbaum – who does not represent either woman – said just as when a sick child might keep a heterosexual union intact for a time, it’s possible that when the Goodridges’ shared goal to legalize same-sex marriage was accomplished, the steam went out of the relationship.
“Every day, every meal, it had to have consumed their lives,” said Nissenbaum, who is also a Herald columnist. “Any perceived dissatisfaction with each other was swept aside because they were a symbol.
“Whenever there’s a cause that keeps people together, once the cause is over, in my experience, there’s a high rate of dissolution of the relationship,” he said. “It’s sad, but it’s real. And what a surprise: Gay people are like everyone else.”
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Arkansas is unnecessarily limiting the number of good foster homes by prohibiting unmarried couples living together from taking in children, several advocacy groups told state officials Thursday.
The Department of Human Services heard testimony from advocates urging the state to drop its policy. The restriction is being reviewed as a campaign is under way for a ballot measure that would bar unmarried couples from being not only foster parents but adoptive parents as well.
“We need more foster homes, not less,” said Dr. Jill Fussell, a pediatrician and representative of the Arkansas chapter of the Academy of Pediatrics.
As several gay rights groups criticized Senator John McCain for saying that he opposes gay adoption, the McCain campaign issued a clarification Tuesday saying that he believes the issue should be decided by the states, and that such adoptions should not be subject to a federal ban.
“It’s pride,” Hensley said of his creation and festivities around him. “It’s not just a celebration for gays. It’s a celebration for the community.”
“I thought that the whole world was either gay people or straight people. When we [he and his partner] had children, it became people with children and people without children,” Strah said.
Strah, a Gallatin graduate and author of the book “Gay Dads: A Celebration of Fatherhood,” sought a domestic adoption for his two children. He considers himself lucky because he, unlike many parents who seek to adopt, had to decide whether he wished to adopt a boy within 24 hours of finalizing the petition.
He said yes.
But when his son was born, Strah and his partner faced an issue familiar to many gay people who wish to adopt. The doctors at the hospital would not recognize Strah as the parent of his newborn. Strah and his partner are just one of over 250,000 same sex couples to adopt children.
Last Thursday, NYU’s Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Student Services held a workshop about queer adoption where 15 people and three panelists discussed the intricacies of adoption in the LGBT community. Julia Hall, Outspoken Peer Educator at Large and a student in the Silver School of Social Work, was inspired to plan the workshop after her internship at Sanctuary for Families, where she works in the clinical and legal department. It was there that she gained an interest in LGBT adoption.
In the two months she spent planning the event, Hall contacted Terry Boggis, director of Center Kids at the LGBT Center, who put her in contact with Strah and Carol Buell, a lawyer who dedicates one-third of her case load to alternative family cases. To round off the panel, Boggis was invited to speak as well. All three panelists are gay, and all three have adopted children.
Buell assures that the families she represents “are accepted and loved by the court system” but admits “it’s taken a while to get here.”
But there are still some areas in which the courts still hinder the LGBT community, according to Buell. She notes that it is a felony in the New York state to aid surrogacy arrangements.
“It has become a feminist issue,” Buell said. “There are concerns about women being used as vessels, like the ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ ” referring to Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel about a dystopian society in which the role of certain women is simply to give birth.
The panelists recommended Family Focus in Queens for would-be parents inquiring about adoption. The organization, now in its 20th year of operation, just last year began recognizing LGBT adoptions. Many birth certificates also continue a hetero-normative tradition, according to the panelists. Some states only print certificates that read “mother/father,” not “mother/mother” or “father/father.” However, some states do print them as “parent/parent” according to Strah.
But in regard to birth certificates, Buell said “things gets complicated with transgender parents.”
Also discussed within the topic of domestic adoption was the homelessness problem among LGBT youths. According to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, citing results from the New York City Council, nearly one-third of all homeless youths are LGBT. Hall noted the Ali Forny Center for homeless LGBT in Chelsea as a resource.
While New York City is a very open place to the LGBT community, Boggis says there are still hurdles.
International adoption is particularly hard for queer individuals. The Hague Convention, an agreement signed by the United States on April 1, 2008, bans adoption of international children by gay men and women.
“[People] find it threatening, a threat to ideology, to what an American family should be,” CUNY graduate student and event attendee Lynn Horridge said. “Homophobia is a huge psychological underpinning.”
