Goodbye for lgbtQnews. And thanks so much.

By gay soup June 5th, 2010, under -site notes, Featured

image After four years of throwing pebbles and (hopefully) a few nuggets of information onto the web, this website has now gone into archive mode. The current posts will remain for at least a few months and maybe even for a year or so, but nothing new will be added from this point forward.

Although I was never able to build the site’s readership as much as I had hoped, I have continued to do summaries of the day’s lgbtQ news each day because of those anonymous “hits” I see on the site’s visitor counter. I appreciate that. And I especially appreciate the handful of folks who have posted comments or sent email along the way.

I started this blog under the url seaQwa.com with high hopes. Through my own failings, I failed to meet most of those hopes. I scaled back after two years to simpler (and cheaper) blog software after realizing the expensive system I was originally using wasn’t justified for what I’d been able to create for the blog. That’s when I switched to the url lgbtQnews.com since the hoped-for Seattle posts had not developed as I had hoped they would.

But I figured I could still scour various search engines for lgbt-related news items, and perhaps lend some clarity by distilling information from multiple sources into a quick summary. I’ve never much tried to make it a comprehensive source of all the lgbt news. After a few initial months of scattering simple clips from stories, I realized that the only way I could offer something slightly unique would be to copy edit the source stories into a freshly written summary. And that takes much longer than just copying the lead ‘graph from a story.

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Bishops and others condemn imprisonment of Malawi gay couple

By gay soup May 27th, 2010, under international, trial
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A gay couple in Malawi who were sentenced last week to 14 years in prison for holding a public engagement ceremony have been sent to separate prisons, the Guardian reports.

Stephen Monjeza, 26, and Tiwonge Chimalanga, 20, were sentenced following a May 20 verdict to hard labor for “unnatural acts and gross indecency”.

The maximum sentence meted out to the couple last week has prompted a renewed round of international outrage about the couple’s detention.

On Wednesday, the Anglican Church of Southern Africa issued a statement condemning the sentences as “a gross violation of human rights” and calling for the immediate release of the couple, VOA reports.

Friends of the couple tell the Guardian that they’re worried because the two are no longer allowed to talk with each other.

“In terms of morale I know what is going on between Steven and Tiwonge,” said activist George Thindwa, a friend of the couple and director of the Association for Secular Humanism.

“Their morale is down because they can no longer encourage each other,” Thindwa told the Guardian.

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Watch: Maddow and Murphy on GOP opposition to DADT repeal

By gay soup May 26th, 2010, under dadt, politics, tv, video

image In the lead story on her MSNBC program this evening, Rachel Maddow offers a superb roundup of the quickly evolving story around hopeful signs for repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell policy”.

The report includes an extended interview with Rep. Patrick Murphy who helped craft the compromise repeal legislation yesterday and introduced the repeal amendment today in the House.

[see video clip at end of this post]

She points out that multiple polls find strong find strong public support for ending the ban that prevents gay men and lesbians from honestly serving in the country’s armed forces. An ABC News/Washington Post Poll taken early this year found that 75-percent answered favorably to the question, “Should gays and lesbians be allowed to serve openly?”

Maddow comments,  “Seventy-five percent of Americans don’t agree on anything. Sometimes it feels like 75 percent of Americans wouldn’t all agree that the world is round. But 75 percent of Americans agree that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is dumb, that gay people should be allowed to serve openly in the military.”

Those polls make it difficult for opponents of DADT repeal to claim the “the American people” support the law, but that, as Maddow points out, has not stopped Congressional Republicans from saying exactly that.

Maddow reports that Republicans in Congress today marched out in lockstep opposition to the compromise amendment.

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Key DADT repeal votes expected this week

By gay soup May 26th, 2010, under dadt, politics

US-Department-of-Defense_seal Both the US Senate and the House are expected to vote this week on a matching set of bills that would authorize delayed repeal of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ (DADT) law that bars gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the military.

Although one prominent DADT-repeal activist hailed the compromise Monday evening as a “dramatic breakthrough”, it is not the decisive repeal that most advocates had hoped for after President Barack Obama’s statement about the law in this year’s State of the Union address.

“This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are,” the president said in his January 27 address to Congress. “It’s the right thing to do,” he added.

Even if the compromise measures agreed to Monday pass in both houses, DADT would remain in affect until well after the first of the year.

The compromise measure would give the military an unspecified amount of time to devise and introduce new rules and regulations pertaining to service by LGBT people in the military, Christian Science Monitor reports. In the meantime, DADT discharges would be allowed to continue under the revised, slightly stricter guidelines announced by the Pentagon in March.

The compromise is one that LGBT activists describe as necessary and the best remaining hope for finally repealing the law that has resulted in at least 13,000 dismissals of gay and lesbian service members since 1993 at a cost to the military of about $1.3 billion, according to Center for American Progress.

J. Alexander Nicholson III, executive director of Servicemembers United which participated in the compromise negations, said, that repeal advocates feared that their window of opportunity to change the law is closing fast, The Hill reports.

“We absolutely do think that we are running a very big risk if we don’t get it done in this Congress,” Nicholson said. “The environment may not be suitable to passing it next year.”

Republicans, who generally favor keeping the DADT law, are hoping to make substantial gains in November's congressional elections, The Hill points out.

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Site note: lgbtQnews on hiatus

By gay soup May 22nd, 2010, under -site notes

[Originally posted Friday, May 21, but with a mistake that crashed the site]

Health issues have forced me (and, therefore, this news site) to take an unexpected hiatus.

I’m finally able to sit up at my computer just long enough to type out this brief note, but I don’t have time right now to explain in more depth.

I hope to be able to update this note on Tuesday with more information about what to expect in the months to come from the site.

I apologize to the site’s loyal readers for just disappearing without explanation as I did last week, but after a marathon of clinic visits and with the help of a few drugs, things are at least under control for now. Unfortunately, however, I have to spend a few days at a hospital without ‘net access, so that will prevent updates for at least a few days.

More later.

Thanks for your patience.

Update: Monday, May 25

I wrote that Friday as I was rushing to check into the hospital for three days of in-patient chemo treatment.

Unfortunately, I didn’t check the post (as I customarily do multiple times). I’d made a dumb mistake in the post itself which triggered a bug in my custom code for showing section headings. (I’ve known about that bug for a long time, but since it is only triggered when I’ve made a mistake in the title, I figured it would never cause but a brief problem. So I didn’t fix the bug. Mea culpa.)

But… To the main point: I’m back from the hospital. That first treatment managed to pull me back from a brink. I can actually sit up at the computer and walk around now. That’s much better than what I was stuck with for the last two weeks.

More later. Tomorrow. Now that you can actually (hopefully) see the post.

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Item: Child with lesbian parents not welcome at Mass. Catholic school

By gay soup May 14th, 2010, under religion, schools
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   ::: In March, a Catholic grade school in Boulder, Colo. asked the parents of two children not to re-enroll them next year because the kids have two lesbian moms. That situation has now been repeated in the Boston area, where two lesbian moms have been told that their 8-year-old son isn’t welcome at St. Paul School in Hingham, Mass. because of the mothers’ relationship. “First they accepted him, and then they said they couldn’t take him,” one of the women told Quincy Patriot Ledger.  She said that St. Paul’s pastor, Rev. James Rafferty, told her in a Monday phone call that accepting the child of a same-sex couple “was not in accord with Catholic teaching”. The woman—the boy’s adoptive mother—explained that the boy’s biological mother is a lifelong Catholic and that the couple (who are not married according to WCVB TV) wanted their son to get a Christian education. “We’re not trying to change the way St. Paul’s does their business, or change people’s beliefs,” the adoptive mother told the Patriot Ledger. “We wanted a good education for our child.” (The mothers have asked the press not to identify the family by name.)  WCVB notes that it is legal for private schools to deny enrollment based on individual policies, but the Boston Archdiocese told the station that it does not routinely prohibit the children of same-sex couples from attending its schools. Archdiocesan officials are reviewing the Hingham case, according to WCVB.

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Two more steps taken toward marriage equality in Minnesota

By gay soup May 13th, 2010, under activism, law, marriage equality, politics
image  Three couples filed suit Tuesday in Minnesota for the right to marry:  Duane Gajewski and Doug Benson, Lindzi Campbell and Jesse Dykhuis, John Rittman and Tom Trisko.

Three gay/lesbian families in Minnesota have filed a suit that asks a court to remove the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.

The complaint filed Tuesday in Hennepin County District Court (Minneapolis) charges that, in refusing to grant them marriage licenses, the state violates the couples’ right to due process and equal protection, and denies them their rights to freedom of conscience and of association.

Also on Tuesday, the lower house of Minnesota’s legislature passed a measure on a strong 78-55 vote that would grant to same-sex couples one of the 515 rights and responsibilities that are denied to same-sex couples because they cannot marry. The bill would grant to same-sex couples the right to make end-of-life decisions for a partner.

A version of the bill was also passed by the state Senate earlier in the session. The two versions must be reconciled—a process that’s considered a technicality—before the measure is sent to the desk of Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who hasn’t indicated if he will sign it, according to St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Significantly, the measure would define ‘domestic partner’ for the first time in Minnesota law, Minnesota Public Radio reports.

Both bills include the right for a surviving partner to decide what to do with the deceased partner’s body and allow a surviving partner to sue responsible parties should the partner be killed.

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Faculty at Marquette and Seattle U protest withdrawn job offer

By gay soup May 12th, 2010, under nw_gaynews, religion, schools, workplace
image  Marquette Hall photo by decemberimages

Marquette’s faculty senate voted Monday to rebuke the school’s administration for the process that led to a sudden withdrawal of a job offer to a highly-recommended professor who’d been chosen by a search committee to become dean of Marquette’s College of Arts and Sciences, Marquette Tribune reports.

The faculty senate declined to support two other more serious resolutions, however. One of them would have called for a formal censure of Marquette’s president, Father Robert A. Wild, for the decision to withdraw the offer to Jodi O’Brien, an out lesbian professor of sociology at Seattle University. Another would have called for Wild’s immediate resignation.

O’Brien has written several academic articles on queer studies. Wild has reportedly expressed concerns to faculty members about those articles.

The faculty senate recommended Monday that their representatives consider a vote of no confidence in Wild in the fall, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

Students and faculty spoke during a portion of the three-hour Academic Senate meeting, but members of the group's executive committee went into a closed session for much of the debate, according to the Journal Sentinel.

Just before faculty members filed into an auditorium for their meeting and votes, about 200 Marquette students staged a quiet demonstration in the hallway outside the auditorium.

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Item: LGBTQ youth center set to open in Baltimore

By gay soup May 12th, 2010, under gay organization, youth issues

image    ::: A drop-in center for LGBTQ youth will be open by this fall, Baltimore’s 33-year-old LGBT Community Center has announced. “Youth are coming out at a lot younger ages,” the center’s program manager, Andrew Ansel, told Baltimore Sun. “It is becoming less stigmatizing, but there are still a lot of challenges. It is still very difficult to come out in high school. Ideally the community center would be the central focal point for after-school programming for youth.” LGBTQ youth are more prone to alienation, abuse and homelessness, Ansel said. He pointed out that many centers and facilities available to assist youths in the Baltimore are not gay-friendly. The drop-in center will be housed on the first two levels of the LGBT Center’s four-story Mount Vernon building. Ansel said it will provide tutoring, mentoring, HIV testing, and an overall support system for the youths. A 21-year-old, Karl Ragen Jr, told the Sun, “I think the youth drop-in center would give [LGBT youths] an opportunity to seriously look at themselves and determine what they are going to do in their lives.”

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