Monday, January 31, 2011

HRC: Barbara Bush Supports Marriage for Same-Sex Couples



Barbara Bush Supports Marriage for Same-Sex Couples

In New Video, Daughter of President George W. Bush Adds Voice to HRC’s New Yorkers for Marriage Equality Campaign

WASHINGTON – Today the Human Rights Campaign – the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization – released a new video in the “New Yorkers for Marriage Equality” campaign featuring Barbara Bush, the daughter of President George W. Bush. In the video she says, “I’m Barbara Bush and I’m a New Yorker for marriage equality. New York is about fairness and equality and everyone should have the right to marry the person that they love. Join us.” View the video at www.hrc.org/NY4marriage.

“Americans from all walks of life are increasingly supportive of the basic right to equal marriage,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese. “Barbara Bush’s advocacy shows that equality knows no party label.”

The video comes on the heels of two New York polls showing a majority of New Yorkers support marriage equality. A Siena Research Institute Poll earlier this month found 57 percent of New Yorkers support marriage for same-sex couples and another poll last week by Quinnipiac University had support at 56 percent.

Barbara Bush joins prominent Republicans like her mother Laura Bush as well as Dick Cheney and Ted Olson as supporters of marriage equality. Her position also reflects her generation with 68% of New Yorkers between the ages of 18-34 supporting marriage for same-sex couples.

The New Yorkers for Marriage Equality campaign is centered on video testimonials from New Yorkers who support the right of same-sex couples to marry. The ads are running online with possible placement elsewhere when the legislative fight for marriage equality heats up in Albany. To date, HRC has released videos from Barbara Bush, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Whoopi Goldberg, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, Fran Drescher, Moby, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, Julianne Moore and Kenneth Cole – with more to follow in the coming weeks and months.

A broadcast quality version of the video is available to media at: www.hrc.org/ny4me-highres-bush/BarbaraBush-NY4ME.mov

The Human Rights Campaign is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. By inspiring and engaging all Americans, HRC strives to end discrimination against LGBT citizens and realize a nation that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all.

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HRC Applauds Illinois Civil Unions Bill Signed Into Law Today

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 31, 2010

HRC Applauds Illinois Civil Unions Bill Signed Into Law Today

Law Providing State-Level Rights Takes Effect June 1, 2011

WASHINGTON — The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, today applauded Illinois Governor Pat Quinn for signing into law the “Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act.” The signing ceremony is planned for 4 p.m. central time today. Couples may begin obtaining civil unions and enjoying the state-level rights and responsibilities of married couples on June 1, 2011.

“Today marks a tremendous step towards equality for all families in Illinois,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese. “HRC commends Governor Quinn for his commitment to ensuring civil unions became law. Congratulations to Rep. Greg Harris, lead sponsor of the bill, who fought for years to ensure civil unions would become a reality, and thank you to Equality Illinois and the ACLU of Illinois for their tireless efforts on behalf of the LGBT community.”

The new law will permit both same-sex and opposite-sex couples to enter into civil unions and receive the same benefits, protections, and responsibilities under Illinois law that are granted to spouses. Couples who enter into a civil union will not receive any rights or benefits under federal law. Illinois still does not permit same-sex couples to marry. The law explicitly allows religious entities to choose not to solemnize or officiate civil unions.

In addition to Illinois, twelve states plus Washington, D.C. have laws providing an expansive form of state-level relationship recognition for gay and lesbian couples. Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Washington D.C. provide marriage to same-sex couples under state law. New York and Maryland recognize out-of-jurisdiction same-sex marriages, but do not provide marriage licenses to same-sex couples in state. Five other states – California, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington – provide same-sex couples with access to almost all of the state level benefits and responsibilities of marriage, through either civil unions or domestic partnerships.

Colorado, Hawaii, Maine and Wisconsin provide gay and lesbian couples with limited rights and benefits, not all rights provided to married couples. An attorney general opinion and subsequent court ruling in Rhode Island resulted in limited recognition of out-of-jurisdiction marriages of same-sex couples. California recognized marriage for same-sex couples between June and November of 2008, before voters approved Proposition 8, which purports to amend the state constitution to prohibit marriage equality. Couples married during that window remain married under California law, but all other same-sex couples can only receive a domestic partnership within the state. The state will recognize out-of-jurisdiction same-sex marriages that occurred before November 5, 2008 as marriages and those that occurred on or after November 5, 2008 as similar to domestic partnerships.

Same-sex couples do not receive federal rights and benefits in any state. For an electronic map showing where marriage equality stands in the states, please visit: www.HRC.org/State_Laws.

The Human Rights Campaign is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality. By inspiring and engaging all Americans, HRC strives to end discrimination against LGBT citizens and realize a nation that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all.

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Sunday, January 30, 2011

New York Times: Suits on Same-Sex Marriage May Force Administration to Take a Stand



Drew Angerer/The New York Times

President Obama speaking on Friday at Families USA's health action conference at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Washington.


WASHINGTON — President Obama has balanced on a political tightrope for two years over the Defense of Marriage Act, the contentious 1996 law barring federal recognition of same-sex marriages. Now, two new federal lawsuits threaten to snap that rope out from under him.

Mr. Obama, whose political base includes many supporters of gay rights, has urged lawmakers to repeal the law. But at the same time, citing an executive-branch duty to defend acts of Congress, he has sent Justice Department lawyers into court to oppose suits seeking to strike the law down as unconstitutional.

The two lawsuits, however, have provoked an internal administration debate about how to sustain its have-it-both-ways stance, officials said. Unlike previous challenges, the new lawsuits were filed in districts covered by the appeals court in New York — one of the only circuits with no modern precedent saying how to evaluate claims that a law discriminates against gay people.

That means that the administration, for the first time, may be required to take a clear stand on politically explosive questions like whether gay men and lesbians have been unfairly stigmatized, are politically powerful, and can choose to change their sexual orientation.

“Now they are being asked what they think the law should be, and not merely how to apply the law as it exists,” said Michael Dorf, a Cornell University law professor. “There is much less room to hide for that decision.”

James Esseks, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer helping with one case, said the new suits could be game-changing.

The Obama legal team has not yet decided what path to take on the lawsuits, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the internal deliberations. But the Justice Department must respond by March 11. The debate has arisen at a time when Mr. Obama has signaled that his administration may be re-evaluating its stance.

As a candidate, Mr. Obama backed civil unions for gay people while opposing same-sex marriage. But last month, after Congress — in the final hours before Republicans took control of the House — repealed the law barring gay men, lesbians and bisexuals from serving openly in the military, he told The Advocate, a magazine that focuses on gay issues, that his views on marriage rights “are evolving.”

“I have a whole bunch of really smart lawyers who are looking at a whole range of options,” Mr. Obama said, referring to finding a way to end the Defense of Marriage Act. “I’m always looking for a way to get it done, if possible, through our elected representatives. That may not be possible.”

Since 2003, when the Supreme Court struck down laws criminalizing gay sex, the legal landscape for same-sex marriage has shifted. Eight states now grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples or recognize such marriages if performed elsewhere. But under the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal government cannot recognize those relationships.

That has raised a crucial question: Is it constitutional for the federal government to grant certain benefits — like health insurance for spouses of federal workers, or an exemption to estate taxes for surviving spouses — to some people who are legally married under their state’s laws, but not to others, based on their sexual orientation?

The Constitution declares that everyone has a right to equal protection by the law. But many laws treat some people differently from others. Courts uphold such policies as constitutional if they can pass a test showing that the discrimination is not invidious.

A law singling out an ordinary class — like owners of property in a district with special tax rates — gets an easy test. It is presumed valid, and a challenge is dismissed unless a plaintiff proves that the law advances no conceivable rational state interest.

But a law focusing on a class that has often been subjected to unfair discrimination — like a racial group — gets a hard test. It is presumed invalid and struck down unless the government proves that officials’ purpose in adopting the law advances a compelling interest.

Gay-rights groups contend that the marriage act ought to be struck down under either test. Last year, a federal judge in Massachusetts agreed, saying it was unconstitutional even under the easy test’s standards.

But the Obama administration, which appealed that ruling, contends that a plausible argument exists for why the act might be constitutional. Justice Department officials say they have a responsibility to offer that argument and let courts decide, rather than effectively nullifying a law by not defending it.

Justice officials have argued that the marriage act is justified, under the easy test’s standards, by a government interest in preserving the status quo at the federal level, allowing states to experiment. And in its brief appealing the Massachusetts ruling, the department stressed seven times that a “binding” or “settled” precedent in that circuit required the easy test.

But for the new lawsuits, no such precedent exists. The Obama team has to say which test it thinks should be used. Courts give a class the protection of the hard test if it has been unfairly stigmatized and if its members cannot choose to leave the class, among other factors. By those standards, it could be awkward, especially for a Democratic administration, to proclaim that gay people do not qualify for it.

But under a hard test, the administration’s argument for upholding the marriage law would be weaker, legal specialists say, in part because when lawmakers enacted it in 1996, they mentioned only in passing an interest in preserving the federal status quo as states experimented.

Some conservatives have accused the administration of throwing the fight by not invoking other arguments, like morality. And in particular, lawmakers’ primary focus in 1996 was “encouraging responsible procreation and child-rearing.”

But the administration’s filings in other cases disavowed that rationale, noting that infertile heterosexuals may marry and citing studies that children raised by same-sex parents are as likely to be well-adjusted as those raised by heterosexuals.

M. Edward Whelan III, a former Bush administration lawyer, said the Obama team’s rejection of the children-based rationale amounted to “sabotage.”

Another possible path, legal specialists say, would be to urge the judges to adopt the easy test because courts elsewhere have done so, without laying out any full legal analysis of how to think about gay people as a class.

Gay-rights supporters, however, call that option dishonest: those cases largely derived from decisions before the Supreme Court’s 2003 sodomy ruling. The premise that it was constitutional to criminalize gay sex short-circuited appraisal of protections for gay people from lesser forms of official discrimination.

“We think there is only one answer the government and the court can come to if they apply the test conscientiously, and that is that the government must have to prove why it needs to treat gay people differently,” said Mr. Esseks, the A.C.L.U. lawyer.

“And if the government has to have a real reason, as opposed to a made-up reason, we don’t think there is any way that the government wins.”

Gay City Times: White House Announces Three LGBT Appointments [One a Graduate of Oberlin College]


BY PAUL SCHINDLER

The White House, on January 26, announced two openly gay or lesbian appointees to administration posts and the nomination of an out gay attorney to the federal judiciary.

President Barack Obama nominated J. Paul Oetken, currently the associate general counsel at Cablevision Systems and an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School, for a seat on the prestigious Southern District of New York federal bench.

He also named Roberta Achtenberg, a co-founder of the National Center for Lesbian Rights and a top housing official under President Bill Clinton, for a seat on the United States Commission on Civil Rights; and Jeffrey Levi, who during the early years of the AIDS crisis headed up the Washington efforts of the National Gay Task Force (now NGLTF) to secure funding to fight the epidemic and later worked in the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, to the Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health.

Oetken was recommended for the seat by New York’s senior senator, Democrat Charles Schumer, on September 23 last year.

In lauding the president's nomination of Oetken, Schumer, in a written statement, called him “a strong advocate for the LGBT community" who "has the right combination of skills, experience, and dedication to make an excellent judge."

The out gay attorney has done work with Lambda Legal and the LGBT Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, and co-authored an amicus brief in support of the successful 2003 challenge to the Texas sodomy law before the US Supreme Court.

“My three criteria for judges are simple: excellence, diversity, and moderation, and Mr. Oetken fits that description to a ‘T’,” Schumer said in his statement.

Oetken served as associate counsel to President Bill Clinton from 1999-2001 and, prior to that, in the Justice Department. After graduating from Yale Law School, he clerked for US Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun. Oetken completed his undergraduate work at the University of Iowa.

In October, the Washington Blade reported that an earlier Schumer recommendation of an out gay attorney for the Southern District bench, Daniel Alter, was rejected because of comments he made that the White House considered controversial. In articles from 2004 and 2005, Alter was quoted saying favorable things about a lawsuit challenging the use of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and about retailers choosing “Happy Holidays” over “Merry Christmas” as their greeting to customers. The Blade said those remarks weighed more heavily than a letter from 66 attorneys who worked with him in the office of the US Attorney for the Southern District that said his was “a nomination worth fighting for.”

Achtenberg’s nomination to the US Commission on Civil Rights would put her on a eight-member panel — half appointed by the president, half by Congress, for six-year terms — which has broad investigatory powers, but no enforcement authority over specific cases.

When she was appointed assistant secretary for fair housing within the Department of Housing and Urban Development by Clinton in 1993, she became the first out lesbian or gay presidential appointee to win Senate confirmation, despite the opposition of the late North Carolina Republican Jesse Helms, who said he would not vote for “that damned lesbian.” Achtenberg later served the Clinton administration as a senior advisor to the HUD secretary.

Achtenberg was a civil rights attorney when she helped found the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights in 1977. She later served on that city’s Board of Supervisors. In 1995, Achtenberg made an unsuccessful run for mayor of San Francisco, and between 1997 and 2004 held senior policy positions at the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and its Center for Economic Development.

She currently is a corporate advisor and a trustee of the University of California.

Achtenberg is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and has a law degree from the University of Utah.

Levi currently heads up the Trust for America's Health, a non-profit focused on making disease prevention a national priority, and teaches at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. The advisory group he will join was created under the Obama administration’s 2010 health care reform law.

After working to secure AIDS funding on behalf of NGLTF beginning in 1983, he went on to lead the group as executive director. He served for two years as deputy director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy during the Clinton administration and before that was the associate editor of the American Journal of Public Health.

He is a graduate of Oberlin College, and holds a master’s degree from Cornell University and a Ph.D. from George Washington University.


Saturday, January 29, 2011

The Washington Post: The Impulsive Traveler: Columbus, Ohio, a new destination for food lovers




By Jane Black
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, January 28, 2011; 2:27 PM

The very first thing I did after signing up to move to the far west of West Virginia for six months was to log on to Mapquest. I'd be living in an entirely new and unfamiliar area of the country, and I wanted to know where my husband and I could go to eat.

The options were limited. Charlottesville, Va., Asheville, N.C., Knoxville, Tenn., all cities with reputations for good food, are more than five hours' drive away. It takes seven hours to get home to Washington and eight hours to get to Memphis. Only 21/2 hours away, though, was Columbus, Ohio, a city I'd never thought much about visiting, let alone considered a culinary destination.

Shows what I know.

The once-conservative Ohio capital has blossomed into a certified food lovers' town, with serious cocktails and microbrews, pastries worthy of Paris, fantastical ice cream flavors - think peanut with toasted coconut and chili - and extraordinary food shopping. In November, food guru Michael Ruhlman, who had dismissed Columbus as "Applebee's country" on an episode of the TV show "No Reservations," very publicly revised his judgment, calling the city a worthier food destination than his beloved home town of Cleveland.

A case in point is North Market, the city's food hub. Open year-round, the airy converted warehouse hosts 35 vendors: butchers, bakers and ice cream makers. Local food gets lots of shelf space - we found Ohio-milled grain, grass-fed beef and Lake Erie-caught walleye - but so do international delicacies such as imported cheese, wine and spices.

We stocked up on supplies (including a case of a terrific 2005 French Bordeaux priced at a glorious $11 a bottle). But we also filled our bellies in preparation for an afternoon of exploring. We shared a fragrant, yeasty cinnamon roll from Omega Artisan Baking and lingered over a case stacked high with potato-and-cream-cheese pierogis at Hubert's Polish Kitchen. But with the wind chill, it felt like 11 degrees outside, so we settled on two giant bowls of pho at Lan Viet Market.

After polishing off the aromatic Vietnamese beef noodle soup, garnished with mint, basil and bean sprout, we were warm enough to forget the blistering cold and justify dessert next door at Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. Founder Jeni Britton Bauer is one of the city's gastronomic heroes. Her market shop, along with six others throughout the city, offers about 30 flavors, such as Bangkok peanut (the one described above), brown-butter brittle and young Gouda with vodka-plumped cranberries, which sounds awful but tastes like decadent cheesecake.

Almost all Jeni's flavors feature local ingredients. That cranberry-soaking vodka comes from Middle West Spirits, an artisanal distillery a short distance from North Market. Housed in a renovated auto garage, Middle West, with its concrete floors, white subway tiles and salvaged turn-of-the-century antiques, looks more like a SoHo loft than a Midwestern manufacturing plant. But style doesn't trump substance. Smack in the center of the space is a stunning, custom-made copper still.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, vodka must be colorless, odorless and tasteless. And while Middle West founders Brady Konya and Ryan Lang don't officially disagree - that would be illegal! - they do everything they can to make their vodka, OYO, taste distinctive. The wheat, a soft, red variety, comes from just 25 miles outside Columbus. The liquor is distilled only once, which leaves a velvety feel in the mouth and a hint of sweetness on the finish. This is vodka for sipping neat.

OYO is available by the glass at Mouton, a spare-but-elegant cafe and cocktail bar a few blocks away. But the draw there is the classic cocktail list, which limits itself to excellent renditions of Prohibition-era classics: aviations and negronis, Manhattans and Mary Pickfords. (This is a stark contrast to many of the slick bars along the trendy Short North strip that seem to trade exclusively in cloying mocha martinis and cosmos.) The drinks are excellent: strong, smooth and never sweet. Still, after one, we switched to wine, all the better to go with Mouton's carefully curated list of American cheese and charcuterie, such as a salami, scented with black truffles, from Utah.

Brunch is a meal I generally find disappointing: a blur of stodgy pancakes and rubbery eggs that not even hot sauce can save. (A "punishment block for the B-team cooks, or where the farm team of recent dishwashers learn their chops," is how Anthony Bourdain described it in his memoir, "Kitchen Confidential.") But all is redeemed at Skillet, a cozy 32-seat bistro in Columbus's historic German Village. The pancakes are fluffy and filled with shredded apples and farmer cheese. The omelets are stuffed with organic potatoes and house-cured sauerkraut spiced with pear and caraway, a nod to the neighborhood's heritage. And, just to make the already tough decision about whether to go sweet or savory even harder, chef Kevin Caskey offers dishes such as breakfast risotto: Arborio rice cooked in milk, then dotted with velvety bits of caramelized apples and salty bacon and finished with a scoop of mascarpone. Only a truly skilled cook could make something so indulgent taste light.

We had planned to walk off our meal as we toured German Village. But blustery winds and snow forced us to tour the narrow streets in our car. The tidy brick cottages and ornate Queen Anne Victorians are some of the city's most desirable homes. But that wasn't always the case. Settled in the early 19th century, the neighborhood grew quickly as waves of German immigrants arrived in Ohio. But the world wars stirred up anti-German sentiment and the area fell out of favor. By 1950, the neighborhood was considered a slum.

Over the past 20 years, young professionals and empty-nesters have resettled the neighborhood, which in addition to offering historic housing stock is a short commute to downtown. Stylish boutiques and restaurants soon arrived to serve them.

Pistacia Vera is testament to the changing neighborhood. For decades, the building it's in housed two no-frills family bakeries. But in 2004, siblings Spencer Budros and Anne Fletcher renovated the space into a chic patisserie with exposed brick walls, marble-top tables and bentwood chairs.

It would have been easy to sell muffins and ubiquitous cupcakes, Fletcher told us. But the pair was determined to restrict the menu to classic French pastries - croissants, brioches, palmiers and an excellent fig-cardamom braid - and elaborate desserts and truffles. Their most popular item? Technicolor macarons that come in seasonal flavors such as yuzu, caramel pecan and maple walnut.

A dozen made the perfect snack for the car ride home.

Black is a former staff writer for The Washington Post Food section.

Friday, January 28, 2011

The Lantern: MTV 'Real World' alum brings message of human rights to OSU




MTV 'Real World' alum brings message of human rights to OSU

By Alex Antonetz

antonetz.3@osu.edu

Published: Thursday, January 27, 2011

Updated: Thursday, January 27, 2011 19:01

Mike Manning has faced many of the same struggles that other bisexual men have faced.

The difference? Manning was not only picked to live in a house with seven strangers and have his life taped on MTV's long-running reality hit, "The Real World," but it's also where he came out as a bisexual.

Manning was a cast member on the 23rd season of the show, set in Washington, D.C., which aired in 2010.

Visiting Ohio State to deliver a speech to OSU's chapter of the Human Rights Campaign, Manning spoke to The Lantern before his lecture Thursday night.

During his stay on "The Real World," Manning interned with HRC in Washington, D.C., although he didn't originally plan on it. After walking into the organization's store, the bright lights and cameras following him attracted the attention of the store's manager.

"He gave me a business card and he kinda encouraged me to look it up online, so I did a couple days later and it just went from there," Manning said. "It was random, I had no idea what they even were. It was great. It was destiny."

Manning's work with HRC almost never happened, and the case was the same for his appearance on "The Real World."

"I actually went there so my best friend could be on the show," he said. "I hardly watched the show. I didn't know a lot about it and my buddy John is like the funniest guy I know, so we always thought he would be the one to be on a reality TV show and just be kinda crazy," he said. "So I went there for him and they ended up calling me back."

Manning wasn't the first LGBT roommate on the show. In fact, "The Real World" has a long history casting LGBT roommates, most notably Pedro Zamora from the third season, who famously dealt with AIDS while on the show.

"I think my story is a little different because I came out on the show, on national television, and you see me kind of go from an average college boy to a gay rights activist throughout the course of the show," Manning said. "And so I think mine was kind of, you saw the whole arc. You saw the whole 180 during the season."

During his stint on "The Real World," Manning brought his parents to see his work with HRC.

After coming out on the show, Manning said his experience of showing his parents his work with HRC was one of the "best moments" he had with them.

"It's the most personal thing I've ever done, and I did it on national television, so it was really scary at the time," he said. "But now that I did do that, and kind of broke down that wall and showed people it's a very personal issue and it's really tough to go through, maybe take it easy on kids that have to go through it like this."

Since then, his mom has even gone on to start a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) chapter at his high school in Colorado.

Manning said he's changed a lot since leaving the "Real World" house.

"I think just personally I'm just a lot more confident and comfortable with myself because it's kind of all out there," he said.

"There's really no looking back and it's given me kind of the drive and the courage to be so vocal about LGBT equality and also being very out in the open in the public eye in Hollywood, just being an openly bisexual actor makes a statement for itself."

Manning was vocal about his religious beliefs while on the show. As a Christian, Manning not only engaged in religious debate on the show, but also dealt with the conflict of the perceived differences between being bisexual and what the church believes.

Now, living in Los Angeles and pursuing an acting career, Manning has found a new church he's comfortable with, even being re-baptized there.

"One of the main things I wanna get across is a lot of people think (religion and being LGBT are) mutually exclusive, (that) you have to either embrace your sexuality or you have to embrace the church and I've done both and it's been fun," he said.

Even with what Manning faced on "The Real World," he said his experience on the show was "awesome."

"We got to go to the nicest bars and we got hooked up everywhere we went," he said. "We got extra attention. What 22-year-old isn't gonna love that?"

With "The Real World" experience behind him, Manning said he hasn't watched the show since, including the highly rated 24th season in New Orleans that aired in the latter half of 2010.

However, that doesn't mean he would be averse to appearing on MTV's "Real Word/Road Rules Challenge" series if he were asked.

"I actually said ‘no thank you' to the first Challenge," he said. "After thinking about it, if they called me up and asked me, I'd probably do it."

He may not have time for that, however.

Manning has two films coming out in March and May: "eCupid," a romantic comedy, and "Gingerdead Man 3-D: Saturday Night Cleaver," which Manning describes as a "cheesy horror film."

"Look for me," he said.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Bay Area Reporter: [Columbus Native] Michael Gelpi Dies

Note from the Blogger:
Michael was heavily involved with HRCF now the Human Rights Campaign, ran for Congress and used to live in German Village. His family owns Swan Cleaners in Columbus.

The story is here



Michael Gelpi dies


c.laird@ebar.com

Michael Gelpi, a leatherman who was one of the first out gay candidates for Congress, died in his sleep at his San Francisco home Sunday, January 23. He was 70.

Friends said that Mr. Gelpi suffered from heart and lung disease.

Mr. Gelpi was born in Ohio on December 28, 1940. He was raised there and early on developed a passion for fine art.

A proud Democrat, Mr. Gelpi was very involved in the Human Rights Campaign Fund (the organization later became the Human Rights Campaign) in the 1980s and 1990s, said spokesman Paul Guequierre. Mr. Gelpi ran for Congress in 1990 but lost to Congressman John Kasich, a Republican. Kasich became Ohio's governor this month.

Friends recounted that Mr. Gelpi excelled in business and was once president of a large cancer foundation in Ohio. He moved to San Francisco in the early 1990s and later became the owner of Treasure House Miniatures in San Francisco.

He was very proud of his work within the civil rights movement and he remained passionate about politics throughout his life.

Clean and sober for 25 years, his love for and work within the recovery community was his gift. After Mr. Gelpi came to San Francisco he became a proud member of the San Francisco leather community and was a staunch supporter of many leather charitable causes and organizations.

He was the loving guardian of a variety of pets over the years. His last four-footed and feathered friends, Tracy and Lily, will surely never forget their lives with him, friends said. A gifted interior decorator, he was known for his good taste and his skill at gracious entertaining.

Mr. Gelpi was also active in his church, Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church. He helped with the hunger program on Wednesdays, and he did outreach to Catholics who had separated from their faith and fellowships. His "Reconnect" programs were valuable to all in attendance. There will be many who will miss Mr. Gelpi but especially his dear friends of a lifetime, particularly those he came to know as his "Tuesday night dinner bunch."

Mr. Gelpi will be laid to rest in Columbus, Ohio after the San Francisco services. There will be Vespers on Friday, January 28 at 7:30 p.m. and a funeral service on Saturday, January 29 at 2 p.m. Both will take place at Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, 100 Diamond Street at 18th. All are welcome.

From the Columbus Dispatch

Link is here

Michael A. Gelpi

GELPI Michael A. Gelpi, 70, of San Francisco, California and Columbus, Ohio, passed away suddenly January 23, 2011, in San Francisco. Arrangements being completed by EGAN-RYAN FUNERAL HOME, 403 E. Broad St.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

VIDEO: ‘Gays Need Not Apply.’ So We Applied.

The National Organization for Marriage’s sister organization, the Ruth Institute (just as fringy as NOM), is running a “Reel Love” project. (Recall our investigation of the Ruth Institute.) They’re asking folks to send in video testimonials on what love means to them and if lifelong love is possible.

According to rules and regulations of the contest, content submitted must convey “how lifelong love between one man and one woman is possible.” Translation: we only care about what straight folks have to say about what love means to them.

Not so fast, Dr. J.

Love is love.

We’re posting the video we submitted here to “Reel Love” — it’s sure to get rejected. Who, by the way, puts on a national contest—via the Internet– that effectively bans whole groups of people from participating? Only NOM and the Ruth Institute would engage in such a loving, tolerant, and affirming undertaking.



HRC Report: Polling Shows Americans Support LGBT People on All Issues

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 26, 2011

HRC Report: Polling Shows Americans Support LGBT People on All Issues

Document shows American public has evolved and now decidedly supports equality

WASHINGTON – Today the Human Rights Campaign – the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization – released a special report analyzing public opinion on LGBT equality. The data clearly shows Americans are supportive of fairness on a wide range of issues affecting the LGBT community. View the full report at: www.hrc.org/pollingreport.

“While the American people embrace their LGBT friends and neighbors, government remains a lagging indicator of acceptance,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese. “The numbers don’t lie. Americans want equal rights for LGBT citizens and lawmakers should heed their call.”

Changing hearts and minds is the key to achieving equality for LGBT people. From marriage and relationship recognition to employment nondiscrimination laws, Americans are quickly and consistently moving to embrace equality.

View the full report at: www.hrc.org/pollingreport.

The Human Rights Campaign is America's largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. By inspiring and engaging all Americans, HRC strives to end discrimination against LGBT citizens and realize a nation that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all.

# # #

You can also find the report below.




HRC Polling Report