Morning Sweep

Fred Hochberg, the openly gay Dean of the Milano School of Management and Public Policy at the New School who also led the Small Business Administration in President Clinton's cabinet, will likely be Obama’s pick to head the Export-Import Bank.

Obama will also likely be putting off some of his campaign promises – including working to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” – to focus on the economy.

After weeks of criticizing Obama’s Rick Warren pick, Bishop Gene Robinson has been invited to give a prayer at one of the inaugural events.

Anti-LGBT activists in Gainesville, FL are using the same old, tired and bigoted tactics to try to repeal the city’s transgender anti-discrimination ordinance.

Former evangelical pastor Ted Haggard, promoting his new HBO documentary, has said he “went through a wandering in the wilderness time,” but he has now repented for his gay sex scandal.

CNN reports that business is booming at the 11 Seattle gay bars threatened with a ricin attack last week. Police are still investigating the threats.

The L.A. Times has a very interesting story on the emergence of what they are calling a “vibrant gay hip-hop subculture.”

Morning Sweep

Gay City News has a great summary of the controversy leading up to Wednesday’s election of Malcolm Smith as Senate Majority Leader.

The New York Blade writes that although the new NY Senate is the most gay-friendly ever, there is still much work to be done before marriage equality can become a reality.

The Blade also writes on the emergence of LGBT advocacy Facebook groups and mentions the Pride Agenda’s OffSprung! group for young professionals in New York.

Despite Gov. Paterson’s instructions to state agencies to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages in New York, it appears that legally married same-sex couples here will not be able to file joint state taxes this year. The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance has said that state taxes must be filed the same as federal taxes, which cannot be filed jointly by same-sex couples because of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

The New Yorker extensively profiles Barney Frank, the openly-gay U.S. Congressman.

Supporters of Prop. 8 are suing to block their campaign finance records from being public, saying the reports have led to the harassment of donors.

Ex-Senator Larry Craig has finally given up his attempts to withdraw his guilty plea from his 2007 airport sex sting.

Nine men in Senegal have been sentenced to eight years in prison for committing “unnatural acts.” The men were arrested at the home of a prominent gay activist. International gay rights groups are shocked at the ruling.

GLAAD has released its list of the "worst anti-gay voices of 2008" (from Joe.My.God).

Gov. Paterson refers to LGBT issues in State of the State address

Ross Levi, our Director of Public Policy and Education, is at it again (two posts in one week!) and this time dicussing Governor Paterson's inclusion of LGBT issues in the State of the State address, delivered yesterday in the State Capitol.


It’s been a few years since LGBT issues were referenced in the New York Governor’s State of the State Address. The last time we could recall was Governor Pataki’s mention of hate crimes and the Sexual Orientation of the Non-Discrimination Act in 2002. So we were thrilled to hear Governor Paterson’s discussion about community in his speech. The beginning parts of that “Community” section were written in his prepared comments as follows:

"Particularly in these difficult economic times, we must make sure that we
respect one another, serve one another and protect one another.

It saddens me to report that, over the past few months, we have failed. In Suffolk County, in Brooklyn and in Syracuse, our residents have suffered brutal murders provoked by ignorance, intolerance, and hate. As we sift through the fallout from these awful crimes, we must make one thing plain: hate has no place in the Empire State.

I call upon all parents to increase their efforts to teach their children respect for all people – no matter their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability or national origin. And we in State government must strengthen our school-based curriculum to reinforce the critical message of acceptance and tolerance.”

We think Governor Paterson deserves great praise for bringing attention to the horrible murder of a transgender woman in Syracuse, and the beating and resulting death of a Brooklyn man accompanied by anti-gay and anti-Hispanic slurs. The Governor’s call for a school-based curriculum to address intolerance we think is a direct reference to the Dignity for All Students Act, whose passage after many years of one-house movement in the Assembly should now be a no-brainer in the Democratic-controlled Legislature. We see all these comments as evidence of Governor Paterson’s continued commitment to civil rights legislation.

We were also heartened to hear the Governor’s discuss his philosophy on health care, which is the model that has been championed for years by the NYS LGBT Health and Human Service Network, coordinated by the Pride Agenda. The Governor said:

“[W]e still incentivize the wrong care in the wrong setting at the wrong price. Where we are overpaying for inpatient or institutional care, we must shift funding to primary, preventive and community-based care.”

We couldn’t agree more. Health and human services are best provided early on and by and among the community that best understands the need. This is exactly the sort of care provided by the over fifty Network groups who provide health and human services to the LGBT community literally all across New York State.

The Governor has so far put his money where his mouth is and continued strong budgetary support for LGBT health and human services in his recent Executive budget. The Pride Agenda and the members of the Network will continuing to work throughout the budget process to maintain and expand state support for these vital community services.

The Governor’s line about hate having no place in New York received a standing ovation from the legislature and other audience members in the Assembly chamber. We hope this as a positive sign that there may be an increasingly receptive environment for passage of legislation to benefit the LGBT community here in New York State, most notably marriage equality and the transgender civil rights bill, GENDA.

Click here for the full text of Gov. Paterson's State of the State address.

Morning Sweep

The New York State Senate will vote today on its new Majority Leader. The New York Times reports that a deal was reached last night to elect Senator Malcolm Smith, putting Democrats in power for the first time in four decades.

Supporters and opponents of Prop. 8 argued in court Monday over whether the state's Supreme Court has the authority to overturn the anti-gay marriage initiative.

A new National Gay and Lesbian Task Force report reiterates that it was party identification, age, religion and political views – not race – that had the biggest impact on voters’ decisions for or against Prop. 8.

Bob Barr, author of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, editorializes in the L.A. Times that he now wants the law struck down – not because he supports same-sex marriage, but because “It truly is time to get the federal government out of the marriage business.”

An anonymous letter threatening to poison patrons was sent to 11 gay bars in Seattle and a local alternative weekly newspaper. The Seattle Police Department is investigating the possible hate crime.

Note to Brennan Center: One-house bills are not a bad thing

Ross Levi, our Director of Public Policy and Education, had the following to say about the Brennan Center's recent report on the workings of the New York State Legislature:

Not to toot our own horn, but we here at the Pride Agenda know a little something about the workings of Albany. Our organization was founded by a New York City PAC merging with an Albany-based grassroots political organization, and since then we have helped get dozens of laws through the state Legislature.

So we are all too familiar with what a complex, stubborn and even sometimes annoying machine Albany can be. The levers can stick too much, it can move way too slowly and the whole thing is just bigger and more cumbersome than it would be in an ideal world. For this reason, our public policy agenda states that, “We support actions that foster a more open, transparent and efficient state government.”

Consequently, we have great admiration for the many good government groups working here in Albany to achieve that very goal. That includes NYU’s Brennan Center which annually recommends improvements to the functioning of state government.

There are a number of points in the Brennan Center’s latest report, however, with which we disagree. Most notably, we question whether the low ratio of bills introduced to bills passed into law is any indication of the inefficiencies of state government. The Brennan Center contends that because only 1,693, or 9% of the bills introduced in 2008 became law, legislators should be limited in the number of bills that they can introduce each session. The report implies that the practice of passing “one house bills,” i.e. one chamber passing a bill that never receives a vote in the other chamber, is a waste of government’s time.

We beg to differ, based on our past experience. As you can see in the statement we issued yesterday, it has been an important part of past advocacy efforts to have LGBT civil rights legislation passed in one house – which in our history has overwhelmingly been the Democratic controlled Assembly – even when we knew a measure stood little to no chance of seeing any similar action in the other house during that same session.

We think it is wrong for the legislature to have that leadership used against them as a sign of legislative dysfunction. Quite the contrary, it has routinely been an explicit part of our advocacy strategy to get a bill passed in one chamber, build its backing in terms of numbers and bipartisan support and use that passage to increase the momentum and political pressure for the other house to move. It is also an important tool to “smoke-out” legislators’ positions around a measure, either for later votes or for when legislators move onto new elected positions, such as when they move from the Assembly to the Senate.

The strategy was a success with hate crimes legislation and the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act, which each passed the Assembly for years before seeing even a vote in the Senate, and it is part of our work around the Dignity for All Students Act, the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act and marriage equality legislation (though we hope and expect those measures will not need similarly long trails of one-house passage).

The rest of the state knows there is a value to one-house bills, too. When SONDA first passed the Assembly, it made the front page of the New York Times Metro section. This media attention is another value to one-house bills, in that it can appropriately bring attention to an issue that is going unaddressed, and serve as an important moment to begin or expand a civic “conversation.”

It is an appropriate part of the democratic process for one chamber to champion bills it views as priorities, even as those measures languish in the other house. The Brennan Center has a point that more frequent use of conference committees to reconcile similar-but-not-identical bills passed in both houses might be a good improvement. But we simply can’t agree that one chamber’s leadership on a one-house bill amounts to a waste of time and government resources. There are plenty of places to find inefficiencies in the legislative process, but surely this is not one of them.

Ross is based in the Pride Agenda's Albany office and is the longest serving current staff member at the Pride Agenda, starting as Legislative Counsel in 2000.

Morning Sweep

Fred Hochberg, the openly gay Dean of the Milano School of Management and Public Policy at the New School who also led the Small Business Administration in President Clinton's cabinet, is being championed as a nominee for Commerce Secretary in the Obama Administration (now that Richardson is out). Hochberg is currently on Obama's transition team.

An openly gay man, Brad Kiley, has been appointed to a non-Cabinet level position in the Obama White House: Director of the Office of Management and Administration.

The New York Times editorializes on Arkansas' recently passed law banning gay couples--and unmarried heterosexual couples--from adopting, saying that the shameful law needs to be struck down by the state's Supreme Court so that bigotry can once again be replaced by the best interests of the child.

Columnist Deb Price writes about the gay-friendly freshman class in the new Congress.

The Forward discusses the increasing understanding and acceptance of transgender Jews in several Jewish faith communities, notably within the Reform and Conservative movements.

Morning Sweep

The Albany Times-Union has a feature on “HomoRadio,” the weekly Capital Region radio show on WRPI.

The Buffalo News writes on Spiritus Christi Buffalo, a local splinter congregation of the Catholic Church that is more inclusive and welcoming to all, including same-sex couples.

The L.A. Times writes about New York’s Harvey Milk High School students’ reactions to seeing the film “Milk.”

U.S. News & World Report explores the debate over LGBT high schools and asks if helping LGBT teens overcome bullying is worth segregating them from other kids their age.

Although New Jersey is close to having enough votes to pass a same-sex marriage bill in the Assembly, politics may hold the legislation back.

Sam Adams, the new mayor of Portland and the first openly gay man elected to the office in a top-30 U.S. city, has taken office. He has stated he doesn’t want his sexual orientation to play a role in his position, saying, "I don't want to be a gay mayor. I do want to be a great mayor.”

The Advocate has recommendations for how the Obama administration can make progress with the LGBT community after its divisive Rick Warren pick.

More than a dozen families are suing in Arkansas in hopes that the new ban against unmarried couples adopting or becoming foster parents will be ruled unconstitutional.

The Sacramento Bee profiles Jerry Brown, the 70-year-old California Attorney General and former Governor who has filed a brief against Prop. 8.