Eleventh Avenue South

A group of gay and lesbian couples are organizing a lawsuit similar to one in California that resulted in laws against same-sex marriage in those states being struck down. Court challenges in Massachusetts and California seem to have provided lasting marriage equality for same-sex couples, but will Minnesota follow suit?

"We have waited long enough," says Doug Benson. He and his partner, Duane, together for 18 years, are one of the pioneer couples looking to sue the state. "The point we want to make is to make sure equality is pursued wherever we can pursue it." He continues, "Because we can't sit around waiting for this to happen. We want this to become a reality here at home, and we are trying through the courts as well as through the Legislature."

The first steps include finding about 30 couples to get involved in the suit. "We want a critical mass of couples involved," Doug says. They've spoken with a law firm who is willing to take the case. In order to cover some of the legal expenses, couples signing on should be prepared to pay as much as $1,000. Couples have until Aug. 15 to sign up for the lawsuit.

So far, three have signed up, two of which have Canadian marriage licenses. Another handful are contemplating joining, but Doug and Duane are assuring them that the risks -- at least financially -- will be well worth it if the lawsuit is successful.

"In Doug and my case, we pay $3,000 more a year in taxes because we are not spouses," says Duane. "Gays and lesbians face legal costs to get legal documents such as hospital visitation, care decisions, and so on -- all that are granted by marriage."

The lawsuit is a small price to pay for couples who could get significant financial relief through marriage.

Certain to be controversial, the lawsuit will challenge existing Minnesota law that prevents same-sex marriage on the grounds that such laws violate equal protection. Unlike California, Massachusetts and -- for a brief time -- Iowa, Minnesota already has a Supreme Court decision that bars same-sex marriage.

Baker v. Nelson was the first challenge to anti-marriage laws in the country. Richard John Baker and James Michael McConnell applied for a marriage license in Hennepin County in 1970, and when they were denied a license the took the county to court -- and lost.

The lawsuit is a step that local LGBT community groups have not been keen on taking, instead preferring to change the minds of Minnesotans and pass marriage equality legislatively.

While Doug and Duane have encountered some negativity to the lawsuit from community groups, they say it's not up to organizations to help people achieve equality.

"We have a responsibility as citizens to take responsibility for ourselves. We can't wait for organizations to do things for us. They can't -- and shouldn't -- do everything."

On the chances of success, the couple says you'll never know if you don't try. "We don't know what's going to happen," says Doug. "We're just taking it one step at a time."

Doug Benson is coordinating couples for the lawsuit and asked me to share his contact information: Phone: 763-219-1206. Email: dugby3@yahoo.com.

Ashwin Madia, the DFL-endorsed candidate for the 3rd Congressional District, penned a column Tuesday speaking out on his experience as a Marine Corps lawyer defending a Marine who was being discharged for being gay. The column, posted on Minnesota Campaign Report and the Bilerico Project, comes on the eve of historic hearings in the House Armed Services subcommittee on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and it's detrimental effects on military members. The following is an excerpt of that column:

I am a Marine Corps veteran, an Iraq war veteran and the Democratic candidate for Congress in Minnesota's Third District, so I hear a lot about patriotism these days. But real patriotism sometimes means taking on the system if you know what you're doing is the right thing. As a Marine Corps lawyer, I was one of the first attorneys to successfully defend a gay Marine from discrimination by the military.

In 2005, my client, Private First Class (PFC) Smith [real name not disclosed], was found to have downloaded gay pornography onto a government computer. On the exact same day, another Marine was found with straight pornography on his government computer. The straight Marine received a verbal reprimand by the commanding officer. The gay Marine was given: a demotion in rank, loss of pay, restricted in his movements on base, and most severe of all, an administrative separation from the Marine Corps with an Other-Than-Honorable (OTH) discharge, just one step below a court martial.
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An OTH discharge is typically reserved for Marines who exhibit a serious pattern of misconduct over time -- disobeying orders, talking back to superior officers, chronic patterns of not showing up or failing physical examinations. An OTH discharge means you lose all your veterans benefits and it shows up on every college application and future job application for the rest of your life.

I presented PFC Smith's case to a review panel composed of senior Marine officers and enlisted Marines. This isn't a typical jury made up of soccer moms and high school gym teachers. I argued that there was no justification for the disparity in punishment given to the straight Marine and PFC Smith. Ultimately, the Panel overruled the commanding officer's recommendations and retained PFC Smith. Overruling a commanding officer's recommendation is a rare event in the Marines. In fact it's so rare that I never saw it happen again during four years of being a lawyer in the Marine Corps.

The panel's decision shocked quite a few people. But that's not the best part of the story.

Be sure to visit Minnesota Campaign Report and the Bilerico Project to find out how the story ends.

Gay and lesbian members of the military must hide every aspect of their lives in order to serve their country thanks to a Clinton-era law called "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." That law has resulted in the discharge of thousands of gay and lesbian military members since it's inception in 1993 -- and has become a wildly unpopular law.

A poll released this weekend found that a striking majority of Americans, 75 percent, support the right for gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. An even more surprising? Fifty-seven percent of evangelicals said the same thing. Sixty-four percent of Republicans support allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly and over 80 percent of Democrats said the same.

Sen. Barack Obama has called for a repeal of the discriminatory law throughout the campaign, putting him squarely in line with American thought on the subject. Sen. John McCain, however, has been vicious in his opposition to allowing gays and lesbians to openly serve their country.

In April, he told the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a group that defends gays and lesbians discharged under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, that he “unambiguously maintains that open homosexuality within the military services presents an intolerable risk to morale, cohesion and discipline,” and that the Supreme Court “has ruled that the military may constitutionally discharge a service member for overt homosexual behavior.”

Despite McCain's assertion, the Supreme Court has declined to hear cases involving Don't Ask, Don't Tell, instead leaving it to the lower courts.

McCain continued, “Most importantly, the national security of the United States, not to mention the lives of our men and women in uniform, are put at grave risk by policies detrimental to the good order and discipline which so distinguish America’s Armed Services.”

Speaking of "intolerable risk to morale, cohesion and discipline," a 2006 Zogby poll found that 73 percent of military members have no problem serving with openly gay or lesbian people, and 23 percent actually know a gay or lesbian person in their unit.

The Military Personnel Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee will hold it's first hearing on the issue of Don't Ask, Don't Tell in more than 15 years on Wednesday, July 23.

Links for today:

CityPages takes a look at gay seminarians particularly among Lutherans -- an increasingly common occurrence in Minnesota.

Project 515 visited Rochester to talk about the Minnesota statutes that discriminate against same-sex couples. They visited the Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce, RNeighbors and the Olmsted County Human Rights Commission. Rep. Tina Liebling, DFL-Rochester, attended: "Some of these things are just plain old fairness issues and plain old workforce issues, and Minnesota needs to attract and keep highly skilled people and creative people."

Along the marriage lines, Massachusetts is set to overturn their laws that say only Massachusetts residents can marry in Massachusetts. Gays from around the country would be able to marry there -- and spend millions in the process.

Katherine Kersten takes a look at a controversy surrounding AIDS, and while she almost gay-bashes, she really, honestly said some coherent and helpful things.

"In my view, O’Neill — with his overheated rhetoric — has this backwards. The campaign to universalize the AIDS threat was not a moral crusade, but an attempt to deflect such a crusade. AIDS appeared when gays were beginning a push for general acceptance. This included attempts to overcome the widespread perception that gay sex was risky and unnatural. If AIDS was tied to gays, activists feared, it might seem to confirm these perceptions.

Was the AIDS’ threat “oversold?”

No. AIDS is a dreadful disease, which has taken millions of lives here and abroad. The resources we have poured into alleviating suffering and seeking a cure are amply justified. But could we have saved more lives if we had targeted our resources more wisely, rather than pouring millions into a misguided campaign to universalize the threat?"

In other words, maybe if we spent the money actually targeting gay men, drug users and sex workers we could have made a greater impact? Tell that to the Republicans who have tied the hands of prevention workers so that they can't discuss the issues relevant to those populations. And shoveled money to faith-based groups who will talk with those groups, but only to share with them their sinful ways.

Creative Time, a New York-based nonprofit that specializes in funding public are will host a gay and lesbian themed demonstration at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, the Colorado Independent reports.

A similar event will be held in Denver for the Democratic National Convention.

For the event, artist Sharon Hayes will recruit between 75 and 100 volunteers from St. Paul to read "Revolutionary Love 2: I am your best fantasy." The 10 to 20 minute texts will be read continuously over a period of 2 hours. The event will be in conjunction with the Walker Art Center and the UnConvention.

The demonstration's mission is "to take back the queer agenda and forefront the personal in these fortresses of the political."

Hayes' demonstration will incorporate war messaging as part of the critique of the Republican National Convention. According to a press release by Creative Time (PDF): "Specifically, Hayes is interested in the militaristic aspect of groups that operated at the beginning of the gay rights movement, many of whom assumed aggressive, reactionary stances to culture at large. Where the classic slogan says, 'Make love not war,' Hayes references the Stonewall-era Gay Liberation movement and their chant, 'An army of lovers cannot lose.'"

Why do gays go after people like Michele Bachmann but spare Keith Ellison when it comes to their faith? Because one is a bigot and one isn't.

Mitch Berg, Republican blogger and radio host, writes in his blog post: "Birkey’s Great Leap Forward" criticizing my recent article on Ellison.

"Given how the local leftymedia has harped on Barb Davis-White’s religion - especially its anti-gay aspects - just as they do for every Republican politician who is open about a faith that doesn’t aggressively embrace homosexuality, why has nobody in the leftymedia asked Rep. Ellison (the way they ask Barb Davis-White and Michele Bachmann, to pick two random examples) about how his religion, the very anti-gay Islam, affects his views on homosexuality?"

My response: [because it's a good question for those too ignorant or lazy to look for the answers]

I have asked Ellison how his religion affects his views on homosexuality:

"Andy: How does your faith affect your advocacy on behalf of GLBT issues?

Keith Ellison: My faith commands me to seek justice and it doesn't make any restrictions. It says "Be just," and I have to fight for justice. Because I have to fight for justice, I have to fight for the rights of all people, the civil rights of all people. That to me is rooted in my faith, that all people have dignity, that all people matter, that all people count, and that we need the talents, creativity, and skill of all people in order to have a stronger society."

And Lavender has asked him the same question and even more pointedly than I did. [They don't have archives]

What the 'leftymedia' has harped on is Davis White's STATEMENTS that are anti-LGBT. Same thing for Bachmann. They use their faith to justify those statements in public campaigns so it's pretty much fair game.

Davis White is running against Ellison in a district with a heavy turnout of LGBT voters yet she rails against same-sex marriages and calls gays sinners.

I don't think anyone's ever asked Bachmann or Davis White to speak for the bigotry of their entire faith, but that seems to be what you are asking of the 'leftymedia' to do to Ellison.

Some politicians running for reelection in a safe district can get lax in their campaigning, but Rep. Keith Ellison is working hard in this year's campaign. At a Saturday afternoon meeting of LGBT activists at the Spirit of the Lakes Church in Minneapolis, Ellison expounded on his "politics of inclusion and generosity" and the responsibility to engage every voter in the district even when the odds look good.

The 5th district votes reliably Democratic. It's also one of the biggest in terms of LGBT voters with 12.5 percent identifying as lesbian, gay or bisexual, the 10th largest such population in the nation. Where many politicians are hesitant to publicize direct outreach to the LGBT community, Ellison has embraced the community with targeted outreach and dialogue, and signed on as a leader in the House's new LGBT Equality Caucus. Saturday's meeting was key to letting the community know that, at least in Minnesota's 5th, their voice is being represented in Washington.

"The fact that I'm in a quote-endquote safe seat, and some are more risky than others, and if I'm in a seat that has a higher safety than others, doesn't that mean I have a responsibility to look beyond just my own immediate political needs to get reelected?" Ellison told the audience. "There's no excuse for a person in my situation to not try to grow, expand, organize and build the base."

And Ellison said that extending that base and the politics of inclusion and generosity outside the district is just as important.

The Ellison campaign has a goal of bringing 20,000 new voters to the polls in the district in November. And the LGBT community is one of the key groups the campaign hopes to motivate. As several audience members have pointed out, frustration and apathy are taking root in a community that is weary of being used as a political football and tired of promises broken by progressive candidates.

"We are here to help the community understand how we are all in this thing together," Ellison said.

One of the most contentious issues for the community in recent months has been the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a bill that would prohibit sexual orientation and gender identity-based discrimination in housing and employment. Two versions of the bill exist: one that excludes transgender Americans, and had the votes to pass, and one that includes the entire community and was doomed to fail.

Ellison explained why the bill including the transgender community is vital to ending discrimination for everyone even heterosexual persons.

"You can be very male in your gender identity, but if you have certain mannerisms associated with women, that's a gender identity you can be fired for. Because you are not -- in somebody's subjective view -- masculine enough," he said. "They might use that to say you aren't going to be hired, you're not getting the apartment, you're not getting this and your not getting that."

Ellison said that the fully inclusive bill is "indispensable to building equality to include gender identity."

But like all communities, the LGBT community is diverse and there are many issues that effect people's lives. Gas prices, health care costs, immigration reform and aging issues were important topics of discussion even outside a LGBT ccontext. Ellison articulated the importance of politicians to engage on a variety of issues with constituent groups.

"I went to a senior event and i came in there ready to talk. I was loaded with information about senior issues that day," he said. "And these seniors said, 'well, what about the war', 'my grandson can't afford college', 'we got air we breathe and we want to make sure the environment is working for us too." People are complex and are concerned about a variety of issues -- many times they are interconnected.

He said that he didn't always get it right, but it's a vital part of community engagement. "It's fundamental common sense and its something that politicians screw up a lot. We all live in this diverse world and yet we skip over it," he said. "The idea that we are all here, we all have a right to be here and make it work for everybody so we don't ghettoize our politics."

When the progressive movement becomes ghettoized in it's various constituencies, then it's easier for the right to drive a wedge between them with wedge-issue politics. "The question is: how do we take the whole community and say 'we all have to be moving forward'"

And Ellison's work on LGBT issues in Congress is one part of that broader strategy of moving everyone forward -- a career that wasn't lost on audience members. Said one participant, "As one of your constituents I can't tell you how immensely proud I am to be able to go in and vote for someone I really believe in."

Here's what comes from cleaning out two weeks of email.

Minnesota's Jake Reitan will be working with Obama in Oregon. He was tapped by real estate broker and investor Terry Bean who serves as Obama's National Finance Committee. Reitan has just completed a degree in divinity from Harvard. I ran into Jake's mom, Randi, at a LGBT fundraiser for Al Franken and she said the family is excited about his move.

[Note: I go to political fundraisers for blogging purposes and free booze. I do not contribute to candidates.]

Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean was in town yesterday giving a pep talk to Obama's Minneapolis workers and he stopped in to say hello to the folks at Wilde Roast Cafe.

Speaking of local business, local auto mogul Denny Hecker is pimping his nationwide Advantage Rent A Car business to the LGBT community, offering discounts for folks who use GayTravel.com. Cara Lyn Greco, GayTravel.com CEO, said in a release, “Advantage is making a significant, long-term commitment to our community and we’re proud to be their partner in these efforts.”

Along the lines of long-term commitments, the Star Tribune has a feature about Minnesota's gay and lesbian couples traveling to California to get married. Of course, not everyone is doing it and that's why the Strib put together a piece on the gays and lesbians who don't want or need marriage.

For those who do marry and would like to sue the state of Minnesota, a law firm is looking for willing couples who can pony up $1000 to cover legal costs.

And same-sex couples, married or otherwise, will not be counted in the US Census this time around.

For our neighbors to the east, they should not go to California at all. Wisconsin law prohibits it and those who do could face criminal penalties.

Visiting South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah, and North Dakota for the next week or so. Here's some images from Twin Cities Pride to tide you over until I get back.

Does a deal on aluminum siding advance the cause of equality? It's a fair question given the vast amount of corporate marketing present at Twin Cities Pride last weekend. As LGBT people and their friends and family gathered to celebrate community and identity, many event-goers are left wondering when that celebration stopped being about queer rights and became a mass marketing event for the Fortune 500.

Perusing the tents at the festival can be a dizzying experience. An aluminum siding vendor handed out magnets, a bank raffled off a flat-screen television, and virtually every business wanted people to put their festival bric-a-brac in their logo-emblazoned bags.

The list of vendors for this year's event looked more like a shopping mall kiosk than a celebration of diversity. Best Buy, REI, Barnes and Nobles, Wells Fargo, Target, Walgreen's and CVS Pharmacy were just a few of the scores of businesses marketing to the masses. Indeed, large corporations provide a great deal of equality for LGBT people in terms of employee accommodations, relationship recognition through benefits and corporate donations to LGBT charities -- more so than our own government and many other sectors of society. But is so much corporate support a good thing?

"The sense of community can sometimes get lost in the midst of advertisements and marketing," said Katy Samuelson, a straight ally with gay family members. She's been going to the festival for 10 years. As for the equality and visibility purpose of Pride, "There's still a very long way to go," said Samuelson. "In my opinion, if the festival is getting 'too corporate,' it only means that it's getting more attention, and that cannot be a bad thing here. So, I put up with those Wells Fargo and Target signs and rock on!"

But the community can't let that attention lose the focus of the event -- that a group of New York City queers fought against police harassment at a time when gathering with other queer people was a crime. A single uprising at a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in 1969 sparked a movement that has seen tremendous success in gaining basic human rights as well as the attention of big business.

"The only way Pride can lose its soul to corporate interests is if all of us forget our movement's very humble beginnings," said Del Jenkins, president of the Stonewall DFL, a LGBT equality group affiliated with the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party. "We should not forget how far we've come or push away the allies we've picked up along the way." Those allies -- big business -- are important. "All of these friends to our LGBT community will be crucial to taking us the rest of the way to finding that end of that rainbow we've been singing about for almost 40 years," he said.

And members of the community aren't letting corporations off the hook in exchange for support. A contingent in the Ashley Rukes Pride Parade on Sunday, called the Revolting Queers, issued a sharp critique of the corporations sponsoring the weekend's festivities.

The group's demonstration, dubbed "Airing out the dirty laundry," called attention to the seedier side of corporate culture -- and called for the community to respond. In an email statement to the Minnesota Independent, the group said that the practice of "buying rights" is having a negative impact. "A modern trend in the LGBT movement is to use the market to try to access rights," the email read. "It is somehow imagined that gays will use purchasing power to shape the cultural and political landscape. In reality, the only outcome is a newly formed consumerist gay identity."

The group set out to "expose the hypocrisies of so-called 'gay friendly' politicians, organizations, and sell-outs like the Human Rights Campaign." HRC has been a major player in promoting equality in corporate culture as well as promoting LGBT friendly employers.

Dozens of marchers wore dirty underwear while carrying signs criticizing the business practices of various corporations. For example, the group accused Wells Fargo of predatory lending targeting people of color in a handout along the parade route. "The queer community should acknowledge the important roles that poor queers and people of color have played in the gay rights movement," the flier read.

The mission of the Pride festival and surrounding events "is to commemorate our diverse heritage, inspire the achievement of equality and challenge discrimination." While many argue that a heavy corporate involvement is crucial to the success of that mission, others will continue to struggle against that notion.

One thing is clear, however. With well over 300,000 attendees each year, big business will always find a way to market at Pride -- promoting equality has proven to be good for the bottom line.