An Army veteran beaten by a man he met at a bar died nearly a week after being hospitalized with burns so bad that parts of both arms had to be amputated, MercuryNews.com noted.
Veteran Stephen Patrick White, 46, died at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Alex Teal, White's longtime partner, had previously told AP White had most of both arms amputated after he was severely burned in a hotel room that caught fire during a Nov. 9 attack. Garry Joseph Gupton, 26, has now been charged with first-degree murder in connection with the beating.
In observance of National Transgender Awareness Week Nov. 17-21, Lambda Legal is joining a host of organizations and community organizers from across the country for a week of education and community events including Transgender Day of Action, Transgender Day of Remembrance and Transgender Day of Resilience, according to a press release. Events are taking place in such cities as Chicago, Atlanta and Newark, New Jersey. For a full list of Lambda Legal events during Transgender Awareness Week, see www.lambdalegal.org/events/transgender-awareness-week .
A visit by outgoing Texas Gov. Rick Perry to an Ivy League campus was marred when students disrupted the event with sexually explicit questions, including one asking if he would have anal sex for $102 million in campaign contributions, according to DailyCaller.com . Ostensibly speaking to students at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, about border security and fiscal responsibility, Perry's question time was marred when three different students asked questions harassing the governor over his stance on homosexuality. The students were led by Ben Packer, a sophomore who wrote up a list of 11 offensive questions prior to the event and distributed them around campus.
The National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce ( NGLCC ) is honoring openly gay NBA player Jason Collins with its NGLCC/American Airlines ExtrAA Mile Award, according to a press release. Collins joins Marriott International, Debra Quade of Kellogg Company, and Excel Global Partners as honorees at the 2014 NGLCC National Dinner. The 2014 NGLCC National Dinner will take place Friday, Nov. 21, in Washington, D.C., at the National Building Museum.
OutVets, representing LGBT military veterans, was the first such group to march in Boston's annual Veterans Day parade, NECN.com reported . "Today we made the statement that we're honoring our veterans, whether you're gay, whether you're straight, whether you're black, whether you're white, we all have shed the same red blood," OutVets founder and CEO Bryan Bishop said. Although some veterans had mixed feelings about OutVets marching, event organizer Stephen Peers said the decision to allow the group in was simple, adding, "They're veterans, period."
A federal judge has struck down South Carolina's ban on same-sex marriage on the basis of legal precedent in the state's judicial circuit, The Washington Blade reported. In a 26-page decision issued Nov. 12, U.S. District Judge Richard Mark Gergel, an Obama appointee, determined the South Carolina's ban on gay nuptials violates same-sex couples' rights to equal protection and due process under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Gergel bases his decision on an earlier ruling from the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals against the marriage ban in Virginia, which lies in the same judicial circuit as South Carolina.
Twenty-four-year-old Gizzy Fowler, a trans woman of color, was found dead in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, The Huffington Post reported. This is the 10th known murder of a trans woman of color in the United States in 2014. Multiple outlets misgendered Fowler, publishing her old name, her criminal history and old photos. Nashville Transgender Day of Remembrance ( Nov. 20 ) organizers planned to honor Fowler during their event at the Scarritt-Bennett Center in Nashville.
Janson Wu is the newest executive director of Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders ( GLAD ), according to a press release. For eight years as a staff attorney, he has been deeply involved in GLAD's legal, legislative and policy work, leading coalition work in New Hampshire and Rhode Island. Earlier this year, he joined GLAD's leadership team as deputy director. He will begin his new role as executive director Dec. 1.
The parent company of the Miami Heat and AmericanAirlines Arena is joining a coalition that provides stronger nondiscrimination protections for the LGBT community, Fox Sports noted. The Heat Group is now among 19 major Florida employers who back the Florida Competitive Workforce Act. Florida law makes workplace discrimination illegal based race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or marital status. The coalition wants the LGBT community included in those policies.
From legalizing same-sex marriage to allowing Texans to openly pack pistols to exempting the state from daylight saving time, Texas lawmakers recently unveiled their seasonal wish list of changes they think should be made in law when the legislature convenes in January, according to the Houston Chronicle. Several bills would reverse the statewide ban on same-sex marriages, would allow Texas to recognize the unions in other states and would repeal a ban on "homosexual conduct"—although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 11 years ago that the ban was illegal and unenforceable.
Chicago-based organization Truth Wins Out ( TWO ) has announced the launch of its "Religious Freedom Farce" campaign. The campaign aims "to highlight the real-world consequences of bills that purport to protect religious liberty, when in reality they only promote prejudice." The campaign comes on a week that Texas state Sen. Donna Campbell introduced a measure, Senate Joint Resolution 10, that would let business owners decline service to LGBT customers if serving them would violate their religious stances.
A federal judge has sentenced a North Texas man to more than 15 years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to kidnapping and severely beat a gay man he met through an online service, LGBTQ Nation noted. Brice Johnson could have received a life sentence for crime, even though prosecutors dropped a hate-crime count against the 19-year-old Springtown man in return for his June 20 guilty plea. Armstrong used social-media app MeetMe to invite then-24-year-old Arron Keahey to his home in September 2013; Armstrong then beat him, bound his wrists, placed him in the trunk of his car and drove him to a family friend's home.
An upstate New York couple filed an appeal with the state, challenging a fine they incurred for refusing to allow a lesbian couple to hold a wedding ceremony on their farm they claimed was available for events, RT.com reported . In a 2012 phone conversation, Cynthia ( and Robert Gifford ) refused to allow Melisa Erwin and her then-fianceé, Jennifer McCarthy, from getting married on the Giffords' property, Liberty Ridge Farm, in Schaghticoke, New York. Unbeknownst to Cynthia, McCarthy was recording the phone call, and the young couple later filed a formal complaint with the state's Division of Human Rights. The state of New York ordered the Giffords to pay fines totaling $13,000.
The U.S. Supreme Court allowed same-sex marriages to proceed in Kansas Nov. 12, lifting a temporary stay issued Nov. 10 by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, The New York Times reported. The two-sentence order was similar to recent ones from the court, which has repeatedly declined to intercede in the legal battles over same-sex marriage. But there was one difference: The earlier orders had apparently been unanimous, while this one noted that Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas would have granted the stay.
A gay veteran in North Carolina was in critical condition after being attacked Nov. 9 by a man who allegedly intended to kill a gay man that evening, Advocate.com reported . Garry Joseph Gupton, of Greensboro, North Carolina, was held by police for assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury with intent to kill, and his bail was set at $150,000. Gupton reportedly met the victim, Stephen Patrick White, at local bar Chemistry Nightclub Nov. 8. Hours later, the two reportedly went to a room at The Battleground Inn, where White was found naked, robbed, beaten and intensely injured from fire.
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi has filed appeals in both state and federal appeals courts, seeking to overturn a number of rulings declaring Florida's same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional by declaring that the trial courts' rulings "were wrong," LGBTQ Nation reported. The appeals come in the rulings by Monroe County Chief Circuit Judge Luis Garcia, who declared the ban unconstitutional on July 17 in a case brought by a Key West couple, and a July 25 ruling by Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Sarah Zabel in a case brought by the National Center for Lesbian Rights on behalf of six same-sex couples.
Leslie Feinberg—who identified as an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist—died Nov. 15, according to Advocate.com . She was 65. She succumbed to complications from multiple tick-borne co-infections, including Lyme disease, babeisiosis and protomyxzoa rheumatica, after decades of illness. Feinberg's impact on mass culture was primarily through her 1993 first novel, Stone Butch Blues, hailed as a groundbreaking work about the complexities of gender.
NerdWallet has looked at what the economic impact would be if all 50 states legalized same-sex marriage. Looking at factors such as the percentage of population that identifies as LGBT, marriage rate by state and the average cost of a wedding, it was determined ( for example ) that more than $101 million would be added to the economy of Illinois, while figures ranged from $3.4 million for North Dakota to $414 million for California.
An Army veteran beaten by a man he met at a bar died nearly a week after being hospitalized with burns so bad that parts of both arms had to be amputated, MercuryNews.com noted . Veteran Stephen Patrick White, 46, died at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Alex Teal, White's longtime partner, had previously told AP White had most of both arms amputated after he was severely burned in a hotel room that caught fire during a Nov. 9 attack. Garry Joseph Gupton, 26, has now been charged with first-degree murder in connection with the beating.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled Nov. 12 that non-biological parents in a same-sex relationship can seek custody of children they raised, based on an agreement to parent together, The Dalas Voice reported. The decision found there is no public policy in Oklahoma against a child having same-sex parents, and if a biological parent jointly conceives children with a non-biological parent and then raises those children together, he or she cannot deny the other parent the ability to seek custody or visitation based on their agreement.
The Human Rights Campaign ( HRC ) strongly condemned an amendment to the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act introduced in the Michigan House of Representatives by state Rep. Frank Foster because of its exclusion of gender identity, according to a media release. The amendment would only add sexual orientation to Michigan's civil-rights act. HRC is a member of Freedom Michigan, a coalition of local and national organizations working to pass a fully inclusive non-discrimination bill.
A woman ticketed in August for going topless during an event at Chicago's lakefront to promote women's rights to bare their breasts in public filed a federal lawsuit, claiming the city's ordinance against the practice is unconstitutional, The Chicago Tribune reported. Sonoko Tagami, 41, is an ardent supporter of "GoTopless," a not-for-profit organization that "advocates for the right of women to appear bare-chested in public," the lawsuit stated.
A new report from the Center for American Progress shows that the uninsured rate among low- and middle-income LGBT Americans has fallen by a quarter since the Affordable Care Act took effect, according to a media release. The report report relies on two surveys of LGBT Americans who earn less than 400 percent of the poverty line ( about $44,000 for an individual )—the cut-off for any financial help buying insurance coverage under Obamacare. And it finds that, between 2013 and 2014, their uninsured rate fell from 34 percent to 26 percent.
Michigan has assumed a new position on the estimated 300 "window" same-sex marriages performed in the state, arguing they're now void following a federal appeals court ruling upholding Michigan's ban on gay nuptials, The Washington Blade reported. In a six-page supplemental brief filed Nov. 14, lawyers for Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Republican, argue the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision in favor of the state's prohibition on same-sex marriages has nullified those legal unions. An estimated 300 same-sex couples were able to marry in Michigan March 22 after U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman ruled in DeBoer v. Snyder the state's ban on same-sex marriage was constitutional; days later, the Sixth Circuit issued a stay on the weddings pending appeal.
In a related development, attorneys for Michigan couple April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse have filed their petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case, seeking to overturn the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision prohibiting same-sex marriage in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee, according to a press release. Multiple other court rulings established marriage equality in dozens of states until Nov. 6, when two of the three-member panel in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Judge Bernard A. Friedman's decision and those of courts in Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky.
After more than seven years at the helm of the San Francisco-based Transgender Law Center ( TLC ), Masen Davis is stepping down in early 2015, according to Frontiers LA. The executive director made the announcement about the "difficult decision" on TLC's website, noting that the organization has gone from a staff of four with a budget of $325,000 annually helping about 900 people to a staff of 14, an annual budget in excess of $1.5 million and more than 2,500 requests for help each year. Also, Davis and TLC have worked with lawmakers and other organizations to create and pass important laws impacting transgender individuals in California.
Professor Mark E. Wojcik of Chicago's The John Marshall Law School has been appointed to the American Bar Association's Advisory Commission to the Standing Committee on the Law Library of Congress. Other appointees include U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and former FBI Director William S. Sessions. Wojcik is the only openly gay appointee to the commission. He will be teaching a course in Sexual Orientation and the Law next semester at The John Marshall Law School.
The Department of Health and Human Services ( HHS ) Advisory Committee on Blood and Tissue Safety and Availability voted 16-2 on Nov. 13 to recommend that the blood-donor deferral policy for men who have sex with men be switched from a lifetime deferral—meaning that any man who has had sex with another man since 1977 be excluded from donating blood—to a one-year deferral. Under the recommended policy, gay and bisexual men would be able to donate blood after having abstained from sex for a year. The committee recommendation, while not binding, is likely to be influential when the Food and Drug Administration's Blood Products Advisory Committee reconsiders the policy in early December.
Internet dating site OKCupid has greatly expanded the available options members can select for sexual orientation and gender identities, according to NewNowNext. Previously OKCupid, which boasts more than 3.5 million users worldwide, only allowed users to declare themselves male or female, and gay, straight or bisexual. The list of sexual orientations now includes asexual, demisexual, heteroflexible, homoflexible, pansexual, queer, questioning and sapiosexual ( one who finds intelligence to be the most important sexual trait ).
A large study of gay brothers adds to evidence that genes influence men's chances of being homosexual—although the results may not be strong enough to prove it, The Huffington Post noted. The new evidence "is not proof but it's a pretty good indication" that genes on the two chromosomes have some influence over sexual orientation, said Dr. Alan Sanders, the lead author. He studies behavioral genetics at NorthShore University HealthSystem Research Institute in Evanston, Illinois.
The churchgoer who exclaimed in a video he was "delivered" from homosexuality insists nothing in his announcement was staged, according to Gay Star News. Andrew Caldwell's performance at the annual Church of God in Christ convention in St. Louis has become a viral hit. Caldwell—who has admitted he's always wanted to be famous—said he's been "saved" from gay sexuality for about a year. He repeated he has "no taste for a man," but does "have a taste for a woman."
College basketball had a first for the history books, with University of Massachusetts' Derrick Gordon playing his first game while openly gay, Advocate.com noted . Gordon, who came out April 9, is the first openly gay man to play a game of Division I men's basketball—and he scored 17 points and grabbed nine rebounds in a 95-87 UMass win over Siena.
