By Michael D. Shear

The Washington Post

President Obama on Monday became the first Oval Office occupant to officially celebrate gay pride in the White House even as the gay community remains bitterly divided about the pace of Obama’s efforts to turn words into action for their agenda.

In recognizing the march of progress since the protests outside New York’s Stonewall Inn 40 years ago, Obama achieved a milestone for many gay and lesbian Americans who mark the day as the beginning of their modern rights movement. But the excitement among the several hundred guests invited by the first couple to the East Wing Monday was tempered by frustration among many who believe that the president has moved too slowly to make good on his campaign promises.

Obama’s refusal to take unilateral action to end the “don’t-ask, don’t tell” policy regarding gays in the military and his administration’s support for a legal challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act even sparked a small protest outside a speech to gay activists by Vice President Biden last week.

“There’s been an awful lot of noise and criticism,” said Steve Elmendorf, a top Democratic lobbyist who is openly gay. “For him to send a message to the entire country that this is an event worth celebrating is a big deal. But people expect beyond that to see some substance on a whole host of issues.”

Obama confronted those expectations directly Monday, renewing his campaign promises to change the military’s policy, repeal the marriage act and pass a federal hate crimes bill named for Matthew Shepard, the student murdered in Wyoming in 1998. “I want you to know that I expect and hope to be judged not by word, but by the promises my administration keeps,” Obama said to sustained applause from the crowd. “By the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration.”

BY Samuel Goldsmith DAILY NEWS WRITER

From left to right, Mary Jo Kennedy, Aliya Shain and Jo-Ann Shain. Photo NY Daily News

Children of gay parents say it’s time to let Heather’s two mommies get married.

“I feel like it’s my right to have two parents who are married,” said 15-year-old Marilyn Carlin of Brooklyn, who was born to lesbian moms Jane and Martha.

As thousands ready to march down Fifth Ave. Sunday for gay rights – marking the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riot – children from same-sex households say marriage equality is not just for the adults who want to marry, it’s also for the kids.

“It would make me feel safer if my parents were married,” said Marilyn, who just finished her freshman year at the Berkeley Carroll school in Park Slope.

Marilyn, who wasn’t even born yet in 1989, when the book “Heather Has Two Mommies,” triggered a national controversy, says she worries about what would happen if her biological mother was in an accident.

“We wouldn’t have the same legal rights that straight couples do even though they’ve been together for like 30 years.” Many children of gay couples are furious and dismayed that the state’s gay marriage bill, which has passed the Assembly and is backed by Gov. Paterson, is languishing in the Senate. Marilyn’s biological mother, Martha, was artificially inseminated by an anonymous sperm donor.

Martha’s partner went through the same process nine years earlier and gave birth to a son, Hunter Walker, now 24. “I’ve turned out very well and my brother has turned out very well and my parents are 99% of the reason for it,” Marilyn said.

The advocacy group Child Welfare Information Gateway says 8 million to 10 million children are being raised in same sex families. The laws vary from state to state, and in some cases city to city, about what custodial rights these families have.

“The standing of a marriage helps bridge the gap in our legal, social and moral systems,” said Ron Zacchi, executive director of Marriage Equality New York. “Without it, the couple is often viewed as legal strangers.”

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For immediate release

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Garden State Equality statement

From chair Steven Goldstein:

“Garden State Equality devoted considerable time and resources to Barack Obama’s campaign for President last year in New Jersey.   As an organization, we endorsed then-Senator Obama before the end of the 2008 Democratic primaries, when many of us who had been supporting various Democratic Presidential candidates came together in the interests of unity to help defeat George W. Bush.

We have supported President Obama with passion.   But when a leader or political party takes the LGBT community for granted, our highest loyalty must be to the community itself.   We will criticize where criticism is due.

President Obama now deserves our criticism.   His first five months in office have been a tyranny of timidity when it comes to advancing civil rights of the LGBT community.

Today, his much anticipated action extending benefits to domestic partners of federal employees specifically excludes health benefits.  To be clear, federal law would not prevent him from granting health benefits.  The President’s action today is not even an executive order, which he has the option to issue, but rather a lesser memorandum whose legal effect is more temporary.

Earlier this month, the Obama Administration filed a brief defending the anti-LGBT Defense of Marriage Act in court.  That is in direct conflict with the President’s repeated promises as a candidate and as President to oppose DOMA.

Adding insult to injury, in the Obama Administration’s brief advocating the continuation of DOMA, the Administration’s lawyers have repeated all of the Bush Administration’s most heinous prejudices against the LGBT community.

Let’s be clear:   It is not true that President Obama’s Department of Justice is legally compelled to defend lawsuits against the federal government.  And never in a way that constitutes a grotesque slander against the LGBT community.

The President’s sad early record doesn’t stop there.  The Obama Administration has offered excuse after excuse in refusing to take action on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  The President has the power to issue an executive order to immediately halt discharges based on the corrupt military policy – a policy which three-fourths of all Americans oppose.

Immigration reform that would unite binational same-sex couples in the interests of fairness and compassion doesn’t even seem to be on the president’s radar screen.  And why hasn’t the President, who knows how to use the power of the bully pulpit, been more forceful in advocating for the passage of a transgender-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act?

Garden State Equality rejects the arguments of those who say, give the President more time.  Or that this President has done more for the LGBT community already than his predecessors.

First, a popular new President’s popularity will never be higher than now.  President Obama will never have more political capital than now.

Secondly, we’re tired of comparisons to previous presidents.  2009 is not 1992.  Times have changed radically.   As poll after poll and state law after law indicate, the nation is moving ahead on LGBT civil rights far faster than is President Obama.

In the fight for civil rights, good things don’t come to those who wait.  Good things come to those who demand equality today.

Civil rights progress doesn’t result from those who say, cut our leaders some slack.  Civil rights progress results from those who say, half-baked caution won’t cut the mustard.

In the bold spirit in which Garden State Equality has worked to get 210 LGBT civil rights laws enacted in New Jersey in the past five years, and has helped to bring New Jersey to the cusp of marriage equality, we reject pastel progress.

We demand more vibrant advocacy, right here and now, from the President who had the audacity to call himself our fiercest advocate.”

EXCLUSIVE: California lesbian couple allege discrimination at Fresno hospital

Kelvin Lynch
Gay & Lesbian Issues Examiner
Examiner.com

(H/T @joemygod)

Kristin Orbin (r) and Teresa Rowe (l) Photo credit: examiner.com

“As I was laying there all alone, I wondered how many people from the LGBTQ community die by themselves because they are denied a basic right. The thought frightens me.”

That’s what Kristin Orbin, 29, said about her ordeal at Fresno Community Hospital and Medical Center on Saturday, May 30th.

Orbin and her partner of 3½ years, Teresa Rowe, 30, who live in Northern California,  were in Fresno for Meet in the Middle 4 Equality, an event protesting the California Supreme Court’s ruling upholding Proposition 8.

After marching 14 miles in Central Valley heat, Orbin (who is epileptic) collapsed and suffered three grand mal seizures.  A doctor at a first aid center had difficulty finding her pulse, so he called 911.

Orbin said the discrimination started as soon as the paramedics arrived.

“By that time, I was going in and out of consciousness.  The paramedics wanted nothing to do with Teresa and she had to practically fight them to be allowed to ride in the ambulance.  I remember one of them was very nice and agreed to let her ride with me in the back.  Once we got to the hospital, they wheeled me into a hallway and left me, refusing to allow Teresa to be with me.”

Orbin said the paramedic told the nurse on duty that she had collapsed after marching 14 miles for civil rights, and the nurse gave her a dirty look and said “ooooh.” She continued, “I asked if Teresa could come back with me, but the nurse told me I was in a no visitor zone. When I asked her why everyone else had visitors, she said ‘those people are different’.”

Orbin said she went to sleep at that point, but she was awakened by a nurse giving her the benzodiazapine Ativan, a drug that causes her to have severe migraine headaches.  It was then that she discovered just how bad the situation had become…

This is particularly important for transgender people because Whole Body Imaging scanners produce a three-dimensional image of the passenger’s nude body, including breasts, genitals, buttocks, prosthetics, binding materials, and any objects on the person’s body, in an attempt to identify contraband. These scanners may out transgender people to TSA staff and potentially subject transgender people to further screening at the airports.