When I sat down to write this post– an argument for marriage, rather than civil unions– I thought about a lot of things and revisited a lot of arguments that have defined the two sides of this debate comprehensively. Civil unions and domestic partnerships create separate but equal institutions. Marriage is about more than an ideal– it’s about concrete federal rights. Marriage is about privacy, and privacy is a civil right.

We’ve all heard these ideas, recycled and revisited, and they’re all correct. I agree that civil unions are a separate and (un)equal institution, and that marriage guarantees federal rights that aren’t attached to civil unions and that there’s a penumbral right to privacy enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. I agree.

But I think there’s something more fundamental that we often overlook.

You can read the rest of the post over at 365…

And by “very short,” I mean there is one other such state: New York. Given the not-entirely-progressive-on these-issues tilt of the current District administration, this Department of Corrections shift seemed like a great step. According to a letter acquired by the Washington City Paper, Attorey General Peter Nickles described the regulation change like this:

“Pursuant to this policy, the District Will be one of only a few jurisdictions in the nation to permit transgender inmates to be housed according to their gender identity in appropriate cases, and to allow transgender inmates to initiate hormone therapy while in custody.

These provisions, along with other aspects of the policy, will help to ensure that the rights of transgender prisoners are respected and that their unique needs are accommodated, to the extent practicable, while they are incarcerated.”

Sounds great, right? Trans prisoners will be able to be housed according to their gender identity, and will even be given the opportunity to start hormone therapy will incarcerated, right?

Not entirely. While Nickles paints a pretty picture about the policy, it’s full of holes that render the new policy inconsistent at best and somewhat useless at worst.

Read the rest of my post at 365gay.com

Last September, the D.C. City Council passed a regulation that authorized the recognition of marriages, civil unions, and domestic partnerships from other states and countries. The new section of D.C. Code 32-702(i) reads:

“Relationships established in accordance with the laws of other jurisdictions that are substantially similar to domestic partnerships established by this chapter, as certified by the Mayor, shall be recognized as domestic partnerships in the District.”

The new regulation is not a dramatic expansion of the District’s domestic partnership regulations. In fact it doesn’t change the existing institution or attach new benefits or rights to it at all.

No, all the regulation does is allow the District government to recognize same-sex relationships formed in other jursidictions, from Massachussets to New Jersey to Spain. It allows couples who come to D.C. to visit or live to preserve the benefits they would have at home, benefits as basic as hospital visitation rights. Without this change, there are serious holes where protections don’t necessarily apply. Couples that come from states with marriage, for instance, would potentially need to divorce before getting a domestic partnership in the District, since you can’t be both married and partnered under city law.

So the regulation sounds pretty good, right?

Yes, it does sound good. There’s only one problem. D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, who signed the bill when it passed the City Council six months ago, has heretofore refused to carry out the regulation’s provisions.

The Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance (GLAA) issued an Action Alert that lays out the conflict well (emphasis added by me):

Dear Mayor Fenty:

I urge you to carry out the provision of the Omnibus Domestic Partnership Equality Amendment Act of 2008 (Law 17-231) allowing the District to extend recognition to the Civil Unions, Domestic Partnerships, and similar relationships under various names in states and countries which have passed laws similar to the District…

Because Washington is a destination city for people from across the country and the world, it is all the more vital that you certify these relationships so that domestic partners (whatever they are legally termed) who come to the District from elsewhere are able to enjoy the same legal protections as District residents who have registered as Domestic Partners.

Mr. Mayor, you gave the following written response during the 2006 mayoral campaign to a question from the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance http://www.glaa.org/archive/2006/mqfenty.shtml:

“We have in the District of Columbia one of the highest percentages of gay families to our total population that any other city in the nation. We have over 5% of couples households in the District that identify as gay or lesbian…. I am also supportive of recognizing the rights and responsibilities given to these relationships in other states when those couples move to the District of Columbia. This will make DC a more attractive place to move to and one of our goals is to increase our population and our tax base.”

It is hard to understand why several months have passed with no sign of action by your office to fulfill your duties under the law and your campaign promise. Please do not keep the affected families in legal limbo any longer. Please proceed quickly to certify these relationships.

GLAA’s Action Alert is revelatory about the frustrations of the D.C. LGBT community at large. Some feel as if Mayor Fenty has failed to live up to his campaign promises of being inclusive and proactive about equality, and many feel as if Peter Nickles, the Attorney General of D.C., is instrumental in slowing potential progress. At a meeting of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club on Monday night, GLAA’s Vice President for Political Affairs Rick Rosendall asked if the AG’s office was engaging in “active obstructionism.” Rosendall was willing to condemn the AG in even stronger terms:

“The AG’s office is where GLBT measures in D.C. go to die.”

Awesome.

Regardless of Mr. Nickle’s positions, it’s time for Mayor Fenty to live up to the pledge he made to GLAA during his 2006 election campaign and enact this important change in regulation.

If you’re so inclined, please please please check out GLAA’s Action Alert and get in touch with Mayor Fenty.

In Sunday’s New York Times, an article about Visa restrictions noted that,

“Religion and sexual preferences, as well, are sometimes cited as reasons for tourists to be denied entry to one country or another.”

Substituting “preference” for “orientation” is both insulting and sloppy, but it would be easy for someone who reads the article to argue that words are just words. The larger narrative of the piece was that the visa process is often overly restrictive, which suggests that writer Mitchell Higgins was not intending to make a political statement with her syntax. Maybe Higgins should just spend some quality time with the GLAAD Media Reference Guide.

But the larger implications of misusing words like “preference” was underscored over the weekend when a spokeswoman for the US Census disclosed that the 2010 census will not distinguish between gay individuals and couples and their straight counterparts. When asked whether the census would question Americans about their orientation, spokeswoman Cynthia Endo said that the census “is all about numbers. This is not about lifestyle or anything else.”

Lifestyle. Preference. Both words imply that being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender is a choice, and that implication opens the dangerous idea that orientation or gender identity can be changed or “cured.” Words have meanings, and in Endo’s case, her words are representative of harmful policies that have real impact. Not being correctly identified– and particularly not being counted– means the LGBT community can be disregarded as a tiny minority. If we’re going to fight for and win the equal treatment under the law we so rightly deserve, we’re going to have to be counted first.

Given that truth about me, I feel like I need to mark the beginning of this blog in some way. Since I plan to write about politics, a little hat tip to the man who first inspired me to get involved in politics: Congressman Rush D. Holt, D-NJ.

For all of you who scratched your head and asked, “who?” it’s called the Google. Use it. He’s a bad-ass, prgoressive, rocket scientist, Member of Congress.

He also gave me my first gig in politics, as an intern on his 2004 reelection campaign, and I followed that up with an internship in his DC office while I was in college. His politics had an ideological impact on me, and I’ve followed his career even after I moved on to other positions.

During the debate over the non-inclusive ENDA in 2008, Congressman Holt took to the House floor and chastised his Democratic colleagues for their willingness to ransom equality for political expediency:

Mr. Speaker, our distinguished colleague John Lewis often reminds us of the words of Dr. King, “The time is always right to do the right thing.” Dr. King warned us against the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. I am concerned that when we break apart legislation, some pieces fall on the floor to get swept into the dustbin of history or to be considered only years later. We should not do this to members of our society who need and deserve the same protections as all other Americans.

Like Congressman Holt, I have strong beliefs. I also have an aversion to compromise. I know that equality and fairness are right, and that discrimination and the perpetuation of inequality and inequity are wrong. Given those very fundamental truths, I have a tough time understanding the willingness of some progressives Democrats to auction their beliefs in order to reach compromise. I get the political appeal of bipartisanship, but I also believe that we have two distinct parties in this country and that each represents a distinct set of beliefs. While we may be able to meet in the middle on some things, there are moral absolutes that don’t lend themselves to compromise.

Anyway, that’s where I’m coming from ideologically. I imagine it will become clear as I write more in this space…

It has been widely reported that Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) introduced legislation today that would overturn Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the ban against gays and lesbians serving openly in the military. It’s estimated that Tauscher’s bill—the Military Readiness Enhancement Act—will be introduced with as many as 120 bipartisan cosponsors. The bill represents a policy change supported by 75% of Americans, a significant majority that has only increased as our country fights two wars with a rapidly depleting military.

But the news coverage of Tauscher’s move hasn’t necessarily reflected those encouraging statistics. Instead, rather than noting the marked change in national opinion over the last two decades or the outreach the new administration has done to the military on this issue, news outlets are largely portraying this fight as one that’s bad news for the Obama camp.

POLITICO, the first organization to report Tauscher’s move, began their story with a questionable lede:

It is precisely the sort of knife fight no president wants to get into, especially in his first 100 days. But it seems that President Barack Obama is about to get dragged down the same dark alley as Bill Clinton when he was forced to confront the highly charged issue of gays in the military early in his term.

The POLITICO story makes several assumptions that I think are false and misleading. And unfortunately, their missteps have been duplicated by the other news organizations that used the original story as a source.

First, POLITICO claims that no President wants to get into this fight. President Obama, however, has committed to reversing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and his Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has reiterated that commitment.

POLITICO goes on to note that the fight is particularly inconvenient in the first 100 days of the Obama administration. The implication of that charge is simple, and hurtful. By mentioning the first 100 days, POLITICO is talking about priorities, and making a value judgment about what should (and what should not) be a priority that merits President Obama’s attention during his first three months in office.

Presumably the POLITICO would argue that there are more pressing issues to address, the global economic crisis among them. In fact, President Obama’s administration has said just as much. But the problem with judging priorities is that it really boils down to judging what’s important. Is equality more or less important than the economy? Are LGBT rights more or less important than DC voting rights? As a District resident, I’d be hard pressed to make a choice, but it’s clear to me that priorities aren’t readily evident. They’re not the same for everyone, and they’re certainly not black and white. There are value judgments to be made, but they need to be made by the elected officials chosen to represent our citizenry, not by the POLITICO, elected by no one.

Finally, the POLITICO notes that this will be a highly charged fight. I think that’s probably accurate, but I also think it’s a self-fulfilling proclamation. There aren’t a ton of issues in this country that ¾ of voters agree on. This is one of them. Moreover, our incredibly popular President is on the same side of the issue as the 75% of voters that support a repeal.

In his inaugural address, President Obama took on naysayers and remarked that “what the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them.” He continued, “the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long, no longer apply,” and he could have been addressing this issue directly. Those who believe gays and lesbians in the military is the divisive, rallying cry it was in the early nineties missed the shift that Obama noted. This fight is about abstract ideals, yes, but it’s also about concrete issues of safety and national security and there is a right answer that has become apparent to a vast majority of Americans.

None of this is to say that this is necessarily the perfect moment for Representative Tauscher to have introduced this legislation. Consensus among many LGBT groups was that hate crimes legislation was going to be their first priority, followed by the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and then a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell as part of the Military Reauthroization later in Obama’s term. They have been preparing for those fights, and this timeline change might have caught them off guard.

But the ground has shifted, and we’ll win this fight. Eventually.

But it will be much more difficult if the media fails to do their job. It is the responsibility of news organizations to inform. In this case, POLITICO seemed to think it was their job to frame an issue, to sway their audience, to influence the debate.

As informed citizens and activists, we need to continue to assert the reality of situations, and to remember that not everything we read and hear comes from a place of complete objectivity.