Justin's Political Corner

GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) — The Boy Scouts of America’s national leadership will vote Thursday on whether to allow openly gay Scouts in its ranks, a critical and emotionally charged moment for one of the nation’s oldest youth organizations and its millions of members.

About 1,400 voting members of BSA’s national council are to cast ballots Thursday on a resolution to end a policy that allows youth Scouts to be excluded based only on sexual orientation. The ban on gay adult leaders would remain in place.

The vote is taking place at a resort in Grapevine, Texas, not far from BSA’s headquarters, during the national council’s three-day annual meeting. The results are expected to be announced shortly after 5 p.m. CDT Thursday.

Gay-rights supporters and opponents have waged impressive campaigns to win support for their arguments in the months leading up to the vote.

Supporters of allowing gay scouts used a political consulting firm and targeted about 120 local Scouting councils where they thought the most votes could be won. Opponents cited Texas code to obtain the names and addresses of voting members from BSA officials so they could send out mailings, and held rallies across the country last week.

Scouting was established in 1910 and claims 2.6 million youth members, in addition to thousands of leaders and volunteers. Its board of directors includes executives and community leaders, and President Barack Obama is its honorary president.

One estimate suggested a policy change could cause as many as 100,000 to 350,000 Scouts to leave. And it could also affect donors – just more than half of local councils reported to BSA that their donors supported the current ban.

Of the more than 100,000 Scouting units in the U.S., 70 percent are chartered by religious institutions. While these sponsors include liberal churches opposed to any ban on gays, some of the largest sponsors are relatively conservative denominations that have previously supported the broad ban – notably the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Southern Baptist churches.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced in April that it supports the new proposal. Leaders of some smaller, conservative denominations have opposed it.

H/T: Huffington Post

During a sermon last October, Virginia GOP Lt. Governor nominee E.W. Jackson added to his long list of virulently anti-gay remarks by warning that marriage equality for gays and lesbians will result in the legalization of man-animal unions. Jackson warned the crowd that if they don’t stop “Adam and Steve” it is going to “soon be Adam and a bull,” arguing that their family, school and community may be “overwhelmed by the torrent of wickedness” if they don’t stop same-sex marriage.

H/T: RWW

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced a comprehensive immigration reform bill that will provide a path to citizenship for the nation’s 11.1 million undocumented immigrants, passing the measure in a vote of 13 to 5. Three Republicans — Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — joined the Democrats on the panel to support the legislation after considering 200 amendments over five days.

The vote came following an emotional debate over a pro-LGBT provision that would have recognized, for purposes of immigration, married same-sex couples. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) withdrew the amendement after Republican senators, including members of the so-called Gang of 8, signaled that they would abandon the underlining bill if it was included. “If you redefine marriage for immigration purposes [by the amendment], the bill would fall apart because the coalition would fall apart,” Graham said. “It would be a bridge too far.”

The full Senate is expected to debate the bill on the floor next month. Earlier on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pledged to “vote for the motion to proceed so we can get on the bill and see if it we’re able to pass a bill that actually moves the ball in the right direction.”

h/t: Igor Volsky at Think Progress Immigration

President Obama would support Illinois’s same-sex marriage bill if he were still serving in the legislature there, the White House said Tuesday.

“Were the president still in the Illinois State Legislature, he would support this measure that would treat all Illinois couples equally,” spokesman Shin Inouye said in response to a question from POLITICO. Obama’s support for the bill comes after former President Bill Clinton endorsed it earlier Tuesday.

“While the president does not weigh in on every measure being considered by state legislatures, he believes in treating everyone fairly and equally, with dignity and respect,” Inouye said. “As he has said, his personal view is that it’s wrong to prevent couples who are in loving, committed relationships, and want to marry, from doing so.

H/T: Politico.com

The chief sponsor of Illinois’ equal marriage bill says he is “absolutely” ready to call for a House vote on the bill within in the next ten days.

Rep. Greg Harris told Windy City Times May 21 that the “Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act,” which would bring equal marriage to the state, will pass by the end of session.

“When I put it up on the board, it’s going to go up to win,” Harris said, adding that he would “absolutely” call for a vote on the measure before spring session ends May 31.

“This issue is at the front and center of virtually every conversation going on in Springfield,” Harris said.

Harris declined to offer a specific date for the vote or a count on the roll call. The bill needs 60 votes to pass the House. It has already cleared the Senate.

Steve Brown, a spokesperson for House Speaker Mike Madigan, said that the timeline on the bill is up to Harris.

H/T: Windy City Times

As a final vote in the Illinois House of Representatives approaches, President Bill Clinton called on lawmakers in Springfield to extend the freedom to marry to gay and lesbian couples in Illinois. The 42nd president expressed his support in a statement issued Tuesday, noting that, “Illinois has stood for the proposition that all citizens should be treated equally under the law.”

“Our nation’s permanent mission is to form a ‘more perfect union’ — deepening the meaning of freedom, broadening the reach of opportunity, strengthening the bonds of community,” said President Clinton. “That mission has inspired and empowered us to extend rights to people previously denied them. Every time we have done that, it has strengthened our nation. Now we should do it again, in Illinois, with marriage equality.”

A growing majority of Americans believe gays and lesbians should have the freedom to marry. Poll after poll shows support for marriage equality increasing across the country and across Illinois.

“Since the days of Abraham Lincoln, Illinois has stood for the proposition that all citizens should be treated equally under the law,” President Clinton said in Tuesday’s statement. “Lincoln himself came to Springfield in search of opportunity, and he dedicated his life to securing equal opportunity for all citizens. I believe that for Illinois and for our nation as a whole, in the 21st century that must include marriage equality.”

h/t: Windy City Media Group

With the end of the Illinois’ spring legislation session just days away, LGBT leaders say that equal marriage legislation has the support needed to pass by month’s end.

Sponsors have until May 31 to pass the “Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act,” which would allow all couples, regardless of their gender, to marry. Failing that deadline, the bill’s passage would be delayed for months.

LGBT groups pushing for the bill say they are ready to see it come up for a vote.

“I have absolutely no doubt we’re going to be done with this by May 31,” said Jim Bennett, Midwest regional director for Lambda Legal. “I believe that this bill is going to pass.”

Bennett declined to give a specific vote count, but said that he expected the bill could be called and passed any day.

Rick Garcia, policy advisor for The Civil Rights Agenda, said he thinks the bill has the 60 votes needed for passage in the House.

“I believe we’re there,” said Garcia. “The cake is baked. We’re waiting for the icing.”

The bill passed the Senate on Valentine’s Day. House sponsors have since struggled to pull together enough votes to pass it in the House.

Illinois Unites for Marriage, a coalition of groups working for the bill, has scheduled a community meeting to update supporters on the bill’s progress and share plans surrounding the vote Wednesday evening.

The bill has the backing of major political players in Illinois, including Gov. Pat Quinn, who told Windy City Times that he has met personally with more than a dozen representatives in an attempt to get the bill passed. Quinn has said he will sign the measure into law.

Chief Sponsor Greg Harris has vowed not to call for a vote until the votes are there to pass it.

Steve Brown, a spokesperson for Speaker Mike Madigan, confirmed that Madigan has also met with wavering lawmakers in recent days in an effort to secure the final votes.

“There were conversations with people last week, hoping to persuade some people,” Brown said.

But when the vote comes is in the sponsors’ hands, Brown said.

“That would all be up to Greg Harris,” he said. Brown said he could not give a specific vote count.

Harris could not be reached to comment before press time.

If the bill does not pass by month’s end, sponsors will need to wait until at least until fall to push the legislation. That option, however, is not seen favorably. Representatives hold office for just two years, and campaigns are expected to heat up as the year goes on, making controversial legislation like equal marriage harder to pass with time.

Complicating that option, Garcia pointed out, will be anti-gay efforts to stop the bill. Delays in its passage will give anti-gay organizations and churches time to mobilize opposition. Illinois Family Institute, a staunchly anti-gay group, has already held several rallies throughout the Chicago area against the bill.

The Illinois Unites for Marriage community meeting will be held Wednesday, May 22nd at 5:30 p.m. at the Urban League, first floor conference room, 4510 S. Michigan Ave. That meeting will be cancelled if a vote is expected that day. See windycitytimes.com for up-to-the-minute information.

h/t: Windy City Times

Tracie Felker and Joe Marion share a deep passion for Scouting. Each has a son who attained the top rank of Eagle, and each has spent numerous years and thousands of hours volunteering as Scout leaders, promoting Scout values.

And that’s where they diverge. When the Boy Scouts of America votes next week on whether to admit gay youth as members, Felker and Marion hope for opposite outcomes.

Marion says his issues have to do with logistics. He said admission of gay Scouts would put Troop 413, the pack he started five years ago, at risk of losing its charter. The troop would then have to find a new place to meet if First Baptist Church of Henderson, Tenn., pulls its sponsorship.

Then there are the other considerations, he says, like the ones related to the monthly camping trips his troop organizes.

“The problem is, do I let my kids who are straight share bathrooms and shower houses with kids who are not? How do I divide these kids up for camps? I mean, do I put the gay kids together and then the straight kids together?” he said.

Marion worries about the potential interaction during those sleepaways.

“What happens when a kid comes back from a trip where he was approached, or something did go on – what is the parent going to do? Who are they going to be mad at? Who are they going to lash out at? Me, because I’m the volunteer that took responsibility for their kid,” he said. “You understand why I’m concerned?”

Felker finds those arguments alarmist. A former merit badge coordinator, troop committee chair and two-time den leader, Felker calls the gay ban a form of discrimination that negates everything the Scouts stand for.

The proposal being considered by the national council of the Boy Scouts of America would allow openly gay boys into the program but continue to ban gay adults as leaders. The council’s 1,400-members will vote on the measure May 23 while in Texas for the organization’s national meeting.

Zach Wahls thinks the proposal is a good start but doesn’t go far enough because, among other things, it would exclude parents like his. The 21-year-old Iowa native was raised on Scouting from the time he was 6 by a lesbian couple.

“My mom, Jackie, was a den mother and my mom, Kerry, was an interim Cub Master,” said Wahls, founder of Scouts for Equality, a group with more than 6,500 Eagle Scouts like himself and other Scout alumni advocating for the admission of gay youth and adults.

h/t: Today.NBCNews.com

With just days left before the Illinois General Assembly ends its regular session, activists are scrambling to get a gay marriage bill to the finish line.

Supporters have racked up an impressive number of high-profile victories in recent months, including adding three states to the marriage equality column through the ballot box in November – Washington, Maine and Maryland – and an equal number through legislative votes held this month, the latest state being Minnesota. Wedding bells will also soon ring for gay couples in Rhode Island and Delaware.

(Another victory came earlier this year in Colorado, where lawmakers approved a civil unions law, possibly the best outcome for marriage equality supporters until a constitutional amendment is repealed.)

With Democrats in control of both chambers of the General Assembly and Democratic Governor Pat Quinn in support, the move from civil unions to full marriage wasn’t expected to come down to the wire in Illinois. After all, Rep. Greg Harris, the sponsor of the civil unions bill in the House, committed his support for a marriage bill even before the civil unions law took effect in 2011.

The marriage bill already has had one false start. Last year during a brief lame-duck session the bill was added to the agenda in the Senate but never came up for a vote. Its champion in the chamber, Democratic Senator Heather Steans, said that time was the main factor behind the decision to postpone a vote.

Six weeks later, on Valentine’s Day, the Senate approved the measure. A House panel agreed a month later, leaving only one hurdle for the marriage bill to clear.

H/T: OnTopMag.com

Springfield, IL — The Illinois House has just over two weeks to vote on SB10, or the Religious Freedom and Marriage Act, or the legislation is in danger of dying. If a vote does not take place by May 31, the end of the current session, supporters of the bill will essentially have to start from scratch.

Members of the activist coalition lobbying on behalf of SB10 said they are confident their work has proceeded as far as it can go, but the bill’s supporters in the House say they’re still trying to shore up more support from legislators.

“We’re in a place where we feel we’ve done as much as we can do, said James Bennett, Midwest Regional Director for Lambda Legal, who has been lobbying for the legislation. ”We’ve made phone calls, people have visited—we’re comfortable that we’ve done our part.”

Bernard Cherkasov, CEO of Equality Illinois, said he “did not want to imagine” what would happen should the bill be allowed to languish. The Coalition has “done what it’s supposed to do with this, so we would not want to be back to ground zero.”

But Cherkasov said he was confident that Illinois would share in some of the momentum from marriage equality victories the LGBT community has enjoyed in Rhode Island, Delaware and Minnesota. ”The truth is, those victories came about from momentum contributed from what we are building in Illinois, and our victory will come from momentum from those states—there is national momentum on this issue.”

A vote is unlikely this week—Friday is a “getaway” day for legislators, and major legislation is rarely decided on those days. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) would not disclose the current tally of votes. Unofficial counts have fluctuated since March, but a recent tally had the measure just within the 60 needed number of votes. 

“When it goes up on the board, it will go up with the necessary number of votes,” Harris told ChicagoPride.com Thursday. 

H/T: GoPride.com

Minnesota-based Religious Right activist/rock star Bradlee Dean went ballistic on his radio show yesterday in response to his state’s new marriage equality law. Dean warned that Gov. Mark Dayton, who signed the same-sex marriage bill into law, is at “war with God” and is “about to find out what it’s like as to what the fallout is when you throw rocks towards God, he’s going to learn how gravity works.” He added that Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who backed his state’s marriage equality law, and other pro-gay rights “criminals” will face divine justice as well.

Dean even seems to believe that every gay person in the country showed up for yesterday’s celebration of the marriage equality law in order to “push their propaganda and their agendas on the American people,” just as Saul Alinsky commanded.

“They come from all over the country to do this so what you’ve seen was probably the whole lump of the population of the homosexual community in the United States of America,” Dean said.

After lamenting about the “pansies” in the Minnesota legislature, Dean and his co-hosts began discussing the “Safe and Supportive Minnesota Schools Act,” an LGBT-inclusive anti-bullying bill, which he said is proof that “radical homosexuals” are part of a “UN global agenda” to “destroy the family.”

Dean then channeled his inner-Antoine Dodson and claimed that gays are coming after your wife and kids: “Go home, look at your wife and look at your kids, because now that’s what they’re coming for.”

He even lashed out at “my good friend Alex Jones,” who is apparently not anti-gay enough for Dean, despite his belief that chemicals in juices are turning kids gay.

h/t: Right Wing Watch

AARP strives to serve the interests of all people over the age of 50, and that includes members of the LGBT community. The organization has a webpage dedicated to AARP Pride, with resources related to issues like marriage equality’s legal benefits, nondiscrimination protections in nursing homes, and unique health concerns like HIV. Because of AARP’s inclusiveness, the American Family Association is specifically targeting the retirement group for contributing money to the “homosexual agenda.” AFA Executive Vice President Buddy Smith offered this warning:

SMITH: When you reach the age of a person like myself and you begin to get information from the AARP saying that they will represent you and your values and standards, you’d better be careful. This group is a very, very powerful Washington lobby, and you just may be very surprised and disappointed to see those things that they are promoting and those things they are opposing.

Be very careful that you know what your fees are going for because the AARP is not on your side. If you are a Christian and believe in Biblical values, you can pretty much count on the fact that everything that you are in favor of, the AARP is opposing.

LGBT older adults face many unique challenges, especially in regards to their very economic well-being. Because of discrimination and alienation throughout their lifetime, as well as their inability to claim partner benefits like Social Security, LGBT older adults are much more likely to be living in isolation and poverty.

H/T: Zack Ford at Think Progress LGBT

In many of the states that have waged marriage equality fights recently, opponents have often coalesced around a coalition consisting of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the state’s Catholic conference, and the state’s “family policy council” affiliate of the Family Research Council. In Illinois, however, these typical players have not united in the same way, seemingly in part because the state social conservative group is the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), a hate group in its own right associated with the American Family Association.

IFI’s rhetoric is quite a bit more brazen than what anti-gay groups have used in other states, which may have scared away its would-be allies. 

Today marks three months since the Illinois Senate passed the marriage equality bill, and with only three weeks left for the House to pass it, here’s a look at some of IFI’s rhetoric that is dominating the opposition:

• Today, IFI posted numerous photos from its rally this weekend, including a sign that reads, “The crime against nature will never be equal.”
• Speakers at the rally included ex-gay advocate Linda Jernigan and another hate group leader, Peter LaBarbera, who told the crowd that homosexuality is “unnatural and wrong,” citing HIV rates among men who have sex with men as evidence of “the dangers of homosexuality.”
• In February, IFI’s Laurie Higgins wrote that gay people shouldn’t even be allowed to teach because they’ll put pictures of their partners on their desk that students will see.
• In fact, IFI believes that parents should pull their children from any classroom that attempts to create a safe environment for LGBT students.
• IFI has claimed gays and lesbians already have equality because they can marry the opposite sex like everyone else; same-sex marriage is thus a demand “to be treated specially.”

This extreme rhetoric extends beyond the talking points conservatives have traditionally used in these fights, which tend to focus on supposed protections for children, gender norms, and the institution of marriage. By openly condemning homosexuality as unnatural and curable through therapy — as well as enabling the bullying of LGBT youth — IFI sets itself apart.

H/T: Zack Ford at Think Progress LGBT