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O'Connor marks 1 year at EQCA
Lots of sun in Miami
ARTS
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Kinsey Sicks
The
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Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971
Vol. 43 • No. 52 • December 26-January 1, 2014
Suit filed over trans student law in CA
Atkins could be next speaker
A
S
by Matthew S. Bajko
by Seth Hemmelgarn
nti-gay activists are suing state officials over a new state law designed to protect transgender students. The Privacy for All Students coalition has been working to repeal Assembly Bill 1266 for months. The law is set to go into effect January 1. Officials are currently performing random sample verification of the signaJane Philomen Cleland tures, and that process will be completed by Frank Schubert January 8. The anti-gay activists must ultimately reach 504,760 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. If they reach 110 percent of that by January 8, or 555,237 signatures, the referendum qualifies, and the new law will be suspended until November. Otherwise, if the coalition just reaches 95 percent of the lower number, a full count of the signatures will be ordered, and the law will not be suspended until the referendum qualifies. If the random samples determine the coalition only hits 95 percent, or 479,522 signatures, then the referendum won’t qualify. The coalition submitted more than 600,000 petition signatures to elections officials last month. AB 1266 aims to make sure that transgender youth can fully participate in all school activities, sports teams, programs, and facilities that match their gender identity. Gay Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) authored the bill, which Governor Jerry Brown signed into law in August. Several other LGBT-related laws, such as those meant to help homeless youth and people living with AIDS, are also set to go into effect next week, and legislators and activists are working to craft more gay bills for 2014. However, none of the proposals has drawn as much attention as the law anti-gay activists call “the co-ed bathroom law,” working to scare voters with notions that horny grade school boys will be walking into girls’ bathrooms and assaulting students. In a Thursday, December 19 news release, the day Privacy for All Students filed its lawsuit, the coalition claimed “the secretary of state is unfairly refusing to count any of the signatures presented to Tulare or Mono counties in support of a referendum to overturn” AB 1266. (Those counties’ registrars of voters are also defendants in the suit.) See page 14 >>
Jane Philomen Cleland
First Castro plaque unveiled
A
t the unveiling of the first plaque for the Rainbow Honor Walk December 20 at the Human Rights Campaign store, Spanish-based artist Carlos Casuso, left, who was joined by Supervisor Scott Wiener, said he feels “very lucky” that his was the winning design. Having fallen in love with San Francisco on his first visit in 1990, Casuso said he is “honored to give something back to the city.” On
hand to see the bronze marker for Sylvester, a local disco star who died of AIDS complications, was dancer December Wright who said that his friend would have thought it “fabulous. She would have done a jig for this one and pretend she wouldn’t want it.” The first 20 plaques are to be installed along Castro Street by June. For more information about the project, visit www.rainbowhonorwalk.org.
peculation in Sacramento is intensifying around the prospect of seeing the first lesbian lawmaker be elected to the powerful Assembly speaker position in the new year. In March 2010 gay Assemblyman John A. Perez (D-Los Angeles) became the first out person to lead the Legislature’s lower body. His election that January marked the first Rick Gerharter time since 1994 that an LGBT lawmaker had Assemblywoman been elected to lead any Toni Atkins state or federal legislative body in the country. Perez will be termed out of his Assembly seat See page 5 >>
Marriage takes center stage in 2013
by Lisa Keen
E
ven before 2013 began, everyone knew what the big news story would be. The U.S. Supreme Court had, in December 2012, agreed to hear two high-profile marriage cases: One testing the right of the federal government to refuse equal benefits to samesex married couples, and the other testing the right of a state to ban same-sex couples from marrying. What no one knew for sure was how the court would rule. And speculation last December was all over the map. Even longtime court observers who routinely cautioned against predicting how the court might rule couldn’t resist speculating how the court might rule. There was unprecedented media attention and public interest in the oral arguments, held on successive days in March. And then, on June 26, the court ruled, striking down a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act and re-establishing marriage equality in California. The results were not everything the LGBT community wished for but they were far more than many in the community expected to see in their lifetime. Those two rulings alone made 2013 perhaps the “Best Year Ever for the LGBT Movement” toward equal rights in this country. Their impact was deep and wide, politically, symbolically, and literally. But there were other breathtaking developments – including the unexpected
– that secured 2013 as the most successful year in the movement’s seven decades of organized struggle. Here are our picks:
No. 10: The Senate gets its first openly gay member
Representative Tammy Baldwin (D), a seven-term congresswoman Rick Gerharter from Madison, Sandee Henry and Jennifer Carlin celebrated the Supreme Court’s Wisconsin, who positive decisions about DOMA and Proposition 8 on June 26 in San embodied the Francisco City Hall. polite, witty, but determined temleagues praised her diplomacy in the successful perament of a Midwesterner, added another effort to get the Employment Non-Discrimina“first” to her already long list of accomplishtion Act approved by the Senate and she became ments. Before January, she was already the first the first rookie senator to win the Senate’s Goldopen lesbian elected to the Wisconsin Assembly, en Gavel Award for having presided over the the first openly gay person elected to Congress, chamber’s activities for more than 100 hours. the first out lesbian in the House, and the first woman elected to Congress from Wisconsin. After being sworn in to the 113th session, she became Wisconsin’s first woman senator and the Senate’s first openly gay member. Her col-
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No. 9: Congress gets its largest-ever LGBT Caucus
Not only was Baldwin in the Senate, as of the See page 13 >>
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