SGN Feb 15, 2019 - Part 1

Seattle Gay News

Meet Bill Barr, the new attorney general

by Mike Andrew SGN Staff Writer

Trump nominee Bill Barr was confirmed as US attorney general by the Senate on February 14.

While his legal views are arguably less

odious than those of his predecessor, Jeff Sessions, Barr is just as hostile to the LGBT community.

As George W Bush’s deputy attorney general, Barr – together with others at see BARR page 9

Greece: Same-sex Valentine’s ads provoke controversy

by Mike Andrew SGN Staff Writer

Valentine’s Day ads for the popular Greek chocolate brand Lacta sparked controversy by depicting same-sex and biracial couples posing in affectionate embrace with Lacta chocolate bars.

The ad campaign, photographed by Chloe Kritharas Devienne, featured 28 couples, some of them same-sex ones. Depictions of same-sex couples were used only in the company’s online advertising. Billboards and print ads featured only opposite-sex couples.

see GREECE page 9

GLAAD condemns Tennessee’s new anti-LGBTQ adoption bills that

would harm youth and unfairly exclude LGBTQ families from adopting

NEW YORK (February 8, 2019) –

GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, today condemned the Tennessee General Assembly for introducing measures that would allow adoption agencies to deny LGBTQ families the ability to adopt children by citing so-called

“religious exemptions.” According to the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), about 160,000 LGBTQ people live in Tennessee, with approximately 18.1% of LGBTQ couples raising children.

see TENNESSEE page 4

Why we have state anti-discrimination laws: Trans woman sues New Jersey restaurant

by Mike Andrew SGN Staff Writer

A Trans woman has filed a lawsuit against a New Jersey restaurant, charging that she was fired because of her gender identity.

“Boggio called plaintiff and left a message stating, ‘Other servers did not feel

see NEW JERSEY page 9

Crystal Aiello worked at Sicilian Sun restaurant for only one day before her employment was terminated. After her first shift in September 2018, she was contacted by the restaurant owner, Jim Boggio, who informed her that her employment had ended.

Cascade Flag Football Association and Seattle U launch new partnership

Cascade Flag Football Association (CFA) and Maylon Hanold, Director of the Sports Business Leadership (MSBL) program at Seattle University are excited to announce their partnership starting in 2019.

CFA was founded in 2016 as Seattle’s LGBTQIA+ flag football league, and holds as core tenants that building an inclusive and welcoming sports community is just as important as the game of football itself.

As a small, growing non-profit recreational sport organization, CFA offers hands-on, real world and highly personalized internship opportunities for students.

“This partnership is a natural fit for the MSBL program as SU’s and CFA’s missions align well. We are excited about the real-world experiences students interested in inclusive sport and the non-profit sport sector can gain with CFA. We see this as a great opportunity for our students in not only learning about non-profit sport, but also being able to do real work that has a big impact in Seattle,” said Maylon Hanold, Director, Master in Sport Business Leadership, Seattle University.

CFA’s sixth season will be held this spring, with games to be played at the Bobby Morris Playfield at Cal Anderson Park on Saturday evenings. CFA held its largest season this past fall with 6 teams and 80 different players.

Maylon Hanold is an educator, researcher, author, and 1992 Olympian. Her areas of specialty include sport sociology, sport leadership, women and sport leadership, and organizational effectiveness. She is an advocate for inclusive sport – sport spaces in which all people who want to play are welcome. She also advocates for inclusive sport organizations and workplaces, arguing that leaders in sport should reflect those who play. While not a football player herself, Maylon has remained active with trail running, ultrarunning, snowboarding, and wilderness paddling.

“This relationship offers a lot of opportunity for both organizations – for Maylon and her student’s at SU, working with CFA

can provide them with ongoing real world applications within the sporting industry; for CFA, we have the opportunity to have one of the leaders of diversity and inclusion and her network as a sounding board and resource as we strive to provide #footballforeveryone,” said Brian Hawker, Commissioner, Cascade Flag Football Association. “We look forward to sharing wins that come from this partnership.”

For additional information about Cascade Flag Football Association, visit www.cascadeflagfootball.org; www. facebook.com/cascadeflagfootball; (206) 452-3505 (vm) or info@cascadeflagfootball.org.

The Seattle Public Library Foundation announces college scholarships for Seattle students

Submissions open through March 15

Seattle high school seniors and college undergraduates are invited to enter the 7th annual essay scholarship competition created by The Seattle Public Library Foundation to honor civic leader Stimson Bullitt.

The Library Foundation created the Stimson Bullitt Civic Courage Scholarship Competition to commemorate Bullitt’s dedication to the community and his appreciation of individuals who were willing to go against public opinion and take a stand to better the world.

Essays exploring civic courage may be submitted online now through March 15, 2019. Three scholarships will be awarded: the author of the winning essay will receive $5,000, and the authors of the two secondplace essays will each receive $2,500.

The competition is open to high school seniors and college undergraduate students who live, work or attend school in Seattle. Participants must have a Library card issued by The Seattle Public Library.

Winners will be announced in June

2019, and winning essays will be added to the collection in the Hugh and Jane Ferguson Seattle Room at the Central Library.

“This civic courage essay contest is a most fitting tribute to Stim Bullitt’s legacy,” said Jonna Ward, chief executive officer of the Library Foundation. “Stim’s commitment and generosity helped build and sustain important Seattle institutions like the Seattle Parks Foundation, the Bullitt Foundation and the Library Foundation. We are happy to honor his contributions to the Seattle community.”

Bullitt, who died in 2009, was a lawyer, decorated soldier, outdoorsman, civil rights activist, developer, philanthropist, broadcaster, environmentalist and community leader in Seattle. He believed that courageous civic leadership could improve the

lives of people in our community now and in the future.

Bullitt saw the Library as an institution that embodied his commitment to equality of opportunity for all. Through his significant bequest to the Library Foundation, his commitment lives on in programs, resources and opportunities at the Library.

For more information and full contest rules, visit the scholarship competition website at www.civiccouragescholarship.com, call the Library Foundation at 206-386-4130, or visit https://www.spl.org/ and select Ask Us.

Courtesy of Seattle Public Library

Record number of bipartisan KY senators introduce Statewide Fairness SB166

New record 21 House co-sponsors join HB164

FRANKFORT, Ky. (February 12, 2019) – Kentucky Senate Minority Floor Leader Morgan McGarvey (D, 19-Louisville) has introduced the LGBTQ-inclusive Statewide Fairness Law, Senate Bill 166, with a record number of bipartisan co-sponsors, including Senate Majority Caucus Chair Julie Raque Adams (R-Louisville), Sen. Alice Forgy Kerr (R, 12-Lexington), and first-time co-sponsor Sen. Julian Carroll (D, 7-Frankfort), former governor of Kentucky.

A new record 21 co-sponsors have also joined Rep. Mary Lou Marzian’s (D, 34-Louisville) Statewide Fairness Law, House Bill 164, with the most recent addition of Rep. Dennis Keene (D, 67-Wilder).

Both Statewide Fairness Laws would update the Kentucky Civil Rights Act to add sexual orientation and gender identity among protected classes in employment, housing, and public accommodations discrimination. Kentucky is one of 28 states that have not updated statewide civil rights laws to include LGBTQ people, leaving nearly three-quarters of Kentuckians living in a place where LGBTQ discrimination is still legal.

Ten Kentucky cities have adopted local fairness ordinances, covering approximately 27% of the state’s population: Louisville (1999), Lexington (1999), Covington (2003), Vicco (2013), Frankfort (2013), Morehead (2013), Danville (2014), Midway (2015), Paducah (2018), and Maysville (2018). More than 250 Kentucky employers, from major corporations to small, locally owned businesses, have joined the

TENNESSEE

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Under HB 0836, an adoption agency could deny an LGBTQ family the ability to adopt a child, as well as prevent them from pursuing litigation against the agency for refusing to serve them. Also, under SB 0848, an adoption agency would be protected from any consequential action by state or local governments if it chooses to deny an LGBTQ family the ability to adopt a child.

“These measures represent state-sanctioned licenses to discriminate,” said Sarah

Images courtesy of The Fairness Campaign

Kentucky Competitive Workforce, which supports the Statewide Fairness Law.

LGBTQ supporters from across the commonwealth will rally in the Capitol Rotunda in Frankfort Tuesday, February 26 at 1:30 p.m. ET.

Statewide Fairness Senate Bill 166

Minority Floor Leader Morgan McGarvey (D, 19-Louisville)

Sen. Denise Harper Angel (D, 35-Louisville)

Majority Caucus Chair Julie Raque Adams (R, 36-Louisville)

Sen. Julian Carroll (D, 7-Frankfort)*

Sen. Perry Clark (D, 37-Louisville)

Kate Ellis, president and CEO at GLAAD.

“This effort in Tennessee is part of a coordinated campaign across the country to turn back the progress LGBTQ people have made, and the fair-minded people of Tennessee will see right through this charade, which harms families and children by hiding behind the false guise of protecting religion.”

The disturbing news from Tennessee comes as the American Bar Association [ABA] recently adopted a resolution urging lawmakers who live in states that do not have nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ couples to pass policies prevent-

Sen. Alice Forgy Kerr (R, 12-Lexington)

Sen. Gerald Neal (D, 33-Louisville)

Sen. Reginald Thomas (D, 13-Lexington)

Statewide Fairness House Bill 164

Rep. Mary Lou Marzian (D, 34-Louisville)

Rep. Patti Minter (D, 20-Bowling Green)*

Rep. Tina Bojanowski (D, 32-Louisville)*

Rep. Charles Booker (D, 43-Louisville)

Rep. George Brown, Jr. (D, 77-Lexington)

Rep. Tom Burch (D, 30-Louisville)

Rep. McKenzie Cantrell (D, 38-Louisville)

ing discrimination against LGBTQ parents and couples. The group also urged all bar associations and attorneys across the country to defend couples or families who are victims of anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

GLAAD praised the ABA’s efforts because anti-LGBTQ activists continue to roll back adoption rights for LGBTQ families in states across the nation, including in state like Kansas and Texas.

“Make no mistake. The anti-LGBTQ animus rearing its head in Tennessee is emanating from the White House, where the President’s attack dog Mike Pence is giving a permission slip for state and local

Rep. Kelly Flood (D, 75-Lexington)

Minority Caucus Chair Derrick Graham (D, 57-Frankfort)

Minority Whip Joni Jenkins (D, 44-Louisville)

Rep. Dennis Keene (D, 67-Wilder)

Rep. Nima Kulkarni (D, 40-Louisville)

Rep. Reginald Meeks (D, 42-Louisville)

Rep. Ruth Ann Palumbo (D, 76-Lexington)

Rep. Josie Raymond (D, 31-Louisville)*

Rep. Attica Scott (D, 41-Louisville)

Rep. Maria Sorolis (D, 48-Louisville)*

Rep. Cherlynn Stevenson (D, 88-Lexington)*

Rep. Susan Westrom (D, 79-Lexington)

Rep. Buddy Wheatley (D, 65-Covington)

Rep. Lisa Willner (D, 35-Louisville

*Indicates first representative from that district to co-sponsor a Statewide Fairness Law

Founded in 1991, the Fairness Campaign is Kentucky’s broad-based community effort dedicated to equal rights for lesbian gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Its primary goal is comprehensive civil rights legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and to dismantle systemic racism.

Courtesy of the Fairness Campaign

lawmakers to advance legislation that harms LGBTQ Americans,” said Ellis. Since taking office, the Trump administration has unleashed more than 93 attacks against LGBTQ Americans in policy and rhetoric, which includes granting South Carolina a waiver to allow faith-based organizations to deny LGBTQ couples the ability to adopt a child.

GLAAD’s Trump Accountability Project (TAP) has catalogued every anti-LGBTQ action by this administration, available at www.glaad. org/trump.

Courtesy of GLAAD

Congressman Adam Smith statement in support of the Green New Deal

“Climate change is one of the greatest public policy challenges facing our country today. I am proud to support the House Resolution introduced by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others, called the Green New Deal.

“This resolution makes clear not only the depth of the problem of climate change, but lays out the necessity of addressing income inequality as part of the solution

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the Department of Justice – successfully pushed for the withdrawal of a proposed Department of Health and Human Services rule that would have allowed people with HIV/AIDS into the United States.

He also advocated confining Haitian and HIV-positive refugees seeking asylum in the US in the same Guantanamo Bay detention center as suspected enemy combatants from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Barr’s scholarly writings are also problematic.

For example, in a 1995 article for The Catholic Lawyer, Barr stated that American government is “predicated precisely”

NEW JERSEY

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like you were a good fit,’ and that she did not need to return to the restaurant,” Aiello’s court filing says.

“Boggio fired the plaintiff solely because at least one member of the staff was uncomfortable working with a Transgender woman.”

The suit was filed on January 29 in the Superior Court of New Jersey, a state court. New Jersey, like Washington state, is one of 21 states that protect both sexual orienta-

to climate change. The devastating effects on our planet from our dependence on fossil fuels has never been more obvious, and never before in our nation’s history has so much wealth been concentrated in the hands of so few people. We must respond to the climate crisis with policies that transform our economy and infrastructure by moving towards clean and renewable sources of energy, while making changes

on Judeo-Christian culture, now being challenged “in an increasingly militant, secular age.”

Barr asserts that there are three ways secularists use “law as a legal weapon.”

The first method is through elimination of traditional moral norms through legislation and litigation. As an example, Barr cites the elimination of the barriers to divorce and the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade as examples of this method.

The second is the promotion of moral relativism through the passage of laws that dissolve moral consensus and enforce neutrality. Barr deplores the 1987 ruling in Gay Rights Coalition v. Georgetown University, which “compel[s] Georgetown University to treat homosexual activist groups like any other student group.”

tion and gender identity in employment.

Aiello is seeking lost wages, punitive damages, and legal fees in accordance with the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination.

Speaking to NBC News, Aiello’s attorney, Kevin Costello, said “We appreciate, as civil rights attorneys, the difficulties and challenges faced by Transgender people, in today’s America especially… We look forward to having process applied to Crystal’s case.”

Trans people in states that do not protect gender identity can still file lawsuits, but they typically do so in federal courts, relying on the argument that the Title VII ban

that create greater equality of opportunity and pay people the better wages they deserve for the work they do.

“What matters most now is that we enact strong, science-based legislation and policies that can put us on a path to meeting the goals in this resolution. The urgency of the climate crisis necessitates that we cannot wait. I look forward to continuing to work with the constituents I represent, my colleagues in Congress, and our stakeholders throughout our country as we craft policies to create a strong, green economy that gives everyone a fair chance to earn a decent living, have access to affordable housing, education and health care, and to support their families.”

The third method is the use of law directly against religion. As an example, Barr cites efforts to use the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution to exclude religiously based discourse from the public square.

Concluding, Barr states the need to “restructure education and take advantage of existing tax deductions for charitable institutions to promote Catholic education.”

Strangely enough for someone who explicitly identifies as a Roman Catholic lawyer, Barr has been a staunch supporter of the death penalty. As deputy attorney general, he pushed hard to pass a Bushbacked bill that would have expanded the types of federal crimes that could be punished by execution.

In a 1991 op-ed in the New York Times, Barr also argued that death row inmates’

on discrimination based on “sex” also covers gender identity.

This interpretation of the law was supported by the Obama-era Justice Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), but it has been rejected by the Trump administration. Today the administration argues that the word “sex” in Title VII is defined only by gender assigned at birth.

New Jersey has adopted many progressive pro-LGBTI policies in spite of the right-year reign of Republican Chris Christie (January 2010–January 2018).

As of February 1, New Jersey will

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

According to Reuters, the Valentine’s Day ads for the brand were the first to feature same-sex and interracial couples in Greece, a country where the ultra-conservative Greek Orthodox Church actively campaigns against LGBT rights, and samesex couples cannot marry or adopt children.

Kritharas Devienne saw working for Lacta – made by the world’s second-largest confectioner, Mondelez International – as a chance to change minds in an environment where depictions of same-sex love are still taboo.

“In Greece people are very, very homophobic,” she said. “The church has made it very clear it considers homosexuality a sin.”

“Personally, I love both men and women,” she explained. “I thought that nothing would make me happier than to have these pictures all over Athens so that all these homophobic people are forced to look at them... It’s been the number one subject in Greece.

“I know it has been all over the internet, but not everyone will have the internet,” she said with disappointment. “My goal was to see these couples all over Athens.”

While Lacta urged Facebook users to “embrace all tastes of love,” hundreds of anti-LGBT comments accumulated on its Facebook page.

“You must be ashamed of yourself,” one said. Another commenter wrote, “Little children will see this! What standards will you pass to them I would like to know.”

Kritharas Devienne was also targeted for abuse.

“People were tweeting pictures of my face, saying, ‘This is the photographer who did this,’” she told Reuters. Critics also posted links to her other photographic work documenting refugees in order to portray her as a leftist.

Homophobic attacks by neo-Nazi gangs are not uncommon in Greece, where samesex civil partnerships were only legalized in 2015 amid protests from right-wing parties and the church.

Recently, Greek Orthodox Bishop

Amvrosios was convicted of incitement to violence and abuse of power for urging Greeks to “spit on” Gay people.

In India, by contrast, a Valentine’s Day ad on Facebook for Big Basket chocolate, the country’s biggest online retailer, showed a young Lesbian couple kissing and holding hands.

ability to challenge their sentences should be limited to avoid cases dragging on for years.

“This lack of finality devastates the criminal justice system,” he wrote. “It diminishes the deterrent effect of state criminal laws, saps state prosecutorial resources, and continually reopens the wounds of victims and survivors.”

Barr is also an enemy of reproductive choice. In 1991, he stated that he believed the framers of the Constitution did not originally intend to create a right to abortion, that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided, and that abortion should be a “legitimate issue for state legislators.”

In his confirmation hearings, Barr said that Roe was “the law of the land” and that he did not have “fixed or settled views” on the subject.

include the option of having a third, nonbinary gender on birth certificates. The new law, called the Siperstein Act, was signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy in July last year. The measure is named after Babs Siperstein, a New Jersey native who was the first Trans person to be elected to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2012. Last month, Murphy also signed a bill into law that requires LGBTI-inclusive education in schools across the state. The law will come into effect in the 2020-21 school year.

“The reactions have been pretty overwhelming, and people were pleased that I was playing something different,” said Shatabdi Chakraborty, who played one of the lovers.

Same- sex relations were legalized by India’s Supreme Court in September 2018, after several years of litigation.

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