Is the GLBT Community Splitting up over the Marriage issue?

Lately I've been meeting a lot of folks on Twitter, some of whom (a lot of whom!! LOL) are really good bloggers/writers. One of them is a lesbian duo called Hersband and Wife. (Yes, I said HERSBAND)They are really awesome; activists in the LGBT community and the fight for equal rights, while also being advice columnists, which is an arena where we are sadly trailing the hetero world in representation. This article is from their blog at www.hersbandandwife.com


Is the GLBT Community Splitting up over the Marriage issue?
May 28th, 2009 by hersbandandwife

DON’T DIVIDE UNIFY!

In case you missed all the discussions last night about the push to take the prop 8 fight to the national stage we decided to re-post them today for all to see.

The statements by the attorneys that are taking this to the supreme court are great and will help you understand their arguments.

Larry King hosts Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, George Takei and Husband Brad Altman to discuss the ramifications and legalities of the recent decision by the California’s Supreme court on Prop 8 as well as the push to take the fight to the United States Supreme Court.

We are very encouraged after listening to their arguments. We are only hopeful that the GLBT groups that have spoken against them will decide to work with them on a unified front.

A statement released by the group Freedom to Marry states the following ;

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
May 27, 2009, New York, NY

PRESS CONTACT:
Evan Wolfson
Executive Director, Freedom to Marry
Tel: 212-851-8418; Mobile: 646-263-5552
Email: evan@freedomtomarry.org

New York, May 27, 2009 — In response to the California Supreme Court decision allowing Prop 8 to stand, four LGBT legal organizations and five other leading national LGBT groups are reminding the LGBT community that ill-timed lawsuits could set the fight for marriage back. The groups released a new publication, “Why the ballot box and not the courts should be the next step on marriage in California.” This publication discourages people from bringing premature lawsuits based on the federal Constitution because, without more groundwork, the U.S. Supreme Court likely is not yet ready to rule that same-sex couples cannot be barred from marriage. The groups also revised “Make Change, Not Lawsuits,” which was released after the California Supreme Court decision ending the ban on marriage for same-sex couples in California. This publication encourages couples who have legally married to ask friends, neighbors and institutions to honor their marriages, but discourages people from bringing lawsuits.

The groups working together with this statement are:

ACLU
GLAD
LAMBDA LEGAL
NCLR
Equality Federation
Freedom to Marry
GLAAD
Human Rights Campaign
National Gay & Lesbian Task Force

These are the groups against the federal lawsuit for marriage equality.

Our question to these groups is what if these two lawyers win?

Do you all think you will loose your GLBT community support because you all came out against what apears to many of us as progress? Wouldn’t it be easier to work with the lawyers to help them in their fight rather than against them?

Sometimes the perfect case never comes and you have to just step out on a limb and try to go “all in” and pray that the legal argument is sound and will stand.

With what is being said and done with these groups right now is making it apear that exactly what the prop 8 supporters wanted has happened. We have gone in one 24 hour period from being compleetly unified on this issue to a smattering of different opinions. These groups were all formed to unify our community but in fact what they are doing now is dividing us.

Yes on this issue we are standing on the opposite side of these groups, We have always stood with them on issues but in true H&W style we are not followers but we are learned writers who delve deep into an issue and form our own opinion. We may anger some by coming out against such high regarded GLBT rights organizations but we believe that they are playing it safe and the die has already been cast with the fileing of this lawsuit so why come out against something that was filed on May 22, 2009 prior to that of the prop 8 decision being made public? Why not unify with the lawyers and help them get this issue not only heard but a favorable decision.

This is too importand an issue to be devided on!

Our community has waited too long (since 1974) to be heard on this issue on the federal level, so we say You Go Boys and take it to the feds. The justices may not be ready but our President, Congress and House are. So we may just have enough pressure on the justices on this issue for them to not only hear this case but rule in true rainbow favorability.

It is about time someone had the guts and the knowledge to be able to push this issue.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE (all you groups against them) UNIFY WITH THESE LAWYERS!!

*This may be political suiside for us but this is what everyone loves about us we dont follow we lead, and we are real not a watered down version of something else. So no appologies, only real opinion’s from a couple with a civil union who are tired of being treated like seccond class citizens.

Partner and Children Denied Visitation of Dying Woman

Aggrieved Janice Langbehn, with her children, Danielle, 15; David, 13; and Katie, 12 (back to camera), has sued the hospital that treated her partner.

When a loved one is in the hospital, you naturally want to be at the bedside. But what if the staff won’t allow it? That’s what Janice Langbehn, a social worker in Lacey, Wash., says she experienced when her partner of 18 years, Lisa Pond, collapsed with an aneurysm during a Florida vacation and was taken to a Miami trauma center. She died there, at age 39, as Ms. Langbehn tried in vain to persuade hospital officials to let her visit, along with the couple’s adopted children. “I have this deep sense of failure for not being at Lisa’s bedside when she died,” Ms. Langbehn said. “How I get over that I don’t know, or if I ever do.” The case, now the subject of a federal lawsuit in Florida, is being watched by gay rights groups, which say same-sex partners often report being excluded from a patient’s room because they aren’t “real” family members.

To read the whole story… Kept From a Dying Partner's Bedside

Police: 'Jena Six' teen shoots self, is treated

AP – In this Thursday, Sept. 27, 2007 picture, Mychal Bell, one of the Jena Six, appears at a news conference …

I wonder what happened to this young man between the time of the whole Jena Six event and now; he was involved in one of the most highly publicized cases of the year, and he went from that to a foster home. Where are his parents? Why was he in a foster home, and what happened to him there that would have him out shoplifting? Shooting himself in the chest with a .22 caliber pistol sounds more like a cry for help to me than a serious suicide attempt, since everyone and his momma knows now that the most sure way of shooting yourself is to put the pistol in your mouth, especially with one so small.

MONROE, La. – A teen convicted in the "Jena Six" beating case shot himself in the chest and was taken to the hospital Monday, days after his arrest on a shoplifting charge, police said.

Mychal Bell's wound isn't life threatening, said Monroe Police Sgt. Cassandra Wooten. The 18-year-old used a .22-caliber firearm in the shooting around 7:40 p.m., she said.

Wooten believes Bell was upset over media coverage of the arrest last week.

"I think he was upset over the incident ... and didn't want to be in the news again," she said.

Bell was one of a group of black teenagers who once faced attempted murder charges in the 2006 beating of a white classmate at Jena High School. The charges for all of the defendants were reduced.

The severity of the original charges brought widespread criticism and eventually led to more than 20,000 people converging in September 2007 on the tiny central Louisiana town of Jena for the largest civil rights march in decades.

Bell was in the news again after he was arrested on Dec. 24 and booked on charges of shoplifting, resisting arrest and simple assault, police said.

Police said Bell tried to steal several shirts and a pair of jeans from a department store and fled when a security guard and off-duty police officer tried to detain him. After they found him hiding under a car, Bell "swung his arms wildly" and one of his elbows struck the security guard with a glancing blow, according to a police report. He was freed on $1,300 bond.

Wooten said Bell was taken to a hospital in Monroe, where a nursing supervisor wouldn't release his condition. Wooten didn't have further details on the shooting.

One of Bell's attorneys in the assault case didn't immediately return a call Monday seeking comment on the shoplifting case.

In the Jena case, Bell eventually pleaded guilty to a juvenile charge of second-degree battery.

Bell, the only one of the six who has been tried, has been living in a foster home in Monroe and attending school.

Police Torturer Arrested On Federal Charges

Nicole Colson reports on the long-awaited arrest of the man who oversaw torture in Chicago police stations.

October 22, 2008

Former Chicago Police Commander Jon BurgeFormer Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge

THERE MAY finally be some long-overdue justice for the victims of former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, after he was arrested October 21 at his Florida home on federal charges of perjury and obstruction of justice related to his role in the systematic abuse of prisoners.

The name "Burge" is synonymous with torture in the city of Chicago. As an officer in the Chicago Police Department, Burge oversaw the beatings and torture of dozens of suspects, all of them Black men, at Area 2 and 3 police headquarters during the 1970s and '80s. Most were railroaded into prison, and even onto death row, as a result of confessions extracted from them through abuse, suffocations and electroshock.

A $7 million special prosecutor's inquiry released in 2006 found credible evidence of torture in more than 70 cases, though activists say the real number is much higher--certainly in the hundreds.

"While not all the officers named by all the claimants were guilty of prisoner abuse, it is our judgment that the commander of the Violent Crimes section of Detective Areas 2 and 3, Jon Burge, was guilty of such abuse," read the report's conclusion. "It necessarily follows that a number of those serving under his command recognized that, if their commander could abuse persons with impunity, so could they."

Dozens of Burge's victims remain in prison today. Despite repeated calls by activists, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has not pressed for new trials.

In 2002, Madigan took over prosecution of many of the torture cases when a Cook County judge declared that State's Attorney Dick Devine had a conflict of interest because he had represented Burge in a civil suit related to torture allegations. When she ran for office that year, Madigan claimed she "would never stand in the way of justice." But in more than five years on the job, she hasn't initiated even one evidentiary hearing.

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BURGE WAS fired in 1993 after the Chicago Police Review Board ruled that he tortured Andrew Wilson into giving a confession. Despite this, Burge had remained free, collecting a city pension of more than $3,500 a month and receiving taxpayer-funded legal representation while living a comfortable retirement in Florida (where he keeps a boat named the "Vigilante").

Prosecutors in Chicago had claimed that Burge and his men were untouchable, because the statute of limitations governing their crimes had run out.

But federal investigators believe there is evidence to make a case against Burge on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury. According to prosecutors, Burge lied when he claimed he never witnessed and did not have any knowledge of physical abuse and torture on the part of Chicago police officers during a deposition in lawsuit filed against him on behalf of former death row prisoner Madison Hobley.

Hobley was convicted of setting a January 1987 fire that killed his wife, infant son and five others. In a pattern of abuse that would become familiar as more cases came to light, Hobley was suffocated by Burge with a plastic typewriter cover. Police then falsified his confession. Hobley was convicted and sentenced to death in 1990. He spent more than 12 years on death row before he was exonerated and pardoned, along with three other men, by former Illinois Gov. George Ryan.

"If Al Capone went down for taxes, it's better than him going down for nothing," federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said in a press conference announcing the arrest. As he concluded, "For his lies about this torture and abuse, we intend to hold him accountable."

Darrell Cannon, a Burge torture victim, told the Chicago Tribune, "I'm thankful to be an American today because...the man that has been skating for so long, riding in his boat, catching fish and everything else--well, now he's in jail, killing roaches. And that's exactly where he belongs."

After his arrest, Burge appeared before a federal magistrate, who set bond at $250,000 and released him. Burge is expected to be arraigned in federal court in Chicago October 27.

Federal prosecutors are hinting that other charges may be forthcoming, with Fitzgerald warning that other police involved in torture should not pin their hopes on police refusing to talk about their colleagues. "If their lifeline is to hang onto a perceived wall of silence, they may be hanging on air," Fitzgerald told reporters.

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FOR NOW, the charges are against Burge, but many others are implicated in this scandal and should be brought to justice. That includes Burge's fellow officers who participated in the torture and other law enforcement officials who knew what was taking place--among them, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who was Cook County State's Attorney when Andrew Wilson was tortured in 1982.

At the time, then-police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek sent a letter to Daley, with a letter from the director of Cermak Prison Health Services, detailing Wilson's injuries and Wilson's claims that he was electro-shocked. Brzeczek requested "direction as to how the Department should proceed in the investigation of these allegations."

According to special prosecutors who oversaw the investigation, the letter "was probably discussed" with both Daley and his then-First Assistant (and the current State's Attorney) Richard Devine--but Daley "has no current memory of how the letter was processed."

Now, with Burge's arrest, Daley is once again claiming he had no knowledge or responsibility for the systematic abuse that took place in Chicago police stations. "I was very proud of my role as prosecutor," he told the Tribune when Burge was arrested. "I was not the mayor, I was not the police chief. I did not promote this man in the 80s, so let's put everything into perspective."

While the arrest of Jon Burge is welcome, federal prosecutors are not condemning the system, but attempting to preserve it--by pointing to Burge and his men as "bad apples.

"According to these charges, Jon Burge shamed his uniform and his badge," Fitzgerald said. "The last time he wore that uniform and that badge was more than 15 years ago. It is important that the public respect that, when we bring these charges, they should not judge the people who walk the streets in a uniform and badge today to try and serve and protect."

But Chicago police have been involved in a number of recent incidents that should give pause to anyone who thinks abuse is a thing of the past. In a two-week span in June, for example, Chicago police were involved in eight shootings--five of them fatal--including Devon Young, a 26-year-old Black man who was shot by police in the back of the head.

A Justice Department report released in July detailed ongoing human rights abuses against prisoners at Chicago's Cook County jail. The report detailed inadequate health care leading to prisoner deaths and a culture of abuse among prison guards.

Such incidents aren't "exceptions to the rule," but part of a culture in which police consider themselves to be above the law. The arrest of Jon Burge is a welcome development--but only the tip of the iceberg in terms of getting real justice for all of the victims of the Chicago police.